The Aramaic Levi Document, the Genesis Apocryphon, and Jubileesthe unrighteous spirit,
and evil thought and fornication....
3 :6Let there be shown to me, O Lord, the holy spirit,
and grant me counsel, and wisdom and knowledge and strength,
3:7-8in order to do that which is pleasing before you....
3 :9And let not any satan have power over me,
to make me stray from your path.This prayer, located before Levi's dream and investiture, opens with "My
Lord, you know all hearts.. ." (3:3). The unexpected note struck by "And
now my children are with me" (3:4a) will be discussed below. As it stands,
this prayer includes: a petition for God to show Levi "all the paths of truth"
(3:4b), to distance the evil spirit from him, to grant him the holy spirit of
wisdom and knowledge, which will help him act properly before God (3:6-
8); and a plea for divine protection from satan, who makes him stray from
God's path (3:9). As Stone and Greenfield note: "This is certainly one of the
oldest passages in which two spirits are contrasted, and if the view of a third
century BCE date for ALD is accepted, then this concept, so characteristic of
the Qumran texts, must be put back to that date. The terminology used here,
however, is not typical of the sectarian writings from Qumran."^27 Further
more, as we argue in our edition of ALD, "It is related to the idea of the two
ways, one good and one bad ... but is distinct from it in its use of the idea of
the two spirits."^28 Thus, in what follows I will concentrate only on the two-
ways image and its parallels.^29
I diverge briefly to discuss Levi's mention of his children at the begin
ning of the prayer. In our commentary to ALD 3:4 we note how "the men
tion of Levi's children at this point seems out of place, and the reason for
their introduction is unclear. Such a mention might have been more appro
priate in the context of 3:i5."^30 The beginning of this verse, preserved only in
the Mount Athos Greek manuscript, has a partial parallel in the Aramaic
manuscripts from the Geniza and Qumran. 4QLevib reads as follows:
- M. E. Stone and J. C. Greenfield, "The Prayer of Levi," JBL 112 (1993): 252.
- Greenfield, Stone, and Eshel, The Aramaic Levi Document, 34.
- Other parallels, but without the contrastive negative way, are found in various Ar
amaic compositions from Qumran Cave 4. Thus, 4Qpseudo-Daniela reads, "... indeed, the
children of [...] the ways of truth" (4Q243 7 2-3); and 4Q246 2 5 reads: "[...] and all his ways
are truth." - Greenfield, Stone, and Eshel, The Aramaic Levi Document, 125.