New JSP imminent

According to their website, the current issue of The Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha is still the December 2010 issue. However, I have it on good authority that the next issue (20/3 [March 2011]) will be issued very soon. When it's released I'll put up a link and a list of its contents. But for now, as a teaser, let me suggest that this issue will feature a very helpful discussion of the literal vs. metaphorical intentions of the therapeutic language in 4Q521. That text, famously found among the cache of texts from Cave 4 near the Dead Sea and originally published in 1992, contains striking thematic and traditional similarities to Jesus' response to John the Baptist's disciples, recorded in Matt. 11.2–6||Luke 7.18–23.

James Tabor, who published an essay with Michael Wise on this fragmentary text in the early 1990s, has posted a translation and discussion on his website. All of this is very interesting!!

how the ancients used language

I need some help. I'm reading Ruth A. Clements and Daniel R. Schwartz's edited volume, Text, Thought, and Practice in Qumran and Early Christianity (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 84; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), which has been a fascinating collection of essays to this point (I'm about two-thirds of the way through). I'm currently reading Menahem Kister's essay, "Divorce, Reproof, and Other Sayings in the Synoptic Gospels: Jesus Traditions in the Context of 'Qumranic' and Other Texts" (195–229). I'm extremely sympathetic to Kister's reading program, which situations NT traditions (here the sayings of Jesus) within overtly Jewish frames of reference.

But I am once again flummoxed at the implicit model of language and communication that enables conceptions such as the following:

Moreover, the expected Greek rendering of יסוד הבריאה is ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κτίσεως, an expression in which the word ἀρχὴ would mean "principle." It seems that this expression was changed in Mark to ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς κτίσεως, "from the beginning of creation" (10:6), and in Matthew further revised to ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς (19:4, 8). If this expression indeed underlies both CD and the sayings tradition, there must be a close genetic link between them. If this is the case, we have here a striking case in which the originality of the wording in one Gospel may be established over against that of another through comparison with the Qumranic parallel. (Kister 2009: 202; my emphasis)

Anyone familiar with redaction-critical analyses of the synoptics will recognize immediately the familiar notion of language revised in later gospels from earlier ones. So Matthew's "from the beginning" is a modification of Mark's "from the beginning of creation" rather than an autonomous instance of language that relates to the sociolinguistic phenomena of Hellenistic Greek in general. Kister takes that thinking to a new level, if I understand him rightly, by applying redaction-critical analytical tools to texts that don't exhibit a literary relationship. In other words, the comparison of Mark and Matthew at least rests on the theory that Matthew knew and copied from Mark; but what theory legitimates Kister's claim that Mark changes language from another (Hebrew) text?

The larger problem, however, stems from our theory of language and communication, if it can be said that we have one at all. As historians of antiquity, we can only work with and analyze the remains of language that was inscribed some place, whether on papyrus or parchment, on a monumental stele or statue, or even the plethora of graffiti that survives from the ancient world. It seems to me, however, that redaction criticism in general, and especially analyses such as Kister's, implicitly assume that written language was all there was. This sounds ridiculous, of course; who could imagine a silent world where people communicated solely in writing?! But this is precisely the conception of language that appears to underlie anlyses of language from text to text. Otherwise, how can Kister (or anyone else) suppose that Mark has changed "the principle of creation" to "the beginning of creation"? Why is either phrase the cause or the effect of the other?

Werner Kelber has for over two decades been arguing against just these very analytical assumptions when he refers to the "equiprimordial"-ness of variant sayings. Kelber's neologism is, perhaps, unfortunate for two reasons. First, it's just plain weird, though it seems Kelber delights in weird language (or in weirdly using language). But second—and more substantively—the concept of equiprimordiality is an exaggeration of an otherwise very insightful point. That is, Kelber argues that tradition, in oral performance, enjoys a certain autonomy vis-à-vis previous and subsequent performances of the tradition. That is, if in one performance Jesus is reported to say, "Blessed are the poor . . . Blessed are the hungry," and in another performance he is made to say, "Blessed are those who mourn . . . Blessed are the meek," the two instances are both equally ("equi-") original instances of the tradition ("-primordial"). One is not "more original" than the other. This variability in the tradition goes back as far as Jesus himself, who on different occasions may have given various renditions of the Beatitudes (cp. Matthew and Luke), and who may have sometimes correlated his Beatitudes with parallel woes (Luke) or not (Matthew).

