intro to bible mjb updated

Upload: binyamin-weinreich

Post on 09-Mar-2016

73 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

DESCRIPTION

Notes for Yeshiva University's Intro to Bible Course, as taught by Dr. Moshe Bernstein. Extremely detailed.

TRANSCRIPT

  • Kandel & Me Intro to Bible, Prof. Moshe Bernstein, Fall 2006 UPDATED Fall 08 "

    - 1 -

    Intro to Bible Moshe Bernstein

    The Text of " , Its Establishment and Transmission .............................................................. 3 Nature and Function of the ......................................................................................... 3

    .......................................................................................................................... 3 Important Manuscripts ......................................................................................................... 3

    Dead Sea Scrolls ............................................................................................................... 3 Aleppo Codex, Ben Asher & Ben Naftali .......................................................................... 4 Other Medieval Texts ....................................................................................................... 4

    Passing Down the Text ......................................................................................................... 4 " ................................................................................................................................ 4

    .......................................................................................................................... 5 ................................................................................................................................. 5 " ................................................................................................................................... 5

    ............................................................................................................................. 6 Types ................................................................................................................................ 6

    Variation in the Biblical Text Within Rabbinic Tradition ...................................................... 6 ., with Rashi, Tosfos, R Akiva Eiger, R Hai Gaon ................................................... 6

    " : : ................................................................................................. 6 " " " '" ................................................................................ 7

    \ ............................................................................................................ 7 History: Rashi & Ibn Ezra .............................................................................................. 7 ........................................................................................................................... 8

    .............................................................................................. 8 Script ..................................................................................................................................... 8

    In Chazal, Evidence, and Radak ........................................................................................ 8 Canon, Arrangement, Inspiration, and Authorship of " ....................................................... 9

    The Divisions of " ............................................................................................................. 9 What goes where? Radak, Meiri, Abarbanel, Netziv, R Chaim, and Another ................. 9

    Whats not in " ? ............................................................................................................... 9 Apocrypha ........................................................................................................................ 9 Pseudepigrapha .............................................................................................................. 10

    When was Tanach Canonized? ........................................................................................... 11 Order of the Books, especially Neviim Achronim, Ksuvim, Megillos .................................. 11

    " :-. ....................................................................................................... 11 Commentary and Alternative Groupings ....................................................................... 12

    Authorship .......................................................................................................................... 12 Tehillim Majority & Minority views ............................................................................. 13 Split Authorship .............................................................................................................. 13

    on Neviim Rishonim ...................................................................................... 13 '... ........................................................................................................ 13

    Chazal ......................................................................................................................... 14 " 6 places ......................................................................................................... 14

    " in its Ancient Near Eastern Environment ........................................................................ 15 Convergence & Divergence ................................................................................................ 15 Laws .................................................................................................................................... 16

    Source of the Law ........................................................................................................... 16 Adultery: .................................................................................................................... 16

  • Homicide: ................................................................................................................... 16 Summary .................................................................................................................... 17 Vicarious Punishment ................................................................................................ 17

    Literary and Cultural Comparison ....................................................................................... 18 Language ........................................................................................................................ 18 Literary Forms ................................................................................................................ 19

    Types of Parallelism ................................................................................................... 19 Metaphors ................................................................................................................. 19

    Religion/Culture/Mythology .......................................................................................... 20 Pagan Myth in Monotheistic Framework .................................................................. 20 Parody of Foreign Beliefs ........................................................................................... 21 Talmudic Mythology .................................................................................................. 21

    Midterm .................................................................................................................................. 22 Translations ............................................................................................................................. 22

    Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 22 Style ........................................................................................................................ 23 Palestinian .............................................................................................................. 24

    ............................................................................................... 24 Cairo Geniza Fragments ................................................................................................. 26 Neofiti ............................................................................................................................. 26

    Comparative Translation .................................................................................................... 26 :-: ................................................................................................................. 26

    Alternate ........................................................................................................... 28 ............................................................................................................ 28

    Other Translations .............................................................................................................. 31 Greek .............................................................................................................................. 31 Syriac, Latin .................................................................................................................... 33

    The Development of Jewish Biblical Interpretation ............................................................... 33 Biblical Self-Interpretation ................................................................................................. 33 Early Interpretation ............................................................................................................ 34

    ............................................................................................................. 34 ..................................................................................................................................... 35

    ................................................................................................................... 35 , ...................................................................................................... 36

    More Interpretations ..................................................................................................... 36 ................................................................................................................................. 36

    .............................................................................................................................. 36 ....................................................................................................................... 37 ....................................................................................................................... 37

    ................................................................................................................... 37 ................................................................................................................. 38

    ..................................................................................................................................... 38 " ..................................................................................................................................... 39 " .................................................................................................................................. 41 .............................................................................................................................. 42 Methodology .................................................................................................................. 43

    ......................................................................................................................... 43 " ................................................................................................................ 45

  • " ............................................................................................... 46 ............................................................................................................................... 46

    .............................................................................................................................. 46 ............................................................................................................................. 48 Contemporaries.............................................................................................................. 49

    " .................................................................................................................................... 50 .............................................................................................................................. 50 Methodology .................................................................................................................. 52

    ........................................................................................................ 54 Archeology and Reality................................................................................................... 55

    '" " ' ................................................................................................... 55 ........................................................................................................................ 57

    ..................................................................................................... 57 Appendix ................................................................................................................................. 59

    Selected Analysis of ................................................................................................ 59 ......................................................................................................................... 59

    ................................................................................................................................ 60

    The Text of " , Its Establishment and Transmission

    Nature and Function of the

    How do we know that the words in our " are the original words? , we follow the word that has the most attestation in . Nonetheless, thats a halachic, not historical definition (e.g. sometimes you can eat the third piece of meat of a ). We know what we have was the historical original due to our Masora.

    The (Masoretes) worked mainly from the 6th to 10th century. includes only letters and paragraph breaks. Everything else was transmitted orally and not written until later. This includes pronunciation, , , and 1.

    The Masoretes tried to preserve not correct the Masora of Tanach. Its logically highly improbable that nothing changed from the time of Moshe

    (' ) . The (Aleppo Codex) has , , . The Warsaw (1864) has four , Targum, and . Starting from the top of page 4 in the reader, we have a little circle above ( :) , which goes to a little '. This means that the form appears three times in " . The most common mark (easiest to memorize) is a ' for , that the form occurs nowhere else. A ' means its twice; the Masoretes ordinarily noted the other time it appears too. '

    " means that the form appears nine times at . ' means its the beginning of a (Israeli triennial division). The square text below " is , which expands upon the with more mnemonics and stuff. There are different versions of Masora, and different manuscripts may disagree with each other.

    Important Manuscripts

    Dead Sea Scrolls

    1 are how people in " read their texts (triennial readings); are how (and we)

    read it.

  • Page 4

    The earliest texts we have are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found near Qumran. As they existed during the Second Temple, they were interested in " , since there wasnt too much else to study. These texts are not identical to the Masoretic text: They always write , for example. In our version of , on page 1, the second-person feminine has a at the end. Many examples of this form appear in our texts

    (), () . The spelling is probably related to the fact that they spoke the language popularly, and they werent the frummest Jews around they had no problem fixing the Tanach when they saw a mistake. Note the coding of the document: 1QIsa. 1Q means it was found in Cave 1 across the valley from the village of Qumran, Is means its from Isaiah, and a means its the first (out of two in this case) of the Isaiah manuscripts found there.

    Aleppo Codex, Ben Asher & Ben Naftali

    This was written by , one of the last of the Masorites. and are the two major schools of . (For example, writes ;

    writes .) Also, has with the first sin silent; has the first one a shin & shva. These traditions are explained by , a commentator on the Masora from the 16th century named . (He thought that it was a difference between " and , but its not.) The differences are usually relatively minute (emphasized) but it makes a difference whether youre yotzei or not. The Leningrad Codex is from , and thats how " follows . Unfortunately, the Aleppo Codex was damaged in riots following the independence of the State of Israel, so it only starts at '. Therefore, Leningrad is the source for our texts; its the most accurate complete manuscript. Theres also OR-4445 in the British Museum (manuscripts are usually named by their location), which is very good, in the tradition. The Damascus Codex is mostly in the tradition, but not completely. Differences between the BN and BA traditions are listed in the .

