rofe - historical significance of secondary

THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SECONDARY READINGS

Alexander Rofe

Textual criticism is a historical discipline. This applies in the first place to our endeavors at restoring primary readings. Here we are led by arguments drawn from the realm of history, be it political, geographical, linguistic, literary or religious. All these facets deter-mine our conscious or unconscious decisions as to which readings are primary and which should be considered secondary.

However, there is an additional aspect to the historical character of textual criticism: it lies in the contribution the discipline can make to historical knowledge. This is mainly obtained by the study of textual transmission. Especially in the case of religious texts, the way they were handled while being copied sheds light on the circumstances of the transmission. In other words, the opinions of the copyists, their intellectual milieu, affected their work and its end-product, the text. This amounts to saying that changes introduced by the scribes into the manuscripts i.e. secondary readings, sometimes have considerable historical significance. The proposition will be discussed at the hand of several examples.

We start with the issue of sectarian corrections in Biblical manuscripts, a well known subject, since it was already explored by Abraham Geiger in the middle of the nineteenth century. Among other things, Geiger drew attention to the textual divergence between the MT and LXX in Prov 14:32.1 The MT submits:

The wicked man is felled by his own evil; the righteous man finds shelter in his death (ini~:;i).

The LXX reads instead of ini~:;i: Tlj E-avToD oaLOTTJTL, which probably reflects a Vorlage reading i~tJ:;i. The whole verse in the LXX, when retroverted into Hebrew, would translate:

I A. Geiger, Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der Bibel in Ihrer Abhaengigkeit van der Innern Entwicklung des Judentums (2nd ed., Frankfurt am Main: Madda, 1928) 175.

Lagus74Sticky NoteRof, A., The Historical Significance of Secondary Readings, in: C.A. Evans and S. Talmon (eds.), The Quest for Context and Meaning: Studies in Biblical Intertextuality in Honor of James A. Sanders (Biblical interpretation Series 28; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 393-402.

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The wicked man is felled by his own evil; the righteous man finds shelter in his own integrity.

Thus construed the verse conveys a fine antithetical parallelism, the hallmark, in this case, of a superior reading. Geiger argues that the reading of MT is not due to graphical metathesis (i~n:::i - im~:::i), but a deliberate correction: im~:::i introduced the concept of retribution in the afterlife into the proverb. The text has been manipulated out of a theological concern which can be defined as Pharisaic or Proto-Pharisaic, since the Pharisees, among the religious movements of the Second Commonwealth, were those who upheld the belief in afterlife and retribution therein.

An opposite case, of a Sadducean manipulation of a Biblical text, is extant in the LXX to 1 Samuel. If I am not mistaken, I had the privi-lege of first recognizing it, some years ago, while reading with my students the first chapters of the Book of Samuel. I refer to the pas-sage in 1 Sam 7:6. The MT reads:

They assembled at Mizpah, drew water and poured it out before the Lord; they fasted on that day and confessed their sins to the Lord.

"Before the Lord" is said about a ritual act: the water is presented to Him, presumably upon the altar. The Greek closely follows the Hebrew text, but having translated the words "and poured it out before the Lord," it adds three words, ETTL TT)v yflv, which equal one word in Hebrew, i1l~ ("onto the earth"). This is self-contradictory. One does not pour water "before the Lord" onto the earth; a proper dedication requires pouring it on the altar. Obviously, the LXX at this point runs a secondary text. Its origin will become evident once we recall the divergences between Pharisees and Sadducees concern-ing the libation of water during the festival of Sukkot. The Pharisees prescribed a proper oblation on the altar while the Sadducees denied its legitimacy, throwing, whenever they could, the water down to the floor. This explains the inconsistency present in the LXX. The words "onto the earth" were inserted here by a Sadducean scribe bent on denying the Pharisees any support from Scripture for their custom of water-libation on the altar during the fall festival. The addition was plausibly penned in Hebrew by a Palestinian scribe familiar with the details of worship at the temple of Jerusalem. A Greek translator or copyist would scarcely be interested in what were for him ritual

THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SECONDARY READINGS 395

minutiae.2 The historical implications of this secondary reading cannot be

exaggerated. In the first place, we have gained evidence to the existence of a class of Sadducean scribes who were involved in the task of copying the sacred books. One wonders if it is not against the activity of such people that their opponents, the Pharisees, came forth with the ruling that "the sacred books defile hands", thus thwarting the everyday handling of these books by the priestly-Sadducean circles.3

No less significant are the implications of this LXX reading for the history of the Jewish sects. Since the Greek translation of the Book of Samuel was made at about the end of the third century BCE, and its Vorlage certainly contained the 'Sadducean' correction, here is a piece of evidence, small but revealing, that in the third century, well before the crisis of Antiochus IV, the divergences that in time would come to characterize the Sadducean-Pharisaic polemics, already existed in Jerusalem. The schism that featured Hasmonean times was already latent in the early Hellenistic period.

Essenians too contributed their share to the correction of Biblical manuscripts. About forty years ago Isac Leo Seeligmann dedicated a detailed study to Isa 53: 11 where the LXX rendering 8Et~m aim~ cp63s is supported by two Qumranic Biblical manuscripts, lQisaa and lQisab, which read iiK i1Ki~ instead of the MT il~T. Seeligmann demonstrated the superiority of MT in this passage and argued that the concept of "light" as parallel to "knowledge" (auvECJ'LS, n.p~), belonged to the stock of ideas of the Qumran people and found its way to circles in Alexandrian Jewry.4 The addition of "light" was meant to insist on the divine source of knowledge, as against human

2 A. Rofe, "The Onset of Sects in Postexilic Judaism: Neglected evidence from the Septuagint, Trito-Isaiah, Ben Sira and Malachi," in J. Neusner et al. (eds.), The Social World of Formative Christianity and Judaism (Essays in Tribute to H. C. Kee; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988) 39-49. References in Rabbinical literature are quoted there.

3 E. Rivkin, "Defining the Pharisees: the Tannaitic Sources," HUCA 40-41 (1969-70) 205-249, on p. 233: "The so/rim-Pharisees were thus, it seems, using the technicalities of the laws of ritual purity to discourage priestly handling of Holy Scriptures .... "

4 I. L. Seeligmann, "8E'l~m aim'.i) c/>GiS' ," Tarbiz 27 (1957-58) 127-41 = idem, Studies in Biblical Literature (ed. A. Hurvitz et al., 2nd ed., Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996) 411-26 (Hebrew).

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wisdom, gained by experience or through the teaching of elders. The fact that a "Qumranic" correction entered a manuscript that

reached Alexandria and influenced, perhaps even served as, the Vorlage of the LXX to Isaiah proves, if I am right, that the circles peripheric to the Qumran Y a}Jad were rather wide. This conclusion is confirmed by the wide circulation enjoyed by books kindred to the Qumranic religion, such as Jubilees and Enoch. As against them, there existed an esoteric Qumranic literature, comprising the serakim, the hodayot, the pesarim, the Damascus Document, the Temple Scroll which did not circulate outside the Essenian denomi-nation and therefore were not afterwards translated into Greek.5

The number of "sectarian" corrections in the textual witnesses of the Hebrew Bible is limited. I doubt if one can add many more to those recorded here. 6 This situation changes, of course, if one counts the Biblical lemmata in the pefarim.1 But we may rightly question whether these were exact quotations from extant manuscripts or reworded ones, done ad hoe for the sake of the peser.s All in all, the evidence yields that by the time of the emergence of the three Jewish sects, in the mid-second century BCE, copyists of biblical manuscripts usually abstained from modifying the texts according to their creeds. Let us recall in this context the early date suggested above for the Proto-Sadducean addition in LXX 1 Sam 7:6. The other "sectarian" modifications cannot be dated, though it is probable that they too

