The Great Shift
Page 55
1. According to the Pentateuch, only those who had inherited the right from birth—that is, the temple priests and Levites—were allowed to officiate in the temple. People would, of course, flock to Jerusalem from all over the country for the annual pilgrimage festivals, but again, apart from the paschal sacrifice slaughtered for home consumption, the direct service of God was in the hands of the priests. But “according to the Pentateuch” is an important qualifier here, as many writers have shown; the archaeological record and even passages within the Hebrew Bible itself sometimes tell a very different story. On so-called “popular religion” (that is, “what people really did” as opposed to what Scripture says they did), see below, note 3. For some extrabiblical evidence from earlier times, see Gnuse (1997), Zevit (2001), Dever (2005), Lemche (2008), Meyers (2010); specifically for the post-exilic period, Albertz and Becking (2003), Olyan (2005), E. Stern (2006). As for communal worship outside of the temple, no one knows when, or where, the first synagogue (in the sense of a noncultic “house of worship”) was created, but see the review of evidence of the ancient synagogue’s development in Levine (2000) esp. 45–80. The oldest buildings identified as ancient synagogues in ancient Israel go back only to the first or second centuries BCE, but it is certainly possible that people gathered for worship and study well before that time. In any case, one fact is certainly striking: evidence from various quarters attests to the emergence of the synagogue as an institution even before the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 of the Common Era. This evidence is significant for our subject precisely because it points to the growing importance of prayer and study even before animal sacrifices had ceased.
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2. Greenberg (1983a); on the interaction of spontaneity and prescription, see pp. 38–57.
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3. Nitzan (1996), 27. To such circumstantial prayers are to be added various other forms of worship that may have taken place in the home or at other gathering places from earliest times, including (though certainly not limited to) acts of worship connected to weddings, healing rituals, burials, rites of mourning, and so forth. The Bible, as well as extrabiblical sources and the archaeological record, all offer ample evidence of some of these; still, it is often difficult to know what to make of such evidence. Does the discovery of a statuette in an excavated site indicate the existence of regular worship there—and if so, is it to be connected to the existence of Laban’s teraphim (Gen 31:19, etc.) or Micah’s apparently family-centered “house of God,” equipped with its own ephod and teraphim (Jud 17:5)? Can one go further and say, on the basis of such evidence, that identifying Second Temple practices that took place outside the temple were really nothing new? The same question might be asked of the role of vows: while they certainly were a form of “personal” piety, the vowing of sacrifices and the like was practiced throughout the ancient Near East from earliest times; see Niditch (2015), 72–78; note Pagolu (1998), 193–212. All this is in turn connected to a broader issue, the difference between “official” and “popular” religion, whose very opposition is nowadays increasingly rejected as an oversimplification. As Francesca Stavrakopoulou recently observed, “Concepts of popular religion are of most relevance to religions in which a prevailing and culturally accredited dominant source of religious legitimation” is aligned with personal or institutional elites—and ancient Israel largely fails to meet this description. See Stavrakopoulou and Barton (2010), p. 50; cf. Niditch (2010), in the same volume, p. 11. Note in this connection the collection of essays of Albertz (2014), as well as the previous, coauthored volume, Albertz and Schmitt (2012), where the authors argue that ritual objects in the home, the practice of home-based healing rites, and similar phenomena had always existed in the eastern Mediterranean littoral. See further: Keel and Uehlinger (1998).
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4. Such prayers thus tend to have an obvious literary character; for one such manifestation, the “scripturalization” of Second Temple period prayers, see Newman (1999).
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5. On Ben Sira and prayer, see Reif (2002).
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6. Text based on the proposed Hebrew retroversion of Segal (1972), 136–37. See also Reif (2006), 33–70.
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7. Swartz (2012).
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8. Or perhaps even inside the temple: on the Jerusalem temple’s proseuche (“chapel,” “prayer room”) see Schiffman (1991), 166. Fleischer (1990) held that fixed, statutory prayer in Judaism came about as a result of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 of the Common Era. Another opinion: Heinemann (1964), 17–22, as well as the essays collected posthumously in Heinemann (1981), 3–73. The question has been revisited by various scholars, including Chazon (2012) and (1992). Note also Schuller (2006).
