Enoch

1 and 2 Enoch are totally separate works. Each, however, takes its cue from the biblical statement that God “took” Enoch (Gen. 4:24). Enochic literature, texts containing revelations to or about this enigmatic biblical figure, appeared quite early in the Second Temple period, certainly by the second century B.C.E. The impact of these traditions on later Jewish esoteric and mystical literature is significant.

1 Enoch (the Ethiopic Enoch) is an apocalyptic book in which Enoch reports his vision of how God will punish the evildoers and grant eternal bliss to the righteous. Enoch describes the angels and the heavenly retinue. He also has visions regarding the Elect, the Son of Man, and reveals a collection of astronomical data which provide the secrets of the natural order. Visions of the destruction of the sinners then occur, followed by a recounting of the history of the world as a series of “weeks.” An account of the birth of Noah and the flood concludes the book. The work is preserved in extensive manuscripts from Qumran, covering virtually all of it except chapters 37–71 (there are 105 chapters). Qumran evidence and the Greek manuscripts for parts of the book indicate that 1 Enoch is a composite of materials, mostly from the second century B.C.E., the final redaction of which must be dated after the completion of the Parables section (chaps. 37–71) sometime in the late first century C.E. Qumran versions included the so-called Book of the Giants, which is not included in the Ethiopic book.

2 Enoch (the Slavonic Enoch) is to some extent related to 1 Enoch. It is essentially a description of Enoch’s life and the lives of his descendants up to the flood. Enoch’s journey to the seven heavens is described, followed by God’s revelation of the history of the world up to Enoch’s time and the prediction of the flood. Then Enoch returns to earth, where he instructs his children in matters of belief and behavior, emphasizing the importance of his books. Finally there is a description of Enoch’s ascension to heaven. It is impossible to determine whether the book was composed in Hebrew or in Greek, or is a composite of both. The text must have been complete by the end of the first century C.E. It was passed down in two separate Slavonic recensions, one longer than the other. The Book of Jubilees is a prime example of the genre of rewritten Bible in which Second Temple authors recast and retold biblical stories in order to teach their own lessons.

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

Josephus, Plagiarism and the Great Revolt

Most of what we know about Jewish history in the era of the revolt and the Hasmonean dynasty is known from the works of the historian Josephus. He was born in 37/38 C.E. to a priestly family. After acquiring an excellent education in Jerusalem, he tells us, he studied in the schools of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, and then with a desert hermit named Bannus. When he returned to Jerusalem at nineteen, he took up the approach of the Pharisees. In 64 C.E. he was sent to Rome to secure the release of certain priests imprisoned by the procurator. During the war against Rome he served as commander of the Galilee, where he was unsuccessful, either because he only half- heartedly supported the revolt or for objective military reasons. After his surrender he took the side of the Romans, later claiming that he had believed that only some form of accommodation could end the ill-advised war and save the nation and its Temple from destruction. When the war ended he went to Rome. There he received from Vespasian a place to live, Roman citizenship, a pension, and lands in Judea. He must have died around 100 C.E.

There are some important things to keep in mind about Josephus as a historian. First, he did not in fact author most of what his works preserve. The great bulk of it comes from various sources, including Jewish materials, documentary evidence (some forged), and some of the best-known historians of Antiquity, which he compiled, sometimes even slavishly, ignoring contradictions with his own words or with his other sources. Second, he had a specific ax to grind. He sought to demonstrate to the Jews that life under Rome was not so bad as long as religious freedom was guaranteed. He also wanted to show the Romans that the war had been brought about by a minority of the Jews and had not reflected the attitude of the people at large. This was certainly one of the main functions of his Jewish War, written toward the end of Vespasian’s reign, between 75 and 79 C.E. He also attempted to relate the story of the war as if he had not been among those to blame for its failure. This is especially evident in his Life, a work which cannot be precisely dated. His Antiquities of the Jews, completed in 93 or 94 C.E., is a history of the Jews from earliest times to the end of the first century C.E. This work also has a purpose, to show the hoary antiquity and, hence, legitimacy of the Jews and Judaism within the Greco-Roman world. In his Against Apion, written after Antiquities, the purpose is to respond to anti-Semitic propaganda and to maintain that Jews had not set themselves apart from the human race by their religion, as their enemies alleged, and did not believe the ridiculous things often attributed to them.

Josephus’s works, written in Greek (one may originally have been composed in Hebrew or Aramaic) served to educate both Greek-speaking Jews and non-Jews about the nature and history of the Jews and Judaism. These books were quickly lost to the Jewish people, as assimilation and conversion to Christianity led to the decline of the Greek-speaking Jewish community whose members would have read Josephus’s works. In the Middle Ages some of his writings circulated again in the form of the book of Josippon, a medieval Hebrew translation of a Latin adaptation. Without Josephus, the entire Herodian period and the story of the Great Revolt would be, historically speaking, virtually unknown.

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

Benedictions on the Shema

Numerous fragments found in the Qumran caves have been classified by scholars as liturgies. Whereas many of the earlier-known fragments were at best insubstantial, more recently published material has changed the picture radically. Now we have prayer texts for daily prayers and Festivals as well as various supplicatory prayers. These texts show that numerous rituals and liturgies, similar in scope to those of talmudic tradition, were associated with the sectarians of Qumran.

Among the prayer texts dating to the Hasmonaean period (100–75 B.C.E.) is a text scholars have entitled Daily Prayers, found in cave 4. It consists of a series of prayers to be recited on the various days of the month. The liturgical materials found here are too short, however, to have constituted the entire liturgy. These prayers appear to have constituted a small section of the worship service, which changed on a daily basis throughout the month and perhaps throughout the year. Specific texts are designated for evening and morning, although no specific nighttime prayer appears to be included here. The material for each day of the month represents a discrete literary unit, and the days are numbered according to lunar months.

Each day’s entry begins:

On the x of the month, in the evening, they shall bless, recite and say: Praised be the God of Israel Who…. May peace be upon you, O Israel.

Then the text takes up the morning prayer:

When the sun goes forth to illumine the earth they shall bless, recite and say: … They shall bless and recite: Praised be the God of Israel….

The text is very fragmentary and no complete unit survives or can be reconstructed with certainty. Nonetheless, we can gather some sense of the text from this otherwise broken excerpt:

… the light of day for our knowledge … in the six gates of ligh[t … and we,] the sons of Your covenant, will prais[e Your name] with all the troops of [light … al]l the tongues (endowed with) knowledge, bless … the light of peace [upon you O Israel…. On the seventh of [the month in the evening, they shall bless, recite and sa]y: Praised be the God of Is[rael Who … righteousness … al]l [th]ese things we knew….] Blessed be [the G]od [of Israel] … (DAILY PRAYERS 7–9 IV 1–8)

In the rabbinic liturgy, the Shema is preceded by two benedictions and followed by one in the morning and two at night. Of the two benedictions before the Shema, for both morning and night, the first benediction deals with the heavenly luminaries, and the second with God’s revelation of the Torah to Israel and the commandments. It is most likely that the benedictions preserved here, focusing on the cosmic order and the heavenly luminaries, were expanding upon a precursor of this first benediction before the Shema.

As we mentioned earlier, the Mishnah dates the recitation of the Shema to Second Temple times. In the same passage, the Mishnah notes that in the view of the Rabbis, some benediction was associated with the Shema already in Temple times. We can therefore conclude that an early version of the blessing on the heavenly luminaries—the first benediction before the Shema—must have then been in use. Although in rabbinic tradition this benediction varied only for morning and evening, with passages added later for Sabbaths and Festivals, the version used at Qumran varied each day of the month.

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

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.