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Canon and the DSS.

While doing some reading last night, I came across a few canonical tidbits from James VanderKam's An Introduction to Early Judaism.

It is very likely that there was not a Bible in the second temple period - that is, an accepted, defined, and closed corpus of authoritative texts - but there is no doubt that there were some books widely held to contain divine teaching. [p. 213]

It is important to remember that the production of texts and the canonization of authoritative texts was a long and complex process. The text of the scriptures, therefore, did not fall out of the sky, as it would seem, but took a process of being embraced as authoritative first, then moved on to a more canonical status. What we need to realize is that there were many more texts that were seen as authoritative, to varying degrees, than were ultimately placed in the canon. I think we also need to agree with VanderKam in the fact that the canon was not even closed within the time of the second temple period.

VanderKam also highlights, very succinctly, the impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls on our understanding of texts and canon:

One of the great contributions made by the Dead Sea Scrolls to our knowledge about biblical books is that they have documented the existence of divergent Hebrew texts of certain scriptural works. That is, there was not a single Hebrew text of each of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament; in some cases, such as the book of Jeremiah, there were Hebrew copies that diverged widely from each other. There was a shorter, probably more original version and one that was longer by about one-eighth and that had some material, such as the oracles of the nations, in a different place (in the shorter version they follow 25:19; in the longer one they are chaps. 46-51). This shorter version of Jeremiah had been known from the Greek translation of the book; now it can be seen that the Greek was not a free reworking of the one Hebrew original but was a faithful rendition of a Hebrew base text that diverged considerable from the one found in the traditional Hebrew Bible (called the Masoretic Text)...

We have no evidence that anyone was concerned that the different copies failed to agree word-for-word, although from some of the Qumran commentaries it is apparent that the expositors were aware of variant readings. Rather than bemoaning these, they at times exploited them in their explanations. [pp.215-6]

The fact of the matter is that texts, even the canonical texts, had variant readings in the Second Temple Period and this fact does not seem to be an issue for the faithful of the day. On the contrary, they not only embraced textual variants, they employed them in their interpretive venture. Imagine what kind of chaos that would create today, especially with our fascination with inerrancy and such.

There might come a day when we need to reconsider the versions of our canonical texts, in light of these textual finds. Perhaps it has already begun.

More News on APU and the DSS.

Thanks goes out to Jim Davila for this from the Los Angeles Times:

Southern California universities acquire rare religious texts

Azusa Pacific University has acquired five fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest known versions of the Hebrew Bible.

The 2,000-year-old shards, featuring passages from the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, will be exhibited in May at the evangelical Christian university in the San Gabriel Valley...

... The five fragments in the Azusa Pacific collection, each about the size of an adult's palm, are stored in a campus safe until they can be readied for the May exhibition that will use artifacts to tell the history of the Bible.

The university bought four of the fragments from a private rare-manuscript dealer in Venice. The fifth came from a Christian ministry in Phoenix that collects biblical artifacts.

University officials would not say how much they paid for the pieces, which include a fragment from the Book of Daniel.

But Robert Duke, an assistant professor of biblical studies, sounded almost giddy as he described the university's new acquisitions. "They are 2,000 years old, and you can still see letters . . . with the naked eye," he said.

The university released a photograph of one fragment that already has been studied by an outside researcher. The brownish-colored section with frayed edges shows part of the 27th chapter of Deuteronomy. In it, Moses delivers a discourse from God, telling the Jewish people to build an altar of stone once they cross the River Jordan into the land of Israel.

The fragment lists the location for the altar as Mount Gerizim. Modern Bibles mentioned another site, Mount Ebal.

James H. Charlesworth, a New Testament professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, said the difference suggests that the fragment may be an original copy of Deuteronomy that was altered at some point by warring factions of Jews.

"We finally found the original text of Deuteronomy," said Charlesworth, who directs the seminary's Dead Sea Scrolls Project. "This is sensationally important."

Azusa Pacific said it is only the third U.S. institution of higher education to acquire fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And some scholars say the purchase has elevated the name of the 8,500-student campus virtually overnight. "They are now on the map," Charlesworth said.

More on APU and the DSS.

Robert Cargill offers a bit more insight on one the DSS fragments acquired by Azusa Pacific University, a fragment of the biblical book of Deuteronomy.

The fragment of Deuteronomy, a portion believed to be 27:4b-6 from the Samaritan Pentateuch text type, was claimed to have originally been found in Qumran Cave IV. The link includes the research of James  Charlesworth and the infra-red photography of Bruce and Ken Zuckerman.

