Wisdom and Law in the Hebrew Bible and at Qumran
In: Journal for the Study of JudaismSearch for other papers by Charlotte Hempel in
Current site
Google Scholar
This article begins by noting the paucity of engagement between scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls (dss) and a number of significant studies on the relationship of wisdom and law in the Hebrew Bible. A substantial case study on Proverbs 1-9 and the Community Rule from Qumran is put in conversation with the seminal work of, especially, Moshe Weinfeld on Deuteronomy and its refinement by subsequent research to trace a dynamic interaction between wisdom and law in the Second Temple period. The article ends with critical reflections on the wide-spread model of segmenting ancient Jewish literature and those responsible for it into neat categories such as wisdom and law. It is argued that such a model presupposes a degree of specialization that is not borne out by the range of literature that found its way into the Hebrew Bible or the caves in the vicinity of Khirbet Qumran.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
1
See Charlotte Hempel, “Texts, Scribes and Scholars: Reflections on a Busy Decade in Dead Sea Scrolls Research,” ExpTim 120 (2009): 272-76.
-
6
See Charlotte Hempel, “The Qumran Sapiential Texts and the Rule Books,” in The Wisdom Texts from Qumran and the Development of Sapiential Thought, ed. Charlotte Hempel, Armin Lange, and Hermann Lichtenberger, betl 159 (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 277-95. Credit must go to Joseph Blenkinsopp for noting the significance of Qumran in his widely cited Wisdom and Law in the Old Testament: The Ordering of Life in Israel and Early Judaism, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 151.
-
8
Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972); see also Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1-11, The Anchor Yale Bible Commentary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
-
9
Bernard Jackson, Wisdom-Laws: A Study of the Mishpatim of Exodus 21:1-22:16 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
-
23
See Bernard S. Jackson, “Modeling Biblical Law: The Covenant Code,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 70 (1995): 1745-1827, at 1763.
-
24
Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 244-319; see also Weinfeld, Deuteronomy, 62-65.
-
27
Schipper, “Wisdom and Torah: Insights and Perspectives,” 315.
-
29
Stuart Weeks, Instruction and Imagery in Proverbs 1-9 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 156-75.
-
35
For details see conveniently Armin Lange, Handbuch der Textfunde vom Toten Meer, Band 1: Die Handschriften biblischer Bücher von Qumran und den anderen Fundorten (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009) and Eugene Ulrich, ed., The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Textual Variants, VTSup 134 (Leiden: Brill, 2010); see also Puech, “Qumrân e il libro dei Proverbi.”
-
37
Fox, Proverbs 1-9, 48-49; see also Katherine Dell, “On the Development of Wisdom in Israel,” in Congress Volume: Cambridge 1995, ed. J. A. Emerton, VTSup 66 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 135-51; Leo Perdue, “Wisdom Theology and Social History in Proverbs 1-9,” in Wisdom, You Are My Sister, ed. Michael Barré, cbqms 29 (Washington, d.c.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1997), 78-101; and Daniel J. Harrington, Wisdom Texts from Qumran (London: Routledge, 1996), 7.
-
38
See Benedikt Otzen, “Old Testament Wisdom Literature and Dualistic Thinking in Late Judaism,” in Congress Volume, Edinburgh 1974, VTSup 28 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 146-57, at 154 and n. 19. See also John J. Collins, “Proverbial Wisdom and the Yahwist Vision,” in Gnomic Wisdom, ed. John Dominic Crossan, Semeia 17 (Chico: Scholars Press, 1980), 1-17, at 4.
-
40
Peter R. Ackroyd, “The Old Testament in the Making,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 1:67-112, at 111.
-
41
See R. N. Whybray, Wealth and Poverty in the Book of Proverbs (London: Continuum, 2009), 99.
-
42
Fox, Proverbs 1-9, 329. On the anthological character of Prov 1-9, see also Baumann, Weisheitsgestalt, 58-59, and the influential study by Kugel, “Wisdom and the Anthological Temper.” For a defence of the unity of Prov 1-9 in its final form, see Weeks, Proverbs 1-9, 44-60, 94.
-
43
See Fox, Proverbs 1-9, 322-30. Whybray, Wealth, 104 argues, “there are strong indications that the provenance of the wisdom poems and the discourses in their final redaction is the same, though the wisdom poems represent a further development of the teaching.”
-
62
See Worrell, “‘Counsel’ or ‘Council’ at Qumran?” 69; also Denis, Les thèmes de connaissance and Arie van der Kooij, “The Yaḥad – What Is in a Name?” dsd 18 (2011): 109-28.
