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The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran, by CarolA. Newsom. STDJ 52. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Pp. x + 382. $155 (hardcover). ISBN900413803X.

Although Carol Newsoms approach to the Dead Sea Scrolls is familiar from sev-eral essays published in the early 1990s, her book is very much a novelty in the world ofscrolls scholarship. Her dialogue partners are M. M. Bakhtin and Michel Foucault,rather than Lawrence Schiffman and James C. VanderKam, although she is also fullyconversant with recent (and not so recent) scholarship on the scrolls. Critical theory hashitherto made even less impression on Qumran studies than on biblical scholarship.(Maxine Grossmans study, Reading for History in the Damascus Document [STDJ 45;Leiden: Brill, 2002], is the main exception that comes to mind). In part, this is due to thefact that scholarly energy in the past decade has been absorbed by the task of editing the

texts, but in larger part it is due to the persistent fascination with historical questionsabout the scrolls. Newsom does not question the validity of such questions, but they donot set her agenda. Rather, she uses the categories of discourse analysis to investigatehow the Qumran community constructed itself and engaged its larger social context.

The book is divided into six chapters. The first of these outlines the theoreticalapproach, which is indebted to the work of Bakhtin and his circle. All communities con-struct themselves in large measure through their discourse. The discourse of a sectariancommunity has distinctive features, as it needs to distinguish itself from other communi-ties. Discourse also forms the identities of individuals. We first emerge as subjects inthe context of language and receive our identities from various symbolic practices

(p. 12). Discourse also provides strategies for the encompassing of situations, in thephrase of Kenneth Burke. Newsom cites with approval the dictum of Fredric Jameson,that the symbolic act of a text is the function of inventing imaginary or formal solutionsto unresolvable social contradictions (p. 16). So it is possible to uncover the politicalunconscious of a text, or the way it attempts to address a historical or ideological prob-lem. Especially important is the insight of Foucault that discourse is power, because itis what gives meaning to the world (p. 19). In any society, one may speak of a dominantdiscourse, which can be identified with the practices of the establishment. A sectariandiscourse is a counter-discourse, which has to make a place for itself by making prob-lematic what the dominant discourse takes for granted. Such a discourse is not necessar-

ily polemical all the time, but it is of necessity interruptive or disruptive, as it presents achallenge to the status quo.

The second chapter is an attempt to map the various strategies of discourse inSecond Temple Judaism. To a great degree, the competing discourses of this periodmay be regarded as a debate about the proper construal of the Torah. Newsom acceptsin broad outline E. P. Sanderss view of a common Judaism, or a broadly consensualreligious culture in the Palestinian area. Nonetheless, it was difficult to establish amonopoly on the interpretation of Torah, even by groups with official status. She goeson to discuss the various roles played by scribes, and their attitudes to Torah. For BenSira, wisdom is the master discourse into which the discourse of halakah is inserted

(p. 41). Daniel scarcely talks about the Torah at all. Nonetheless, Newsom notes evi-dence of a common scribal ethos, shared even by figures whose ideologies of knowledge

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ancestral tradition or by special revelation. But not everyone made knowledge the key tothe will of God, as can be seen from the Maccabean focus on zeal for the law. The sec-tarians saw themselves as a new Israel, and accepted the common concept of covenant

as the basis of their identity. They insisted, however, that, while some things wererevealed to all Israel, true Torah could only be known within the sect, so that to enterthe covenant was in effect to enter the community.