5 The Damascus Document seems to be an exception to this group, since it first surfaced in the Cairo Geniza. A plausible explanation is that the Geniza manuscripts were copied from scrolls discovered in a cave by Qumran in the eighth century CE. Cf. J. T. Milik, Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judaea (SBT 28; London: SCM, 1959) 19 n. 2. Here perhaps belongs the note of al-Qirqisani concerning the sect whose writings were discovered in a cave; cf. L. Nemoy, "Al Qirqisani's Account of the Jewish Sects and Christianity," HUCA 7 (1930) 317-97, esp. 326-27, 363-64; B. Chiesa and W. Lockwood, Ya'qub al-Qirqisani on Jewish Sects and Christianity (Judentum und Umwelt 10; Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1984) 102, 134-35.

6 Is Isa 9: 14, attested by all textual witnesses, a polemical actualization inserted by a sectarian scribe? Cf. M. Goshen-Gottstein, "Hebrew Syntax and the History of Bible Text," Textus 8 (1973) 100-106;

7 See S. Talmon, "Yorn Hakkippurim in the Habakkuk Scroll," Bib 32 ( 195 l) 549-63, esp. 554.

8 See, however, C. Rabin, "Notes on the Habakkuk Scroll and the Zadokite Documents," VT 5 (1955) 148-62. On p. 152 Rabin pointed out that the sectarian reading hon in Hab 2:5 also appears paraphrased in CD 8:7.


preceded the formation of the sects themselves. Thus it appears that in Hasmonean times a complex situation

obtained: on the one hand, a variety of text-types were in use side by side, as witnessed by the Qumran libraries; on the other hand, respect for the biblical text (as an ideal) and attention in the process of copying it were already becoming the rule in the learned circles of the Jewish people. This may be considered as a first stage in the stabilization of the text.9

The situation just described does not apply to the Samaritan schism. It is well known that their copies of the Pentateuch contain a series of expansions asserting the sanctity of Mount Gerizim. I refer to the insertion of the words o:HZJ Sm in Deut 11: 30 and especially to the additional commandment, appended to the Ten Command-ments in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, enjoining the erection of an altar on that mountain. This precept has been forged with elements from Deut 11:29-30 and 27:2-7 where the Samaritan Pentateuch ( = SP) reads Gerizim instead of Ebal extant in the MT. As a by-product of the addition of this new Tenth Commandment, all passages in Deuteronomy that mention the Lord's future choosing of a place "to set His name there" have been turned by the SP from imperfect (in:J') to perfect (in::i).10

In my view, all these deviations of SP from the MT represent secondary Samaritan revisions. This applies to Deut 27:4 as well where the Vetus Latina corroborates SP by reading Garzin as against Ebal of the MT .11 Suffice it to say that Mount Gerizim never appears as a holy site in the patriarchal legends nor in the historical books of the Bible. The sacred place of Elon Moreh (Gen 12:6-7) was near Shechem (Tel Balla.tab), situated on the lowest slopes of the opposite mountain, Ebal. And the temenos containing the grave of Joseph (Josh 24:32) and the pillar erected by Jacob (Gen 33: 19-20)12 was in

9 S. Talmon, "The Old Testament Text," in P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. l (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) 159-99, esp. 165-66.

10 Cf. J. A. Montgomery, The Samaritans - The Earliest Jewish Sect: Their History, Theology and Literature (Philadelphia, Winston, 1907) 234-39.

11 Cf. E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 95 n. 67. In his opinion, l:l'l'1l i;i::i in SP Deut 27:4 reflects the original reading.

12 Cf. J. Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis (2nd ed., ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1930) 416.