-
72
Newsom, Self, 148. For an early discussion, without reference to 1QS 6:4 however, see Sutcliffe, “General Council,” 973.
-
94
Otzen, “Old Testament Wisdom Literature,” 152. See also Puech, “Qumrân e il libro dei Proverbi,” 176-77, 186-88.
-
105
Newsom, Self, 160. See also Hindy Najman, Past Renewals: Interpretative Authority, Renewed Revelations, and the Quest for Perfection in Jewish Antiquity, JSJSup 53 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 219-34.
-
115
Fox, Proverbs 1-9, 92. See also Jon L. Berquist, Controlling Corporeality: The Body and the Household in Ancient Israel (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 149.
-
116
See Josef Wiesehöfer (Kiel), “Youth,” in Brill’s New Pauly, ed. H. Cancik and H. Schneider (Leiden: Brill, 2006), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e529590, who observes, “Comparative historical and anthropological studies have shown that adolescence . . . typified by critical processes of adaptation to the world of adults, is a modern concept.” Further, John R. Illis, “Life Course and Transitions to Adulthood,” in, Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society, ed. Paula S. Fass (New York: Macmillan Reference usa, 2004), 547-52 (Gale Virtual Reference Library). Illis notes (547) that prior to the 19th century “Children and adults were simply bigger and smaller versions of one another.”
-
123
Fox, Proverbs 1-9, 245-46. For the suggestion that Prov 7 refers to a fertility rite, see Perdue, Wisdom and Cult, 148-51.
-
125
See Carol Newsom, “Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of Proverbs 1-9,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. Peggy Day (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 142-60, at 152-55.
-
128
Fox, Proverbs 1-9, 62-63. See also Richard A. Horsley, Scribes, Visionaries, and the Politics of Second Temple Judea (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 85 where he observes, “The latest section of the book, Proverbs 1-9, is clearly the product of learned scholars, presumably those with sophisticated scribal training.”
-
129
Philip S. Alexander, “Literacy Among Jews in Second Temple Palestine: Reflections on the Evidence from Qumran,” in Hamlet on a Hill, ed. M. F. J. Baasten and W. Th. van Peursen, ola 118 (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 3-24. See also Hempel, Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 285-99 for a discussion of a shared scribal milieu emerging from Josh 1:8, Ps 1:2, and 1QS 6:6-7.
-
132
See Sarianna Metso, “In Search of the Sitz im Leben of the Community Rule,” in The Provo International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls: Technological Innovations, New Texts, and Reformulated Issues, ed. Donald W. Parry and Eugene Ulrich, stdj 30 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 306-15.
-
133
For this concept, see Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (Cambridge: Polity, 1993), 41 and passim.
-
138
See, e.g., Alexander Rofé, “The Piety of the Torah-Disciples at the Winding-up of the Hebrew Bible: Josh. 1:8; Ps. 1:2; Isa. 59:21,” in Bibel in jüdischer und christlicher Tradition: Festschrift Johann Maier zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. H. Merklein, K. Müller, and G. Stemberger, bbb 88 (Frankfurt: Hain, 1993), 78-85; Tooman, “Wisdom and Torah,” 219; and Benjamin G. Wright iii, “Conflicted Boundaries: Ben Sira, Sage and Seer,” in Congress Volume Helsinki 2010, ed. Martti Nissinen, VTSup 148 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 229-53, esp. 229.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 623 | 140 | 2 |
| Full Text Views | 357 | 10 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 252 | 25 | 0 |
Wisdom and Law in the Hebrew Bible and at Qumran
In: Journal for the Study of JudaismSearch for other papers by Charlotte Hempel in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
This article begins by noting the paucity of engagement between scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls (dss) and a number of significant studies on the relationship of wisdom and law in the Hebrew Bible. A substantial case study on Proverbs 1-9 and the Community Rule from Qumran is put in conversation with the seminal work of, especially, Moshe Weinfeld on Deuteronomy and its refinement by subsequent research to trace a dynamic interaction between wisdom and law in the Second Temple period. The article ends with critical reflections on the wide-spread model of segmenting ancient Jewish literature and those responsible for it into neat categories such as wisdom and law. It is argued that such a model presupposes a degree of specialization that is not borne out by the range of literature that found its way into the Hebrew Bible or the caves in the vicinity of Khirbet Qumran.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 623 | 140 | 2 |
| Full Text Views | 357 | 10 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 252 | 25 | 0 |