Category Archives: Judaica

As you may’ve noticed, I’ve been reading the volume edited by Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton, In Quest of the Historical Pharisees (Baylor University Press, 2007). If anyone is interested in what can be known about the Pharisees, this is the book to read. I found it a much more satisfying reading experience than even the relatively recent and excellent Anthony Saldarini’s Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society (Eerdmans, 2001), with nearly every chapter presenting a new and more convincing reading of the data.

The first five chapters already lead to something of a consensus. Steve Mason in “Josephus’s Pharisees: The Narratives” and “Josephus’s Pharisees: The Philosophy” covers very well indeed all the mentions of the Pharisees in Josephus’ works, the two chapters dealing with narrative and with the passages wherein the Pharisees are described as one of several Judean philosophies. Martin Pickup covers “Matthew’s and Mark’s Pharisees,” Amy-Jill Levine describes “Luke’s Pharisees,” and “John’s Pharisees” are covered by Raimo Hakola and Adele Reinhartz. The indication through these (with Luke being somewhat equivocal and hard to pin down, which makes Levine’s chapter somewhat less fun, that way) is that the Pharisees were a voluntary association of some sort with a focus on religious-social law (or halakhah, to be somewhat anachronistic), who did not in themselves comprise the ruling class (though some members did belong to it), but they exerted continuing influence over the leadership due to their influence over and popularity with the general population, an influence beginning in the middle-Hasmonean period and continuing until the Great Revolt (and beyond, in the Pharisees transformation/appropriation as the forerunners of the Rabbis). Details of their organization, membership requirements and numbers, even a precis of their standard beliefs, however, are all lost to us. But we do have some very interesting remnants preserved in the rabbinic canon, particularly several pericopes in the Mishnah and Tosefta, which Jack Lightstone describes in “The Pharisees and the Sadducees in the Earliest Rabbinic Documents”, and Neusner describes in “The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70 CE: An Overview”, and “The Pharisaic Agenda: Laws Attributed in the Mishnah and the Tosefta to Pre-70 Pharisees,” and “The Pre-70 Pharisees after 70 and after 140.” The potential recovery of such material is only possible with careful attention to the form of the pericopes. Where the form is unusual, this needs to be investigated. Neusner shows that this yields interesting possibilities indeed in the Pharisee/Sadducee dispute material and in the “domestic” narratives regarding Hillel’s family. In both cases, parts of the pericopes have not been “digested” by the editors of the pre-Mishnaic sources or by the editors of the Mishnah and Tosefta themselves into the standard format for such materials, so the likelihood is high that these are earlier sources incorporated into the texts as we have them. It’s unfortunate that there are so few! It’s also fascinating just how very blurred the line is between “Pharisees” on the one side and “Rabbis” or “Sages” on the other in the Tannaitic documents; there appears to be no real distinction, in fact. Additional interesting chapters include that of Bruce Chilton, “Paul and the Pharisees,” Chilton and Neusner with “Paul and Gamaliel,” James VanderKam’s “The Pharisees and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” and James Strange’s “Archaeology and the Pharisees.”

There are some chapters following the above on The Pharisees in Modern Theology: Susannah Heschel’s “The German Theological Tradition,” and two by Neusner “The Anglo-American Theological Tradition” and “The Debate with E. P. Saunders since 1970.” There is then also a concluding chapter by William Scott Green, “What Do We Really Know about the Pharisees, and How Do We Know It?”

One of the most interesting and beneficial results of this book would be the attention it draws to how one particular reading of the Gospel evidence, rather than the sum of the available evidence itself, and even a more generous reading of the Gospel evidence, has generated nearly two millennia of misreadings of the other materials regarding the Pharisees, too. I’ll cover some of those misreadings here, later. In the meantime, I recommend In Quest of the Historical Pharisees to everyone interested in the subject.