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front of the city (Gen 33: 18) i.e. on its outskirts, either on the slopes of Mount Ebal or down in the valley. Thus it appears that the sanctuary on Mount Gerizim was a parvenu among the holy places in the area of Shechem, a fact which explains why the Samaritan com-munity felt the need of inserting the election of Mount Gerizim into the holy of holies, the Ten Commandments. Seen in this context, the composition of this literary-textual layer appears as a legitimization of Gerizim against competing Samarian sites, rather than a defiance against the supremacy of Jerusalem.

It is difficult to tie the composition of the "Gerizim-layer" in the SP to any specific episode. A superb Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim, founded in the times of Antiochus III the Great (ea. 200 BCE), has been unearthed at the site.13 But excavating beneath that stratum, the archeologist Dr. Yitzhak Magen has recently reached the remains of a former temple, dating to the late fifth or early fourth century BCE.14 It is possible, indeed, that building activities coincided with scribal ones, but archeology does not offer a clue to a more specific identification. The Persian era as the time of composition of the SP "Gerizim-layer" is to be excluded, since at that time the Torah was still in the process of its formation. A low date in Hasmonean times is not very plausible, if one infers from the analogy of the paucity of sectarian corrections as discussed above. Of course, one might argue that the state of affairs in Jerusalem did not apply to Shechem while Jewish scribes preceded their Samaritan colleagues in developing a conservative attitude towards text transmission. All in all, a date at the end of the third century BCE, shortly preceding the building of the large sanctuary under Antiochus III, seems the most plausible. This would, up to a point, also take into account the paleographical character of the script in the Samaritan Pentateuch.15

A similar type of correction was introduced into biblical manu-scripts by another dissident group. I refer to the mention of a city "in the Land of Egypt speaking the language of Canaan and taking

1 3 Y. Magen, "Mount Gerizim and the Samaritans," in F. Manns and E. Alliata (eds.), Early Christianity in Context. Monuments and Documents (Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Collectio Maior; Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1993) 91-148, esp. 104. Cf. also U. Rappaport, "The Samaritans in the Hellenistic Period," Zion 55 ( 1989-90) 373-96 (Hebrew).

14 Oral communication by Dr. Y. Magen. I hereby thank him for his kindness. 15 See J. D. Purvis, The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Origin of the Samaritan

Sect (HSM 2; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968).


oath by the name of the Lord" in Isa 19: 18. For the name of that city we have a number of variants:

01i1i1 1'll MT oin;i 1'll MTMSS I Qisaa LXXS (rr6A.Ls acrE8 i]A.(ou) et al. p1:!>i1 1'll LXX (rr6A.Ls-acrE8EK)

Plausibly, the primary text ran O"JC,l;:T 1'.V, hinting at the Egyptian city Heliopolis which was greatly populated by Jews. No sanctuary is mentioned in the verse in connection with the city. Later on, when a sanctuary was established in Leontopolis by the fugitive high-priest Onias III or his son Onias IV, the mention of the city in this verse was adapted to the name of Onias' family, Sadoq: Pl~V 1'.V, city of justice. Jerusalemite circles responded with a derogatory appellative: O"'.)();:T 1'.V, city of destruction.16 In this case we have an exceptional instance of theological modifications introduced into the Biblical text as late as the second century BCE.

The study of secondary readings is instructive for the history of Jewish aggadah, especially concerning its very beginnings. Most significant in this context is the Qumran scroll of Samuel known as 4QSama which still awaits publication. This contains a text that at times departs from all other textual witnesses, such as the MT and the LXX. One such deviation is a large plus which obtains right in the middle of I Sam 10:27. The passage runs in English rendition: (completions are not marked here):I7

And Nahash king of the Ammonites sorely oppressed the Gadites and the Reubenites and gouged out all their right eyes and struck terror and dread in Israel. There was not left one among the Israelites in Transjordan whose right eye was not gouged out by Nahash king of the Ammonites; only seven thousand men fled from the Ammonites and entered Jabesh Gilead. About a month later ...

