f :i Teihillah le=MosJ1e J ,) I Biblical and Judaic Studies ! in Honor of !I f , Moshe Greenberg I i !I ( t I ( Edited by MORDECHAI COGAN BARRY L. EICHLER JEFFREY H. TIGA Y r I I ElSENBRAUNS Winona Lake, Indiana Most/{' Greenberg ]997 r- viii Contents New Marl Documents and the Prophecy of Ezekiel 71* Abraham Malalizat The Origin and Development of Languages on Bar1h: The Sumerian versus the Biblical View 77* Jacob Klein Moshe Greenberg: An Appreciation "And if Given the Strength-Eighty Years": The Terms for Longevity in Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, and Mishnaic Hebrew ..... 93* Hayim Tadmor 1 Part 2 Second Temple, Rabbinic, and Medieval Studies For nearly fifty years, Professor Moshe Greenberg has had an important im• pact on biblical scholarship through the content of his research, his teaching, ~;:,iv,1'31, p'1: A Semantic Analysis .. , 101* and as a model of engaged scholarship. Moshe has summed up his lifelong Moshe Weinfeld goals as a scholar in the introduction to his Studies in the Bible and Jewish Thought (224). They are: "Was It Not at His Hand the Sun Stopped?" (Ben Sira 46:6): A Chapter in Literary Archaeology , 107* to be true to the task of the classical Jewish Bible scholar: to enhance the Yair Zakovitch Bible in the eyes of the faith/cultural community by (a) seeking to set forth existential values embodied in biblical narratives, laws and rituals; (b) point• Tradition and Innovation in the Commentary of Rabbi Samuel ben Meir ing to the continuities and transformations of the biblical materials in later (Rashbam) on Job: Tbe Hymn to Wisdom (Job 28) , 115* Jewish creativity. At the same time ... to' be true to the task of the critical Sara Japhet scholar in (a) using historical, linguistic, and comparative methods that seek to understand the Bible in its ancient context; (b) presenting and dealing with Tbe Pre-70 C.B, Judean Synagogue: Its Origins and Character Reexamined , , , '" 143* material uncongenial to my predilections; (c) reviewing the goals and reflect• Lee 1. Levine ing on the assumptions underlying the procedures of criticism (224, p. xv). Was Maimonides Influenced by Al-GhazzaJi? , .. , . , , 163* These goals mirror Moshe's ideal for Jewish biblical scholarship as con• lfava Lazarus-Yafeh sisting of academic-professional scholarship accompanied by Peshat Exegesis of Biblical Historiography: Humility-that is, an openness to the new and the innovative, and to continuing debate that entails modesty and lack of dogmatism. Historicism, Dogmatism, and Medievalism 171* Uriel Simon Respect for the text. expressed in a systematic search for its "troth,'· in the universal• human sense as well as the particuJaristicaUy Jewish; for the wealth of meanings, past and Additional Fragments of the "Rhymed Ben Sira" " , , 205* present, contained in it; and for its art of expression. Ezra Pleischer Finally, and most important, a sense of -responsibility toward a community whose mem• bers, the scholars' brethren, await their disclosure to them of the Scriptural message (224. p. 7). Midrashic Derivations regarding the Transformation of the Names Jacob and Israel according to Traditional Jewish Exegesis: 11 Semantic and Syntatic Aspects , , 219* Simcha Kogut i Moshe has devoted most of his scholarly attention to the phenomenology "Moses Had Written about Many Deeds, .. and David Came and of biblical religion and law, the theory and practice of interpreting biblical Explained Them" (Exodus Rabbah 15:22) , 235* Avigdor Shinan Editors' note: Numbers in parentheses in this appreciation refer the reader to the numbered works I in the "Bibliography of the Writings of Moshe Greenberg" (in this volume, pp. xxiii-xxxviii). Indexes to Hebrew Essays. , , , ,. 245* Wherever possible, quotations are cited from item number 224. ix .' •.. ••••••••••••••••. ~ x Maske Greenberg: An Appreciation F·······Maske Greenberg: An Appreciation xi texts, and the role of the Bible in Jewish thought (224, p. xv). His studies in "Some Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law" (22), he argued that "the law [is] the area of biblical religion include his magisterial survey of Israelite religion the expression of underlying postulates or values of culture" (224, p. 27) and in the monarchic period (135), his article on prayer ("Tefillfi") in the "Enefq• that differences between biblical and ancient Near Eastern laws were not re• Mpedyfi Miqrii"ft (154), and other essays on prayer and on the book of Job. In flections of different stages of social development but of different underlying his study on the refinement of the conception of prayer in the Bible (121), he legal and religious principles. In "Biblical Attitudes toward Power" (202), he traces the development of petition and praise away from their roots in the analyzed various economic, social, political, and religious laws in the Torah conception that the' deity literally needs to be informed of the plight of the and showed that their thrust was to