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Hebrew Texts and Language of the Second Temple Period

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Hebrew Texts and Language of the Second Temple Period Hebrew Texts and Language of the Second Temple Period Proceedings of an Eighth Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira Edited by Steven E. Fassberg LEIDEN | BOSTON This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2021 Steven D. Fraade Contents Preface vii List of Figures ix Abbreviations x 1 On Some Words in Two of the Dead Sea Scrolls 1 Moshe Bar-Asher 2 The Aramaic Influence on Mishnaic Hebrew: Borrowing or Interference? 25 Edward M. Cook 3 A Reappraisal of Three Philological Comparisons between Biblical Hebrew and the Hebrew of Ben Sira 37 Haim Dihi 4 Sixty Years of Publications on the Dead Sea Scrolls: Discoveries in the Judaean Desert in Perspective 52 Devorah Dimant 5 Trends and Methodologies in the Study of Qumran Hebrew 79 Steven E. Fassberg in the Dead Sea Scrolls 96 אמת The Word 6 Steven D. Fraade 7 The wqatal Form in Sectarian Instructive Texts 107 Gregor Geiger 8 The Linguistic Profile of Select Reworked Bible Material vis-à-vis Masoretic Hebrew and Some Ramifications Thereof 127 Aaron D. Hornkohl 9 The Hebrew of the Book of Jubilees at Qumran 153 Daniel A. Machiela 10 The Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD) Series and the Linguistic Study of Ancient Hebrew 172 Noam Mizrahi This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2021 Steven D. Fraade vi Contents 11 Hidden and Evident Aramaic Influences on Qumran Hebrew 181 Matthew Morgenstern 12 Verbal Rection in Qumran Hebrew 191 Takamitsu Muraoka 13 The Significance of the Finite Verb Conjugations in the Hebrew Dead Sea Scrolls 204 Ken M. Penner 14 Aramaisms in Hymn 32 (1QHa 24:2–25:33) 236 Gary A. Rendsburg 15 Geminate Verbs in the Hebrew of the Wisdom of Ben Sira 260 Eric D. Reymond 16 Language and Group Identity in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Case for an “Essene Hebrew” 280 William M. Schniedewind 17 The Infinitive Absolute in Samaritan Hebrew 292 Stefan Schorch in Qumran Hebrew 310 אף and גם The Use of 18 Christian Stadel 19 Orthographic Practices in the Biblical Texts 329 Emanuel Tov 20 Promises and Challenges in Designing Stylometric Analyses for Classical Hebrew 349 Pierre Van Hecke and Johan de Joode 21 New Readings in the “Commentary on Genesis D” (4Q254a) Scroll 375 Alexey Eliyahu Yuditsky Index of Words and Phrases 381 Index of Ancient Texts 391 Index of Subjects 422 This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2021 Steven D. Fraade Chapter 6 in the Dead Sea Scrolls אמת The Word Steven D. Fraade 1 Introduction This paper began as a footnote to a published article (in Hebrew) in the journal Meghillot,1 an English version of which subsequently appeared.2 To summarize one part of that article, in “rewriting” the biblical pericope of the Deuteronomic high court (Deut 17: 8–13),3 the Temple Scroll rearranges the verses a bit and adds some interesting details, the most significant of which are, in rework- ing Deut 17:10, that the court’s verdicts derive “from the book of the Teaching and that “they (the members of the court) declare it to (מספר התורה) ”(Torah) This emphasis on the “truth” of the scripturally 4.(ויגידו לכה באםת) ”you in truth 1 Steven D. Fraade, “ ‘If a Case is Too Baffling for You to Decide …’ (Deuteronomy 17:8–13): Biblical Interpretation in the Pericope on the High Court—Between the Temple Scroll and Tannaitic Interpretation,” Meghillot 11–12 (2014–2015): 199–218 (in Hebrew). See 211 n. 53. 2 Steven D. Fraade, “‘If a Case is Too Baffling for You to Decide …’ (Deuteronomy 17: 8–13): Between Constraining and Expanding Judicial Autonomy in the Temple Scroll and Early Rabbinic Scriptural Interpretation,” in Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy, ed. Joel Baden, Hindy Najman, and Eibert Tigchelaar, JSJSup 175 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 409–31. See 423 n. 54. 3 I am well aware of the methodological difficulties of employing the term “rewritten Bible” for the Temple Scroll, since we cannot presume that the authors/editors of the Temple Scroll understood themselves to be “rewriting” a canonical scriptural text identical to what would eventually become the Masoretic Text of the Bible. However, in the absence of any Qumran scriptural texts of Deut 17:8–13 with which to compare the Temple Scroll, we are left to draw comparisons with MT (and ancient versions). Note that the only extant fragment of our scrip- tural passage in the Dead Sea Scrolls (2QDeutb [2Q11 in DJD 3.61], covering Deut 17:12–15) is identical to MT. here is variously translated: Yigael Yadin (The Temple Scroll, 3 באמת 11Q19 56:3–4. The word 4 vols. and supplement [Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society, 1983], 2:251): “in sincerity”; James Charlesworth, ed. (The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations. Volume 7: Temple Scroll and Related Documents [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2011], 143): “truthfully”; Geza Vermes (The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, rev. ed. [London: Penguin, 2004], 213): “in truth”; Florentino García Martínez (The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English, 2nd ed. [Leiden: Brill, 1996], 173): “accurately”; and Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook (The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation [San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996], 484): “the truth.” The last would seem to understand the prefix bet as introducing a verbal object (“they shall © Steven D. Fraade, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004447981_007 This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2021 Steven D. Fraade in the Dead Sea Scrolls 97 אמת The Word derived verdict and its trustworthy transmission, is in sharp contrast, I argue and seek to explain, to the interpretation of the Sifre commentary to Deuteronomy 17:11, “You must not deviate from the verdict that they tell you either to the right Even if they show you“ :(לא תסור מן־הדבר אשר־יגידו לך ימין ושמאל) ”or the left אפילו מראים בעיניך על ימין שהוא) ”that right is left and left is right, obey them ,If, as I have previously argued at length 5.(שמאל ועל שמאל שהוא ימין שמע להם the Temple Scroll seeks to rein in the relative autonomy of the Deuteronomic court (especially if compared to the judicial bodies under Moses’s prophetic authority during the period of wilderness wandering),6 the rabbinic midrash seeks to do the opposite: to further expand and loosen it. אמת My purpose in this paper is to look more closely at the use of the word in other texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls so as to better understand its impor- tance for Qumran communal ideology and self-understanding, especially as with ,משפט and צדק/צדקה it is used in relation to such other judicial nouns as which, in the scrolls (but apparently not elsewhere), it is often used in com- bination, and in some other places apparently inserted.7 Yigael Yadin, in his here and elsewhere אמת notes to his edition of the Temple Scroll, suggests that in the scrolls denotes a sectarian (exclusive) claim to (divine) truth.8 In a pronounce to you the truth”). For this use of the prepositional object in Qumran Hebrew, see Jean-Sébastien Rey, “On the Prepositional Object with Bet in Qumran Hebrew,” in Steven E. Fassberg, Moshe Bar-Asher, and Ruth A. Clements, eds., Hebrew in the Second Temple Period: The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and of Other Contemporary Sources, STDJ 108 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 189–213 (who does not discuss our text). 5 Sifre Deut §154 (ed. Finkelstein, 207, checked against MS Vatican 32). This is a most notable example of rabbinic “nominalism,” in contrast to sectarian “realism.” See my aforementioned articles, in Hebrew, 208–209 n. 44; English, n. 46, including citation of those who have sought to dilute this radicalness. More recently, see the collection of essays in Suzanne Last Stone, Yair Lorberbaum, and Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, eds., Nominalism and Realism in Halakhah Revisited: Studies in the Philosophy of Halakha; special issue of Diné Israel: Studies in Halakha and Jewish Law 30 (2015), esp. Rubenstein, “Nominalism and Realism Again” (79*–120*); Christine Hayes, What’s Divine about Divine Law: Early Perspectives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), esp. 169–245 (but without reference to our texts). For the biblical metaphor of “right and/or left,” or approximations thereto, see Deut 2:27; 5:29; 28:14; Josh 1:7; 23:6; Jonah 4:11; Isa 30:21. 6 See Exod 18:13–27; Num 11:10–17, 24–25; Deut 1:9–18; and my discussion in the introductions to my aforementioned articles. appears twice in the pericope of the high court: Deut 17:9, 11. Although משפט The noun 7 does not appear in this immediate context, it is emphasized in the preceding צדק/צדקה chapter, in Deut 16:18 and 20, to which I shall return. in the Dead אמת Yigael Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2:251 in note to line 4. For previous treatments of 8 Sea Scrolls, see Devorah Dimant, “The Vocabulary of the Qumran Sectarian Texts,” in History, Ideology and Bible Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Collected Studies, FAT 90 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 57–100 (83); eadem, “Criteria for the Identification of Qumran Sectarian This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2021 Steven D. Fraade 98 Fraade sense, I am expanding Yadin’s note as well. Before doing so, however, attention should be paid to 1QS 1:15, “And do not deviate from the laws of his truth (that ולוא לסור מחוקי אמתו ללכת ימין) ”is, his true laws) by going either right or left ,which immediately follows an admonition to members not to deviate ,(ושמאול either early or late, from the proper festival calendar.
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