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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 no exception. They do not give much help in identifying what might have been the origins of focused violence against the Yahad on the part of its opponents. Yet on the basis of one specific reference, the Yahad's mysterious opponents may be narrowed down to a group of Jerusalemites who invited a certain “Demetrius, King of Greece” to establish himself as ruler in Jerusalem (4QpNah, fr. 3–4, 1:2). 11 This allusion is illuminated by an incident described by Josephus (War 1:92–98, Antiquities 13:377–383), usually dated to 88 BCE. Disgusted with the policies of the Hasmonean Priest-King, Alexander Jannaeus, his opponents (unnamed in Josephus' account) invited the Seleucid ruler, Demetrius III Eukeres, to oust the Hasmonean dynast. Ultimately Alexander prevailed, but in revenge he executed 800 of his opponents. After Alexander's own death in 76 BCE, Josephus portrays newly empowered Pharisees as taking vengeance upon those of Alexander's advisors who had executed the 800 (War 1:113, Antiquities 13:410–415). In the context of the Josephan report, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Expounders of Smooth Things of the Nahum pesher encodes a reference to a Pharisaic group. Presumably, they engaged in some sort of reprisals against members of the Yahad who, whatever their feelings about Alexander Jannaeus, had opposed a coup d'etat that involved a Gentile ruler dominating Jerusalem. 12 In addition to the political dispute that resulted in the Yahad's conflict with the Pharisees, there appear to have been other errors of the Pharisees that drew the enmity of the Yahad. We have seen that CD 1:18 denounces Jews who, “expounding Smooth Things,” also “speculated about loopholes” in the Torah of Israel. The nature of this exposition, and the very meaning of “Smooth Things,” is the nub of the interpretive problem. Most likely, as some English translators of the term dwršy h lqwt have suggested, the term refers to a tendency to seek “easy interpretations” of covenantal law. 13 end p.42 It is likely, then, that the Smooth Things are a reference to interpretive judgments about the application of covenantal law which conflict with the revelations disclosed to the Yahad in the nightly vigils of study referred to in the previous chapter. On this reading, the Pharisees are represented as a group that ignores the Yahad's specific revelations and insists on interpreting certain matters of covenantal law in light of its own traditions. Obviously, the precise way in which the Pharisees might have interpreted the origin, nature, and authority of such traditions is a matter of great interest. Some scholars have proposed that the term “Expounders of Smooth Things” contains information that can answer this question. Specifically, “Smooth Things” ( lqwt, vocalized as alaqot) is understood as a wordplay on the term hlkwt (vocalized as halakhot). 14 The latter is commonly used in rabbinic literature of the third century and later to designate rabbinically sponsored rulings that carry the authority of binding tradition. According to scholars pursuing this interpretation, the phrase “Expounders of Smooth Things” is a punning reference to the Pharisaic practice of expounding rulings on the basis of traditional, orally transmitted law. This practice, presumably, yielded results that conflicted with the prophetically inspired “hidden things” of the Yahad. If this view could be established, there would indeed be grounds to suggest that the idea of an authoritative, orally transmitted legal tradition mediated through scriptural interpretation was a key element of Pharisaic ideology at least as early as the first century BCE. It would suggest, moreover, a genuinely early Second Temple period lineage for what eventually emerges in third-century rabbinic culture as “Torah in the Mouth” stemming from Sinai. This is an intriguing suggestion, but it depends upon a tissue of highly speculative assumptions. The term halakhah appears nowhere in the Qumranian corpus, nor is it attested in any surviving Jewish literature of the Second Temple period. Its earliest appearances are in the Mishnah and related rabbinic literature of the third century CE and later. As we shall see in chapter 4, the term halakhah (and its plural, halakhot) bears a number of nuanced meanings, not all of them implying that halakhot are exegetically generated. Many rabbinic traditions, in fact, deny the scriptural foundations of substantial bodies of halakhic tradition. This fact constitutes the first objection to the claim that the qumranian lqwt provides the earliest attestation of the rabbinic concept of halakhah as an orally transmitted tradition of laws derived from scriptural exegesis but not explicitly contained in the Torah. Such a claim selects only one range of attested meanings for historical retrojection beyond rabbinic usage back to the Pharisees. Even if the term halakhah could be of demonstrably Pharisaic coinage, it would not be possible on the basis of the term lqwt alone to infer precisely which range of rabbinic meanings could be imputed to the Pharisaic enemies of the Yahad. 