DSS.950425 Class Minutes #27, Dead Sea Scrolls, 25 April 1995 University of Pennsylvania, Religious Studies 225, Robert Kraft Recorded by Mark P. Berman, with Asaf Cohen 1. Poetic Texts Before diving into this material one must realize that any grouping such as this is not set in stone. As Garcia Martinez explains in the introduction to this section (p. 302), works can be grouped in different ways. Some documents from the Dead Sea Scrolls contain a variety of literary styles and thus it is hard to classify them as psalms or liturgies or whatever. The DSS scribes also sometimes pieced shorter documents together into a longer work, and thus one may not be able simply to classify a documents as a homogeneous unit if in fact it contains a collection of disparate works. A good example of this is the psalms. The Hebrew biblical book of Psalms contains 150 poems of various sorts. The Greek translation has 151. The Qumran archives include a Hebrew form of the Greek Psalm 151 and offer additional psalms and also sometimes present the biblical psalms in a different order from what has become traditional. A. Apocryphal Psalms Page 309, Column 27. Here we have a non-poetic intrusion into its surrounding poetic context. Although the DSS do not normally present poetry in separate lines (as GM prints it, unless it is very fragmentary), it is usually relatively easy to identify Hebrew poetry due to its characteristic "parallelism" (repetition of ideas in adjacent poetic "lines"). This prose passage discusses David and his poetic works. David is described here as wise, learned, knowledgeable, and perfect before God, inspired by the spirit of prophecy. He is said to have written 3600 "psalms," which are distinguished from 364 liturgical "songs" (one for each day of the DSS solar year), and 52 other songs (one for each week), and 30 other songs for special occasions of various sorts, and yet 4 more songs "to be sung over the possessed" (for exorcisms?), making a grand total of 4,050! The reference to David's "perfect" ways must imagine a time either before the Bat-Sheva (Bathsheba) incident, or after David had repented for that incident. (David had sex with a woman named Bat-Sheva, and when she became pregnant, David tried to cover his sin and finally sent her husband off to die in battle -- see 2 Samuel 11.) P. 310: column 28 (Psalm 151) This psalm was not canonized in the Hebrew biblical collection, and thus is absent from traditional Protestant Bibles. However, it was included in the Greek and Latin collections, and thus is in the Roman Catholic Bible. This and other psalms that are not found in the Hebrew Bible bring up the question of the exact relationship of the DSS community to the pslams and to the traditional Hebrew biblical canon. Some psalms appear to have sectarian characteristics (e.g. GM 304 col. 10) and thus could have been written by the DSS community. In passing, it was noted that the practice of collecting pslams in antiquity was not limited to the biblical collection(s) or the DSS Hymns. A collection of "Odes" drawn from other hymnic material found in both the Christian Testaments became part of the Greek Christian scriptures, alongside the book of Psalms. This includes an Ode from the book of Habakkuk and the Nativity Hymns of Mary and Elizabeth, among others. 2. Wisdom Literature Much of the ancient Jewish poetic material such as the acrostic hymn found also in Ben Sira 51.13-19 (GM 306, col. 21) is called wisdom literature. Wisdom in Hebrew is "hokma," in Greek it is "sophia," and in Latin it is "sapientia." Thus when one encounters these words in a title (as in GM 380ff), one will be able to tell that it is considered a "wisdom" poem. Wisdom is personified as a female in many of the works. Thus one must not be confused when sudden switches to female pronouns are found, as in GM 305, col. 18.12ff, or GM 395, frg. 2.2.2f. Personified wisdom is a key being next to God in the creation and manintenance of the world (see especially Proverbs 8.22-31). Page 379, Wiles of the Wicked Woman (4Q184), offers a good example of "extra biblical" wisdom literature, reflecting themes similar to those in the biblical book of Proverbs and also in the "apocryphal" book of Sirach (Ben Sira). In line three the seductive woman is noted for having eyes defiled with evil which might mean that she wears eye make-up. This is a symbol of evil and sin because it was learned from the fallen angels who appear in the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36). The pit too is a symbol of death. In class, only the first five sentences were read to get the general idea that she (as the opposite of the Wise Woman, Wisdom!) was to be avoided. GM 383, Sapential Work A (4Q416), might be called "The Mystery of Existence" for its emphasis on that sort of terminlogy. The mystery of existance is a theme used here to glue together the many teachings which discuss aspects of life and how to cope with them. This also contains the concept of the "just man," which in the DSS (as in other early Jewish and Christian literature) can refer to someone who is just a good man, or it can refer to a special person, perhaps a Messiah, or a Righteous Teacher. On page 384, frg. 2.2.6, the phrase "do not embitter your holy spirit" appears. This is an example of the many ideas about spirits (of humans, of God, of Belial) offered in these works; in the "horoscope" texts, people are described in terms of the proportion of appropriate "spirit" they possess (GM 456). The poetic DSS also contain allusions to economic matters or terminology, such as poverty, riches, and inheritance. In such a phrase as "you are poor," the reference could either be to the collective community ("the Poor"), or to an individual. Nonetheless, the author states that one who is poor must live with that condition. Part of the mystery of existence is that whatever one's lot is has been established by God and should not (cannot?) keep a person from what God provides. //end dss.950425//