After these two introductory chapters, Newsom turns to the scrolls and devotestwo chapters each to the Community Rule and the Hodayot. The first of these, ch. 3, is arelatively brief discussion of the treatise on the Two Spirits. Two features of the dis-course are emphasized. First, even at the level of syntax, the passage claims that onecannot really know one thing without knowing many other things and their relation-ships. Things are joined together in webs of significance. If one wants to know abouthuman character or why the righteous sin, one has to know about the plan of God for all

creation from beginning to end (p. 80). Second, there is the use of balanced pairs, lightand darkness, truth and perversity, which simplify the complexity of the whole. Newsomargues that this model of knowledge is implicitly semiotic, insofar as it attempts toaccount for particular phenomena, such as traits of character, as elements in a system ofrelationships. She acknowledges, of course, that there are important differencesbetween the metaphysical assumptions underlying the Qumran text and postmodernsemiotics, but she argues that even the notion of God is nuanced by semiotic assump-tions insofar as the divine plan involves a set of structured relationships. FollowingFredric Jamesons idea of the political unconscious, she argues that the treatise can be

seen as a response to the domination of Israel by foreign empires, although, in contrastto overtly political books like Daniel, here the political concern is displaced into anthro-pology.

Chapter 4 is a much longer, sustained discussion of the rhetorical dynamics of theCommunity Rule. Newsom works with the form of the Rule found in 1QS, with occa-sional reference to the Cave 4 manuscripts. She accepts that the Rule is composite, butshe argues for structural coherence nonetheless: the Serek ha-Yahad is roughly shapedto recapitulate the stages of life as a sectarian: from motivation, to admission, instruc-tion, life together, and leadership (p. 107). The Serek is a book of instruction and for-mation. The rules are illustrative samples rather than comprehensive laws. The treatise

on the Two Spirits construes the self as the product of the balance of spirits, an unstableconstruct liable to change in either direction. It is not simply a piece of anthropologicaland cosmological speculation but relates what one must know about oneself (p. 189).The emergence of an elite community in column 8 can be understood as an expressionof the highest potential of the sect. The Maskil described in the closing columns is amodel of the ideal sectarian self (p. 167). Newsom draws on Foucault to describe the

yah\ad as a disciplinary community, where people are formed not only by instruction butalso by practices. Even the character of the Maskil is formed not so much by conceptualknowledge as by experience of God and humankind (p. 173). Becoming a sectarianrequires entry into a fictive or figured world, in which various privileged words,tropes, embedded narratives, patterns of behavior, and constructions of time create adistinctive form of reality and selfhood. By engaging in structured social practices and

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While the Community Rule addresses community life explicitly, the Hodayot areengaged in the formation of subjectivity. According to Newsom, subjectivity is not sim-ply natural but is acquired in a social context. Oddly enough, the so-called hymns of

the community do not talk about the community but presuppose it. The kind of subjec-tivity fostered in the Hodayot is described as the masochistic sublime: The model ofGod as absolute being that one finds in the Hodayot generates and is generated by a lan-guage of the self as nothingness (p. 220). The hymns cultivate a sense of estrangementfrom the dominant culture, but they do not talk about the integration of the speaker intothe community of the sect. Instead, they offer a proleptic resolution of earthly problemsby speaking of fellowship with the angelic world. The distinctive character of therhetoric of these hymns is nicely illustrated by a contrast with Psalm 119 (p. 270).

The last full chapter of the book, before a brief conclusion, is devoted to the so-called Teacher Hymns. Newsom is skeptical about attempts to specify the authorship of

these compositions. While she does not think the evidence sufficient either to establishor to disprove the view that the Teachers persona is reflected in these hymns, sheargues that it is important to loosen the grip that this hypothesis about the Teacher ofRighteousness has had on our scholarly imaginations (p. 288). Newsoms interest is notin historical questions about the Teacher, but in the ways in which these hymns wereread, to shape the ethos of sectarian life. So she proposes that the Hodayot articulate aleadership myth that was appropriated by the current leader in much the same fashionthat the ordinary member identified with the I of the so-called Hodayot of the commu-nity (p. 288). The references to trials and opponents may be real or imagined. Newsom

notes that sectarian communities need to maintain a sense of persecution and opposi-tion as part of their rationale. These Hodayot can be read as complementary to the Com-munity Rule. They articulate the affective dimension of sectarian existence, which wasobscured in the rhetoric of legal regulations.