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9. See 1Q9:26–10:1–8, which specifies fixed prayers to be said each day, morning and evening, as well as at the tequfot, the beginnings of months, festivals, New Year, and so forth. In general see Falk (1998) and (1999); Davila (2000), 203–38; the essays collected in Chazon (2003); Schuller (1994); Penner et al. (2012). On berakhot at Qumran: Schuller (1990); Nitzan (1996), 87–103. Moshe Weinfeld has explored connections between prayers at Qumran and in rabbinic Judaism: Weinfeld (1992a).
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10. “Prayers of the Heavenly Lights” would probably have been a more accurate translation of dibrei hamme’orot, but this was not to be. In any case, the Hebrew title appears on the back of the first column of 4Q504 and, as Esther Chazon explains further, “probably relates to the work’s liturgical function as prayers for the days of the week, with hamme’orot, ‘luminaries,’ serving as a term for the day, the unit of time for which these prayers were designated (compare Gen 1:14–18)”: Chazon (2006). These prayers, as well as those designated “festival prayers” (4Q509+505), follow a complex pattern, which integrated daily praise and petition with reflections on events recounted in Scripture—this last an example of what had already become a conventional feature of late biblical prayers. On this phenomenon: Newman (1999). See also Chazon (1992); also Davila (2000), 239–66.
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11. This scroll (4Q503) contains a series of such prayers of praise. There is no clear proof that these were sectarian prayers, though they do show a kinship with other prayers found at Qumran that have been so identified. It seems that they were apparently intended to be recited by the community as a whole, marking the onset of daybreak and evening. In this they have a clear continuation in rabbinic Judaism, which had its own fixed prayers for morning and evening.
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12. That the prayers are addressed to the sun (instead of to its Creator) is apparently what Josephus means by describing this prayer as “idiosyncratic” (ἰδίως), but it seems most unlikely that this is an instance of real sun-worship; cf. the prayer of the Therapeutai below. Another opinion: Jonquière (2007), 54–55.
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13. Scholars have rightly concluded that this is an idealized picture, but it is probably not made up out of whole cloth. Certainly the idea of fixed prayers at daybreak and sunset was hardly Philo’s invention. See the sources cited in this chap., nn. 8–10.
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14. “Apparently,” because, as Martin Goodman has pointed out, the Qumran texts that we possess seem to stop just short of saying so explicitly: Goodman (2010), 82. Halakhic and political considerations were certainly connected to the Qumranites’ disdain, as was the moral corruption of the priesthood; see Regev (n.d.).
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15. Of course, it might be suggested that there was no change at all. After all, quite a few psalms in the Psalter simply say, “Praise God” (Hallelujah) without telling us where or why; perhaps they too were designed to be uttered each day at daybreak or sunset. But if so, why is there no mention of sunrise or sunset in the psalms in question? Why no mention of the establishment of such daily praises elsewhere—in, for example, mention of songs and prayers in the temple service (see, for example, 1 Chron 6
or 16)?
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16. In fact, the whole idea of this huge deity was hard to reconcile with the idea of a temple; see again, Isa 66:1. It is certainly true that the footprints on the steps of the ‘Ain Dara temple (above, chap. 6) seem to pertain to a deity considerably larger than the overall structure, but this still falls short of the conception of a world-bestriding only God whom no physical structure could contain. Perhaps more to the point are the polymorphous ilu s of Mesopotamia, but it is precisely the underlying concept of a polymorphous god, one who is present here but also there, and also in the stars, that ruled out any theoretical contradiction between an earthly temple and a heavenly deity. This was certainly true in Israel as well. Israel’s God had always been presented as enthroned on high (Ps 29, etc.); moreover, some of those biblical texts generally recognized as among the most ancient also evoke His interventions from the heavens (Deut 33:26, Jud 5:20, Hab 3:3–6). Nor did more abstract theologies alter this way of thinking (e.g., Deut 26:15). The rabbinic solution to this quandary was the Shekhinah, a kind of concentrated, embodied divine presence found on earth while God Himself dwelt in heaven: see Urbach (1987), 37–65, a figure in some ways comparable to that of interventionist Wisdom in the Wisdom of Solomon.