Kelber perhaps goes too far when he insists that traditions in oral performance are equally "original" or "primordial." Tradition could certainly develop as well as devolve; it could be applied to new contexts, integrated with other traditions, or cast in new frames of reference. These would not be equi-primordial. But we should recognize the fairly obvious point that the traditions we analyze transcended and existed well beyond the texts we work with. As a result, any analysis of one text solely—or even primarily—in terms of another text runs the risk of neglecting the ways that nontextual factors contextualized both the production and the reception of our texts. In other words, in a world where people could (and presumably did) say ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κτίσεως as well as ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς κτίσεως, and many other things besides, no one was likely to perceive one phrase in terms of (or as a change from) the other.

SECSOR: Day Three

Sunday morning had three sections I wanted to attend, but I had to balance my desire to hear papers with my urge to get home. Sunday morning papers can be sparsely attended, which is too bad. They're typically of the same quality as their earlier counterparts, and often the discussion (perhaps because of the lower attendance) is even better. Having had to present a paper on Tuesday morning at the SBL's Annual Meeting, I really do sympathize.

At any rate, I heard four papers Sunday morning. The first two papers were part of the ASOR/SBL: Archaeology and the Ancient World IV meeting, and the second two were part of the SBL: New Testament V meeting.

• The first paper, which was moved from a later meeting because two presenters were unable to attend, was "A Sculpture Fragment from Iron II Moabite Khirbet Mudaybi': A Case Study of Inter-Disciplinary Inquiry for Interpretive Purposes" (Ted Carruth, David Lipscomb University), presented a sculpture fragment and the contextual information impinging upon its interpretation. This is about as far afield from my area of expertise as you can get and not be, say, a NASA engineer, so I have very little by way of comment. But it was interesting to see the kinds of deliberations archaeologists engage in and the kinds of argumentation deemed appropriate for those deliberations.


• The second paper, "Was There an Economic Crisis under Antipas? Revisiting the Questions of Royal Estates and Taxation in Herodian Galilee" (Sharon Lea Mattila, University of North Carolina at Pembroke), took aim at the application of conflictual models of society as they are applied to reconstructions of first-century CE Galilean society (by, e.g., Richard Horsely, Douglas Oakman, and others). Mattila presented a circumstantial (though convincing) argument that the Great Plain (a.k.a. the Jezreel Valley) between the Galilee and Samaria would have been allotted to Herod Antipas rather than to Archelaus after the death of their father, Herod the Great, in 4 BCE. These lands would have been considered Antipas' private lands and would have provided him with considerable income. Due to time constraints Mattila was unable to adequately consider the question of taxation, but that really is the point. That is, if Antipas did not have control over the Great Plain (and so did not reap its fruits for his own wealth), then the funding for his building projects would have had to have found a different source, probably heavy taxation of the populace. Mattila's implied argument was that, since Antipas held the Great Plain, theories of excessive taxation that have been fashionable in the last three or four decades and have driven much of the sociological interpretation of this time are probably wide of the mark. This, I thought, was an especially interesting way to pursue this question.
  
  [At this point I had hoped to hear the paper, "How to Read a Book: Irenaeus and the Pastoral Epistles Reconsidered" (Ben White, UNC Chapel Hill), but unfortunately Mattila's paper ended about the same time as White's. If you happened to attend the New Testament IV session and you heard that paper, I'd be interested in getting a brief synopsis and any evaluative comments you might have.]