I still adhere to my opinion, expressed about a decade ago, that the extra-sentences of 4QSama in this passage, also known to Josephus,

16 In another way, I. L. Seeligmann, The Septuagint Version of Isaiah: A Discussion of its Problems (Leiden: Brill, 1948) 68. Concerning the identity of the founder of the temple at Leontopolis, see his excursus: "Onias III and the Onias Temple in Heliopolis," 91-94.

I 7 F. M. Cross, "The Ammonite Oppression of the Tribes of Gad and Reuben: Missing Verses from 1 Samuel 11 Found in 4QSamueJa," in H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld (eds.), HistOI)', Historiography and Interpretation (Jerusalem: Magnes 1983) 148-58.

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are a secondary midrash aggadah.IB Indeed the additional story bears an evident hallmark of midrash: one trait of a biblical hero is exaggerated to the point of becoming his permanent property. Here Nahash, the Ammonite king, is transformed into an inveterate eye-gouger. Thus, midrash has entered into this biblical manuscript as a kind of supplement to one of its stories.19

I believe we can even reckon the approximate date of the composi-tion of this midrash. At the end of the Book of Samuel, in the story of the consecration of the altar on Araunah' s threshing floor (2 Samuel 24), 4QSama again deviates from the MT. 4QSama runs a text similar to 1 Chronicles 21, a secondary text vis-a-vis the MT of 2 Samuel 24, since it solves the queries contained in that narrative one by one.20 A Samuel text similar to the one in 4QSama was before the Chronicler, which amounts to saying that it took shape before the composition of the book of Chronicles in the mid-fourth century BCE. In other words, stories such as the Nahash-midrash were composed in the Persian period. The year 350 BCE is to be consid-ered as a date ante quern for the beginnings of the Jewish midrash.

On our trail backwards to uncover earlier historical information by the evidence of secondary readings, we now come to the question of the double text of Jeremiah. There is a longer text, mainly represented by the MT, and a shorter one, which presumably served as Vorlage to the LXX of Jeremiah, and has been very partially retrieved in the manuscript 4QJerb.21 I believe that the relation between these two should not be explained on the basis of the routine ruling brevior lectio potior est; rather both texts must be looked into in detail, in order to find out the possible reasons for their differences.

18 Cf. A. Rofe, "The Acts of Nahash according to 4QSama," !El 32 ( 1982) 129-33.

19 For further arguments, cf. J. A. Sanders, "Hermeneutics of Text Criti-cism," Textus 18 (1995) 1-26, esp. 22-26.

20 For further details I refer the reader to my study: "4QSama in the Light of Historico-Literary Criticism: The Case of 2 Sam 24 and I Chr 21," in A. Vivian (ed.), Biblische und Judaistische Studien (Festschrift fiir P. Sacchi; Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1990) 100-119.

21 J. G. Janzen, Studies in the Text of Jeremiah (HSM 6; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973). E. Tov ("Three Fragments of Jeremiah from Qumran Cave 4," RevQ l 5 [ 1992] 531-42) has recently introduced a distinction between three separate scrolls, 4QJerb,d,e.

THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SECONDARY READINGS 40 I

A case in point is the divine epithet ni~:t~.22 In the MT of Jeremiah it appears eighty-two times; in the LXX it is represented sixteen times only, most of them in two well defined collections: the book of resto-ration (Jeremiah 30-33; LXX 37-40) and the prophecies against the nations (~haps. 25; 46-51; LXX 25-32). How can this phenomenon be explained?

In my opinion, it should be considered in conjunction with the absence of the epithet ni~:t~ from the books Genesis-Judges and Ezekiel and the traces of its being erased from several passages in Samuel and Kings: certain editors of biblical books endeavored to obliterate this appellation of the Lord from the sacred books. Apparently, they took offense to the "Hosts" (ni~:t~), because they sensed in it a recognition of the "Host of Heaven." Actually, polemics against the worship of astral deities is clearly preserved in Hos 13:4 according to the LXX and one Qumran manuscript (4QXIIc):23

But I am the Lord your god, who establishes the heaven and creates the earth, whose hands have created all the host of heaven; but I did not show them to you that you would go after them ...