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17. Kugel (1998a), 75–77.
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18. On their carrying Israel’s “repentances” on high: Kugel (2010c). See also T Levi 3:5. Guy Stroumsa has observed that throughout the Mediterranean world, “the end of animal sacrifice gave rise to new forms of worship, with a concern for personal salvation, scriptural study, rituals like praying and fasting, and the rise of religious communities and monasticism”: Stroumsa (2012), 85.
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19. Had the text said merely “bloodless,” this might be attributed to the sanctuary’s location (in heaven); but “reasonable and bloodless” seems to evidence the apparent assessment of bloody sacrifices as irrational.
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20. See on this Gerhards (2007), 27–28.
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21. It might be argued that offering the regular tamid sacrifice twice a day in the temple (Exod 29:38–42 and Num 28:3–8) was likewise a way of establishing contact. But such a claim disregards the very nature of the temple, which was, and always had been, conceived as the deity’s own home. What need was there to establish contact? On the contrary, the tamid sacrifice can be offered nowhere except within the temple, where its lambs’ carcasses are deemed to be no less than “My food” (Num 28:2), and the smoke rising from the altar provided a “pleasing odor” (Exod 29:41, Num 28:2) for a deity who must not be far off. There is a world of difference between these temple-bound sacrifices and words whispered into the wind from nowhere in particular and asking for nothing, not even acknowledgment.
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22. On 4Q380-301, see Schuller (1986), 21–60.
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23. First published by Newsom (1985). An overview and survey of current scholarship is found in Davila (2000), 83–167.
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24. Again, see Newsom (2004).
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25. See the discussion in Newsom (1985), 65–67.
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26. As Rabbi Joshua ben Levi is reported to have said, “Statutory prayers were established in correspondence to the [morning and evening] tamid sacrifices [in the temple].” Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot chap. 3 halakhah 6; Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 26b.
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27. See the various essays collected in Watts (2001). I still find the opening essay, Peter Frei’s reconstruction of the process, basically convincing; his critics in the other essays offer some probing questions, but in the end the role of Persian authorization seems basically sound. See now the further refinements of Knoppers and Levinson (2007); also, Carr (2005), (2011a), and (2011b). From this last: “Ultimately, this debate appears unresolvable with the data present at our disposal” (p. 218); however, Carr properly distinguishes between Persian sponsorship and Jewish claims of Persian sponsorship, as well as expressing doubts that such matters truly were ever handled at the highest level of the Persian bureaucracy, Persian sponsorship probably being executed, in this as in other matters, “at a resolutely local level” (219).
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28. Apparently, though not irrefutably, nearly identical to our Pentateuch. See Rubenstein (1995).
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29. With regard to the Pentateuch itself, see the recent studies collected in Gertz et al. (2016), the product of a yearlong study group at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The resulting essays still reflect fundamental (and irreconcilable) disagreements about the Pentateuch’s formation.
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30. A highly fragmentary text has been argued to be an ancestor of the book of Esther, but the relationship is distant at best. On 4Q550 Proto-Esther see Milik (1992), White-Crawford (1994), Wechsler (2000).
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31. Among many recent treatments, Lim (2010), esp. 314–19.
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32. Exactly when and why this idea began to take hold has been the subject of some debate. Scholars used to focus on its very last stage, the moment of the “canonization of Scripture,” which was treated as a specific event in history: according to this approach, the Hebrew Bible (more or less as we know it) was created when an authoritative group of Jews got together at Jamnia (Yavneh) in the late first century CE and, reviewing various candidates for inclusion in the biblical canon, established what the Bible’s final contents should be. For some time, that “moment” was identified as the “Council of Jamnia [Yavneh],” ca. 90 CE, but this hypothesis has been largely abandoned; see., e.g., Lewis (1964), J. Barton (2007), 23–34. In truth, there is no evidence of such an event.