• The first paper of the New Testament V session was "If Christ Has Not Been Raised—The Inefficacy of a Qualified Gospel in 1 Cor 15:17" (Mark Proctor, Lee University), offered a critique of certain interpretations of Paul's claim at 1 Cor 15.17 ["If Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless and you are still in your sins"]. That is, some have read this verse as Paul's claim that, if Christ has not been raised from the dead, that forgiveness of sins is impossible. According to this reading, the resurrection is the essential factor in Pauline ideas of forgiveness; forgiveness, in other words, is a function (or result) of Christ's resurrection. Proctor argues that this is wrong on two counts. First, Paul typically locates the forgiveness of sins in relation to Jesus' crucifixion rather than the resurrection. Second, this interpretation neglects the rhetorical structure of Paul's arguments in this section. Instead, Proctor reads 1 Cor 15.17 as Paul's claim that, if Christ hasn't been raised, then his proclamation of the gospel—which trades heavily on the message of Jesus' resurrection—is worthless because he has offered false testimony about God. In other words, forgiveness might still be a real possibility between God and Paul's readers, but Paul's proclamation of that forgiveness would not be trustworthy if his message of the resurrection were false. Proctor's argument was convincing, though I lack the necessary knowledge to know the extent to which the interpretation Proctor opposes characterizes the scholarly literature.


• The second paper, "From Qumran to Philo: Precedence for Paul's Use of Israel" (Thomas Whitley, Gardner-Webb University), compared the use of Israel among the DSS (1QS, CD, and the Temple Scroll) with the rather different use of the term among Philo's writings. According to Whitley, Israel is used among the Scrolls in a number of different ways: as a label for the nation at large, as a label for the group itself, and others. In Philo, however, Israel usually refers to a spiritual level achieved only by a select élite. Whitley finds elements of both Qumranic and Philonic uses of Israel in Paul (esp. Galatians and Romans). Whitley then made an appeal to sociological theories of identity, which I think was the right move to make. Unfortunately, Whitley makes a mistake common among biblical scholarship's appropriation of sociological inquiry in that he identifies two separate theories: "identity theory," which highlights the identity of the individual, and "social identity theory," which highlights the identity of the group. This, of course, is not correct; social identity theory (and the similar field, social memory theory) takes up the issue both personal and collective identity as fundamentally social processes. If Whitley takes account of this difference between sociological research and its biblical social-scientific criticism, I think he'll have a very interesting analytical perspective to bring to bear upon his data.

There were two other papers in the New Testament V session, both of which looked good in the program. But I hadn't seen my family in over forty-eight hours, and I was itching to get home. So I left. I am sympathetic to how frustrating it can be to be the last two presenters at a conference and to watch your audience melt under the heat of earlier papers and pressures of travel. My apologies to Annie Tinsley (University of Birmingham [UK]) and Presian Burroughs (Duke University). I hope your papers were well received and discussed.

And that was my experience of SECSOR 2010. Next year's meeting will be in Louisville, KY, which sounds like a fabulous venue. Hopefully the weather will be nice that far north, but I'm sure I'll survive. Although . . . I suppose that really is the sort of thing I shouldn't take for granted. See you all in Louisville!

the problem with teenagers?

I've always assumed that I hate the mall and other locations teeming with teens and post-teens who drink Mt. Dew and still live with their parents simply because I'm getting old and irritable. I have no desire to deny my age or my temperament. But according to the Damascus Document (an ancient Jewish text included among the Dead Sea Scrolls), perhaps my distaste for all things pubescent has spiritual roots as well. Cecilia Wassen discusses the Damascus Document's exclusion of youths, among other classes of the unclean, in her essay, "What Do Angels Have against the Blind and the Deaf? Rules of Exclusion in the Dead Sea Scrolls" (Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple Judaism, edited by Wayne O. McCready and Adele Reinhartz [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008], 115–29). She says,

