The Great Shift

by James L. Kugel

  “Why should I have all these sacrifices?” says the LORD.

  “I have had more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the suet of fatlings, and bulls’ blood.

  I take no pleasure in lambs and he-goats . . .

  Stop your wrongdoing; learn to do good. Seek out justice.” (Isa 1:11, 16–17)

  Or Amos’s sarcastic invitation:

  Come to Bethel for sins, to Gilgal for sins galore!

  But bring your offerings every morning, and a tithe every three days;

  Send up a thanksgiving and shout: “Freewill sacrifice!”—let people know!—

  for such is your devotion, Israel, says the LORD. (Amos 4:4–5)

  But here and elsewhere in early times, it is the people’s lack of devotion that the prophets attack. The act of sacrificing itself is not being called into question. Later, however, a psalmist could presume a definite divine preference:

  O Master, open my lips, so that my mouth may utter Your praises.

  For if You desired a sacrifice, I would surely give it; but it is not a burnt offering that will please You.

  God’s [true] sacrifices are a broken spirit, a broken and shattered heart; God will not reject these. (Ps 51:17–19)

  Now, the cleansing power of sacrificial blood no longer seemed persuasive. When Levi toured the heavens in the late-biblical “Testament of Levi,” he reached the highest part of heaven and God’s heavenly throne:

  [An angelic guide explains:] Next to Him are the angels of the Lord’s Presence, who serve and make atonement before the Lord for all the unwitting sins of the righteous, offering to the Lord a sweet savor, a reasonable and bloodless sacrifice. (T Levi 3:5–6)19

  The author of the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews likewise saw the role of blood in effecting divine forgiveness as a thing whose time had come and gone:

  For when every commandment had been told to all the people by Moses in accordance with the Torah, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the scroll [of laws, Exod 24:8] itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God has ordained for you.” And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the Torah almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. (Heb 9:19–22)

  But all this blood, the letter continues, is ultimately ineffective, “for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (10:4). While this assertion in Hebrews was tied specifically to the message of the early Christian movement, it seems unlikely to have come out of nowhere. No doubt others were asking about the necessity of sacrificial animals in general.

  Beyond all these, one final factor stands out. The very idea of fixed, statutory prayer returns us to the “establish contact” aspect of people being in search of God. After all, statutory prayers are not usually uttered because the person praying needs something in particular or wishes to acknowledge receipt of a specific divine favor. To say certain fixed, unchanging words to God at the crack of dawn or at sunset is a way of affirming contact each day and thereby seeking God’s favor. Of course, the communal dimension of a fixed liturgy is highly important as well; people who pray together in a fixed ritual also reaffirm their connection with each other and with the ideas and practices that they share.20 But this hardly eliminates the vertical connection to God. Mere contact, in other words, is an underlying theme of obligatory, fixed prayer, and this theme is inevitably, if paradoxically, tied to that of divine remoteness: “I will turn to You on a regular basis in a prayer that is essentially disinterested and which, therefore, expects no immediate answer.”21 Rather, like the dove released by Noah after the flood, the people who sent forth those fixed prayers hoped, and believed, that they were not sent off in vain but would somehow find their intended goal even though unacknowledged. And such fixed prayers did not cease at the end of the Second Temple period. Various forms of both Judaism and Christianity came to establish fixed, obligatory prayer as a central form of piety.

  Songs of the Heavenly Temple

  This is not to say that Second Temple period prayers were all of the “establish contact” variety. We have already seen the unique character of the Thanksgiving Hymns, with their urgent and otherworldly quality. Alongside these, the Qumran caves have also yielded prayers that seem intended simply to imitate the style and substance of our canonical psalms, adopting whole phrases as well as the pseudepigraphic attributions and grammatical features characteristic of our canonical Psalter.22 And in addition to these are a series of altogether unique hymns, called Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice.23 They describe, in breathless enthusiasm, God’s great temple in heaven and the angels who serve in it, sometimes addressing them directly, as in this (unfortunately very fragmentary) opening hymn:

  [O you angels,] praise [the God of . . .], the God of the holiest of holy ones (i.e., the God of the angels who serve in His heavenly temple), and [rejoice] in the Godliness of His kingship, for He [has appointed (?)] the holiest of the holy ones of eternity, and they have become His priests . . . serving before Him in His glorious inner sanctum. (4Q400 col 1:1–4)

  For all its lacunae, this passage makes it clear that what is being described is indeed the heavenly temple, akin to the heavenly temple that had been glimpsed by Enoch, Abraham, Levi, and others in their ascents to heaven. Here, the analogy with the earthly Jerusalem temple is explicit: Just as God chose priests to serve before Him on earth eternally (in the sense that the earthly priesthood was held to be hereditary, passed on from generation to generation), so He appointed the very holiest of His angels to serve before Him forever in His temple just above the clouds.