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33. Note that this three-part division is reflected in other texts as well: Philo of Alexandria refers to the “laws and oracles delivered through the mouth of prophets,” which would include the five books of Moses (i.e., Torah) as well as the later historical and prophetic books as well as “psalms and anything else which fosters and perfects knowledge and piety” (Vita Contemplativa 25). In the New Testament, Luke 24:44 refers to “the law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms,” and so on. While many scholars agree that “The Torah and the Prophets” (the latter including the historical books from Joshua to 1 and 2 Kings) was a widely recognized designation by the end of the second century BCE, the third category remained fluid for a few more centuries. The complicated issues of the growth of the canon and the idea of a Bible are well summarized in Stone (2011), 122–50.
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34. Indeed, as K. van der Toorn has pointed out, to this day the Torah scroll in synagogues is treated in ways reminiscent of the adulation given to cult statues in ancient Mesopotamia: bowing down as the “god” passed by, touching the hem of one’s garment (talleth) to the god’s garment, and so forth. Van der Toorn (1997), 229–48.
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35. The Qumran caves were thus found to contain a particular type of commentary called pesher, whereby the commentator seeks to connect the events of his own time to the words of prophets who had prophesied hundreds of years earlier: there is a pesher to Habakkuk, a pesher to Zephaniah, a pesher to Psalms, and so forth. This sort of interpretation is likewise exemplified in passages not specifically identified as pesher, such as the “midrash of the Well” (CD 6:3–10), explaining an incident in the book of Numbers, when the Israelites are reported to have sung a somewhat cryptic song after discovering a well in the wilderness: “Spring up, O well—they sang about it—The well that the chieftains dug, which the nobles of the people unearthed, With the scepter, with their staves” (Num 21:17–18). To the Qumran sectarians, these words could be understood to refer to an event in their own recent history, when their community was founded: “The well is the Torah, and those who dug it are those of Israel who returned [in penance] and left the land of Judah to dwell in the land of Damascus. God called them all princes becau
se they beseeched Him and because their glory was never gainsaid by any man’s mouth. The Scepter refers to the expounder of the Torah . . . and the nobles of the people are those who came to dig the well with the staves with which the Scepter had decreed to walk about with” (Damascus Document, 6:3–10). For this translation, see Kugel (1998a), 818. Each of the italicized words—the well, the diggers, the princes, the scepter, and the staves—is being interpreted to refer to a specific element in the community’s founding, whose leaders dug out (correctly exposited) the Torah, following the teachings of their leader, the “Scepter” aka the “expounder of the Torah.” See further the pioneering studies Finkel (1963), Rabinowitz (1973), Horgan (1979), and Brooke (1985). More recently: Kister (1992), Mandel (2001), and Horgan (2002).
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36. See further: von Rad (1968), 267–280; he cites 2 Chron 15:2–7, 19:6, 32:7–8, 30:6–9. Note also R. A. Mason (1984), and J. Barton (2007), esp. 154–78. Among Barton’s examples: 1 Chron 15:2–7.
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37. Again, Barton (2007), 156: “The Former Prophets or ‘Deuteronomistic History’ was probably understood in this way well before the New Testament era, as Martin Noth has observed: ‘When this [sc. the post-exilic] community preserved and maintained the ancient narrative tradition of the history of Israel along with it [sc. the Law], it was understood as a collection of historical examples of the attitude of man to the law and its consequences.’”
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38. Barton (2007), 99.
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39. To be sure, these were not the only sorts of prayers recited during this period. But the Qumran Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice may likewise be seen to highlight the distance separating humanity from God: it is no longer we humans who encounter Him in the earthly temple, offering sacrificial animals as a “pleasing scent” to a deity who can’t be far off. Rather, the temple service has been transposed to somewhere above the clouds, and at best we humans can only aspire to be symbolically joined to this heavenly worship by singing “Holy, holy, holy.” The Qumran Thanksgiving Hymns illuminate another aspect of this distance. They seem to be inward-looking spiritual exercises (again, reminiscent of Ps 119) whose focus is strikingly on the self of the individual supplicant. This subject has been explored at length by Carol Newsom; see Newsom (2004), 191–286.