Unlike [the War Scroll], [the Damascus Document] does include youths in its list of excluded categories. This exclusion may reflect an underlying fear of demonic affiliation. A youth has not been formally initiated yet, according to the prescriptions in [the Damascus Document]. It is revealing that the angel Mastema (an alternative name for Belial or Satan) is said to turn from a person when he takes the oath at the entrance; as the ritual reads, "On the day when a man takes upon himself an oath to return to the Torah of Moses, the angel Mastema shall turn aside from him if he fulfills his words" (CD XVI 4–5). Menahem Kister explains that the entrance ritual in itself was seen as a ritual of exorcism. Hence, youths, as not full members, were viewed as potentially being under the influence, or possession, of evil powers until the moment of their entrance (CD XVI 4–5). (127)

OMG.

the origin of commentary writing

I've begun reviewing Ruth A. Clement and Daniel R. Schwartz's edited volume, Text, Thought, and Practice in Qumran and Early Christianity (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 84; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009). The first essay is Markus Bockmuehl's, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of Biblical Commentary" (3–29), a thus-far interesting examination of pesharim at Qumran and their relation to Greco-Roman commentary practices. In a footnote Bockmuehl drops a rather interesting suggestion, which I thought I'd throw up against the InterWeb and see if it stuck:

Prof. Horbury suggests to me that the learned nature of Alexandrian poetry may itself have encouraged a commentary tradition, and that recondite biblical texts that explicitly required interpretation (e.g., Zechariah, Daniel) would have fostered an analogous Jewish interest. (9, ftn 19)

Jews, Christians, and everything in between

I've begun playing with phrases that might help me get at my problem with the way Jews and Christians (and the relation between them) have been conceived in biblical scholarship (broadly understood). A particularly interesting example of this conception, in a mildly polemical context, comes from Lawrence Schiffman's recontextualization of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their True Meaning for Judaism and Christianity [New York and London: Doubleday, 1994]). The very first paragraph of the Preface reads,

This book aims to correct a fundamental misreading of the Dead Sea Scrolls. For some forty-five years, the scholars publishing and interpreting the scrolls have focused almost singlemindedly on the scrolls' significance for our understanding of early Christianity. This is the first work ever written to explain their significance in understanding the history of Judaism. (xiii)

I'm not interested in assessing the truth of Schiffman's claim (although I don't really doubt him here). Instead, I can't help but feel that Schiffman conceives the shift from "early Christianity" to "the history of Judaism" as a change of categories rather than as a broadening of categories. In my way of thinking, understanding the DSS and their significance for ancient Judaism is a larger question—not a different question—than the DSS and Christian origins.

Why does this matter? Well, consider Schiffman's description of "the messianic idea," by which he means the Jewish messianic idea. Again, I can't help but feel that Schiffman is excluding, or at least neglecting, Christian messianic ideas.

The messianic idea has been central tot he development of postbiblical Judaism in all its various forms. Generally speaking, the concept envisions the eventual coming of a redeemer, a descendant of David, who will bring about major changes in the world, leading to world peace, prosperity, and the end of evil and misfortune. Essential to the messianic idea in Judaism is the expectation that when the time comes, the ancient glories of the Davidic kingdom will be reestablished in the Land of Israel. Unquestionably this-worldly, Jewish messianism expresses its ideas in concrete terms. it looks forward to the messianic era, when the spiritual level of humanity will rise, resulting in and from the ingathering of Israel and the universal recognition of Israel's God. Of course, that definition is a sweeping generalization. in reality, the messianic idea in Judaism has a complex history, further complicated by the simultaneous existence, even within the same strain of Judaism, of various views of messianism. Within this history, we can distinguish certain patterns or trends of messianic thought. (317)

Despite a couple ideas in that paragraph that I think don't befit traditional Christian messianic ideas (though in the history of Christian ideas we could probably find an analogy to all of Schiffman's elements of the messianic idea), very much of this description describes Christianity very well. Some even, represent an important shift in perspective that helps us appreciate anew numbingly familiar aspects of Christianity (e.g., if Christianity identifies Jesus as Israel's messiah, how, if at all, does he bring "world peace, prosperity, and the end of evil and misfortune"? Or do we think these are things about which Jesus couldn't be bothered?).