The reading is undoubtedly secondary. However, it joins the editorial operations mentioned above in documenting an opposition to astral worship at a certain phase of the formation of the biblical canon. Thus we reach the conclusion that astral religion, far from being limited to the times of the Assyrian supremacy (2 Kgs 21:3-5; 23:5, 11), still troubled observant Jews in the late Persian days. The interpolation in Hos 13:4, together with the editorial deletions from biblical books, particularly from Jeremiah, have led us to this result.

The shorter, sometimes secondary, text of Jeremiah presents, by its very omissions, some substantial information even about the sixth r.entury BCE, i.e. late Babylonian and early Persian era. LXX Jere-miah 52 lacks all three mentions of the exile of Zedekiah's people contained in the MT (vv. 15, 27b, 28-30). How is this difference to be construed? As far as I can see, the reports about exiles at the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE were deleted from Jeremiah 52 in order to deny Zedekiah' s people any survival: they were all and sundry wiped

22 I summarize here the arguments presented in "The name YHWH SEBA'OT and the Shorter Recension of Jeremiah," in Prophetie und geschichtliche Wirklichkeit im alten lsrael (Festschrift fiir S. Herrmann; Stuttgart: Kohl hammer, 1991) 307-15.

23 4QXUC frag. 8 has recently been published; cf. R. Fuller, "A Critical Note on Hosea 12:10 and 13:4," RB 98 (1991) 343-57.

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out.24 The same lot befell the vessels of the temple that had remained after the first despoilment with Jehoiachin's exile. According to the MT Jer 27:19-22 they would one day be restored from Babylon; according to the LXX in this passage (34:19-22), they were never to be returned! 25 These allegations accord with those Deuteronomistic speeches announcing salvation to the exiles of the first deportation as against annihilation to the remainder (Jer 24:1-10; 29:10-14, 16-20). These speeches, and later the deletions in LXX Jeremiah 27 and 52, reflect the mutual aversion of two Jewish factions in the exilic and early postexilic periods,26 an antagonism that can hardly be dated later than the fourth generation after the fall of Jerusalem.

Thus, if I see it right, the shorter text of Jeremiah submits impor-tant data for the history of Israel in a period for which the documen-tation at our disposal is extremely scanty.

The corollary of the present discussion is that in the study of the texts of sacred literature secondary readings frequently are more revealing than primary ones, since secondary readings can be used as a source for the history of the community that preserved the holy writings.

One additional conclusion is in order as to the principal aim of biblical text-criticism. It is not the recovery of a presumed original text,27 but rather the pursuit, step by step, of the history of the text. The task is to follow, as far as possible, the various phases of the transmission of the texts, in order to extract from them all possible information concerning the religious community which preserved and transmitted the sacred books.

24 See A. Rote, "Not Exile but Annihilation for Zedekiah's People: The Pur-port of Jeremiah 52 in the Septuagint," in L. Greenspoon and 0. Munnich (eds.), VIII Congress of the Intemational Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies: Paris I 992 (SB LS CS 41; Atlanta: Scholars, 1995) 165-70, where the argument is made in detail.

25 This point was brought to my attention by Prof. Christopher Seitz, Yale University, at my lecture there in April 1994.

26 These conclusions also affect the date of Ezek 11: 14-21. In another way, M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20 (AB 22; Garden City: Doubleday, 1983) 203-205.

27 See Tov, Textual Criticism, 288, where he writes: " ... textual criticism aims at the 'original' form of the biblical books as defined by scholars." However, further on he admits: "it is now possible to formulate the aims of the textual criticism of the Bible. The study of biblical text involves an investigation of its development, its copying and transmission and of the processes which created readings and texts over the centuries" (pp. 289-90).