    Other Medieval Texts

    The text on page 3 is the 2nd Rabbinic Bible; is in the top and lower margin; sometimes, they also take notes at the end of the " . Some more egregious mistakes are marked on page 7: For Ashkenazim, is spelled ( :);

    is spelled ( : ). Professor Bernstein also found a in which was written . Computers (from anecdotal evidence) dont work perfectly.

    Passing Down the Text

    "

    : " says that the are messed up; he uses the famous Ben Asher

    manuscript (Aleppo) and says that its perfect. He says that we write in 70 lines, but Aleppo has only 67 lines! Actually, a manuscript that " signed himself to authorize the text says that it should have 67 lines. Our has been tampered with to match our Masora by , were extraordinarily careful to preserve our Masora.

  • Page 5

    An anecdote portraying how conservative are (as they should be): Dr Bernstein was getting megillos for his shul and asked the sofer to write certain according to the Aleppo Codex. The sofer refused, saying, Im sorry, but we only use the Berdovitcher tikkun.

    There were three , and each one had a different text. There were three discrepancies (), /, / . is spelled with a vav either 9 or 11 times. We say , " , , based on . The that were in the were pretty authoritative. We see that we recognize the occurrence of textual errors, with the psak on how to deal with them. [Its unclear if they corrected the minority words.] Notice that all three were actually .

    Take a closer look at the discrepancies: vs. (masculine and feminine forms of the same noun, like vs. , vs. ; similar discrepancies are found in2 the Samaritan texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.; or, it could be vs. , both pronounced .)

    vs. : is a derivative of - (Dead Sea Scrolls have sa s algnis esasas ); maybe, is like an explanation of the difficult word to clarify

    the meaning that was inadvertently incorporated into the body of the text. For example, someone wrote on top of the word to explain its meaning and it was later put in the text. Sometimes, books written in the Second Temple period have simpler words substituted for more difficult earlier words; e.g., " " " : vs. " : , where it says " " instead. : says " "; the Dead Sea Scroll replaces with , another example of replacing a more common word for a rarer word.

    : is written in the most of the time; the question is how many times the used the later spelling of the third-body feminine pronoun of in the .

    This is certainly a good example of the types of mistakes that could be made. Its unclear if these were three single mistakes or three types of mistakes; the could be interpreted narrowly or broadly. " said that a break in happened during .3

    "

    " ( , " ") tries to explain the , or meaning (not reason), of : There were different, conflicting traditions, so sometimes picked one for and one for .

    2 The Samaritan text was the only text we had besides our own before the Dead Sea Scrolls; some

    parts have been changed for Samaritan theological reasons, other parts have a different for some parts of the text.

    3 Brief passage from Rav Yaakov Weinberg, from Ner Yisrael: He wrote a little on the :

    The thrust of this principle is that each letter was given to Moshe But it is difficult to take this literallyWe see that they found three Torah scrolls that did not conform; " . ": He says that it is clear that the Torah we have has had issues in transmission.

  • Page 6

    has a few and : :: " [: ] " ; [ ] . Its really all a single type of . " was familiar with

    codices, so when he says it means the text; means the margins, or .

    ( , - ) questions " from a few cases: There are some perpetual s (e.g., ); the " s eighth (which is his main point it makes

    " a ); euphemistic - . Rather, he says that in , the - is to preserve the deeper meaning (the is really the of ), but in " , its sometimes because s Hebrew wasnt perfect, since he was a young lad when he prophesized. (Needless to say, this is a very novel and possibly problematic interpretation; the " attacks the for saying this. He thinks that both and were original.) Chances are that " agreed that " and the euphemistic (which we say

    ) we find are not from a ' . Types

    Euphemistic: Like in " . Archaic Text: Third-person masculine possessive is written with a in archaic forms

    of Hebrew; cf. 4, . There are a whole bunch of examples that we really dont have to know.

    Variation in the Biblical Text Within Rabbinic Tradition

    ., with Rashi, Tosfos, R Akiva Eiger, R Hai Gaon

    Gemara says , everyone else has . Rashi says that it must be a mistake in the gemara (this amora didnt say this), Tosfos is okay that " , and gives another example. " gives a slew and a half other examples. Notice that ' is more laid back about it than " . See Y. Maori, Rabbinic Midrash as Evidence for Textual Variants in the Hebrew Bible: History and Practice in Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah: Contributions and Limitations (Orthodox Forum); he quotes a few places where the quotes some that seem to not fit our ",

    " ", whereas our texts all say . says that that was either a mistake of scribes or students or a paraphrase. All he actually says is that " could never have misquoted a ; he doesnt say anything about variant texts.

    Also, there are in that say that there were 480 in , like " " in . The problem is that is actually 481; they mustve had a text that reads .5

    " : :

    : ... " : , ( ()

    ). : ... " "

    ... This is pretty self-explanatory; " quotes a bad in the . To explain it as

    bassed on the instead of a is just wrong context needs it in the , not the .

    4 In , page 41 in the reader.

    5 Later ( )emend this text to read that there are 480 , plus the " .

  • Page 7

    :: . " : : " , .

    Again, " has a bad ; see " , who says the same thing. The says that it seems that ", ", had a bad ; the says the same thing on

    " . There are some (dating from later than " s time) that do have ; its possible they were emended to have " s text. " says to see

    " " " ' "

    Discusses whether or not we should amend texts to fit the . " starts off by saying we dont change based on or . However, he says that we always fix the text to match " if a was learned from it.

    " , , , ... (.)

    However, many people (e.g., : , page 18 in the reader) quote the opposite text, that we dont fix texts based on unless the variant is the minority. This is also reflected in by ' (author of ), who says (in the second edition of the book) that we follow the over the . Halachically, we say this.

    Other medieval writers do quote the " correctly, without the word . Based on the sources who quote it that way, it seems it was originally without that word.6

    \

    History: Rashi & Ibn Ezra

    We find this phrase in a few places; it means that the employed a theologically comfortable euphemism. (This could either be that the speaker himself used a euphemism, or that the recorder of the word used a euphemism.) In other cases, we see the same referred to as . Its not clear what that means of the type that do (i.e., that the " itself didnt record it in its original vulgarity), or that literally the made a change? If so, since were frum, well say whoever changed it was authorized to do so, at least or earlier. Theres no problem with that, as long as theyre authorized. Unauthorized individuals would have been unable to change . appears in , while is more common in . Some , like " , seem to interchange the two.

    : 7 '

    , .8 ( , " ) ( :) ... ( ,

    " ) (' : ). Also, the biggest thing is:

    6 This raises another interesting question: What do you do if you find out that the basis in

    of the that youve been basing your practices on is faulty? 7 In our text, we have , without a .

    8 A similar example is , which " quotes as meaning that really, the

    will leave. Also, ,( : ) which could be referring to themselves.

  • Page 8

    " :: ': " , ' ,

    [ " ]. The part in brackets is censored from most editions of " . Even more explicit:

    :: : .

    . 9 Its important to note that " assumes that and and all that

    stuff are really the same. He also assumes and are the same, but he seems to take it as " " " , really weird.

    Whats really important is to understand that when we read the " , we are meant to understand it in its pre- state. does not hold of and reads it all literally.

    : : .

    " says that refers to , so it should be ; says that is on the , as it leaves its mother. In general, the " always takes the text literally.10

    : : , ( ) -

    , -, (" ) - . These should be distinguished from the other mechanism that was

    available to convey a euphemism, a - . Script

    In Chazal, Evidence, and Radak

    There are three explanations of : That was given in , then changed to , then changed back to ; given in and changed to when they came back from ; it was always and never changed. Two of them are reluctant to say that our alphabet wasnt the one used by .

    is either Canaanite or Paleo-Hebrew script. The parallel passage from : adds that if the were given in ,

    then the was ; if it were given in , then was . Archaeologically, its clear that all scripts until late were .11

    ", " : : 12: Says that and are interchangeable terms, since ' and ' are interchangeable.13, 14

    9 One answer (not quoted in class) to this one is that "/ explained/interpreted as

    nonliteral, thus fixing its meaning. 10 ( ) - , , ,

    : 11

    The answer from silencethat the Jews only used for scrollsis weak; we can trace the historical roots of , and its pretty clear that it didnt originate at .

