Early Judaism- A Comprehensive Overview

which are attested by twenty copies or more) with the small number of

preserved copies (three or less) of Joshua, Judges, Kings, Proverbs,

Qohelet, Ezra, and Chronicles. There are noa priorigrounds for assuming

that all the later biblical books of the Tanak were already scriptural or au-

thoritative to the same degree. It seems that a core group of scriptures

(Pentateuch, Isaiah, the Minor Prophets, and Psalms), were differently

transmitted, interpreted, and granted a different degree of authority than

other scriptures. For example, the textual transmission of Isaiah and the

Minor Prophets is fairly stable: we have only one major recension. Also,

there are pesharim interpreting those books, which indicates that the con-

tents were seen as authoritative but in need of interpretation. In contrast,

there are different recensions of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and instead of

pesharim we find parabiblical literature connected to those books. Some

of the Ketuvim are extensively used in other Dead Sea Scrolls, such as the

Psalms, Daniel, Proverbs, and Lamentations. Other Ketuvim, like Canti-

cles, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Esther, and Ezra, are not known to have been used

or referred to in other texts.

Criteria that may cumulatively indicate the importance or authority

that a group attached to a text include (a) the number of preserved copies

of a composition, (b) the existence of commentaries on those works,

(c) quotations or references to a text in other compositions, (d) the exis-

tence of translations of those texts, (e) implicit or explicit claims to au-

thority in a work, and (f ) attribution of a text to preexilic authors. Hence,

it has been suggested thatJubileesand (some of ) the books ofEnoch,but

possibly also texts like theAramaic Levi Documentand theApocryphon of

Joshua,may have been authoritative scriptures for groups behind the Dead

Sea Scrolls. But here, too, the question is whether one should assume a

sharp distinction between scriptural and nonscriptural.

Extending Scriptures by Interpretative Rewriting

Since the 1990s, the term “parabiblical” has gained popularity in Dead Sea

Scrolls studies as an umbrella term for a large variety of texts that are

closely related to texts or themes of the Hebrew Bible. This category in-

cludes both those texts that were formerly described as “rewritten bible” or

“biblical interpretation,” and those compositions that are attributed or

connected to biblical figures and that often were characterized as

pseudepigraphal and apocryphal. Even though there sometimes is an over-

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The Dead Sea Scrolls

EERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:04:03 PM