This article investigates the prefatory material in 2 Maccabees (2:19-32; 15:38-39) in order to reveal the motivation and attitude of the epitomator of 2 Maccabees toward the text he is adapting. The article argues that the concept of auxiliary texts, recognized in Graeco-Roman and Hellenistic texts by classicist Markus Dubischar, is the lens through which to properly understand the preface and therefore the scribe’s motivation for textual adaptation. The article further employs these conclusions to question whether other texts from the Judean milieu might also be best understood in this category.
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Ronald Hendel, “Assessing the Text-Critical Theories of the Hebrew Bible after Qumran,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Timothy Lim and John Collins; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 281-302, esp. 281-82: “Hence, the discovery of the Qumran biblical texts entails not only the existence of new evidence, but a rediscovery of the importance of the textual evidence that we already had.”
Sidnie Crawford, Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), esp. 327-32, argues for a continuum of transmission with one end of the spectrum occupied by word-for-word copying, and the other end occupied by commentaries. See also George Brooke, “The Rewritten Law, Prophets, and Psalms: Issues for Understanding the Text of the Bible,” in The Bible as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judean Desert Discoveries (ed. Edward Herbert and Emanuel Tov; London: British Library, 2002), 31-40; James VanderKam, “Questions of Canon Viewed Through the Dead Sea Scrolls,” bbr 11 (2001): 269-92, esp. 280, 292, also presents these texts as existing on a continuum. See, however, the critical remarks of Zahn, Rethinking, 239-41.
Tessa Rajak, Translation and Survival: The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 19 notes: “Thus, an even more intricate task within the domain of textual criticism is the exploitation of the Greek as a route to our understanding of the development of the Hebrew text. The Qumran material has of course transformed what was once a desultory activity into an all-absorbing investigation.” Ulrich, Dead Sea Scrolls, 225, adds: “Some of the texts that show [pluriformity in the text tradition], principally the Samaritan Pentateuch (sp) and the Old Greek (og), lay within easy reach of scholars through the centuries but were not generally understood in this context. However, the scrolls from Qumran and other sites along the Dead Sea paint the picture with exciting clarity.”
Ibid., 2.
Ibid., 3-4; Lied, “Textual Transmission and Liturgical Transformation of 2 Baruch in Syriac Monasticism,” n.p. [cited 25 June, 2014] Online: https://www.academia.edu/4227179/Paper._Transmission_and_Transformation_of_2_Baruch._Challenges_to_Editors._The_Rest_is_Commentary_Yale_28_April_2013, 2.
Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), particularly chapters 1, 2, and 5, but such insights are found throughout the book; David Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 4-5.
Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (trans. Jane Lewin; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 161.
Markus Dubischar, “Survival of the Most Condensed? Auxiliary Texts, Communications Theory, and Condensation of Knowledge,” in Condensing Texts-Condensed Texts (ed. Marietta Horster and Christiane Reitz; Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010), 39-68, esp. 44-47.
See, e.g., Daniel Schwartz, 2 Maccabees (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 28, who goes on to reject the term in favor of “author” (p. 37).
Hans Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (trans. Timothy Bahtu; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 22, coins this term to describe the ideas and institutions present in a given historical circumstance.
Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises, from their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 129-30.
Eugene Ulrich, “The Notion and Definition of Canon,” in The Canon Debate (ed. Lee McDonald and James Sanders; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2002), 21-35, esp. 31-32, on the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls, emphasizes that a book’s scriptural status preceded any stabilization of form, or selection of a particular version.
Dubischar, “Survival,” 40-43. Paul Grice’s communications theory into which Dubischar fits his category can be found in Paul Grice, Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 27-29.
Ibid., 56-59. The practice of self-epitomization is attested in several Graeco-Roman examples. These include such illustrious figures as Galen (De Pulsibus which is epitomized in Synopsis de pulsibus and adapted again in De pulsibus ad tirones) and Lactantius (Divinae institutiones which is epitomized in Epitoma divinarum institutionum).
Ibid., 41.
Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, 176. The nets translation of 2 Maccabees would seem to agree.
Bezalel Bar Kochva, Judas Maccabeus: The Jewish Struggle against the Seleucids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 178 n. 82, counts more than fifty numbers, which Bar Kochva takes to mean that Jason’s work must have been full of them.
Robert Carroll, “Jewgreek Greekjew: The Hebrew Bible is All Greek to Me: Reflections on the Problematics of Dating the Origins of the Bible in Relation to Contemporary Discussions of Biblical Historiography,” in Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period (ed. Lester Grabbe; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001), 91-107, esp. 93.
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This article investigates the prefatory material in 2 Maccabees (2:19-32; 15:38-39) in order to reveal the motivation and attitude of the epitomator of 2 Maccabees toward the text he is adapting. The article argues that the concept of auxiliary texts, recognized in Graeco-Roman and Hellenistic texts by classicist Markus Dubischar, is the lens through which to properly understand the preface and therefore the scribe’s motivation for textual adaptation. The article further employs these conclusions to question whether other texts from the Judean milieu might also be best understood in this category.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 296 | 75 | 26 |
Full Text Views | 132 | 9 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 62 | 12 | 3 |