RelSt 225 DSS Class Minutes #12 (17 Oct 1996)
by Adam Kaplan

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   A question was raised raised on the ORION list about who invented the
term "parabiblical." It seems to have been coined by H. L. Ginsberg in a
1967 article. The issues relating to the need for this term are central to
the study of the DSS and their significance.

   Regarding the relationship between the scrolls and the terms
"biblical" and "canonical," early discussions tended to take for granted
that the DSS authors privileged the traditional canonical "biblical" texts
over other writings. The traditional biblical "canon" is the collection of
authoritative texts that includes certain books and excludes others.  When
discussing canonical biblical literature, one needs to specify whether
they are referring to the classical Jewish canon (= the Protestant "Old
Testament") or the classical Christian canon (Roman Catholic and Eastern
Orthodox) which includes the Apocrypha.  Even the term canon has some
flexibility with regard to where it was used and by whom.

   In the 1950s, biblical and canonical meant that you were dealing with a
specific list of books that had long been considered authoritative.  When
Qumran was discovered it challenged old assumptions about the canon.
Literature was found at Qumran that did not become canonized (as far as we
know) but clearly was held to be authoritative in some special sense.
Interestingly, around 200 ce the Christian Latin author Tertullian
considered Enoch "scriptural." Enoch was not included in any mainstream
biblical canon but was considered biblical by someone in 200 ce and was
widely copied in the DSS materials. Similarly, in the New Testament, in
the book of Jude, there is a quotation about Michael disputing with the
devil about the body of Moses. While the book of Jude is canonical for
traditional Christianity, the quote is not found in the Christian or
Jewish scriptures.

   The book of Enoch is an example of "pseudepigrapha."  These are
(largely Jewish) writings that did not become part of the traditional
Hebrew-Aramaic or Greek Jewish bibles. They are written in the name of and
from the perspective of someone who couldn't have been the author. Enoch
was in one of the early generations between Adam and Noah.  There were
legends about Enoch, including the biblical claim that he didn't die.  He
was an ancient figure that supposedly invented writing, science,
geography, and communicated with God.  He was a key figure in ancient
literature associated with Jewish and Christian tradition.  Did Enoch
actually write anything?  Some have said yes.  But, modern scholarship
says that Enoch is "pseudepigraphical" because Enoch could not have
written it. Other works attributed to people such as Adam/Eve, Moses,
Isaiah, and Jeremiah are similarly problematic. The traditional assumption
is that anything not in the canon is suspect; the canon = truth.  There
are serious historical flaws in this approach.  We are taking late
formulations of canonical judgements and reading backwards in time. In
reality, the historical processes leading to the traditional collections
of canonical scriptures must have been quite complex. The DSS provide us
with a new glimpse of one stage in those developments.  The use of the
term "parabiblical" is a reminder that canon terminology, with all of its
traditional assumptions, may be quite misleading in the study of the DSS.
  
   A question was raised concerning stories about ancient figures.  Why
were they circulated?  And, in these stories, the "bad" aspects of the
figure often were not mentioned, leaving only the good side.  We are
assuming, though, that people back then were critical the way that we are
now.  That may not be the case.  There is a danger in projecting our
insights back into antiquity. Not everyone had access to information the
way we do. Then, there was often only oral transmission.  The writer may
have only known the good side about the ancient figure and therefore did
not consciously remove the bad parts.  We take traditions about figures
and compare them to the text.  We make judgements that the author knew all
and then omitted, when he may not have known all.  * The danger is in
assuming that we are dealing with people that had a firm concept of
biblical, canonical material.

   The Greek Orthodox canon has several differences from Roman Catholic. 
It contains Maccabees 3 and 4 among the "Apocrypha."  It also contains a
Psalm 151, when other traditional collections only have 150.  This psalm
was found in Hebrew among the DSS.  Were there several collections of
psalms?  When did the collection become fixed?  Two psalms that are
numbered separately in Hebrew (9-10) are found together, as a single Psalm
(9), in Greek and Latin, and this messes up the numbering until Psalm 147
(Hebrew, = 146-147 in Greek/Latin), where the situation is reversed. Some
other books have major differences. Jeremiah is a collection of oracles
that the prophet proclaimed, and some narratives.  In Greek form, the book
is 1/7 or so shorter and the order is different.  This shows that even
within the canon there are textual differences.  Outside canonical
literature, as in the Apocrypha, these differences are even more complex.

   The question was raised as to why Job would be included in the canon
and not with other pseudepigraphical works?  Doesn't it seem to fit better
with the other literature?  First, we are now trained not to accept things
at face value.  Second, we have knowledge of literature that gives legends
about Job and how they relate.  Third, we look at the content, which deals
with God and the devil.  In sum, we are looking at things differently than
someone back then.  These things are probably not what motivated ancient
people. They were motivated by what was accepted and had authority within
the community, and often by what had explanatory power (e.g. why do the
righteous suffer? what is the source of evil?). Aetiology/Etiology is a
Greek word which means the study of causes and origins.  If we had
information about the origins of the writing of Job and when it was
accepted then we could understand better why it was accepted.  Back then,
writings were not judged through the same sorts of critical processes that
we tend to employ. People took what they had and they passed it along. 
  
   A question about the purpose of including Job.  Maybe, so that 
people could question their faith within the confines of religion.  
But, we don't now if they shared the same assumptions.