  Following this hymn are others—thirteen in all—that detail such things as the praises and blessings that are offered in various parts of heaven and the different names and classes of angels serving there. It is hard to be certain, but the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice seem to presume a series of seven different levels in heaven; on the highest level is the central throne room inhabited by God Himself. In this respect, too, these compositions are similar to those apocalyptic ascents to heaven seen earlier, except that here there is no angelic interpreter explaining heaven to the earthly visitor. Instead, the Songs just describe what a human visitor might see on his or her own ascent to heaven.

  But what did the real-life singers of these Songs think they were doing by singing them?24 Did they suppose they were speaking directly to the angels surrounding God’s throne, as implied in the fragmentary opening hymn cited above? Clearly, they were not just describing what the heavenly temple was like; they seem to have been suggesting some sort of connection or proximity between those angels and themselves. Unfortunately, the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice never quite articulate the nature of this connection, at least not in the surviving fragments. Some scholars hold that by singing these hymns, the human beings at Qumran (and quite possibly elsewhere) actually believed that they were somehow participating in the heavenly service on high. Other scholars hesitate, arguing that these songs suggest only a correspondence to, but not necessarily an actual participation in, that heavenly service.25

  Whichever the case, it is certainly noteworthy that slightly later worshipers, both Jewish and Christian, did explicitly assert a connection between their own prayers and the words of praise sung by angels surrounding the heavenly throne. Recalling that the prophet Isaiah had reported hearing the angels cry out, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts, the whole world is full of His glory” (Isa 6:3), later liturgists urged their congregations to take up this refrain in their own praise of God:

  Let us sanctify Your name in the world [that is, down here on earth] in the same manner as they [i.e., the angels] sanctify it in highest heaven, as was written by Your prophet, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts, the whole world is full of His glory.” (Jewish Kedushah)

  And therefore let us, along with the ang
els and archangels, with thrones and dominions and with the whole host of the heavenly multitude, sing a hymn to Your glory, endlessly saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Sabaoth; the heavens and the earth are full of Your glory, Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.” (Preface to the Eucharist in the traditional Latin Mass)

  In sum: these different sorts of prayers suggest that prayer itself was coming to occupy an increasingly important role in Second Temple period piety (as well as pointing to some striking continuities between such worship in the closing centuries BCE and that of Jews and early Christians in the two or three centuries that followed). Prayer was now in its ascendancy. Of course, the offering of animal sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple continued until its destruction in the great revolt against Rome in 66–70 BCE. But the loss of their temple did not exactly catch the Jews flatfooted. They already had in place a developing supplement or alternative. Taking as their motto a somewhat cryptic verse in Hos 14:3, now understood as “Let us substitute for [sacrificial] bulls the offerings of our lips,” later rabbinic authorities quite consciously equated prayer with actual sacrifice.26 But quite apart from prayer itself, there was another form of piety, equally important and equally new, emerging in the Second Temple period: the recitation and study of sacred texts.

  The Rise of Scripture

  The writings that make up our Bible belong to different times, stretching over a period of centuries. But as time went on, these writings came to play an increasingly important role. They were preserved and often revised in the process, studied and compared with one another. One text in particular was deemed preeminent, the Torah or Pentateuch, comprising the first five books of the Bible, Genesis through Deuteronomy. From an early period, the Torah seems to have functioned as the sacred text par excellence.27

  One early depiction of this Torah’s importance is found in the book of Nehemiah, which recounts a great public reading convened by Ezra, spiritual leader of the reestablished Jewish community in Jerusalem:

  In the seventh month . . . the whole people were gathered as one man to the square opposite the Water Gate, and they asked Ezra to bring the scroll of the Torah of Moses that the LORD had commanded to Israel. On the first day of the seventh month, Ezra the Priest brought the Torah before the assembly, men and women and all who could listen and understand it. He read from it, [standing] in front of the square that is in front of the Water Gate, to the men and women and those who could understand, from first light to midday; and the ears of all the people were [given] to the scroll of the Torah. (Neh 8:1–3)

  Scholars suspect that this public reading of the Torah28 is a somewhat idealized event, but a few important themes are nonetheless worthy of mention. First, it is highly significant that the people are represented here as requesting this reading. Whether this is exactly what happened or not, the idea that ordinary Judeans would feel the need to know what the Torah says was probably not anachronistic. They or their immediate ancestors had been conquered and forcibly exiled, and the Judeans were no doubt eager not to repeat the experience. If, as certainly some of them believed, the exile had come about as punishment for Israel’s failure to keep its part of the covenant and the Torah’s laws on which it was conditioned, then it was imperative that they now master those laws in order to avoid any repeat disaster. Indeed, the book of Jeremiah had spoken of God creating a “new covenant” with Israel (Jer 31:31), whereby everyone will know the Torah; this assembly and public reading may be seen as part of such a program’s idealized fulfillment.