It is well worth the time to read to gain a better grasp of the enormity of the scrolls themselves, as well as one of the fragments APU has just acquired.

Azusa Pacific and the DSS.

This just in:

Azusa Pacific University Acquires Five Dead Sea Scroll Fragments and Rare Biblical Artifacts

September 3, 2009 - In its most significant holding to date―and possibly ever―Azusa Pacific University acquires five Dead Sea Scroll fragments and a collection of rare biblical antiquities.

Joining Princeton University and the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, APU becomes only the third institution of higher education to own original Dead Sea Scroll fragments. These earliest known texts of the Hebrew Bible, dating back to roughly 150 B.C., were discovered in the caves of Qumran, east of Jerusalem, between 1947-56. Today, many of the estimated 15,000 known fragments are held in private collections. With this acquisition, APU can study, research, and share these fragments with scholars and the public while carefully preserving the history of Scripture.

Simply incredible. Many thanks goes to the university and the administration in being able to secure such a treasure. This is an acquisition that begins to solidify Azusa Pacific as a top rate academic institution and a place that serious about its scholarship.

If you had a chance to see the DSS exhibit when it was in San Diego, you have an idea of what APU has acquired and how rare this is. The scrolls are perhaps the greatest textual discovery in modern scholarship. The impact the scrolls have had on the development of texts, including canonical texts, is priceless. Having these five fragments at the university, where they can be preserved and studied, is an incredible opportunity for students and faculty.

Since these texts will have a central focus in my doctoral work, I'm blown away. Can't wait to see them in person.

Thesis Abstract.

So today I spent the better part of the day working on my thesis paper. [With it being so blasted hot, this worked out really nicely.] Anyway, if you're interested, here's the abstract in working form. Enjoy.

The interaction between God and his people is one of covenantal journey, one marked by faith and a deep hope. Perhaps nowhere is this ideal more captured than in the textual writings of the Second Temple Period, especially within those texts often demarcated as “apocalyptic” writings. These texts, formulated by various communities within the Second Temple Period, display a yearning and a strong belief that God is not absent, but quite present in their midst. Trusting in his past faithfulness and promises, these communities believed that God was about to act significantly in their present context, bringing about the expectant hope of complete restoration.

To more deeply appreciate these texts and the communities that developed them, we must initially explore the development of apocalyptic literature as a genre and a vehicle for this expression of faith and hope. How did this genre develop and why was it chosen as a central vehicle of the Second Temple Period? Secondarily, we must explore the texts themselves and their relationship to received texts and traditions. How did these authors and redactors see their texts? Were they “scripture” on equal footing as the received texts of their day? How did they use the vehicle of apocalyptic literature to portray their dreams, desires, and understanding of God and his activity in the world? On a broader scale, what can we learn about the category of “scripture” from the texts collected and produced in the Second Temple Period?

The aim of this paper is to explore selected writings of the Second Temple Period in order to gain a vision of how various expressions of Judaism understood their relationship with God and their world. By specifically exploring the nature of their writings, both of content and category, we hope to gain a clearer vision of their self-understanding, along with their vision of God and his activity in the present world. Central to our discussion will be how these communities utilized the writings that had been handed down to them in the development of their own textual traditions. It is in this interaction with received texts that we have an insightful vantage point into their self-understanding and their view of their own particular texts.

We will be examining three main texts produced from three different communities, which exhibit varied nuances of “Judaisms” within the larger Jewish community of the Second Temple Period – 1 Enoch, the book of Daniel, and the Habakkuk pesharim from the community at Qumran. All three texts evidence an unfolding theological trajectory rooted in an apocalyptic worldview. They all display a reliance upon received texts and traditions, which are integrated into new forms and endowed with new meanings, resulting in a wholly new textual creation.

Highly Recommended.

Jim West just finished a chapter by chapter review of Hanan Eshel's The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hasmonean State. After reading the book I have to concur with West in saying that it is perhaps one of the best treatments of the historical references found in various DSS texts available. The book is carefully constructed and solidly argued. If you are at all interested in the field of current research on the scrolls, this is a must read volume.

Preservation of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The IAA has recently posted a seven minute video on the history and preservation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's a good introduction which lays out the basics of the consensus theories of the texts and the archaeology of the Qumran site. Well worth the seven minutes...

Scripture in Second Temple Times.

