The Copper Scroll

The priests and sectarians of Qumran never cut off entirely their relations with the priests of Jerusalem, despite their strenuous opposition to and criticism of the views and practices of those priests. As a result of this ongoing contact, the strange document known as the Copper Scroll reached Qumran. This scroll, engraved on copper sheets, contains a list of buried treasures hidden in the Judaean Desert at various locations. The text mentions some sixty-four items, specifying the amount of treasure and the hiding place of each one.

Because this scroll was composed in a Hebrew dialect somewhat closer to mishnaic Hebrew than the rest of the texts authored or preserved at Qumran, scholars have concluded that the Copper Scroll originated in different circles, most likely from Jerusalem. Apparently, as the war approached, or soon after the Temple was destroyed, some persons put together a list of treasures that they either buried, or intended to bury, in the desert. No one has yet located any of these treasures despite many attempts to find them.

Certain scholars have argued that the Copper Scroll is entirely a fabrication, a fantasy concocted by some powerless sectarian who could never approach these great treasures of the Temple. The basis for this claim is that the amounts of silver and gold cataloged in the scroll seem inconceivable. However, recent studies have shown that although the amounts do appear large, they are not impossibly so. Furthermore, certain terms in the text link the scroll intimately with the system of tithes and offerings that existed in the Jerusalem Temple.

Others have suggested that the moneys recorded here were collected after the destruction as tithes and other offerings and were then buried in the desert. But that interpretation also cannot be supported. First of all, such substantial funds would never have survived the Roman pillage of Jerusalem. Second, no sources report that offerings were disposed of through burial after the Destruction of the Temple.

Yet another theory claims that the Copper Scroll constitutes the central document of the Qumran collection, a hypothesis that would require a radical reinterpretation of the entire Qumran collection. According to this view, the scroll records the placement of Temple documents throughout Judaea, including the scrolls placed in the caves of Qumran. However, though the Copper Scroll does mention that a copy of itself was deposited in another location, that statement cannot be interpreted to refer to numerous written texts that were then deposited throughout the Judaean Desert. Other passages, taken to refer to the deposit of numerous scrolls in the Judaean Desert, have been both incorrectly read and misinterpreted. It is entirely unlikely that the Qumran documents would have constituted the hidden library of the Jerusalem Temple, since these documents uniformly object to the conduct of the Jerusalem Temple and its priests.

If indeed the items on this list referred to treasures from the Temple, then the document could not have been created by the sectarians, who had separated themselves from the Temple and the Jerusalem priesthood. It must have been brought in to Qumran, probably by some priests who fled there before the destruction of Qumran in 68 and of the Temple in 70 C.E.

Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1994.

Midrash in the Time of Ezra

During the exile, a feeling of patriotism and the desire to preserve the Israelite literary heritage in the wake of the destruction of the ancestral homeland were probably responsible for a new emphasis on the study of Israel’s scriptures. When Ezra returned to Judea, he devoted himself to making the Torah the center of the religious life of his people. But the Torah had one deficiency as a legal text. There were apparent contradictions and inconsistencies between the legal rulings in its various sections. Now something new was called for. How were the contradictions between laws on the same subject to be handled? How were the multiple presentations of the same material to be understood?

The duplications in the Torah begged to be interpreted. Thus was born the method which later Hebrew termed midrash. Essentially, the exegetical (interpretative) technique of midrash can be defined as the explanation of one biblical passage in the light of another. In its earliest forms midrash dealt with matters of Jewish law, what the rabbis later called halakhah. In the early Second Temple period, the new dependence on the written law stimulated the development of the method of legal midrash. Its earliest record is in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

An example of the use of this technique in our period is the decision attributed to Ezra to expel foreign wives. Returning exiles had married non-Israelite women of “the people of the land” and children had been born to them. Ezra 9:1 presents a list of the nations with which Israel had intermarried. The list is itself evidence of a midrashic interpretation. Included are some nations with which the Torah had prohibited marriage unconditionally and other nations that could marry Israelites only after a specific number of generations according to other biblical sources. The technique of analogical midrash led to the conclusion, based on Deut. 7:3 and 23:8–9, that the nations were all to be treated alike; marriage with any of them was to be eternally proscribed. The expulsion of the foreign wives was based on this exegetical conclusion.

Another example relates to the proper observance of Sukkot (Tabernacles). Leviticus 23 commands the building of the sukkah, and dwelling in it during the seven-day festival. There is no mention of pilgrimage to the sanctuary. Deuteronomy 16 does not mention the obligation of dwelling in sukkot but describes the festival as a pilgrimage. Legal midrash led to the decision that the entire people was to assemble in Jerusalem and build sukkot there. Thus it was possible to fulfill the commands of both codes and in this way resolve the inconsistency.

Other decisions based on this technique are recorded in the covenant of Nehemiah 10. These show beyond any doubt that the use of the midrashic method for the determination of Jewish law in cases where the Pentateuch was either unclear or apparently contradictory became the norm in the Persian period. It remained in use for the derivation of new conclusions until well into the Middle Ages, and at the same time, as we will see, often served as a means of justifying legal rulings already practiced on the basis of ancient tradition.