   With regard to the collection of poems in Job, one scholarly approach
is to say that the old poems were put together with a later narrative. 
But how and why were the old poems passed along?  Some were probably oral
and perhaps some were written.  We don't know exactly why certain poems
were passed along and others not. 

   A qustion about why, when dealing with similar books (like Proverbs and
Ben-Sira), one is excluded from the canon and the other not.  For example,
why was Chronicles chosen and not Maccabees?  Maybe it involves who was
sympathetic to the Maccabee victory and who wasn't.  Some people were not
happy that the traditional priesthood was replaced by the Maccabees and
maybe those people had more influence as to what books would be considered
authoritative or scriptural.  The truth is that we don't know exactly what
people thought and what they were motivated by. We do a lot of guessing! 

   Why is the Psalm book constructed as it is?  There are traditions about
David as a shepherd lad on the hills, composing poems.  How do you get
from the specific items to the framework that the materials get put into? 
It needs a title, author, situation, who said what.  The community does
this and put things in a setting.  This kind of process is going on with
biblical materials in antiquity. 

   Chronicles and Samuel/Kings.  These books have a lot in parallel.  They
have the same stories, sometimes told in radically different ways.  When
David took the census, in one version God told David to do it (1 Sam
24.1), and in the other Satan influenced David to do it (1 Chron 21.1). 
The census is seen unfavorably in both accounts, but the reasons are not
entirely clear. A census is useful for taxes so maybe that is a factor. 
This shows that in the Bible itself, a story can be described so
differently.  Not everything is as smooth as one would think with
canonical materials.

   Some books are mentioned in the bible, but not preserved in antiquity,
like "the Book of Yashar."  We don't have copies of it.  We assume that if
a book is not in the bible, then it is suspect, even though Enoch and
Yashar would seem to be older than the biblical materials that mention
them!  This terminology carries pejorative judgements because when you
hear something is not in the canon it immediately beomes suspect.  It may
be possible to use this vocabulary but take away the pejorative
judgements.  "Parabiblical" moves away from the canonical/biblical
terminlogy.  But "parabiblical" and "pseudepigrapha" still do not make the
ground completely level for materials. 

   Pre-DSS, we had virtually no Hebrew or Aramaic copies of ancient Jewish
literature of any sort.  Non-biblical materials were preserved in
Christian circles in translations; e.g. Enoch was translated from the
original semitic form into Greek and then into Ethiopic where it survived.
Materials that were not preserved in Hebrew or Aramaic were often pushed
aside from the canon.  The Wisdom of Ben-Sira was known in Hebrew for a
long time.  It is mentioned by Saadya and is at the Cairo Geniza and
Masada.  So, it can't be written off as something adopted by the
Christians and therefore no longer available in semitic.  Here, the Rabbis
knew about the book so the reasoning that it is not in the correct
language (like Enoch probably wasn't by then) can't be used. Some
Rabbis said that Ben-Sira was valuable for instruction but it was not
biblical.  They made a distinction between the two.  3 Enoch is another
example of a book in Hebrew but not in the canon.  1 Enoch had legends
that were discussed earlier.  It survived in Ethiopic.  2 Enoch also has
similar materials, and survives in old Church Slavonic.  3 Enoch is a
Hebrew work preserved in Rabbinic circles.  It concerned mysticism and
ascending to the heavens. Enoch is seen as a mediatoral figure between
humans and God.  Also, Tobit and Judith were available in Semitic. 
Fragments of Tobit came up in the DSS in Aramaic and Hebrew.  These texts
were already going through development in semitic forms. There were
different textual forms in DSS times.

   Not all variants are attributable to translation from semitic to Church
languages.  The differences were already there in the texts being
translated.  The texts themselves saw different groups collecting
information in various ways (like Chronicles and Samuel/Kings).  There is
a relationship to the problem of sources -- what was available and how was
it used?  Also, we don't know the reasons for some texts not getting
approval.  The Rabbis or Christian authors create answers for why some are
not approved.  They are probably rationalizations.  They say that certain
works were earlier, in the right language, accepted by the right people. 
But according to modern scholarship this fails, because, for example,
Daniel and Psalms are late works from the Greek period but are included. 
 
   Onkelos produced a translation of the Bible into Aramaic (a targum) for
Babylonian Jewry that came out around the time of the Talmud.  He relied
on earlier translations, maybe some from Palestine.  In places, Onkelos
probably translated a variant semitic text.  It had been suspected that
Greek translators somehow misread the claim that 70 people entered Egypt
in the household of Jacob when they wrote 75 instead (Gen 46.27). The DSS,
however, also have a Hebrew text with 75.  This shows that Greek
translators didn't cause the problem.  There was already variety way, way
back in Hebrew texts themselves.  Greek translators translated a Hebrew
text that had the number 75.  In Sirach, there are similar variations in
the preserved Greek and Latin texts. The Cairo Geniza fragments of that
book have textual differences in the Hebrew. They updated the material to
reflect contemporary uses of language, like what happens today with
English translations of the Bible.

   It may be true that Masoretes worked with the same biblical text as the
first century texts but it also may be false. This can also vary from book
to book. 

   P. 219 in Garcia-Martinez.  Paraphrase of Pentateuch assumes that the
passage is dependent on the Pentateuch.  It is possible that the reverse
is true.  The passage is like Deut 18.  Parabiblical is material that is
like what is in the bible.  It is not necessarily reworked.  That the DSS
people were probably not so involved with "canonization" issues yet is
apparent from their wide variety of texts, including variant biblical
texts.

//end//