4Q252: LISTENWISSENSCHAFT AND COVENANTAL PATRIARCHAL BLESSINGS* Shani Tzoref 1. Introduction The primary thesis of this study is that the structure and purpose of 4Q252 can best be understood with respect to two phenomena attested in contemporary writings: a literary practice of compilation and an exegetical tradition pertaining to blessing, election, and periodization of history in Genesis. Previous attempts to discern a unifying factor in 4Q252 have not yielded any consensus.1 This composition consists of * It is a great privilege to offer my contribution to this volume in honor of Prof. Hanan Eshel, most cherished mentor, colleague, advisor, and friend. In the spirit of Abraham, Hanan has walked throughout the land by its length and by its breadth, and has devoted himself to the instruction and transmission of the words of the Lord, generating blessing throughout the earth. How fitting that a work of scholarship has been produced as a mark of appreciation and gratitude. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 15th World Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, in August 2009. I am grateful to Hanan and to Prof. Moshe Bernstein for their com- ments on earlier drafts. 1 Proposed themes have included: “Sexual offenses,” “the Land,” “escape and salva- tion,” and “calendrical” issues. See especially the discussions of George J. Brooke in, inter alia, “The Deuteronomic Character of 4Q252,” in Pursuing the Text: Studies in Honor of Ben Zion Wacholder on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (ed. John C. Reeves and John Kampen; JSOTSup 184; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 121–35; “The Genre of 4Q252: From Poetry to Pesher,” DSD 1 (1994): 160–79; “The Thematic Content of 4Q252,” JQR 85 (1994): 33–59; “4Q252 as Early Jewish Commen- tary,” RevQ 17 (1994): 385–401 (Hommages à Józef T. Milik. Ed. Florentino García Martínez and Émil Puech); “4Q252: 4QCommentary on Genesis A,” in Qumran Cave 4. XVII: Parabiblical Texts, Part 3 (ed. George J. Brooke et al.; DJD 22. Oxford: Clar- endon, 1996), 185–207. See also, Ida Fröhlich, “Themes, Structure and Genre of Pesher Genesis: A Response to George J. Brooke,” JQR 85 (1994), 81–90; idem, “The Biblical Narratives in Qumran Exegetical Works (4Q252; 4Q180; The Damascus Document),” in Qumranstudien: Vorträge und Beiträge der Teilnehmer des Qumranseminars auf dem internationalen Treffen der Society of Biblical Literature, Münster, 25.–26. Juli 1993 (ed. Heinz-Josef-Fabry Armin Lange, and Hermann Lichtenberger; Schriften des Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum 4; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 111–24; eadem, “Narrative Exegesis in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Biblical Perspectives: Early Use and Interpretation of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Proceedings of the First International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 12–14 May 1996 (ed. Michael E. Stone and Esther G. 336 shani tzoref a series of citations and paraphrases of select passages from Genesis, occasionally accompanied by interpretive comments. Other than the fact that the excerpts follow the sequence of the biblical book, there is no obvious coherence to the work. The variegated nature of the excerpts and comments in 4Q252 has led most scholars to view the work as a composite of multiple sources, and has inspired many cre- ative, but ultimately unsatisfying, attempts to isolate a unifying theme or authorial motive.2 I propose that a key unifying factor in this collection of seemingly disparate citations is a particular understanding of patriarchal bless- ings in the book of Genesis, and specifically of first person blessing formulas.3 I further suggest that both the exegetical basis for this Chazon; STDJ 28; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 81–99; Timothy H. Lim, “The Chronology of the Flood Story in a Qumran Text (4Q252),” JJS 43 (1992): 288–98; idem, “Notes on 4Q252 fr. 1, cols. i–ii,” JJS 44 (1993): 121–26; Menahem Kister, “Notes on Some New Texts from Qumran.” JJS 44 (1993): 284–91; and, most recently, Juhana M. Sauk- konen, “Selection, Election, and Rejection: Interpretation of Genesis in 4Q252,” in Northern Lights on the Dead Sea Scrolls Proceedings of the Nordic Qumran Network 2003–2006 (ed. Anders Klostergaard Petersen et al.; STDJ 80; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 63–81; idem, The Story Behind the Text: Scriptural Interpretation in 4Q252 (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Helsinki, 2005). Moshe Bernstein rejects these attempts to seek—or in his view, to impose—an ideological theme upon the work; he argues that 4Q252 should be understood as “simple-sense” exegesis, comprised of comments upon successive textual cruces arising in the book of Genesis, without any further ten- Biblical :’לא ידור רוחי באדם לעולם‘ “ dentious motive (Moshe J. Bernstein, 4Q252 i 2 Text or Biblical Interpretation?” RevQ 16.3 (1994): 421–27; “4Q252: From Re-Written Bible to Biblical Commentary,” JJS 45 (1994): 1–27; “4Q252: Method and Context, Genre and Sources. A Response to George J. Brooke,” JQR 85 (1994): 61–79. 2 See the works cited in the previous note. The various proposals are summarized by Brooke in DJD 22, 187, and reviewed in Saukkonen, The Story Behind the Text, 163–87. Please note that I use the terms compiler and author somewhat interchange- ably, to refer to the person or persons responsible for producing the form of the composition as it has reached us, with the understanding that in many cases we have a very limited understanding of the range of activities involved in this production. 3 Other scholars have already perceived the centrality of blessings and curses in 4Q252 (which was first published with the title “4QPatriarchal Blessings”; cf. John M. Allegro, “Further Messianic References in Qumran Literature,” JBL 75 [1956]: 174– 75), though less systematically than I have maintained here. See, inter alia, Brooke, “Deuteronomic Character,” 133–34; Menahem Kister, “Some Notes,” 288. Saukkonen has objected to the attempt to view blessings and curses as the all-encompassing theme of the work, stating that “some of the most central curses of Genesis have been omitted” (The Story Behind the Text, 167); that the motif is not relevant for all of the pericopae in the composition; and that “Blessings and curses seem to appear in 4Q252 only when a story containing them conveys other messages that are more important to the compiler of 4Q252” (idem, 168). These objections will be addressed below. On the centrality of blessing and cursing in the Qumran corpus, especially in the main doc-.