    12 - " , " "

    " " "

  • Page 9

    Canon, Arrangement, Inspiration, and Authorship of "

    The Divisions of "

    Theres no debate about what constitutes (the ). Theres a broader gray area between and .

    What goes where? Radak, Meiri, Abarbanel, Netziv, R Chaim, and Another

    (1) " says ( ) (and so does the " , both in the and the ) that the difference between and is that is on a higher level, and so loses consciousness. The distinction is definitional (black box), so there can be no questions on it.

    (2) Contrast to this the ", 9 , who says that it cant be that the reason that the werent included in the is due to their level. are distinguished by their purpose: The books that are meant to direct the people went into ; the books that are just stories went into . Some of it doesnt fit so well, like

    and , who gives some mussar; he has to bend over backwards to solve it. He just defines everything based on the primary purpose. The question usually focuses on why , " are in a different place from and why is separated from .

    " sounds like " , with the difference between the and being the purpose of the work.

    (2.1) ( ) says that the story of is to teach that the promises made to and were fulfilled.

    (3) " says that are written ; the are written in . This is an interesting linguistic difference. (4) Another famous distinction ascribed to ' is that since you can put on

    top of , they must be at the same level; the difference is that were said and later written down, whereas were written immediately. Why exactly should be said orally is a little vague.

    (5) Possibly, the closing of the canon for happened before that for . For example, was too late to make the cut. See more below.

    Whats not in " ?

    Apocrypha

    When we read " , it seems pretty clear that there was no possibility to have any other division or composition. The Septuagint was the Greek translation of the " (and

    " " /"/ , " " , " " , " " " " , " "

    " " " " ,"

    : 13

    ' and ' are similar both in and . 14

    Problematically, the " also brings as an example ( ': ) vs. ( ': )its not clear how " could have had these two variant readings.

  • Page 10

    a few bonuses). It differs from our " in a few ways: (1) It doesnt have the same division of books; (2) It doesnt have exactly the same number of books: It includes in and in . Josephus15 counts the books the same way. In the Septuagint, we have all the narratives ( , , , " ) together; then the poetry ( ", , , ); then the . This may be a Christian organization, so that the are juxtaposed to their supposed fulfillment in the appendix.

    However, there are other books written around the time of : Maccabees, Judith (quoted by " at the beginning of ); Wisdom of Solomon (quoted by " in the beginning of his " ); Tobia; Susanna; Ezra II (additions to ) Bel and the Dragon; Prayer of the Three Young Men; etc. They perceived negatively because they are classically translated as , and ' holds that one who reads (specifically publically?) has no " . " 16 says that they were called the same way that were excluded from the . He also says that the reason " didnt include all of these books is that they all are a little off, either or ; he goes on by bringing each book and explaining why its problematic. In any case, its clear that he and the " both read the Apocrypha.

    For example, in Susanna, there is a story about how Daniel saved a woman from being killed by making her witnesses contradict themselves17; the false witnesses are killed. Oops! Theyre only , not !18 Also, the " wasnt standing at the time! So it wasnt included.

    None of the Apocrypha survive in their original language. Among the discoveries at Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls (which are all fragments of literature, including " , second temple literature, and the sects own stuff) are sections of the Apocrypha. They found the book of Tobit in both Aramaic and Hebrew; a Hebrew version of Ben Sira (likely a retranslation from the Aramaic); the Psalms scroll, (11QPsa) (which, by the way, has a ' verse for , starting with , but probably a later addition; it also includes a few extra psalms that we dont have.)

    Pseudepigrapha

    Pseudepigrapha (falsely ascribed) is a collection of stuff that was ascribed to an earlier author,19 such as Enoch (the guy in ) and Jubilees (a midrashic adaptation of ). It wasnt necessarily unethical then. Its unclear exactly what is included in the Qumran sects " ; there are many copies of Jubilees found in the caves, but its possible also that they dont have a notion of canon at all. Jubilees is attributed to an angels dictation to on " , which according to them is the day after .

    15

    One of the military leaders at the time of who survived and became a historian of the house of Flavian; theres good reason to think that his version of " was based on one of the groupings of one of the sects of the Jews of .

    16 The only at the back of Vilna with a Ph.D.

    17 About trees, reminiscent of .

    18 It should be pointed out that does suggest that get the punishment of

    " : , ( " :- ). 19

    For two reasons: Authorial acceptance, and the ability to predict things that happened up until the time the work was written.

  • Page 11

    They have all on the 15th of the month. Other pseudepigraphic books are The Wisdom of Solomon and Testaments of the Twelve Tribes.

    Ben Sira is quoted many times throughout . (The text of , one of the songs on , is very close to Ben Siras description of the .) It gets distanced the most because it was closest to getting in. Leiman suggests that ' s was only for his generation as a , but perhaps no longer applies. (The

    " , towards the end of his , also quotes Ben Sira.) When was Tanach Canonized?

    The closing of the canon of the " presupposes the existence of all the books. The generally accepted latest book is , finalized around 160 BCE. A question is whether the were canonized before the later books; its possible that they were closed, which is why none of the later books, such as , were put in there.

    The story of happened around 163 B.C.E. About that time, all of the books of the Tanach were completed. Therefore, some suggest that " was sealed around then. This argument is augmented by references by Josephus and the early Church fathers to a completed " . However, this date for the sealing of " is problematic, since even (3rd century) discussed which books are . (Some suggest that the Council of Jamnia () closed the canon, which is after .)

    Theres a suggestion in " that some books should be ; they discuss ", , , . Leiman suggests that is unrelated to the canon; it only restricts the

    books from public consumption (put up on a high shelf). After all, the only problem is that its got a funny .

    sounds a little closer to questions of canon. The origin of the prohibition is that was being kept next to , and mice would eat both, so a was created so they wouldnt be kept together. (The books suggested are , , . None of them have " . Unfortunately, no single holds of all 3.) Leiman argues that since ' holds that does not make hands impure but yet quotes the book often, it is possible to have a book in " that would be just from

    . It is possible, though, that after a certain point, there was like a one-way door, so that books could be taken out of " , but not be put back in.

    Order of the Books, especially Neviim Achronim, Ksuvim, Megillos

    " :-.

    ", : , , , . , : ' , ?

    ! " : , : , . ! , ,

    . ! ( , .) , !

    , , , . : , , , ,

    , . ": , ! . ! ; : ?

    " . ? ;

  • 21 egaP

    " ; ; , " , , " , , , " : ) "( ; ; ,

    , ) "( ; , , , . ; : . ? . : + :' , : .

    , ? ]+[ :" + )( - ' +" " :" ; ' ," , ,

    " , ! +" + : ? + + : , " , " . !" ) "( , ? :

    !' +" + : . . ," ! : . . ! : . : ! . . ].'[ : , : ,

    . ! : , : , : , . ' .

    sgnipuorG evitanretlA dna yratnemmoC

    ot stnaw enoemos fi si ecnacifingis eht ;skoob eht fo redro eht tuoba sklat : " eb dluohs eht taht semussa ' .llorcs elgnis a ni koob eno naht erom tup ;.E.C.B 007 dnuora ta devil .gnipuorg citameht a sreferp tub ,lacigolonorhc . tpecxe ,meht gnitarapes stseggus .E.C.B 005 tuoba ta a evah yllautca eW .tsol yllacisyhp gnieb naht rehtar ecnacifingis esol lliw ti spahreP a evah segA elddiM eht morf stpircsunaM .ariS neB seod sa ,gnipuorg lacigolonorhc .snoitanibmoc fo yteirav

    yeht ;rehtegot eht puorg tndid " :noitautis tnereffid a tneserp si redro ehT .rehtegotla tinu a meht redisnoc tndid ylbaborp

    ytterp eb ot smees sihT . ,yllatnedicnI .redro ezis ni era skoob cinomoloS eht taht elbissop sti ;redro lacigolonorhc .redro ezis ni depuorg osla si redro s ' ot gnidrocca

    " si ti taht si [ ?tsrif ton ti si yhw , etorw fi taht sksa ot elbissopmi yllacinhcet stI . dna neewteb ni si erofereht dna

    taht srewsna ' ]. eht lla ni tif ot yrt lliw eht ,sselehtenoN .erehwyreve tup a sah ti taht srewsna tub ,dab osla si taht sksa eht ;ffuts dab htiw trats tnod ew .02gnidne doog

    eht ta rehtegot depuorg eht evah ew ;tnereffid yllacidar si redro ruO ni yteirav erom hcum si ereht ;yltnereffid skoob eht puorg tnereffiD .gninnigeb era yeht hcihw ni redro eht ni( " evah emoS . ni naht .nettirw erew yeht hcihw ni redro eht , " ti od srehto elihw ,)daer

    pihsrohtuA

    02

    a yllaer tnsi ro gnidne yppah lanoitan a deen ew rehtie taht srewsna dna , tuoba sksa ' . fo ygolaeneg sa edecerp dluohs esuaceb retfa tup stI .gnidne yppah

  • Page 13

    The same discusses the authorship. If wrote , you have to say either that it happened before s life or was an allegory. According to just about everybody, you cant write history in advance in ; thats ' s objection to ' that cant have written the lat 8 as if they happened, since its .