To avoid confusion one point should be made very clear: the term midrash designates both an exegetical method and a collection of literary materials based on midrashic exegesis. Later on we will have occasion to discuss various midrashim of the latter sort. It would be incorrect to conclude from the early dating of the technique of legal midrash that the contents of the collections to be examined later are of similar antiquity.

Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition, Ktav Publishing House, Hoboken, NJ, 1991.

Early Christianity – A Jewish Sect

Christianity was firmly anchored in the heritage of Second Temple sectarianism. Various documents from the corpus of materials discovered in the Qumran caves tell us of the extreme apocalypticism of some groups of Jews in this period. These groups hoped for the immediate revelation of a messiah who would redeem them from their misfortunes and tribulations. As time went on, and political and economic conditions worsened, they became more and more convinced that the messianic deliverance would be accompanied by a cataclysm. The forces of evil, usually identified both with Israelite transgressors and with the non-Jewish powers that dominated the Jewish people, would then be totally destroyed. This view took its cue from the prophetic idea of the Day of the Lord. The destruction of evil would be accompanied by a utopian messianism wherein an ideal society would come into existence with the restoration of the Davidic monarchy. When Christianity came to the fore in the first century C.E., its adherents saw themselves as living in the period of the fulfillment of these visions. They identified Jesus as the Davidic messiah who would usher in the eventual destruction of all evil.

Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition, Ktav Publishing House, Hoboken, NJ, 1991.

Yom Kippur

Along with the Sabbath, several other days were set apart by biblical legislation as occasions for special sacrificial offerings. As such, they had special significance in First and Second Temple times. In tannaitic times, after the destruction they were adapted to the new situation that had become the norm and were given a more important place in the home and synagogue.

First and foremost, by tannaitic times, were Rosh Ha-Shanah (the New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). In the absence of Temple and sacrifices, the High Holy Days and the period between them, the Days of Penitence, became a period of repentance, atonement, and forgiveness. The ceremonies and prayers for these days expressed Rabbinic Judaism’s belief in free will and the human being’s ability to change his or her life. The emphasis on God as king and sovereign on Rosh Ha-Shanah accented such concepts as God’s remembrance of Israel and His use of the shofar to herald the Sinaitic revelation and, in the future, the coming of the messiah. Yom Kippur became a remembrance of the atonement service in the Temple, serving to replace the sacrifice described in Leviticus 16.

Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition, Ktav Publishing House, Hoboken, NJ, 1991.

Bar Kokhba’s Real Name

Until the letters in the caves near the Dead Sea were discovered, Bar Kokhba’s real name was not known. The letters contain the first mention of his full name, “Simeon bar Kosiba.” We now realize that the talmudic Rabbis were hinting at this name in connecting the rebel leader with the Hebrew root kzv (to be false), referring to his false messiahship. But to some of the Rabbis, he was known as Bar Kokhba (son of a star), an allusion to the star prophecy of Numbers 24:17, “A star rises from Jacob, a scepter comes forth from Israel,” which was interpreted as prophesying a future messianic redeemer. In the Zadokite Fragments (7:18–21), this same prophecy had been considered a reference to the Interpreter of the Law, a quasi-messianic figure.

Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1994.

The Causes of the Maccabean Revolt

The earliest attempts at an organized uprising were probably led by the Hasidim (“pious”), a group of priests who found the religious compromises in Hellenistic Jerusalem totally unacceptable. Rebellion was mounting; determined to stem it, Antiochus conceived of the infamous persecutions, which, far from being the beginning of our story, come after years of struggle and insurrection fueled by the attempt of Hellenistic Jews to foist their way of life on the entire nation of Israel. There is no evidence whatsoever that Antiochus pursued a similar policy anywhere else in his kingdom. He took up the Hellenizing banner in Judea in response to the nature of the rebellion confronting him there. As he saw the situation, the way to defeat the rebels was by an onslaught against the forces that propelled them, the Torah, the commandments, and the culture of the Jewish people.

The persecutions were enacted in the winter of 167/66 B.C.E. To begin with, the decree of Antiochus III which had granted the Jews extensive rights of religious freedom was formally rescinded. Moreover, in December of 167 foreign idolatrous worship and cultic prostitution were introduced into the Temple. In addition, throughout Palestine the Sabbath and festivals were to be violated, high places (outdoor shrines) were built where unclean animals were to be offered, circumcision was outlawed, and the dietary laws could not be observed. The penalty for violating these ordinances was death. In every part of the land Jews found themselves facing royal officials who sought to enforce the regulations with a vengeance, burning Torah scrolls and executing those who hid them. Antiochus had instituted this brutal program in order to deprive the Jewish uprising of a purpose by forcing the Jews to become normal citizens of the Seleucid Empire. Thanks to his short-sighted scheme, the stage was now set for the confrontation of two opposing forces, the Jewish people and the Seleucids. The appearance of the Hasmonean (Maccabean) family would ignite the flames of full-scale revolt.

Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition, Ktav Publishing House, Hoboken, NJ, 1991.