…to be comforted upon her mourning, her sorrow…
…to destroy peoples, and nations he will cut off and the wicked…
…renew the works of the heavens and earth,
and they will rejoice,
and all the earth be full of His glory…
…on behalf of their guilt, he will atone,
and the Great One of good will comfort them.
Good is the … to eat its fruit and its good.
Like a man whose mother comforts him,
so will He comfort them in Jerusalem….
…like a bridegroom with a bride,
with her He will dwell forever…
…His throne is forever and ever,
and His glory…
…and all peoples
…and there will be with Him…
…and their pleasant land…
…splendour…I will bless the…
…Blessed is the name of the Most High….
…Your mercy upon me…
…for the Law You have established…
…the Book of Your statutes….

That is my translation of 4Q434a, or 4QGrace After Meals. The reasons for the title Grace After Meals are found in the brilliant and incredibly rich publication of this fragment by Moshe Weinfeld, “Grace After Meals in Qumran,” JBL 111 (1992), 427-440. The parallels to later rabbinic instruction regarding prayers following meals are clear. Likewise, there is here a parallel to a prayer found in Didache 10.1-6 (translation from Niederwimmer The Didache, in the Hermeneia Commentary series, Augsburg Press, 1998):

¹When you have had your fill, give thanks this way:
²“We thank you, holy Father,
For your holy name,
     which you made dwell in our hearts,
And for the knowledge and faith and immortality,
     which you made known to us
     through Jesus your servant.
To you be glory forever.
³You, almighty Lord, created all things for the
          sake of your name,
     and you gave food and drink to human
          beings for enjoyment,
     so that they would thank you;
But you graced us with spiritual food and
          drink and eternal life
     through your servant.
⁴For all things, we thank you, Lord, because
          you are powerful.
To you be glory forever.
⁵Be mindful, Lord, of your church,
     to preserve it from all evil
     and to perfect it in your love.
And <...> gather it from the four winds,
     into the kingdom which you have prepared for it.
For power and glory are yours forever.
⁶May grace come, and may this world pass by.
Hosanna to the God of David!
If anyone is holy, let him come.
If anyone is not, let him repent.
Maranatha! Amen.”

There are several interesting similiarities, as you can see, and the similarities of 4Q434a are dealt with in detail by Weinfeld, in the above-mentioned article. I’d like to mention a few interesting points regarding the Didache text, which is also recognized to reflect the influence of the rabbinic Birkat ha-Mazon (see Niederwimmer, 155-161).

Firstly, the line before the prayer here in Didache 10.1, “When you have had your fill, give thanks this way” is an obvious allusion to Deuteronomy 8.10, “When you have eaten and are full, give thanks….” In Didache 10.1 is εμπλησθηναι, in Deut 8.10 LXX, εμπλησθηνη. Deuteronomy 8.10 is the verse which is the origin for the tradition of the Birkat ha-Mazon, and seems to be taken the same way in the Didache, either directly, or, as is more likely, in continuation with the tradition of the earliest Church.

Weinfeld mentions (p. 429) that the three mandatory benedictions are for 1.) the food just eaten, 2.) for the Land of Israel, and 3.) for Jerusalem and the Davidic Dynasty. Likewise, we can see Christian alteration of these themes in the prayer in the Didache. First, the food just eaten is explicitly mentioned, and expanded to “spiritual food and drink and eternal life” (v. 3). The Land of Israel is likely represented by mention of the Church (v. 5a), as we are familiar with both Apostolic and Patristic equation of Israel with the Church. The Divine Kingdom (vv. 5b-6), perhaps on the analogy of the New Jerusalem, takes the place of Jerusalem, and we find also “Hosanna to the God of David” (v. 6), which mention of David seems a bit out of place, except when understanding the development of this prayer from a basic form such as described by Weinfeld. In the case of this prayer in the Didache, we thus find a continuation of typological interpretation as found in the New Testament and Patristic texts with regard to Old Testament texts, but rather with reference to prayer traditions after the meal.

Many thanks to Mike Aquilina for pointing me to 4QGrace After Meals.