    Tehillim Majority & Minority views

    The ten people who wrote lived before or during the life of , but there is a statement that appears in a few places (page 39 in the reader, ') that wrote some of . " wrote the same thing. This isnt necessarily against , since wrote most of it; it just wasnt closed until . What does it mean if wrote

    (presumably) without having experienced it? Anyways, ' says that wrote everything21.

    Split Authorship

    It gives one author for each book; for those who die in the middle, it just means that they wrote most of it. (According to " , four authors , , , wrote in two different sections of " : in the and ; in the and ; in and ; in and .) Whats really weird is that the says that wrote his and 22 (since is the only time in the entire since the birth of that the thing happens outside the natural knowledge of ; Josephus mentions that alone wrote , instead of claiming the in his own name).

    The says that wrote . , according to " , was killed by . " " says that the would write their own books before their death. Also interesting is " were written by ; says that explicitly in . Its unclear exactly what means: Did he take everything wrote, winnow out some of it, or maybe even add some stuff?23 wrote

    . Its not so clear what actually is (either they were a one-time group or a group that assembled at certain times). Also, it says that finished .

    on Neviim Rishonim

    He says that was edited by , and that was edited by . Hes bothered by " " and " ". He also says that if " werent so sure, he doesnt have to be so sure either.24 He says that is the final editor of

    , and together wrote . ' (a of " ) writes on " " that " ", then quotes " , and expresses his frustration that theres no answer. explains the that most of the material was written by , but not all of it. " : says almost that

    wrote , but the strangely didnt quote it, though does. '...

    21

    See the " to and Four Approaches to the Book of . 22

    See Leimans book. 23

    Its clear that wrote most of , in any case. It may be worthwhile to look at R Shimon Schwabs article on Comparative Chronology in Jewish History, in the of R Breuer.

    24 ' attacks the for his formulation; apparently, however, meant what he said.

  • Page 14

    Chazal

    ' thinks that cant have written the last 8 historically if they didnt happen, since its a lie. Therefore, wrote them. ' is bothered by saying that s was incomplete and only finished later. He says that wrote the last eight

    ; its not clear what that means: 1) While crying, 2) With tears instead of ink; 3) All mixed up ( " ), perhaps just writing the letters without the spaces (). In any case, its not clear exactly how that answers the question, because its presumably still a " . Nonetheless, its like , where told to write what he was supposed to write; here, told what to write. [The then goes on to a side discussion about ; ' there discusses what that means, and see ' , , about .] The . quotes the that ; there are two understandings: The , or the - in , nobody suggests the ones in . Whats interesting is that ' who says that wrote the last eight also says ( : ) that he wrote them in the end of his days;25 cf. " : .

    " 6 places

    : , , , .

    : ' ' , . means that he didnt write as an eye witness, but that ' showed him.

    " also says something like this in the beginning of . He also says that wrote this at the end of his life; if we use the in the end of : that he wrote them " ", that could explain why he says what he says.26 He says that if logically, , cant have written something, we extend from the last 8 mentioned by the ' to more, e.g. the last 12.

    : says that if you know the " ", youll understand the . " quotes a few more that raise eyebrows: " ( :") (its self-referential); " ' " (if it refers to " , then wasnt around to see the

    " , so its hard to say that he referred to it in the present); " " ( never saw s crib; " never went there until the time of ); and the beginning of , which is difficult because: 1) Its written in third person, unlike the rest of 27, or 2) 28 " ": Why should it be ?! That seems to imply that the writer was on the west bank of the river!29 Regarding " :" could mean then and not before, which is how " explains it; or then and not now, which would mean " ". Either way, means theres a contrast to another time.

    25 : . - ' ' , :

    , : . " ' , ; " ,

    ?" : . 26

    It should be pointed out (even though Professor Bernstein didnt do this in class) that no ever interpreted as meaning anything other than the last eight in the .

    27 Really, this isnt such a strong question; the whole is written in third person.

    28 The implies the first approach.

    29 This also isnt such a strong question; we could say that was just known as Transjordan.

  • Page 15

    Whats the " " ? The (commentary on " from the 14th century, not to be confused with the Rogatchover) explains " s understanding, and says that " meant that one of the later added in these . Needless to say, in more recent years, this becomes an unacceptable opinion, and so there have been several ways to explain " : says that he meant that wrote it in . This is similar to how " explains " " and " ", in the "

    " (' : ). This is a little weak; the doesnt really sound like that. Furthermore, the he mentions in this context dont overlap with the he mentions were written . The weakest answer is that a wrote it (as appears in ).30 Peculiarly, " doesnt attack for this approach.

    Spinoza, an early biblical critic, uses this to support his approach of non-Mosaic authorship of 31 . Luzzato attacks him, since " says explicitly in his introduction to that wrote the . Also, cf. ' : , about , where he says that wrote it (the there is referring to ) and not as the Karaite heretic (not " ) says; for saying that, his book deserves to be burned. Perhaps the difference between this and the other is that this is a longer section, whereas the places that he was willing to stray were smaller. :-

    ( -) talks about the of ' , who says that there are that didnt write, and says that ' didnt write that commentary32; he quotes " who says that you should burn these books. Due to the of the , the publisher took the book out of circulation, and reprinted it without the offending passages, though the footnotes were not renumbered. This is an ironic twist that would lead to us to burning the " s based on his own ! Its pretty clear that the " (based on the eighth ) would reject this position, but it should be pointed out that he emphasizes the divine nature of the more than the Mosaic authorship.

    " in its Ancient Near Eastern Environment

    Convergence & Divergence

    As a rule, its to our disadvantage not to think about the context of " ; it hampers our understanding of the message and events contained in " . The most basic level of understanding the is the meaning it had for the generation to which it was given. Such analysis is known as the comparative approach; due to modern archeology, we have knowledge in this area to which " had no access. Theres an implicit in the entire section. In general, well examine the convergence and the divergence of the two cultures.

    " was written in a Semitic language (like Moabite, Aramaic, (Syriac), Arabic, Arabic, Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Phoenician33). The most important was Akkadian, which had two dialects: Assyrian and Babylonian. These languages are all constructed similarly.

    30

    This could be compared to " " "s in " , which probably mean that ' wrote it. 31

    Thats exactly why said so people dont say that. 32

    Although there are who think that ' really did write it, and the quoted him as saying these things.

    33 Not Hittite.

  • Page 16

    Most of the language that survived is on either inscriptions or tablets, written in cuneiform. A map of the Ancient Near East shows clusters of cities along the Fertile Crescent that surrounds the Arabian Desert. All sorts of literature come from the Ancient Near East. One type of literature is laws. A lot of the laws come from the east, by and Mesopotamia ( ); the Hittite empire is in the north, near Turkey. We have very little stuff from (apparently, we did a pretty good job eradicating the native civilizations).34 The best way to preserve tablets is to burn them, which happened often in antiquity.