So I'm still in the process of finishing my Master's thesis paper... which feels like it has taken forever. I seem to be finding more roadblocks than opportunities when it comes to time and focus... I just need to get this thing finished. I've often joked with Jamie that writing has some interesting correlations with pregnancy. In the beginning you are filled with joy and passion for what lies ahead. By the end you are so tired of the whole thing, you just want to be done.

Anyway, the following is the conclusion for a paper I wrote for a class I took on Scripture and Canon. The paper is providing the basis for the more expanded paper I'm doing for my Master's thesis. The original paper explored the writings of the Enochic community [1 Enoch] and the community at Qumran [1QpHab] to gain insight on how they perceived their received texts, as well as the ones they produced. Since we've talked a bit here about the issue of "scripture," I thought this might be interesting as a conversation starter.

If you're interested in reading the entire paper, including footnotes, here it is...

Download research_paper.doc

Of Content and Category.

We began this survey of specific Enochic and Qumranic literature by asking questions of content and category. How did these two communities understand the texts that they had received from previous generations? How did they use these received texts in the development of their own particular writings? What was the relationship between the received texts and the texts developed within these communities? And of resulting import, how did they view their own writings? Were they considered in the category of scripture for the community? By way of bringing clarity to these questions, we must first consider a few thoughts on the nature and category of scripture.

Martin S. Jaffee offers an essential definition of “scripture” as “a writing preserved by a community as an authoritative source of teaching, reflection, or worship.” He goes on to rightly argue therefore that scriptures should not be understood as being authored, but as being “received.” They are seen as having divine origin [as Eugene Ulrich explains as “having God as its ultimate author”] and being passed down from the communal ancestors. Scripture, therefore, in its clearest sense is a category of function. Received texts are preserved and transmitted from generation to generation as scripture, because they function, or are accepted as “an authoritative source of teaching, reflection, or worship” [as per Jaffee] or “as determinative for its belief and practice” [as per Ulrich]. Essential for bringing clarity to our survey is Jaffee’s summary observation:

Texts normally do not become scripture simply because the latest composer claims to have received it. Rather, writings become scripture only because human communities have at some point placed agreed to place them at the center of the common life. Any text regarded as scripture came to be so because a community, formally or informally, gave it central place in the pattern of community life.

Following from these insights into the definition of scripture, it is clear that both the Enochic and the Qumranic community regarded the received texts as authoritative, and thus scriptural. Both communities, by both possessing the received texts as well as placing them at or near the center of their own particular writings, gave them a functionally authoritative position within the community. What separated them from other streams of “Judaisms” is to be found in how they utilized these received texts within their own writings.

Which brings us to the issue of the category of the particular writings of each community. The writings of both the Enochic community and the sectarian Qumran community can find a home within Jaffee and Ulrich’s definition of “scripture,” precisely because the texts functioned authoritatively within their respective communities, providing a guiding principle for community life and belief. How they understood the authority of their own particular texts, as well as how they utilized received scriptural texts is where the two slightly differentiate themselves from one another.

For the Enochic community, they saw their writings as an elaboration, or clarification upon the authoritatively received texts, as seen in the relationship between Genesis 6.1-4 and 1 Enoch 6-11, where 1 Enoch 6-11 functions both etiologically and symbolically of the concerns of the community. They further found authority for these elaborations in the fact that God himself had originally transmitted these texts directly to the patriarch Enoch [Genesis 5.24]. These elaborations upon the authoritative received texts functioned as the basis for their community life and belief. It is this sense that the literature of the Enochic community was equally as authoritative for community as the received texts themselves.

For the Qumran community, their understanding of the scriptural status of their texts, specifically that of the pehsarim writings, is slightly different. As the Community of the Elect, they felt that the true meaning of the authorized received texts was fully and finally directed towards them and their time. The message of these texts was hidden from the prophetic authors, only to be fully and finally revealed in the inspired interpretation of the Teacher of Righteousness. They believed that it as to the Teacher of Righteousness and him alone, that the mysteries of the prophetic messages were given. Therefore, the inspired interpretations of the pesharim were just as scriptural as the authoritative base texts upon which they were developed, perhaps even more so because by nature they were the true meaning and fulfillment of these prophetic base texts. Much in the same vein as the literature of the Enochic community, the Qumran community found an added measure of authority for the pesharim due to the belief that the interpretive insight found in the pesharim came to the Teacher of Righteousness directly from God.