The world of modern scholarship, no less than that of Second Temple Judaism, is aworld of competing discourses, each with its own figured world and distinctive lan-guage, which the student must learn to speak. Much of contemporary academic dis-course is couched in the language of theorists such as Foucault. The most obviousachievement of this book is that it is the first major study to apply such language to thestudy of the scrolls. Readers who are broadly versed in the humanities and already famil-

iar with such languages will welcome this development as long overdue. Old-fashionedhistorical critics who look with suspicion on new-fangled phrases and theoreticalabstractions will probably greet it with apprehension. But they may at least take comfortfrom the fact that the author is no ideological polemicist, and that, while she is attempt-ing to reorient the discussion the scrolls, she is well versed in the more conventionalscholarship and is by no means repudiating it.

One obvious gain from the new form of discourse is new vocabulary, which entailsnew insights or at least offers attractive ways of expressing old ones. The masochisticsublime offers some advantages for English speakers over the German Niedrigskeit-doxologie. But Newsoms discourse analysis also benefits from sustained attention to theliterary and rhetorical character of the text. The difference made by her approach is per-haps most clearly evident in her discussion of the so-called Teacher Hymns. Undeni-

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practiced by Newsom, is a powerful antidote to this temptation, while it does not at thesame time dispute the inherent value of historical questions. Throughout the book, sheshifts the focus away from authorial intention to the effects these texts would have had

on their readers or hearers. Her use of Foucault heightens the readers awareness ofissues of power. Her reading of the Community Rule is, to my knowledge, the most per-suasive attempt yet to imagine how this text might have functioned in a community. It isnot a descriptive account of the actual practices of a community, but rather an illustra-tive prescription that attempts to shape community life, and an articulation of normativeideals. Again, the discussion of the Two Spirits shifts the focus from the cosmology assuch (although that is a perfectly legitimate subject of investigation) to the way it is beingused to mold character.

If the book has limitations (and what book does not?), they lie in the rather abstractcharacter of the discussion. To be sure, a measure of abstraction is inevitable, since we

lack specific details about the life and history of the sect. The suggestion that the treatiseon the Two Spirits is a response to political domination may be valid, but its validitymust be sought rather deep in the unconscious. One may wonder whether Newsomsreading of the Teacher Hymns as a leadership myth does full justice to the distinctive

voice we encounter in those poems, although her reading would not be negated if theHymns could be shown to be the work of a specific individual such as the Teacher. Thelocation of the Scrolls among the strategies of discourse of Second Temple Judaismmight emerge more clearly from a detailed historical comparison of specific texts andmovements. But here again, this would not invalidate what Newsom has written, which

is meant to be suggestive rather than comprehensive in any case.It is unlikely that future discussion of the scrolls will be dominated by Foucaultiandiscourse, but it should be enriched by the numerous insights of this pioneering study.

We are indebted to Newsom for expanding our horizons and opening up a new angle ofvision on these intriguing texts.

John J. CollinsYale University, New Haven, CT 06511

The Worldly and Heavenly Wisdom of 4QInstruction, by Matthew Goff. STDJ 50.Leiden: Brill, 2003. Pp. xii + 276. $113.00 (hardcover). ISBN 900413591X.

Matthew Goffs book represents a watershed of sorts for both the study of4QInstruction and the wisdom material from Qumran. While Goff does not necessarilyrevolutionize our understanding of 4QInstruction, his cautious approach to both thetexts fragmentary manuscripts and its frequently enigmatic vocabulary, combined witha comprehensive overview and critique of the scholarship on the text to date, results inthe first study on 4QInstruction to discuss both the past and present state of scholarshipon this material while simultaneously highlighting several areas in need of further study.

A revised version of Goffs Ph.D. dissertation written under the supervision ofJohn J. Collins at the University of Chicago, this well-written study is primarily con-cerned with how 4QInstruction should be understood in relation to wisdom and apoca-

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