    Laws

    Source of the Law

    Professor Greenberg wrote The Biblical Grounding of Human Value, which is an interesting investigation into the moral meaning of the versus the ancient law codes. The s law code is integrated into the story; ancient near east laws are not. In the ancient near east, law is perceived as a cosmic truth (not given from G-d); in contrast, gave us the , which is transcendentally divine. To say that the law is divine means that violating the law is a sin against G-d, not just society. That also implies that human pardon doesnt work. The Code of Laws of Hammurabi (which preceded Moshe) says that having laws is perhaps divinely mandated, but defined by man.

    Adultery:

    Laws of Hammurabi, paragraph 129 discusses adultery. It assumes a wife is subservient to her husband, and everyone is subservient to the king; he who is above can pardon he/she who is below. Adultery is a crime against the husband. Middle Assyrian Laws 14-15 says similar ideas. Hittite 198 also says that the husband can pardon a wife. Note that in , its all considered a crime against ' , cf. s dream,

    ; and , . Also says " " . Homicide:

    One of the major distinctions is in the law of homicide: A killer is put to death, as is the owner of a goring ox. In the , we have : Murder is a transcendentally evil case; in ancient Near East laws, murder is treated as a monetary crime. America has many levels of murder; has two ( ), which is expanded to five by " (they add in and the two intermediate cases, and ( . Hittite 1-3 says that you pay four people for killing people, and its pretty clear that its a monetary matter. In fact, in Saudi Arabia, about 20 years ago, a murderer paid the family of the victim a few million dollars, and he went free. But this is unheard of in halacha.

    Goring: Hammurabi, 250: If an ox, when it was walking along the street, gored a man to death, that case is not subject to claim. 251: If a mans ox was a gorer, and his city council made it known to him that it was a gorer, but he did not pad its horns or tie up his ox, and that ox then gored to death a member of the aristocracy, he shall give one-half mina of silver. This is contrasted to the , which does not let people to get

    34

    Theres a famous book by Pritchard called ANET, Ancient Near East Texts.

  • Page 17

    out of goring people by paying money,35 and so therefore, the ox is . Similarly, there is no Biblical crime against property which is punishable by death, which further emphasizes the idea that there is no equal to human life.36 (on ,

    " ) says that you shouldnt say:

    .

    Someone was already killed, why should we kill another Jew?!37 (Cf. the argument about the deterrent power of the death penalty at the end of " .) Also, there is a law that says that if someone pushes someone off of his ox into a river, the city of the killee receives the killer. Thats a pretty intense emphasis on the monetary implications of a crime. Its the polar opposite of the value of human life in biblical law, that even a killer ox gets killed and is either as a menace to society or so people wont say this ox killed . This is not found in classic Near Eastern law.

    In ancient laws, if a wife steals from a husband (Hammurabi 6ff.) she is killed; if a guy doesnt have enough to pay back his stealing, hes killed (Hammurabi 8); if you break in, youre killed (ibid. 21), etc. In some Near East codes, later codes replace killing someone with a fine, which has no parallel in .38

    Summary

    The source of biblical law is transcendental divine decree and human life is a strong value. Therefore no compensation is allowed on the taking of human life (except ), and no capital punishment is collected for monetary crimes (except sort of and kidnapping, because theyre capital crimes). Similarly, punishment originates from God, so no mortal can pardon such crimes. Incidentally, biblical law was relatively liberal: it was much more humane, lenient, and respectful of women than expected at the time. All this is not true in classic Near Eastern law.

    Vicarious Punishment

    We must also take into account vicarious punishment, which is very common in the Near East. See Hammurabi 116, 209, 210, 229, 230; also, Middle Assyrian 50: If someone

    35

    Its important to also remember that we have to deal with the headaches these laws cause; we cant, for example, take the of the Dead Sea Scrolls (which show the differing of the ) and ignore the Scriptural texts. You can choose to ignore everything, but you cant pick and choose what you want to take and ignore only inconvenient stuff.

    36 is a self-defense clause, not a ; in addition, there are in it. Also, there

    is a fascinating " ( : ) who claims that if it is during the day, you cant kill him, since even halachically:

    " " " '" .

    37

    There was a case in Saudi Arabia in which a murderer was allowed to pay ransom for the guy he killed to the family of the victim and then was let free.

    38 The idea that applies to stealing is interesting; it needs a lot of .

  • Page 18

    kills a fetus, his daughter is killed.39 Or, if someone kills another son, his son is killed. Or, if someone ravishes a girl, the father can demand the rapists wife and that the rapist marry the girl without possibility of divorce (because she has no chance of marriage) somewhat similar to biblical law. The logic behind it is that the family is one organic unit, and so everyone can pay for the crime of the head of the family (cf. ). So

    ' is actually a big . Some cases of vicarious punishment appear to occur in " . For example, pshat says

    that the family of was killed with him; are executed by the , the story of , the families of , the first child of . There are two contradictory : , and ; one way of answering is that one is and one is ; only can do vicarious punishment. Perhaps this can be extended to any extrajudicial punishment, e.g. those mentioned above.

    : quotes the that you cant kill the son for the stuff that a father did; apparently, 40; it quotes the entire , even that which " apply to mean that a relative may not testify.

    Literary and Cultural Comparison

    A little more than 75 years ago, a site was discovered along the Syrian coast called Ras Shamra. In 1929, an expedition came across a bunch of tablets written in cuneiform dating back to the 13-14th cent. B.C.E. (c. galus mitzrayim). To decode a text, we first assume that it is a Northwest Semitic language. So say that we see a text that starts with x; well assume thats a , meaning that it belongs to (for an object) or was written to (for a letter) someone. If we see yxy, then its probably a thuf41 (making TLT=); we go on in that format and work it all out.

    The Ugaritic culture was probably on its way out during the time of the . But we generally assume that the Canaanite and Ugaritic theology and culture were similar.

    Ugaritic texts are full of ; because of its geographic closeness to " , it will probably be more related to Canaanite mythology than, say, Babylonia or Assyria.

    Remember the " that its evident from the text that God wrote the in a Semitic (not Egyptian) style, implying that " possessed with such a culture. In other words, their tradition had its origins in the Canaanite culture from which they descended. That is, the of the is uniquely divine; the could be derived at least in part from Ugaritic models. Its new wine in old bottles its monotheism in the framework of the Canaanite culture and style. Language

    : " ": What does mean? Ugaritic texts say YPH BDRSP ( , parallel to or such) and YPH MNHM BN HNN ( ); apparently, YPH= means witness.

    39

    There was an oral tradition to deal with difficult cases; say, for example, the guy didnt have a daughter at all.

    40 Which is how the " in explains this .

    41 Supposedly, Proto-Semitic had a tha sound that developed differently in Hebrew and Aramaic;

    Hebrew had , casmslA ngt , and Arabic got tha.

  • Page 19

    : ): ( has an unclear meaning is it or jussive ? Ugaritic has the word meaning fear, so thats it (parallel to ).

    : Consider : ", where , stricken with leprosy, lives in . :- uses funny, and : says that the dead are from their

    masters. BT ChPThT in Ugaritic is another name for the underworld (), hence the leper house was called the underworld. And has an awful pun. : : names three righteous people to a gentile king , ,. In

    : , he mentions that was very wise. But in the time of , the guy we know was a young man was he famous enough to be thrown in the face of ? Ugaritic mythology has a righteous king named DNAL, and these places are the only ones in Tanach that spell without a yud. So Yechezkels listing the legendary righteous gentiles.

    : Finally, ) ( does it mean rider of clouds or plains? " take the former approach. Ugaritic has RKB RPT as a title for Baal. The good news

    is that " got it right. The bad is that the monotheistic author of adopted a polytheistic epithet. When composing the literature of " , it did not scare the authors to use terminology from the polytheistic past. Literary Forms

    Biblical poetry, of course, is based on parallelism42, as is most Near Eastern poetry. But almost all Near Eastern Poetry uses the same word pairs, as if they each have a single poetic dictionary. For example: -, - , -, -, -43,

    -, -, - , and more. [ is the Ugaritic word for gold.] So how much sense does omnisignificance make ( , that every word has its own specific meaning; some say )? What about saying that means the left hand when contrasted to ? Maybe that was just the style ( )? Types of Parallelism

    There are classically three types of parallelism in biblical poetry: synonymous, , antithetic, where the two halves contrast each other, and synthetic, which is everything else. Theres also n||n+1, e.g. " " . Also theres staircase or tricolon parallelism, where the first clause provides only part of the sentence. E.g., ' . This is mentioned by

    " : . All of this appears also in Ugaritic literature. Metaphors

    There are metaphors and similes which belong to a larger literary tradition: 44 : and : 45 both talk about opening its mouth. These metaphors of the

    underworld refer to the Ugaritic god MOT (death=); his desire () is very big and hard to satiate. Israelites never deified death, but the metaphor remains. Then

    42

    Biblical poetry is often more exact than Homeric poetry, since Homeric poetry is based on meter and Biblical poetry is based on word pairs.

