fell into the hands of the talmudic rabbis in its entirety: Ben Sira. Beyond
that, they did not have, or perhaps did not want to read, the Dead Sea
Scrolls or the writings that now comprise the Apocrypha and Pseudepigra-
pha, nor the works of Philo and Josephus. This hiatus in culture, indeed an
abyss from a literary point of view, remains largely unexplained. This gap
is not unique; after all, some twenty-two books are mentioned in the He-
brew Bible that did not survive into later periods. Still, that virtually noth-
ing passed from Second Temple times to the talmudic era stands in stark
contrast to the large body of Israelite literature that was transmitted to
Second Temple Judaism.
If there was no direct literary influence, we will have to content our-
selves with seeking common ideas and approaches that were passed down
as part of a general religious ambience. Because the halakic and theological
forebears of the rabbis were the Pharisees, we have to expect that rabbinic
literature and rabbinic Judaism are dependent primarily on the Pharisaic
teachings. But here we have no existing Second Temple texts written by
Pharisees. This situation most probably owes to the penchant for oral tra-
dition among the Pharisees, as known from Josephus, even if the ideologi-
cal notion of oral revelation and transmission was actually articulated only
in the tannaitic period. At the same time, some Pharisaic texts may have
lost popularity as oral tradition came to dominate Pharisaic Judaism. Ob-
viously, such texts would not have been preserved in the Qumran sectarian
collection, since the sect was so anti-Pharisaic. In any case, the Pharisees
bequeathed no literary materials to the talmudic enterprise but only exten-
sive oral traditions. It is possible that as Pharisaic Judaism emerged as the
only real survivor of the Second Temple period, the other books were ig-
nored or suppressed, under the category of “outside (apocryphal) books.”Indirect Influences and Continuities
There are very few explicit references to apocryphal works in rabbinic lit-
erature. In fact, rabbinic texts mention only two such works, one being Ben
Sira, which the rabbis apparently knew and quoted. Another is Sefer ben
La}ana (y. Sanhedrin10a), of whose contents nothing is known. The rabbis
explicitly prohibit the reading of such books, but there is some uncertainty
regarding the meaning of this prohibition. On the one hand, it might be a
blanket prohibition forbidding the reading of these texts under any cir-
cumstances. The assumption would be that it is forbidden to write, and421Early Judaism and Rabbinic JudaismEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:04:19 PM