Lethargic Man (anag.)

There are certain texts which function almost as macguffins to the cultures which produced them: Everyone is aware of them and holds them to be a central text in the foundational period of their culture, but few have actually read them. "Beowulf" is an example for the English (is there something similar for the Germans?); I would say that the Dead Sea Scrolls constitute one for the Jews.

Having attended a number of Limmud sessions on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but not actually read any of the scroll contents myself apart from brief quotations, when an acquaintance gave away part of her library prior to emigrating, I took her copy of The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, ed. Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar (thanks, Shani!), which contains all of the non-Biblical material in the scrolls, presented along with English translation but no commentary.

I'm not going to write a general blog post about the DSS here; rather, I'm going to write about the things I noticed which matched my interests. (And even then, not all of those: The Genesis Apocryphon is worth reading, as a pre-midrashic midrash, but I'm not going to write about it here, save to note that for anyone who's interested, there's a bit quoted in this Limmud talk I attended.)

Most of what I am going to write about here reflects my interest in how deep the roots of rabbinic Judaism go into the pre-rabbinic period. Orthodoxy, or at least ultra-Orthodoxy (which was responsible for my childhood Jewish education) presents many current practices as going back to Moses; this is, as liv first made me aware, Pharisaic propaganda, in that the Pharisees enabled Judaism to survive the destruction of the Temple by a great deal of innovation, but had to do so in a context in which innovation was greatly disparaged.

Of course, some of the roots of rabbinic Judaism do go back into the Second Temple period; for example, there's a proto-Amida in the book of Ben Sira, so the question is what evidence can I see for this in the DSS (bearing also in mind that the Qumran sect was not on the path leading towards rabbinic Judaism). Let's find out, and discover some other interesting material.

Miscellaneous

4Q173a (p. 351) is written in cryptic letters, noch. This piqued my interest; upon investigation, this appears to be Cryptic A script, based upon palaeo-Hebrew; see this and the preceding page (requires JSTOR access). See also 4Q298.

11Q Temple Scroll (p. 1297), Col. VI:

[And after the festival of the virgin oil*, the twelve tribes of the Israelites shall bring the woo]d to the alta[r as an offering. On the first day] the tribes [of Levi] and Judah [shall offer], and on [the second day Benjamin and the sons of Joseph], etc. [...] [And they shall offer on the festival] of the wood a burnt-offering [...]

* Shovuos.

Something that's almost completely forgotten about today is the fact that all those sacrifices in the Temple required a lot of wood to burn them, and somebody had to bring that wood to Jerusalem. Josephus refers to the festival of xylophory (wood-bringing), and I recall reading somewhere else that it took place nine times a year. This text provides confirmation that it was considered a (presumably minor) festival.

The children of Israel brought forth all the bones of the children of Jacob save the bones of Joseph, and they buried them in the field in the double cave in the mountain. And the most (of them) returned to Egypt, but a few of them remained in the mountains of Hebron, and Amram your father remained with them. Then the king of Canaan was victorious over the king of Egypt, and he closed the gates of Egypt.

Now this is interesting; what's going on here? My guess is that a continuous Israelite presence in the land of Cana`an is necessary for the Israelites to know, when they emerged from Egypt after 210 years, where their holy sites were in the land of Cana`an. Alternatively, ch. 37 decribed how the sons of Jacob imposed servitude upon the Edomites "until this day"; there would need to remain Israelites in Cana`an for that too.

But what is the narrator's point in having Amram specifically locked out of Egypt? I have no idea; what about you?

The fragmentary 4Q543/4Q545 1 II/4Q546 2 Visions of Amram (pp. 1085-6) answers the question of why Amram is left behind in Cana`an:

Qahath there to stay and to dwell and to bui[ld the tombs of our fathers... many from the sons of my uncle together...] a man, and about our work it was very much un[til the dead were bur]ied [...] rumour of war, frightening those returning [from] here to the land of E[gypt...] quickly, and they did not build the tombs of their fathers,
[...]
[their fathers], and [my father Qahath] let [me] go [...]
[...] and to build and obtain for them [all they need] from the land of Canaan [...] [...] until we ourselves build. And war broke out between Philistia] and E[g]yp[t], and was winning...]
And they closed the b[ord]er of Egypt and it was not possible to [...] forty-one years, and we could not [...] between Egypt and Canaan and Philistia.

And [during al]l th[is...] she was not.

I, myself, [did not take] ano[ther] woman [...] all: that I will return to Egypt in peace and I will see the face of my wife.

The Copper Scroll

The Copper Scroll is sui generis: not only is there no other scroll written on copper, but its contents are also unique: they are directions on where to find buried treasure.

I actually knew this before I read the text, but the night after I read it, I dreamed I was searching for buried treasure!

To be continued...