Torah in the Mouth.pdf

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
all the distinction in 1QS 6:7–8 in particular between verbs denoting kinds of study and their direct objects. The rule prescribes an act of
“recitation” (qr') appropriate to the Book and an act of “exposition” (drš ) appropriate to the Ruling. While it is clear that the recitation of the
Book is preliminary to the exposition of the Ruling, the relationship of the two acts remains unspecified. Is the Ruling exegetically derived
from the Book, or is it an independent textual entity in its own right? In either event, is the Ruling a written document or an orally
transmitted compendium of some sort?
The key to interpreting this exposition of the Ruling lies in the term, mšp , which stands behind the translation “Ruling.” As Schiffman has
pointed out, mishpat is a technical term in CD and 1QS, denoting behavioral prescriptions particular to the community. 36 The Ruling, on
this reading, is in some sense the preserved record of the periodic disclosure of things “hidden” from all Israel and “disclosed” to the Yahad
in their collective textual studies 37 “according to the Ruling of each time” (lmšp ‘t w‘t : CD 12:20).
But the specific textual procedure that constitutes the act of “expounding the Ruling” is tantalizingly vague. It is possible that before us is
an exegetical activity that generates from the Torah itself, as a kind of midrashic application, a normative prescription for explicitly
communal behavior. 38 The general disinterest of Qumranic texts, however, in using the literary form of exegesis to link communal rules to
laws from the Torah mitigates against this interpretation. 39 Alternatively, it is also possible that the exposition of the Ruling is an
exegetical inquiry into a text other than the Torah. That is, the Ruling is a source of teaching in its own right, and “expounding” it is a
matter of applying and extending the Ruling itself. 40 The evidence of successive revisions of sectarian regulations within CD and 1QS,
noted by J. Baumgarten and S. Metso in particular, lends support to the latter interpretation. 41 It seems likely, then, that this passage
assumes the existence of an authoritative body of written texts related to, but separate from, the laws encoded in the Torah. It is the
corpus of inner-communal “disclosures,” rather than the unadorned scriptural text itself, that undergirds the specific form of life that
distinguishes members of the community from those beyond its perimeter.
Oral Performance, Prophetic Presence, and Written Record
Even among those who doubt that Qumran served as a site for an industrious project of text composition, 42 the sources before us show
that the oral presentation of written texts and the orally mediated transmission of the text-interpretive tradition played a key role in the
common life of the community. The interpretive study of texts was not confined to priestly leaders or scribal professionals. Rather, it
extended beyond them to become part of the ethos of the collective. While a small minority of the community would have mastered all the
scribal skills, the entire group aspired to a degree of textual knowledge appropriate to scribes. Moreover, the results of textual exposition
—particularly as it intersected with and found social embodiment in the behavioral norms applicable within the community—were intended
for rapid dissemination throughout the group by designated teachers, priestly and nonpriestly alike.
end p.36
The passages we have examined describe a twofold textual foundation lying at the basis of collective study: the recitation of the Book and
the exposition of the Ruling. The precise nature of this recitation and exposition, and the identity of their textual objects, is impossible to
identify with much certainty. Whether the Book (or the book of Hagi) is synonymous with the canonical Torah of Moses or not, the text is
represented as being publicly read forth as the basis of a secondary discourse. This secondary discourse, the exposition of the Ruling,
seems to have been the foundation of innovative application of the texts of the Book. But this application was not represented as
exegesis, even of a prophetically inspired sort (as in the pesher texts). Rather, it was represented as a prophetic delivery itself, a divine
disclosure delivered to a teacher.
Both sources of instruction—the Book and the Ruling—are represented as having been delivered orally and received aurally in public
session. But while the written character of the Book is certain, matters are vaguer regarding the Ruling. The Ruling is nowhere referred to
specifically as a written source. Nevertheless, the weight of Qumran scholarship warrants the conclusion that the Ruling was composed
and transmitted in writing, its remnants preserved in the various interpretations of biblical laws and sectarian rulings found in the very
documents we have examined. This picture coincides with that drawn by Byrskog of the interrelation of written and oral/aural media in the
preservation and transmission of the other major focus of qumranian literary tradition preserved in the pesher literature. “The written
traditions from the Righteous Teacher,” he argues, “were not devoid of oral and aural functions within the transmission process. The written
means used for carrying the traditions related to aural means for conveying them.” 43 Authorized knowledge may have circulated widely
through oral means, but the decisive authority of that knowledge was linked inevitably to written texts—to the Book and the Ruling, where
communal discipline was at stake; to the pesharim and other texts, where collective self-understanding was the issue. 44
Summary
Despite the many unsolved problems we have considered, the material from Qumran yields an inescapable conclusion with regard to our
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