scrolls were discovered, theHodayotwere taken to be an inferior version of
Psalms poetry. No one seemed to realize that we were dealing with the next
stage in the history of Hebrew poetry. Indeed, elements of Qumran reli-
gious poetry point invarious directions toward the style, though not the
content, of the later piyyut. This is clear now especially in the reuse of bib-
lical material to form postbiblical poems and in the tendency to create
grammatical forms not previously known. Yet, as a corpus related closely
to rabbinic literature, the piyyut takes the rabbinic liturgical calendar and
its content as a starting point and is suffused with rabbinic midrashic ma-
terial and legal rulings, even if some of them are at variance with those
taken as normative in the rabbinic legal texts.Conclusion
How can we explain the contradictory observations that we are making
here? On the one hand, we have emphasized the lack of a literary pipeline
from early Judaism into rabbinic Judaism, beyond that of the Hebrew
Scriptures themselves. On the other hand, we have pointed to rich parallels
and apparent intellectual interaction between those who left us Second
Temple texts and those who were apparently the spiritual ancestors of the
Tannaim, namely, the Pharisees. It would seem that the existence of a
“common Judaism” provides the answer.
As we have noted, Pharisaic-rabbinic Judaism was at odds with sectar-
ian and apocalyptic trends, both in Second Temple times and after the de-
struction. The relationship between early Judaism and rabbinic Judaism,
then, is characterized not by dependence but dialogue, disputation, and
sometimes polemic. We lack adequate documentation of the Pharisaic side
of the debate beyond reconstructing it on the basis of rabbinic literature.
However, the license to perform such a reconstruction is inherent in the
anti-Pharisaic polemics of the Second Temple texts, especially the Dead
Sea Scrolls. The texts hint at a rigorous debate replete with polemics back
and forth. This polemic must have been quieted greatly in the aftermath of
the destruction of the Temple, when the Pharisaic-rabbinic approach
gradually emerged as the consensus. From this point on, in an atmosphere
of rabbinic debate, various aspects of the common Judaism of Second
Temple times were preserved in the rabbinic movement and its literature.
All kinds of ideas crossed the literary abyss without the rabbis having read
Second Temple texts. It is these ideas that constitute the heritage of Second433Early Judaism and Rabbinic JudaismEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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