    43 There was a Ugaritic text that seemed to say that they would cook s in butter, which would

    help the " s claim that is an anti- law, but it was emended to , or coriander. Oh well.

    44 .

    45 .

  • Page 20

    : says that at the end of days, , ' swallows death. Again, the authors of " are monotheists, putting new wine in old bottles. Religion/Culture/Mythology

    The Israelites did a good job of eradicating Canaanite idolatry; theres little left of the literature. But we have Ugaritic stuff, which is probably similar to the Canaanite pantheon. Theres a sky god BL or similar, whos nemesis is the sea god, YM. Theres a celestial battle, and Baal wins. Yams allied with MOT, the god of death, and a few others, including LTN BTN BRH and QLTN. MOT is allied with TNN. The generation before Baal contains El and Elyon. In Babylonian myth, Tiamat () is the godess of the sea.

    : appears five times in ", four in and one in . It could be that Malkitzedek is referring to the local deities, and Avram says the only is ' ' " . Perhaps the reason " say that was a monotheist is because otherwise why would Avram give him a tithe?

    : A monotheistic culture cant have celestial wars. So they have to be transformed into a different context by poets and prophets. See :

    .

    In Ugaritic, LTN BTN BRH and LTN BTN QLTN are allies of Tanin against Baal. (BTN is equivalent to , which is an obscure word for snake, cognate with Egyptian python.] These were transformed into metaphors and symbols of evil, which ' will destroy. This is also in : , with the emphasis on how ' created the ; they have no independent power. Pagan Myth in Monotheistic Framework

    :- : -, '-- , ; - , . - , ; , ---, .

    In general, , are buzzwords for mythology were going back to the earliest days of the world. In Canaanite mythology, TNN helps MOT; theres a smooth segway from into ( ) and into Yam. In general, poets and prophets show Gods omnipotence through his power over water. In the Ancient Near East, water was the edge of the world, very dangerous, you could go there and not go back46. The point is that even that, He restricts and controls. The earth floats on the water, Hashem fixes it in place () Similar theme:

    :- : '--, : . , -- -. - ; , -. ; . -

    , ; , . , ; , - . ; , .

    , , , -; , . Also see:

    :-, : -, -; -, . , ; -, . - ; - , .

    46

  • 12 egaP

    . ,- ;- ,- . ,- -- , .- - , ; ,

    .yot sdoG ot decuder si retsnom aes ythgim ,emosraef ehT ; . , ; , : -:

    . , ; , .- , , : htiw tsartnoC .maY dog eht sti sselnU ?retaw hsurc uoy od woH

    .retaw eht fo noitacifinosrep a tsuj ylbaborp sti erehw gnisiarp eryeht taht a stI . .- , --- ',- : :

    .doG saw eh ,yllatnedicnI .rahan ylla sih dna maY dellik laaB erehw ,64-54 .pp redaeR

    a si daeherof eht yltnedive ot lellarap ,seye sih neewteb wolb bulc a yb dellik .denigami naht ot resolc elttil

    tup LB taht syas yrots etinaanaC ehT . - :- ,- : :

    .mih taeb eh retfa liaj a ni NNT , ; , . ,)( ; , : -:

    .retaw eht revo tnahpmuirt seH ,niagA . . , ; . , ; : -:

    taht etoN . ,- ; , --- . , ; svoyI ot esnopser etuc a stI .maY ylekil erom rab dna rood htiw derettuhs si aes eht ]. dna HRB NTP htiw nup eht etoN[ . fo noitnem

    . , ; ,- . , ; : -: .yot a tsuj si NTL eht mohW ot eH sa doG gnibircsed seH ,niagA

    .ti etirw ot diarfa tnerew " fo srohtua ehT ,niagA sfeileB ngieroF fo ydoraP

    : -: , -- - , ; -- ,

    ; , . , - : , . .- , ;- , . , . ,- ; ,- -- ,

    .-- , - . , ; - , / ,yllatnedicnI .rats gninrom fo nos ,eno thgirB .ygolue a fo ydorap a stI

    fo txetnoc ni ot srefer .supmylO citiragU eht si , .ecnediser eniviD eurt ylno eht si taht gniyas ygolohtyM cidumlaT

    : " : ' ). ( : - ' ' ) :( '.' ' ' : , , - " : ?" , - ) ( , -

    '. ' : , , ?" , - , - ' ' , - ' ' : , ,

    ( . ! )( ) ( . -

  • Page 22

    !) : ( ); , : ' ', . ! ()

    , . : " , : . : ", .

    , : ' .' ' , ": , - , : ' ' ', .

    ' says that the of are the of , and also says that

    killed the and all that stuff; all the are echoes of Ugaritic material. This " shows that even these traditions come from way back. Its a monotheistic evolution of a polytheistic myth. Hashem told Rahav, the minister of the sea, to be bounded, and he refused. Its a battle between Heaven and earth, except its not a battle Obey Me. No. Bye. Smite him, game over.

    Midterm

    Partial reconstruction of some categories of questions (please, future generations, update and improve this): Its a choose x of y for each section type. Its open Tanach (Hebrew only, no translation or commentaries), but it has to be unmarked, even without shtark marks. Some questions (incomplete): (1) What happens if our text disagrees with something found in "? " ,' ," ,". (2) What does the discuss about ? Describe the situation and . (3) , with specific examples. ". (4) Whats the question about ? What are the opinions in the '? Whats the opinion of ? (5) Explain apocrypha and pseudepigraphy. Whats , for which books, and why? (6) Explain the of . (7) Who wrote[four books of "]? Whats the difference between and ? Give two different explanations and their problems. (8) Explain the following words based on the Ancient Near East: , ,. (9) Whats the difference between Ancient Near Eastern law and biblical law? Give three specific examples. (10) Explain some of the following based on the Ancient Near East (pick four of five): : - ,

    : ,: ,:-? , . (11) Describe rare types of parallelism in ", with specific examples of each.

    Translations

    Introduction

    The in general that we have are split into two: Babylonian tradition () and Eretz Yisrael (Palestinian) tradition ( , , Fragmentary Targum47, Cairo Genizah Fragments, Neofiti48). The latter, unlike the former, has many texts with significant variations. The major difference between Babylonian and Palestinian is the dialect of Aramaic49 the former uses an eastern dialect while the latter uses a

    47

    Written in as ; it only appears on some . 48

    It was miscataloged in the Vatican under for centuries until it was recognized as a Palestinian targum.

    49 Example: See in Aramaic is in Eastern and in Western Aramaic. Hence the

    in .

  • Page 23

    Galilean, western dialect. isnt consistently Babylonian Aramaic; some think it originated in " , was brought to , and mostly modified there into the local dialect before it was fixed.

    Everyone spoke Hebrew (called in " :50 ) during , albeit in different dialects51. Nonetheless, few spoke Aramaic52. But within about two generations53, : says the Jews didnt know . Therefore, translations into Aramaic develop.

    ' " . ' . ,

    . ' '? ' .

    .' ,

    '.' "? . , "

    ( ) ' - ?' ' -' , ',' , ' ,' , ' ,' ,

    "? . ' ' were right after the , placing the s composition (

    implies verbal54) there. This ' accredits the to ; everywhere else in " its / . This might actually refer to a discussing that well see shortly.

    (a of , 30 BCE) was composed "" (around 500 BCE55), meaning in the tradition of, without implying direct contact. ' says composed the and renewed it56.