disperse authority and prestige throughout worshiper and propitiated by flattery into "a vehicle of humility, an expression society and prevent the monopolization of prestige and political and economic of un-selfsufficiency, which in biblical thought, is the proper stance of humans power by narrow elite groups. before God." Thus, "[i]n its highest reaches, biblical prayer remains still the In his commentaries on the books of Exodus (70) and Ezekiel (157), and embodiment of the awareness of creaturehood, as much a contrast to theurgic earlier studies leading up to them, Moshe has developed and exemplified his incantation as to the self-containedness of human-centered modernism" (224, "holistic" method of exegesis. This method is beautifully explicated in the in• p. 104). troductionto his commentary on Ezekiel. While building on the source-critical In his monograph on biblical prose prayers (156), Moshe shows that these achievements of earlier scholarship, the holistic method redirects attention from prayers reflect the piety of commoners, illustrating the popular conception of the texts' "hypothetically reconstructed elements" to the biblical books as in• God as redresser of wrongs, constant, reliable, trustworthy, and fair. He reasons tegral wholes, as the products of thoughtful and artistic design conveying mes• that the frequency of spontaneous prayer must have sustained a constant sense sages of their own. "Details of this art .. ; and design disclose themselves to the of God's presence and strengthened the 'egalitarian tendency of Israelite reli• patient and receptive reader who divests himself of. preconceptions regarding gion that led to the establishment of the synagogue. The fact that prayer was what an ancient prophet .should have said and how he should have said it" conceived as analogous to a social transaction between persons fostered an (157, p. 26). I With this approach, Moshe has recalled scholarly attention to the emphasis on sincerity and content, rather than formulation, and may lie at the "received text [which] is the only historically attested datum; it alone has had root of the classical-prophetic view of worship as a gesture whose acceptance demonstrable effects; it alone is the undoubted product of Israelite creativity" depends on the worshiper's adherence to the values of God. (70, pp. 4-5). As Moshe showed, since midrashic and later· precritical Jewish In his "Reflections on Job's Theology" (140), Moshe observes that Job's exegesis operated on the assumption of unitary authorship, they have many in• experience of God's inexplicable enmity could not wipe out his knowledge of sights to offer the holistic commentator .. God's benignity gained from his earlier experience, and hence he became con• The recognition of the value of traditional Jewish sources for the holistic fused instead of simply rejecting God. Accordingly, the fact that the Bible re• method is manifest in Moshe's recourse to postbiblical sources in explicating tains Job as well as Proverbs reflects the capacity of the religious sensibility to the biblical text and aspects of ancient Israelite culture. In his early study of aflirm both experiences: Hebrew siigullfi and Akkadian sikiltu (3), he found the key to the meaning of both words in the Rabbinic Hebrew verb siggel. In other studies, he found that One can see in individual as in collective life a moral causality (which the re• the release of the accidental killer from the city of refuge upon the death of the ligious regard as divinely maintained ... ): evil recoils upon the evildoers ... high priest is best clarified by the talmudic explanation that the priest's death goodness brings blessings. At the same time, the manifestation or' this causal• constitutes a vicarious expiation of life by life (18); and he explained Ezek• ity can be so erratic or so delayed as to cast doubt on its validity as the single iel's dumbness (17) and Rachel's theft of Laban's teriiffm (27) on the basis of key to the destiny of people and nations.... No single key unlocks the mys• striking parallels from Second Temple times found in Josephus. tery of destiny ... but, for all that, the sober believer does not endorsc nihil• ism. Wisdom, Torah, and Prophets continue to'represent for him one aspect of On the other hand, Moshe has remained true to his early recognition that causality in events which he can confirm in his own private experience. But the Bible is best understood in light of its ancient Near Eastern context as well one aspect only. The other stands beyond his moral judgment, though it is still as later Jewish tradition. Beginning witb his' doctoral work on the ijapiru under God: namely, the mysterious or preordained decree of God, toward through the study of biblical law in the light of ancient Near Eastern law, and which the proper attitude is "Though he slay me, yet willi trust in Him (Job nbw throughout his commentary on Ezekiel, Moshe has consistently shown 13.15, qere)" (224, pp.