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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 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 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 central question about the authority of the orally performed traditions of reading and exposition that circulated within the textual study sessions of the Yahad. Text-interpretive tradition—the cumulative results of multiple textual readings built up over time in the memories of the community's members—was received not as tradition transmitted from the past, but as ongoing revelation continuing into the present. While delivered orally in the context of textual study, it appears to have been routinely compiled, reformulated, and transmitted in written compositions that themselves were subjected to oral-performative exposition. There is no suggestion in any of the Yahad-related materials, however, that the group assigned authoritative status to an unwritten body of collective tradition on the specific grounds that it had been orally mediated through ancient tradition. While oral teaching was clearly the norm—people acted “in accord with the dictates” (‘l py) of selected teachers and heard the pronouncements of the expounders of the Torah—the authority of the teaching appears to have been end p.37 connected inextricably to that of the writings from which it originated. And the definitive expression of its authority was found not in its oral nature, but rather in the fact of its having been itself inscribed on the leaves of scrolls. From this perspective, the Yahad's engagement with written texts is wholly continuous with those common among the broader scribal communities discussed in chapter 1. In those communities the authoritative oral moment of textual tradition, in itself authorizing further explicative teachings, was located at the origins of the book, in a disclosive moment of authorial illumination. The contents of the oral- literary tradition that had escaped written form was not perceived at all as an entity distinct from the book; rather, it was carried along within the orbit of the written text itself, as the performative tradition of its public exposition. What distinguished the Yahad from other Second Temple literary circles was one simple fact: while the scribal progenitors of such venerable texts as the Torah of Moses, the Enochic works, or Jubilees located the origins of their revelations in the distant past, the Yahad regarded itself as blessed to have such prophets in its very midst. Delivered with prophetic authority, the living traditions of the community were perceived not as supplements to prophetic books, but as divine disclosures themselves. As such, they were recorded in written texts, upon which alone all other forms of unwritten tradition would find their attenuated authority. How was it different, we may now wonder, among those other formidable opponents of the Yahad and its text-interpretive traditions—the Second Temple Pharisees? end p.38 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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