    Theres apparently no official . One of the was asked about it and said he doesnt have it. Furthermore, unless it was done by like ' ' , its stupid and can be ignored.

    Style

    : [ ] , . ' ' .' ?! '

    , ! ? .

    50

    s messengers warn the Jews about s plans for torture. s servants ask them to use Aramaic (the language of international diplomacy) so that the populace wont understand it.

    51 Shomronite dialects, unlike Judean, often collapsed the diphthong, e.g. yayn instead of

    yayin. 52

    In " , only , , one in , and two words in are in Aramaic ( is with a ; it changes into a sometime before " ). Hebrew was spoken in " through the Tannaitic period, albeit somewhat Aramaized.

    53 Yiddish was lost even faster.

    54 It was originally intended to be read in shul.

    55 The Temple was destroyed in 586 B.C.E. and was destroyed for 70 years, so the rebuilding began

    in 516 B.C.E. 56

    Alternatively, perhaps institutionalized the and formalized the official text.

  • Page 24

    " " : , . ' ':

    , . ' :' , ,57

    58 . ' " : -

    , , , . , , , , ' .

    The here deals with , and it says that one who says hes a must be able to read only three . ' says he also has to translate, but you cant translate on your own.

    " thinks means literal, while means addition. Basically, only has the ability to properly balance and interpretation59.

    ' limit(s) the issue to anthropormorphic translations in light of theology. But its not clear when chooses to translate literally and when he chooses to comfortably paraphrase.

    Palestinian

    The major texts are: Yonasan (TJ1), Yerushalmi/Fragmentary (TJ2), Cairo Geniza fragments60 (CG), Neofiti (N). The differences could either be only chronological (frozen in history when written down) or actually different traditions; its probably a combination of the two. Palestinian Targum is usually more aggadic than Israeli; it functions sometimes as or .

    isnt mentioned in ' ; the only thing we have from is . Its actually , at one point abbreviated " and then expanded into . Its characterizing feature is its many aggadic interpolations into the text. It appears to be an edited mixture of some earlier , combining Palestinian tradition, , and ; its dating is very difficult. Some date it almost as late as " . But just because everything was copied so late doesnt mean everything originated that late.

    " " :

    It refers to , 135-104 BCE. " say he became a before the end of his life; this passage appears to see him positively. Either its very early (before " finished eradicating all positive mention of him, c. 2nd century CE) or non-rabbinic in origin.

    57

    Nobody quotes a source for this. ' has a similar line somewhere. Its a little problematic what would an Aramaic do for ? Furthermore, " sometimes argues with .

    58 ' ' " because thats not the quoted there.

    59 Translations are like women: Theyre either beautiful or faithful, not both.

    60 Palestinian tradition in Babylonian Aramaic; copied by eastern scribes (or who know bavli).

  • Page 25

    " " :

    On the other hand, here he uses the names of Mohammeds wife and daughter61, meaning its sometime after the 8th century. (The and sometimes commented in on current events, the same way some people would say that is _____ (fill in the blank); in many cases, place names change when they are copied over in different places. In any case, someone related to Mohammed.) So portions were very early and portions were very late.

    has some interesting Halachic and Aggadic stuff that isnt so rabbinic. , ( )

    :: "

    : " " :

    Its clear from that some people had this translation. is translated as

    that which impregnates and is taken in the rabbinic language of pregnancy. The Apocryphal Book of Jubilees inserts this after the story with and , to prohibit intermarriage. it makes sense, since its in the middle of and theres no other place where (we find ) shows up. The Peshitta (Syriac translation done by Jews; R Chaim Heller transliterated and commented on it) and Neofiti also translate this way.

    Another example: 62

    " . " " :

    Christian gospels (): Just as our father is merciful in heaven, so too you should

    be merciful on earth. One more example:

    : - , - , - , -- ,

    . Bavli interprets it as , meaning animal63. CG translates it as burning. This

    is also non-halachic. The Bavli says its ( ). There is a Cairo fragment that

    translates it as burning, which, again, gives us another case of non-halakhic translation of the text. Neofiti translates the same way.

    (1) Albeck: The was allowed to say non-Halakhic translations; (2) Who said that all the were ?

    61

    ' does the same. 62

    Indicative of oral . 63

    An more archaic word; note the suffix for the possessive; this is also archaic.

  • Page 26

    (3) Rav : Its possible that there were other traditions of that were . There might be a of a hint of an echo of this from " : - " " .

    Cairo Geniza Fragments

    The Cairo geniza fragments were found a hundred years ago. The in " added a lot at the beginning and end of a (the was read in different ways in different places, so one way we know whats considered a is by seeing when we have these big additions to the .)

    Neofiti

    Neofiti was found in the latter half of the 20th century in a Vatican library; it was labeled . It was an Targum that goes go back to the earlier times of Targumimits certainly earlier than pseudo-Yonatan.

    s Aramaic isnt identical to the Aramaic of the , but its pretty close. One major discussion is the anti-anthropomorphism of the Targumim. doesnt normally translate these things literally; the - does.64

    In general, " didnt normally give us much (except for chronology, which forms the majority of Second Temple interpretation; for example, the Book of Jubilees is almost all numbers). is the closest to that we have (although its hard to claim that there was a shared tradition of among different exegetes, since its based on , so it could just as well be two different people coming up with the same as it is one common shared tradition).

    Comparative Translation

    :-:

    (-2 )

    65

    -

    :

    66

    :

    -

    :

    64

    The " discusses this in : . 65

    Omnipresence and theological distance 66

    Very common of him to put in midrashic details

  • 72 egaP

    76

    '

    :

    86

    ...-

    -

    :

    96

    07

    17

    :

    -

    :

    27

    :

    :

    37

    47

    -

    :

    57

    :

    76

    / eb dluow ti esiwrehto ;purt eht segnahc noitaterpretni cihsardim sihT .ecnetnes nwo sti sa sterpretni eH . '

    86 sti os seirogetac eht sehsiugnitsid eH .swoc dna ,peehs ,mimalhs ,halo stcejbo ruof era erehT

    .dnatsrednu ot reisae96

    nosrep dnoces seriuqer msihpromoporhtna gnidiovA 07

    .suolucidir si hcihw ,gnivom doG sdiovA 17

    .gninaem seifiralC 27

    .evals setilearsI na ton ,evals etilearsI nA 37

    ' eton lanigraM 47

    .yllaretil etalsnart ot thgir eht sah syawla noitalsnart A .laretil ylpmis sti cinibbar-non TNSI sihT 57

    noitaterpretni cinibbaR

  • 82 egaP

    :

    67

    :

    : 77

    ...

    :

    -

    :

    { 87 }

    :

    97

    :

    :

    ) 2-(

    08

    :

    etanretlA

    eh 8002 llaF nI . htiw eht dna dessucsid nietsnreB rD ,6002 llaF nI na ot seton 6002 eht devom evah I .daetsni gninnigeb eht did eh ;ton did .erutuf eht ni meht stnaw enoemos tneve eht ni xidneppa

    !01:82:1 JsPB01:82:1

    > }

  • 92 egaP

    18 !11:82:1

    JsPB11:82:1

    ) 2-( oeNC11:82:1 28 ) 2-( !21:82:1

    > }>

  • 03 egaP

    88 > 3-< ) 3-( \ A22:82:1

    !90:92:1 JsPB90:92:1

    98

    ] [ !21:92:1 JsPB21:92:1

    !31:92:1

    JsPB31:92:1

    09 !71:92:1

    19 A71:92:1 JsPB71:92:1

    29 oeNC71:92:1

    >>

  • 13 egaP

    JsPB33:92:1

    !43:92:1

    JsPB43:92:1 !53:92:1

    JsPB53:92:1 !20:03:1

    69 A20:03:1 !60:03:1

    JsPB60:03:1

    !80:03:1

    JsPB80:03:1

    !12:03:1 JsPB12:03:1

    79 !22:03:1

    89 A22:03:1 >>> >

  • Page 32

    :100 has two stories of Greek translations, one with 101 and one with the 72 . Why two stories? (1) The first was bad and the second was good, or (2) theyre two versions of the same story, where some (", where early Christianity was using it?) said it negatively and others (?) positively, or (3) the attitude changed over time. The positive story is found all over pre-" stories; some attribute a quasi-miraculous status to the Septuagint (legitimizing Christianitys use of it in their canon). only says ' ' " . lists 13 changes:

    102, , , , , 103, , ,

    , [ ]104, , " , .