For many people, there seems to be no hesitation in spelling out and regularly using the Tetragrammaton. I’m not one of those. Perhaps it’s because the people that taught me Hebrew (Biblical, post-Biblical, and Modern Israeli) were Jewish that I’m entirely uncomfortable with pronouncing the currently favored scholarly reconstruction of this name. When reading the Hebrew Bible we always vocalized what the Masoretic Text was pointed to indicate, אדני or אלהים as the case may be. Anyhow, I just thought I’d explain, if anyone in fact had even noticed that I avoid this, or may, in a pinch resort to Y” in place of simply LORD or Lord or God, though I think I’ve only rarely used even that.

There are other reasons, too. Socially, I’m not on first name terms with God. Nor am I so with my father or my mother or any number of others whom I love and/or respect. That does it for me. The rest is icing on the cake.

Religiously, I find using that pronunciation suspect. It’s not part of any religious tradition carried down through the millennia. The Judaic tradition abandoned its pronunciation long ago. The Christian tradition never used it, though it was a curiosity, apparently. Had the syncretistic Hermetic magical tradition survived late antiquity, there might be a living connection there to a garbled version of it, but it was garbled and that tradition died out anyway. It’s a new thing in that sense, and its usage is no more necessary or required or necessarily correct than the use of the simplistically concocted “Jehovah.” The “Sacred Names” people can be all over it, with their syrupy CDs and ghastly Tshirts and coffee mugs and whatnot, in fonts with appropriatly Hebrewish-looking English letters (Lord. Have. Mercy!) but that doesn’t make it authentic. To me it just seems really, really wrong to be bandying about this name as though it’s some kind of proof or trophy badge of your authenticity when it’s not an authentic part of any tradition at all. It’s a scholarly reconstruction, utterly devoid of any traditional religious value.

I have some basic scholarly reservations, too, though they’re not so viscreally felt as my reaction to a tacky Tshirt sporting the supposed only name of God. It would be one matter if the pronunciation were preserved there in the Masoretic Text, but it’s not. Therefore, it’s another matter: that of taking the word of patristic Christian writers (who didn’t know Hebrew!) on Hebrew pronunciation. Aside from Origen and Jerome, apparently none of them, including Clement of Alexandria, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Epiphanius of Salamis, our star witnesses to the ancient pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, knew Hebrew. Certainly the scribes doing the transmitting of the Greek texts of these fathers didn’t know Hebrew, and we can’t be certain that, textually speaking, these readings which we think are accurate indicators of ancient Hebrew are really such. So that’s the “traditional” pronunciation in a nutshell, based on writings from 100-200 years after the name had ceased to be pronounced by anyone, anywhere (with the date for its last pronunciation being the last celebrated Day of Atonement in the Jerusalem Temple in 66? AD). Yet with that in hand, it’s possible to back this up with data from the Masoretic Text, particularly other words ending with יה-, and some other hints, as described in HALOT. But that could also be a wild goose chase. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, but it’s certainly possible. It’s a personal name, after all, not an actual verb or noun. How certain were scholars with “Jehovah”? It was also the unquestioned darling of the ink-stained for a time. One must avoid the apparently dogmatic representation of the currently favored pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton among scholars as being either probative or truly authentic, which is exactly the warning scholars worth their salt would give, if asked. It’s certainly the best guess we can make based on the evidence we have, and thus should be treated in that manner, but not as though it’s an established fact.

Now Maccabeus and his followers, the Lord leading them on, recovered the temple and the city; they tore down the altars that had been built in the public square by the foreigners, and also destroyed the sacred precincts. They purified the sanctuary, and made another altar of sacrifice; then, striking fire out of flint, they offered sacrifices, after a lapse of two years, and they offered incense and lighted lamps and set out the bread of the Presence.

When they had done this, they fell prostrate and implored the Lord that they might never again fall into such misfortunes, but that, if they should ever sin, they might be disciplined by him with forbearance and not be handed over to blasphemous and barbarous nations. It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Chislev. They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the festival of booths, remembering how not long before, during the festival of booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals. Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days every year.

(2 Maccabees 10:1-8 NRSV)

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