Chapter 3 A New Understanding of the Sobriquet Why Qumranites Rejected Pharisaic :דורשי החלקות Traditions

Harry Fox

1 Introduction

The assumption that the rabbinic movement continues Pharisaic is generally considered so automatic and obvious that even those scholars criti- cal of this scholarly reflex nonetheless use it and assume it themselves.1 The question my paper wishes to address is the extent to which the at Qumran help us establish this hypothesis further given that we possess very little in the way of any certain writings attributed to the Pharisees themselves.2 This serious lack has been compensated for by indirect references taken from Josephus, from rabbinic literature—especially Mishnah and Tosefta, and from the New Testament. These sources have been explored rather exhaustively.3 To these I wish to add special attention to an oft referenced expression almost uni- versally reserved for the Pharisees for which I wish to provide a new meaning. dorshe ḥalaqot, the so-called “seekers after smooth things,”4 has דורשי חלקות

1 This topic is surveyed extensively by Annette Yoshiko Reed, “When Did Rabbis Become Pharisees?: Reflections on Christian Evidence for Post-70 Judaism,” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honour of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Ra’anan S. Boustan et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 2:859–895. See further below n. 2. 2 Megillat Taʿanit may be an exception though it is hardly intelligible without the aid of its much later scholia. Such a situation has Schremer comment, “no pharisaic text is truly known to us.” This in turn yields the following statement made by him: “I would obviously prefer to speak of ‘rabbinic’ rather than ‘pharisaic’ discourse as the historical process to which Noam refers is entirely rabbinic since we possess no pharisaic discourse”; Adiel Schremer, “Avot Reconsidered: Rethinking Rabbinic Judaism,” JQR 105 (2015): 287–311. Nonetheless Schremer also conflates Pharisees and rabbis (p. 303 n. 59). See also above n. 1. 3 I find that the best recent treatment of the Pharisees which is aware of all the problems and nuances required, yet with a contribution to the field, is Etka Leibowitz, “Hypocrites or Pious Scholars? The Image of the Pharisees in Second Temple Period Texts and Rabbinic Literature,” Melilah 11 (2014): 53–67. 4 See the large variety of translations in Shani L. Berrin, The Pesher Scroll from Qumran: An Exegetical Study of 4Q169, STDJ 53 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 91–99.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004393387_004 66 Fox generally been understood as a pun5 reflecting upon a group that seeks halak- hot, namely the Pharisees,6 who are also referred to by the sobriquet Ephraim in Pesher Nahum. Håkan Bengtsson challenged all the scholarly certainties by demonstrating ambivalence in the valence of Ephraim, an epithet comprising a group greater than just the purported Pharisees.7 Another critical voice is Gregory Doudna who has argued (rather unconvincingly) that the universally accepted Ephraim as a reference to Pharisees in Pesher Nahum is uncertain.8 Though I believe the argumentation raised by Doudna to be inadequate for a

5 Concerning the pun halakhah, see Berrin, Pesher Nahum, 95 n. 23. According to Stemberger, -is a pun on the hal (דורשי חלקות) ’the idea that “the designator ‘seekers of smooth things akhot of their opponents, commonly considered as Pharisees or Proto-Pharisees, has some probability, but cannot be proven”; Günter Stemberger, “Mishnah and Dead Sea Scrolls: Are There Meaningful Parallels and Continuities?,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls In Context: Integrating the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Study of Ancient Texts, Languages, and Cultures, ed. Armin Lange, Emanuel Tov, and Matthias Weigold, VTSup 140 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 2:620. See fur- ther Sanders, who quotes Pesher Nahum 1:6–8 on hanging men alive and also mentions the seekers of smooth things, “apparently a punning reference to the Pharisees”; E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 600 n. 1. See below, n. 35. As I discuss in the Conclusion below, one possible fallout of this event alluded to in Pesher Nahum is that the remnant of this hanged faction left Jerusalem to establish Yavneh (Jamnia) as a safe haven. 6 For bibliography on the identification with Pharisees, including ties to Matthew 23 and the charge of hypocrisy, see Berrin, Pesher Nahum, 91–92, 98–99. See also Leibowitz, “Hypocrites or Pious Scholars?” 7 See Håkan Bengtsson, “What’s in a Name? A Study of Sobriquets in the Pesharim” (PhD diss., Uppsala University, 2000). 8 Gregory L. Doudna, 4Q Pesher Nahum: A Critical Edition, JSPSup 35 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 577–599, erroneously concludes that the names Ephraim and Manasseh are not to be identified with the Pharisees and Sadducees. This suggestion, as far as I am able to discern, has not gained much currency. The reason for this may be supported by several observations. Those two names never appear in the prophetic . Pesher works by a combination of valence (positive for friends and negative for foes) and identification of subjects in Nahum with various individuals and parties in the Qumranic orbit. Central players in groups within that orbit are called by the epithets of Ephraim and Manasseh. These epithets are not normative exegesis of Nahum but are Pesher identifica- tions of Nahum’s subjects with these contemporaneous ones. One could argue for other iden- tifications, but these are surely not mere references to biblical toponyms or personalities. See further Robert A. Kugler, “Review: Gregory L. Doudna, 4Q Pesher Nahum: A Critical Edition,” JHS 5 (2004), http://www.jhsonline.org/cocoon/JHS/r150.html; Michael G. Wechsler, “Review: Gregory L. Doudna, 4Q Pesher Nahum: A Critical Edition,” JNES 65 (2006): 150–53. Both review- ers comment on the revolutionary nature of removing these epithets from identifications with Pharisees and Sadducees.