    The Christian Septuagint text of is different from the Masoretic text of the same book; its fuller, and sounds more like some Qumran texts. However, its important to note that the Septuagint is like a , not a straight translation. So we dont know if Qumran had the text underlying the Septagint or not.

    : has a tradition that translated the into Greek: .

    , [ ] .

    .

    Note its the same about a translating before " ", but Greek ( , like ). Its almost like that of . There are three possibilities: 1) Two different people; 2) Same person (Aquilas) who made two translations; 3) The story originates in " , and then was applied (with the wrong name) to the anonymous Aramaic translation (since they dont have a Greek translation) later.

    Aquilas in Greek is weird; he always translates as with (like "?). Its part of (Hexapla), a book by Origin, (3rd c. Church father). It has six columns: Hebrew, Hebrew transliterated into Greek letters105, Aquilas106, Septuagint, Theodotian (which may be Yonatan), and Synocus (). Aquilas is quoted in Yerushalmi and (e.g. - ( : ) as deathlessness, which crept into an Aramaic translation somehow).

    100

    A post-talmudic 101

    There are two versions: , and .

    102 This one is the most problematic, since Greek is inflected, so if they translate theus it cant be

    anything other than the subject of the verb. 103

    In the Christian Septuagint, was euphemized (" that should talk such!), which is the end of that .

    104 was changed to hairy-footed (a adjective meaning rabbit), since Ptolemys family name was

    the greek name for rabbit (Lagos?). 105

    Tells us how Hebrew was pronounced at the time. 106

    The closest to the Hebrew

  • Page 33

    Syriac, Latin

    Two more important translations: The Peshitta was translated by Jews into Syriac (an Aramaic dialect). It has many links to rabbinic interpretation, but was adopted by the Syriac Church. Some of it is transliterated into Hebrew by '. The Vulgate (translation into Latin from Hebrew, for which Jerome was attacked by Augustus) was helped by Jewish sources and scholars.

    The Development of Jewish Biblical Interpretation

    Interpretation is necessary in several cases: 1) Gaps in the text, 2) Background information, 3) Meaning of words, 4) Solving moral questions.

    Most Judaism in had a halakhic mindset of some sort (Karaites and Sadduccees both were interested in halakhic interpretation, though not ").

    Examples: : Aquilas and Jerome translate bow down, from 107 . Septuagint108 has herald109. Jubilees translates as a title, God and the mighty110 one of God. Alternate: , from +Rex (Latin)111, which gives us father of the king. Neofiti and say , a compound word (hence the meaning of the young kollel guy.)

    : Septuagint has if you make a good offering ( as offering); " have as a favor (if you improve, you will be favored), that will ; " says that your sins will be pardoned; Neofiti has if you do good, then youll be protected; if not, youll lose in this world and the world to come.

    Legal tradition: The doesnt tell me when I can divorce. Josephus writes that he divorced his wife because he didnt like her behaviour. When you can divorce your wife is a discussion " " ; 112 " says that it must be (close to early Christianity).

    " says that you can divorce her if she burns your food; ' says even if you found a nicer one, you can kick her out.113 Qumranic texts say that you cant marry another wife while your first wife is still around and attack for marrying more than one wife.114

    Biblical Self-Interpretation

    : : : :

    107

    If its the command, there should be a in Hebrew, not an , the Aramaic form. [Which brings up the question when youre translating a foreign language, do you try to use semi-foreign words?]

    108 Aquilas doesnt always match the Septuagint, even though he wrote both (probably).

    109 They may have had , singular.

    110 Related to , probably.

    111 Cf. , which " at one point interpret as two foreign words for two.

    112 : .

    113 Professor Bernstein said that yeshiva guys titter when they read this opinion, but dont let it

    have the impact that it should have on us. 114

    Qumranic texts also are not happy about uncle-niece marriages, which could be why " praise it.

  • Page 34

    These two seem to contradict, as says clearly that you have to roast the , whereas implies that it should be cooked in water. To solve this

    contradiction [some scholars dont think its meant as a resolution], " : says: :

    This says that they -ed it , which implies , which solves the problem.

    :: : :: ' ' :

    says ; : says . " say ; " : 115 implies that the only things for are and is for .

    One thing you have to do is to reconcile seemingly contradictory . In , only , , and possibly or are . also says things like that (

    ); talks about . talks about people who did all sorts of bad things: , doing business, etc. Even so, we need " to establish the details of .116

    Early Interpretation

    What about in Egypt: 1) How does know that hes in danger; 2) What happens to in s house?117 3) How does discover reality? 4) Isnt their deceit immoral?

    The Genesis Apocryphon (written in Aramaic, found in Qumran (one of original seven scrolls discovered), published later than other texts, but some parts are unreadable. Dont confuse it with the Genesis Commentary A) has some of these answers. There is no traditional text commentary (picking out a few lines of text and writing a commentary on it) until Philo; most interpretations are rewrite the text and embed interpretation in the text, e.g. Genesis Apocryphon, Jubilees, and Josephus.

    : says that told to always claim a sibling relationship but the never mentions the original statement. The Samaritan Pentateuch (and sometimes Dead Sea Scrolls) occasionally find a previous place to place an event referenced later ( " occasionally do this too, saying or such). One classic example: in , tells his wives about a dream he had thats missing from the narrative. The Samaritan Pentateuch and Qumran put it in the narrative.

    The Genesis Apocryphon (bottom of page 453): And on the night of our entry into Egypt, I, Abram, dreamt a dream; [and

    behold], I saw in my dream a cedar tree and a palm tree118men came and they

    115

    :: "

    : 116

    Maccabes has a passage that says that after the Jews were massacred on , that they would fight back on . Its unclear whether that implies that there was a new or re-discovered. Also, : , . Its unclear what that means; Dr. Bernstein translated as (re)newed, to hedge his bets.

    117 s event has " ", which is absent here.

  • Page 35

    sought to cut down the cedar tree and to pull up its roots, leaving the palm tree (standing) alone. But the palm tree cried out saying, Do not cut down this cedar tree, for cursed be he who shall fell [it]. And the cedar tree was spared because of the palm tree and [was] not felled. And during the night I woke from my dream, and I said to Sarai my wife, I have dreamt a dream, [and I am] fearful [because of] this dream. She said to me, Tell me your dream that I may know it. So I began to tell her this dream[the interpretation] of the dreamthat they will seek to kill me, but will spare you[Say to them] of me, He is my brother, and because of you I shall live, and because of you my life shall be saved

    This solves: (1) An explicit location for : , a reference to an unknown command to constantly claim a sibling relationship. (2) Why was afraid that he would be killed in Egypt. (3) Why it was moral to deceive a prophetic dream told him to. [Josephus and " say that was afraid that since the Egyptians were notoriously lustful, would be in danger. has a non-PC statement, that its because theyre dark and repulsive.] Note that this type of commentary does not ask questions; it supplies only the answers.

    What happened to in ? doesnt say. (1) The Genesis Apocryphon (page 455) says, And he was unable to approach her (reminiscent of , by ), and although he was with her for two years119, he knew her not.

    (2) Josephus says that there was disease and political disturbance until the priests tell him that he was being punished because of . (3) " say that got a that

    , and whenever told120 the angel to hit , the angel hit him.

    Another kind of interpretation is from Genesis Commentary A (not the same as Genesis Apocryphon): In the story of s curse, there are two questions: (1) why curse , and (2) why not curse . Some sources that deal with the latter question: Qumran and " both say its because had already been blessed. It s unclear if its a shared tradition or they both arrived at the same conclusion independently.

    was 75 when he went to " , but theres some confusion about the dating process. " left after 210, 400, and 430 years from when? Josephus claims 430 from getting to and says nothing more. says that 430 is from (which was before ) and 400 is from . The Qumran scroll (paragraph E) says that 400 is from , while 430 is from when left his homeland of . Once again, it doesnt raise the question; it just says that left and got to at 70 (surprise!) that answers the question. Three