Introduction to Volume 2: Law, Pesher and the History of Interpretation

The fifteen essays in this volume are more loosely held together than those in Volume 1, and they cover a broader variety of texts and topics. The first two are surveys of biblical interpretation at Qumran, written from some- what different angles. The first (16) “The Contribution of the Qumran Dis- coveries to the History of Early Biblical Interpretation,” looking at Qumran treatments of the Bible from the vantage point of the history of biblical interpretation, focuses on the impact that the Qumran discoveries had on what was, at the time of their publication, only a nascent field at best. We find that the Qumran texts did not merely supply material for the study of early biblical interpretation; they virtually created the field by forcing scholars to study them and a whole variety of other Second Temple texts that had been neglected as repositories of interpretation. This is one small way in which the impact of the Qumran discoveries on the study of “Juda- ism in late antiquity” had a ripple effect that reached far more widely than the scrolls, the caves and the habitation at Khirbet Qumran. The second survey article (17) “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish Bib- lical Interpretation in Antiquity: A Multi-Generic Perspective,” focuses on a half dozen interpretive texts from Qumran, belonging to a variety of genres, ranging from “rewritten Bible” of two sorts (Reworked Penta- teuch and Genesis Apocryphon) to Aramaic translation (Job targum), to commentaries of two sorts (Commentary on Genesis A and 4QpIsab) to a collection of biblical legal material (4Q159—Ordinancesa). Each text is discussed in some detail, in an attempt to avoid the superficiality to which many surveys of this type are susceptible, and the overall discussion con- cludes with remarks on the survival or non-survival of these genres in later Jewish and Christian biblical interpretation. Although the picture drawn by the analysis of a limited number of texts is perforce incomplete and cannot be comprehensive, I believe that the essay succeeds in delineating a substantial portion of the diverse spectrum on which the Qumran texts that address biblical material lie. One of the characteristic literary techniques or methods of Second Temple compositions related to the Bible is pseudepigraphy, and the third essay in this collection (18) “Pseudepigraphy in the Qumran Scrolls: Cat- egories and Functions,” evaluates the way in which this technique was 354 introduction to volume 2 employed in the Qumran scrolls. Although this term originally had a fairly narrow connotation, referring to works ascribed falsely to a well-known author of antiquity, as is evidenced in the second volume of R.H. Charles’s once standard edition, for example, it has by now lost that specificity.1 In the context of the Qumran scrolls, that terminological problem is compli- cated by the employment of “pseudo-X” and “Apocryphon of Y” as titles of hitherto unknown works, where “Apocryphon” has a misleading implica- tion about connection to some “canonical” text, and “pseudo-” has lost its emphasis on false attribution of authorship. This is another example of how some less-than-optimal choices in nomenclature made in the early days of Qumran scholarship continue to hinder us today. We cannot ever know whether all or any practitioners of pseudepigra- phy were seeking to deceive their reading audiences, or whether in some circles and some contexts, it was accepted as a literary device that did not make authorial claims. One of my goals in the essay, therefore, is to distinguish among levels and functions of pseudepigraphy in divergent literary works. Thus it is likely that Jubilees needs what I call “authoritative pseudepigraphy” of the strongest nature for the work to be believable as divine revelation, prescribing binding legal practices.2 The same is prob- ably true of prophetic or apocalyptic predictions placed into the mouths of ancient speakers. Testamentary works, on the other hand, may be said to require a weaker level of authoritative pseudepigraphy. I tentatively label other forms of pseudepigraphy as “convenient,” for works that are anonymous but contain pseudepigraphic voices within them, and “deco- rative,” for works whose association with ancient authors or speakers is completely superficial and not meant to carry any real weight. If we are going to keep our terminology strict, only works that are authoritatively pseudepigraphic should be considered pseudepigraphy, since the impact of works that are more “weakly pseudepigraphic” often would be the same without that compositional feature. The subject of the largest group of essays in this volume is legal mate- rial of various sorts in the Qumran texts, and it is introduced by a discus- sion of the ways in which laws are presented and derived at Qumran (19)

1 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. Volume 2: Pseudepigrapha (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913). By the time we reach the (now standard) English translation of J.H. Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City: Doubleday, 1983–85), the texts included in the second volume of that collection demand a far broader employment of the term. 2 Works containing law like “Reworked Pentateuch” and the Temple Scroll raise par- ticularly knotty questions vis-à-vis their pseudepigraphic nature.