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Torah in the Mouth, Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE - 400 CE Jaffee, Martin S., Samuel and Althea Stroum Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Washington Print publication date: 2001, Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-514067-5, doi:10.1093/0195140672.001.0001 Similarly, numerous students of the Second Temple literature have shown how richly the images and ideas of the canonical Scriptures informed the diverse literary productions that laid claim to prophetic authority during the period. Here too the extensive reframings of well- known narrative traditions and interpretive revisions of legal traditions dotting this literature are undertaken without ideological justification, as if such revisioning were a natural, inevitable aspect of literary life. 4 The ubiquitous fact that interpretive traditions generated in social settings of oral exchange end p.29 served as the transformative medium of written texts does not, however, disclose the ideological systems by which the interpreters grasped the authority of their own interpretive acts. Nor, in fact, does it tell us if they paid particular attention to the authorization of oral tradition at all. This is precisely where our evidence is poor. It is often quite difficult to summon up clear pictures of the social groups that carried and developed various literary traditions. Nor do Second Temple writings always permit glimpses of the meanings such groups might have ascribed to the oral or written status of the media that bore into the future results of their literary-interpretive activity. For example, there are no texts deriving from the Second Temple period, in which writers defend the oral-performative interpretive tradition of their communities by appealing to the tradition's very unwritten form as the principle of its authority to govern the meaning of scriptural writings. In order to illustrate the dimensions of this silence about the authority of orally mediated traditions of textual performance and interpretation, it is necessary to focus the discussion in this and the next chapter upon two well-studied groups. Each appears to have developed at least implicitly recognized conceptions of the authority of the interpretive traditions that stood at the heart of its communal engagement with written texts. But neither resorted—as far as the evidence can be pushed—to the polemical strategy that will emerge among rabbinic Sages by the third century CE: namely, that the authority of communal understandings of key writings is guaranteed by the exclusively oral medium in which those understandings are preserved. We have already encountered the first group in the discussion of Second Temple scribalism. The community associated episodically with the Qumran site from Hasmonean times on through the war of 66–73 CE may have had some connection to the Essenes, an apparently ascetic fellowship mentioned by a number of ancient ethnographers and historians of Second Temple Jewry. 5 For the past half century, however, all historical reconstructions of the Qumran group must be built upon writings, secreted in caves throughout the Dead Sea wilderness during the war of 66–73 CE, which preserve some living connection to the traditions generated within the community. The main task in this chapter will be to identify and reflect upon the conceptions of the authority of written texts and their oral-performative transmission that may be recovered from these writings. I will indicate as well how these representations of various modalities of interpretive tradition may point to attitudes that enjoyed a wide currency within the group for much of its history. The next chapter will devote sustained attention to a second well-known Second Temple community of textual interpreters, the Pharisees. This group represents a peculiarly complex problem for anyone attempting to reconstruct the nature of its ideological universe. Unlike the Qumran community, whose world can be explored in some detail on the basis of its own literary remains, the Pharisees are known entirely from writings produced by more or less partisan observers. As scholars now universally recognize, it is necessary to grasp the interests of these observers—whether neutral or hostile—in order to evaluate the pictures of the Pharisees they preserve. Accordingly, when we reach the discussion of Pharisaic tradition in chapter 3 we will pay particular attention to how the perspectives of these literary witnesses my have affected what we have received. end p.30 The Qumran Yahad and Its Text-Interpretive Tradition After a half century of intense study, the scrolls found in the vicinity of Khirbet Qumran from 1947 through the early 1950s continue to raise controversy. Among well-trained scholars there remain some who continue to deny that the site was in fact the center of any sort of sectarian community. 6 Among the majority who accept the view that Qumran served as a sectarian settlement, there is continued debate concerning the identity of the group. The early equation of the sect with the Essenes continues to enjoy strong consensual support, but there is increasing appreciation of some significant and long-noted disparities between the ancient literary images of the Essenes and the material and textual evidence from Qumran. 7 The questions about the identity of the group also touch upon the interpretation of the literary texts from the various caves. Which texts are to be interpreted as reflecting the views and practices of the Qumran community, and which are reflective of larger religious currents in Second Temple Palestine? To what degree is it possible to assume that the mere availability of a text in the Qumran cache indicates the community's acceptance of some or all of its central ideas? The present study offers no opportunity to treat these questions at length. I shall refer to the group alternatively as the “Yahad” or the “Tzadokites,” since both terms cluster together in a number of crucial works. PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2003 - 2011. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/privacy_policy.html). Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 20 September 2011