  The passage further reports that this public reading was made not for the men alone, but for women and “all who could listen and understand it,” presumably children above a certain age. Here is a sweeping inclusiveness: everyone ought to know the Torah’s laws—that is, the Torah was not a text for rulers or judges alone. And whether or not it is probable that this mass of humanity stood quietly “from first light to midday” to hear the Torah’s words, this very assertion may reflect what was already a widespread commitment, even if idealized, to running things in keeping with the Torah’s words. Finally, this passage goes on to list a group of people who, during this public reading or thereafter, “helped the people to understand the Torah, while the people remained standing” (Neh 8:7). Here is a glimpse of a new sort of figure, the interpreter of Scripture, whose role will be of great importance. Here, the interpreters “read from the scroll of God’s Torah, translating [presumably from Hebrew to Aramaic] and giving its meaning, so that they [the people] understood the reading” (Neh 8:8). The message is unmistakable: if this Torah is to function as the central text for the community, then it must truly be the community’s common property, known and understood by all.

  The Torah Supreme

  It is sometimes said that democracy started off as a system of government, a way for a society to select its leaders and run its affairs, but that in America it eventually became something more like a national ideology of equality, espoused (or at least given lip service) by all and expressed in hundreds of little ways in daily life quite apart from government. Somewhat analogously, the Torah began as a collection of narratives and laws, but it soon became much more than that. In the early second century BCE, Ben Sira described it as nothing less than the embodiment of divine wisdom—the set of principles by which God governed the world—so that if you wished to know what God wanted of you, or to explain His ways with the world, you needed to go no further than this book. At one point, Ben Sira explained how this came to be:

  [Wisdom speaks:] I came forth from the mouth of the Most High,

  and covered the earth like a mist.

  I dwelt in the highest heavens, and my throne was in a pillar of cloud.

  Alone I compassed the vault of heaven and traversed the depths of the abyss.

  Over waves of the sea, over all the earth, and over every people and nation I have held sway.

  Among all these I sought a resting-place; in whose territory should I abide?

  Then the Creator of all things gave me a command, and my Creator chose the place for my tent.

  He said, “Make your dwelling in Jacob, and in Israel receive your inheritance.”

  Divine wisdom, in other words, had always existed in heaven; it “came forth” from God’s own mouth. But at a certain point, Wisdom began to look for a dwelling place on earth, and God told her to make Israel her home. Once transplanted in Israel’s territory, she grew like a great tree:

  I took root in an honored people, in the portion of the LORD, his heritage.

  I grew tall like a cedar in Lebanon, and like a cypress on the heights of Hermon.

  I grew as great as a palm tree in Ein-gedi, and like rose-bushes in Jericho;

  like a fair olive tree in the field, and like a plane tree beside water I grew tall.

  Lest there be any doubt about who this “Wisdom” figure truly was, Ben Sira then makes the matter triumphantly clear:

  All this is the book of the covenant of the Most High God, the Torah that Moses commanded us, as an inheritance for the congregations of Jacob. (Sir 24:3–8, 12–14, 23)

  In other words, the Torah was not just a collection of laws and stories; it was nothing less than the written embodiment of all of divine wisdom.

  Something similar was said at the same time, or perhaps even a bit earlier than Ben Sira, by the anonymous author of 1 Baruch, a book included among the biblical Apocrypha:

  No one knows the way to her [i.e., Wisdom], or is concerned about the path to her.

  But the One who knows all things knows her, He found her by His understanding.

  The One who prepared the earth for all time filled it with four-footed creatures;

  the One who sends forth the light, and it goes;

  He called it, and it obeyed him, trembling; the stars shone in their watches, and were glad;

  He called them, and they said, “Here we are!” They shone with gladness for Him who made them.

  This
is our God; no other can be compared to Him.

  He found the whole way to knowledge, and gave her [Wisdom] to His servant Jacob, and to Israel, whom He loved.

  Afterwards she appeared on earth and lived with humankind. She is the book of the commandments of God, the Torah that endures forever.

  All who hold her fast will live, and those who forsake her will die.

  Turn, O Jacob, and take her; walk toward the shining of her light.

  Do not give your glory to another, or your advantages to an alien people.

  Happy are we, O Israel, for we know what is pleasing to God.

  This last line is perhaps the most significant. Once the Torah, the “book of the commandments of God,” had been given over to the people of Israel, they no longer had to worry about what God might want them to do, because now “we know what is pleasing to God.” Now there would be no more guesswork. A path had been given for every man, woman, and child to follow—the laws of the Torah.