15 But the most important criticism of the idea that the Yahad's references to lqwt satirize Pharisaic hlkwt is the observation that the term lqwt is not itself of Qumranian coinage. Rather, it enters Qumranian terminology from scriptural antecedents. This is no secret to students of the Qumran scrolls, but its significance is normally underappreciated. The most crucial passage comes from Is. 30:10. Here the prophet denounces the defiant among Israel who refused to listen to the Torah of God and end p.43 “who said to the Seers: Do not see! and to the Visionaries: Do not envision for us in honesty! Speak to us Smooth Things [ lqwt], 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 envision Illusions [mhtlwt]!” The conjunction of lqwt and mhtlwt, Smooth Things and Illusions, stands directly behind CD 1:18's complaint regarding some of Israel's seduction by the Man of Lies (see above), and serves as the intertextual reference point for CD's use of the term “expounding Smooth Things.” We learn that Pharisaic teachings are equated with self-serving lies and illusory principles—but know nothing about the nature of their derivation or authority. A second example of how the scriptural text informs the Qumranian terminology comes from the fragmentary pesher to the book of Isaiah itself. The pesharist's comment on Is. 30:10 has unfortunately been lost, but the following point appears in conjunction with a contiguous verse that promises “swift shall your pursuers be” (Is. 30:16): “Its explanation concerns the End of Days with regard to the Ex[pounders] of Smooth Things/ who are in Jerusalem . . . ” (4QpIsa c , fr. 23, 2:10–11). While the larger point has been lost in the damaged text, it seems clear that the proximity of Is. 30:10's “speak to us Smooth Things” finds its intertextual echo in the passage before us. 16 In both of these cases, the argument can be made that the Qumranian reference to Expounders of Smooth Things exemplifies the larger tendency of the pesher genre to read the Yahad's historical experience against the background of scriptural images. 17 But it is doubtful that we can press the term too far for clues as to the nature of Pharisaic oral-interpretive tradition. Indeed, the intertextual context of Is. 30:10 suggests, rather, that the pesharist viewed Pharisaic legal tradition not as false exegesis, but as false prophecy . It is a tantalizing coincidence that lqwt blends euphoneously with a term first attested in the rabbinic literature of the third century CE. But we should hesitate in concluding that we have found the earliest evidence of a Pharisaic ideological commitment to orally transmitted legal- interpretive tradition. Our survey thus far has come up with relatively slim results. It is likely that the phrase “Expounders of Smooth Things” is indeed a reference to the Pharisaic group that came into conflict with the Yahad over political affairs during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus. It also seems clear that, from the Yahad's point of view, Pharisaic faults included not only political treason, but a more fundamental rejection of the legal prescriptions revealed to Israel in the study vigils at Qumran. Pharisaic life—as the Yahad perceived it, at least—was, by contrast, governed by reference to “easy expositions” of the Torah and a penchant for finding “loopholes.” But if we appreciate the shaky grounds for accepting the facile equation of lqwt and hlkwt, the crucial question of how the Pharisees understood the origin and authority of their text-interpretive tradition remains unanswered in the Qumran sources. Early Christian Literature In contrast to the allusive and vague references to the Pharisees in the literature of the Yahad, the Pharisees of the earliest Christian writings are drawn in clear, bold strokes. Along with Sadducees and scribes, the Pharisees appear in each of the canonical Gospels (and in Acts) as leading figures in the Galilean and Jerusalemite communities in which Jesus of Nazareth and his earliest followers found their audiences. There is no opportunity here to mount a comprehensive survey of the diverse end p.44 pictures of Pharisaism found in early Christian writings. Nor can we go into detail on the question of how specific portrayals of the Pharisees in relation to Jesus might be shaped by a growing recognition among the increasingly Gentile churches of the latter part of the first century that commitment to the messiahship of Jesus entailed estrangement from the communities of ethnic Judaism. Rather, we will move briefly through the various chronological strata of the early Christian literature and focus on specific textual moments that promise some insight into the nature of first-century Pharisaic interpretive tradition, at least as it appeared to those for whom all Judaic tradition had come to its culmination in the career and teaching of Jesus. The earliest Christian sources in which Pharisees play a role are frustratingly silent about the question of Pharisaic tradition. The apostle Paul's letter to the Philippian church, written during the middle 50s, is the earliest text written by a believer in Jesus' messianic identity to mention Pharisees. Here, in portraying his own bona fides as a genuine Jew who has reason for confidence in his relationship with the God of Israel, Paul portrays himself in the famous formulation: “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee [kata nomon pharisaios], as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless” (Phil. 3:5–7). 18 The doctrinal content of Paul's self-identification as a Pharisee was amplified in Christian tradition to include beliefs regarding the resurrection of the dead (e.g., Acts 23:6–10) that are obliquely confirmed in Josephan portrayals of the group (e.g., War 2:163, Antiquities 18:14). But here in Paul's own words the significance appears narrower. Paul simply points out that his pursuit of covenantal piety conforms to legal norms espoused by the Pharisees. He offers nothing, however, by way of an explanation of the specific content of those norms, their authority, or their relation to the revealed prescriptions of Scripture. 19 There is one other Pauline passage that might illumine Paul's situation to a degree. In his letter to a community in Galatia, also datable to the mid-50s, Paul has another occasion to remind his readers of his knowledge of Judaism. The passage is of great interest, for it uses 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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