Torah in the Mouth, Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE - 400 CE Jaffee, Martin S., Samuel and Althea Stroum Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Washington Print publication date: 2001, Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-514067-5, doi:10.1093/0195140672.001.0001 In choosing these terms, I intend to make as minimalistic a stand as possible on the sect's possible identification with the Essenes or other voluntary religious associations known from other Second Temple sources. The term, y d (“Community”), appearing principally in the Damascus Covenant (CD), 8 the Community Rule (1QS), 9 and several pesher compositions, 10 clearly is a self-designation employed by the community. Many of these same texts highlight the role of a priestly group known as the “Sons of Tzadok” (bny dwq) as authoritative communal figures, or of a priestly teacher, the “Righteous Teacher” (mwrh h dq), as a historical founder. Thus the sense of historical connectedness to the Tzadokite priestly family appearing prominently in the eschatological priesthood imagined by the exiled prophet Ezekiel (Ezek. 40:46, 43:19, 44:15, 48:11), and in the priestly lineage of the post-exilic priest-scribe Ezra (Ezra 7:1–2), played some sort of central role in the Yahad's self-understanding. 11 Our discussion here focuses on two primary matters. The first concerns the nature of the social situations in which the Tzadokite community gathered around common texts for study and the sorts of teaching authority enjoyed by those who expounded texts. The second question concerns the subject matter of textual study. Which texts were placed at the center of collective concern, and how did the community understand the authority of the learning that issued from collective textual study? These questions have been raised in numerous forms by scholars of the Qumran literature. My own conclusions are deeply indebted to the studies of Joseph Baumgarten, 12 Steven Fraade, 13 Lawrence Schiffman, 14 and Shmaryahu Talmon 15 in particular. The purpose of revisiting this matter here is not to bring previously unnoticed material to the discussion or to offer dramatic reinterpretations of well-known materials. Rather, in reviewing some well-studied texts from a commonly accepted critical vantage, I hope to stress the significance of a single observation. end p.31 It is clear that the Yahad was deeply engaged in the oral-performative transmission of written texts and shared a rich tradition of orally mediated understandings of such texts. Moreover, embodiment of this accumulation of written and oral tradition in the form of concrete behavioral norms was taken as a sign of full participation in the community. It is striking, therefore, that this heritage of text and interpretation was not designated by any term denoting “tradition” at all. Indeed, little of it—beyond the writings regarded as Scripture stemming from primordial prophecy—seems to have been perceived as something received from the distant past or handed down by a succession of authoritative tradents. 16 To be sure, it was orally delivered and aurally received, transmitted through teachers in a public setting of oral instruction. But it did not depend for its authority upon guarantees of sound transmission over vast stretches of time. Rather, its authority rested upon the confidence that it was disclosed in contemporary moments of illumination, gifts of prophecy secured by current communal leaders. And its record was most likely transmitted in writings that themselves became the subjects of further interpretive activity, rather than in oral traditions beyond the range of written preservation. The Study Session of the Community The most important single representation of textual study in the Tzadokite corpus serves as the hermeneutical basis upon which to interpret other sources. This is the passage from the Community Rule that mandates the public study of the Torah and an associated body of learned tradition among a deputation of leaders known as the Community Council (‘ t hy d ) (1QS 6:6–8): And let there not be lacking [w'l ymš ], in a place where the ten are [’šr yhyw šm h‘ rh], 17 a man expounding the Torah ['yš dwrš btwrh] day and night,/ on the proper relations of a man with his fellow [ 'l ypwt 'yš lr‘hw ]. 18 And the Many [whrbym] shall diligently spend a third of all the nights of the year reciting the Book [lqrw’ bspr ], expounding the Ruling [ldrwš mšp ],/ and offering benedictions communally [lbrk by d ]. 19 The passage contains a number of puzzles that need to be confronted before the questions of concern to us here can be brought to it. Those most important to us are, unfortunately, hidden by the very act of translation. The first puzzle concerns the relationship between the two rulings I have rendered as separate paragraphs. Does CD prescribe a single study community presided over by one interpreter, or is the study session of the Many construed as an event distinct from that undertaken “where the ten are”? If the underlying Hebrew rulings are read conjunctively, with the second intended to amplify the implications of the first, then the “man expounding the Torah” would preside over the Many in nightly study. 20 But the Hebrew also supports a disjunctive reading, such that the first rule applies to the “man expounding the Torah” in a community quorum of ten and the second describes a separate gathering of the Many. 21 Are there grounds for reaching a decision about how the relation between these two rulings was interpreted at Qumran? 22 A close parallel to this passage, preserved in the medieval copy of the Damascus Covenant (CD 13:2–4), offers some help: end p.32 PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2003 - 2011. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/privacy_policy.html). Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 20 September 2011
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