Inasmuch as Schiffman has transferred his focus from Christianity to Judaism, I think his focus is still too narrow (though he would probably say his focus is what he wanted it to be). I think our understanding of Christianity and Schiffman's understanding of Judaism would only be enhanced if we broadened the interpretive field that gives our questions meaning rather than moving from one field to another.

Who wrote the DSS

This isn't new, but it's worth re-posting here. Smithsonian.com published a brief essay, "Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?" Given the recent mentions of Raphael Golb in the press (not to mention in the American judicial system), Who wrote the DSS? is a rather important question.

[HT: Bible and Interpretation]

another thought

The recent research in these areas thus gives powerful confirmation to hypotheses that only a few interpreters were previously ready to entertain and willing to argue. First, Israelite culture was as diverse as were the groups and communities that comprised Judean, Galilean, and Samaritan society. Different versions of Israelite tradition coexisted and competed. The well-known differences between the Sadducees and the Pharisees can be multiplied. (Horsley, Jesus in Context, 129)

This is true, for the most part. But again I'm a little frustrated that Horsley rails so effectively against established assumptions even while continuing to employ them. Earlier on page 129, for example, Horsley has rightly noted:

[T]hose who have closely examined the multiple scrolls of books of the Torah found at Qumran are also concluding that the text of the books of the Torah was not yet uniform or stable. Different textual traditions still existed in the same scribal community (and presumably in Jerusalem as well), each of which was still undergoing development. The Dead Sea Scrolls also supply further examples of alternative Torah (4QMMT; the Temple Scroll) and alternative versions of Israelite history and tradition (not rewritten Bible; Jubilees; Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities) that coexisted and competed, at least among scribal circles.

Some conservative Christians, somehow, turned to the DSS (and especially the Great Isaiah Scroll) in order to argue for the textual stability of the Hebrew Bible even in texts that were 1,000 years older [!] than previously known texts. Some texts were indeed remarkably similar to what became the Masoretic Text (the basis for modern English translations of the Old Testament), but others were strikingly different. And there were also other texts that Jews and Christians would later exclude from the canon. None of this is meant to imply the Bible is unreliable or untrustworthy. But if the DSS have any significance for the question of the Bible's reliability, that significance is very ambiguous.

Horsley, however, has recognized the textual and traditional dynamics at play at Qumran even while adhering an old paradigm of "competing versions." Qumran might not have preserved a stable text-form of Hebrew biblical traditions, but neither does it suggest a competition between text-forms. In fact, if competition were the best way to think about different text-forms (LXX, MT, Samaritan, in addition to various minor and other variant readings and traditions), I would expect Qumran to have expended some effort to conform their biblical scrolls to a particular text-form.

Instead, we find at Qumran evidence that LXX, MT, and Samaritan readings could be preserved and read as authoritative in a single community. This isn't competition. Rather, it suggests that the text-form may not have been the most important factor. What mattered, I suggest, was the tradition itself, and the text's primary significance was for enabling access to the tradition. In this paradigm, then, what matters isn't [necessarily] whether or not this or that reading was preserved but rather how the text functioned to connect the community to its traditions. Of course, specific readings could become significant as groups engaged in social conflict (whether Qumran against a Temple priesthood, or Justin against Trypho, or Samaritans against Judeans, etc.). But even this "becoming significant" was a function of other, extratextual factors.

Dead Sea Scrolls online

A number of blogs (HT: PaleoJudaica.com and Codex) have mentioned the New York Time's report that the Dead Sea Scrolls are being rephotographed and will be made available online. This is great news for everyone interested in all aspects of Second Temple Judaism (not least the New Testament and Christian Origins). This project is not just about access to the scrolls' contents but also the preservation of their substance. The number of recent efforts to photograph ancient manuscripts and make them accessible online is perhaps the most important thing happening in biblical and related studies today. What an exciting time!