The 'Broken' Hebrew Script

According to the Mishnah (Yadayim 4.5):

תרגום שבעזרא ואבדניאל, מטמא את הידים. תרגום שכתבו עברית, ועברית שכתבו תרגום, וכתב עברי־־אינו מטמא את הידים. לעולם אינו מטמא עד שיכתבנו אשורית, על העור, ובדיו.

 In Danby's translation (p. 784): 

The [Aramaic] version that is in Ezra and Daniel renders the hands unclean. If an [Aramaic] version [contained in the Scriptures] was written in Hebrew, or if [Scripture that is in] Hebrew was written in an [Aramaic] version, or in Hebrew script, it does not render the hands unclean. [The Holy Scriptures] render the hands unclean only if they are written in the Assyrian character, on leather, and in ink. 

There are several weird features of this passage that I wont address here (e.g., the link between defiling the hands and sanctity, on which see the next mishnah). I am interested in one of the surprising features of this rabbinic declaration, that the appropriate script for writing scripture is not the paleo-Hebrew script but rather the Aramaic square script. Indeed, say the Rabbis, scripture written in Hebrew script does not defile the hands.

I've been reading through William Schniedewind's book A Social History of Hebrew, and this is how he explains this odd decision:

Writing the Scriptures in Aramaic script makes the texts sacred, whereas writing in Paleo-Hebrew, according to the Pharisaic tradition, renders the Scriptures profane! This turns on its head the principle that we see, for example, in the use of Paleo-Hebrew from Qumran, where the divine name is frequently written in Paleo-Hebrew instead of regular Aramaic script in order to demonstrate the sacredness of the divine name. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, writing in Paleo-Hebrew was even more sacred than Aramaic script. Indeed, it was precisely this special meaning given to the Paleo-Hebrew script by groups like the Samaritans and the Essenes that must have encouraged the Pharisaic tradition (reflected in the Mishnah) to reject the special nature of the Paleo-Hebrew script. (p. 172)

I wrote something very similar in my book (pp. 121-22) where I also pointed out that the Talmud (b. San. 22a) explicitly links the 'broken' (רועץ) script to the Samaritans.

I wonder, though, whether there's something else going on. Reading through Schniedewind's book, I made a connection that had escaped me before. He mentions on the previous page (p. 171):

The ideological importance of the Hebrew script is most evident in the Hasmonean (and later in the Bar Kokhba period, and even in the contemporary Israeli) adoption of the Paleo-Hebrew script on their coins. The relative rarity of the Hebrew script also made it a much more powerful religious and political symbol. 

Again, I also mentioned the coins in my book on pp. 111-12, p. 115, and p. 121, where I quote Ya'akov Meshorer (p. 48):

The rulers who minted the coins sought to make them especially prestigious by means of symbols of Jewish significance and inscriptions written in letters from the glorious days of the kingdom of Judah in the First Temple period. 

You can also see a modern Israeli shekel at Wikipedia and observe the paleo-Hebrew word 'Yehud' on the obverse. More relevant, here's a shekel minted in Jerusalem during the First Revolt, and here's one minted during the Second Revolt.

Now, Rabbi Akiva supported Bar Kosiba (Bar Kokhba) during the Second Revolt, which was also the last of the Jewish revolts against Rome. Following the Second Revolt, violent resistance seems to have been discouraged among the Rabbis. During the Second Revolt, the paleo-Hebrew script itself served as a symbol of that violent resistance, hearkening back to the glory days of political independence.

So, I wonder, might there be a link between paleo-Hebrew script as a symbol of political revolt and the rejection of this very script by the pro-peace Rabbis who codified the Mishnah? I'm sure that is simplistic on many levels, but still, might there be a connection? After all, about 135 CE the most famous rabbinic authority of all time threw his support behind a revolt that used paleo-Hebrew as a political symbol, and seventy years later the major rabbinic authority declared the paleo-Hebrew script unsuitable for scripture.

In that case, the Talmudic linking of the 'broken' script with the Samaritans could be interpreted as a late justification for the use of the Aramaic script.

This may not be a new suggestion, I don't know. I haven't yet gotten my hands on Willem Smelik's new book, which I'm sure will educate me on some of these matters.

A Temple Collection? (part 3)

I'm finally back at this subject, which has, I admit, ended up being more complicated than I anticipated (what else is new?). These posts are my attempt to get a handle on the evidence and arguments for a temple collection of scripture, especially as that relates to the development of the biblical canon. The first post surveyed some of the ancient testimonia for such a collection, and the second post presented the argument put forward by Emanuel Tov in regard to the textual data arising from the Judean Desert scrolls.

I did promise some evaluation of Tov's arguments for our present purposes (biblical canon), so here goes.

First of all, Tov's views are shared by other scholars. For example, David Carr:

The proto-Masoretic texts that start to appear in the late Hasmonean period probably linked back to reference exemplars stored there [= the Jerusalem temple]. (Formation, p. 163)

Armin Lange also believes that a standard text was created in the second half of the first century BCE by priests in the Jerusalem temple ("They Confirmed the Reading," p. 79). Lange (Flores Florentino): accepts much of Tov's presentation, but adds: (1) diversity of biblical quotations (see now his book and the review of same at JHS); (2) Greek recensions; (3) Greek textual scholarship (but precisely this third argument was refuted in 1978 by Bertil Albrektson, pp. 48-51, citing Lieberman before him). Lange thinks Jewish standardization began in Egypt (evidence: Alexandrian pagan scholarship; LXX mss earliest examples of Jewish standardization; Aristeas) and thence influenced Palestine after 63 BCE. Originally it was not aimed at MT exclusively--"The proto-Lucianic recension as well as the supralinear corrections of 5QDeut demonstrate that originally other texttypes were also favored as standard texts" (p. 126)--but eventually the MT was housed in the temple, perhaps by the late 1st cent. BCE.

But Tov's hypothesis is speculative, as he admits. This is how I summarized his position in my previous post. 

If the non-Qumran Judean Desert texts reflect exclusively MT and if those who used these scrolls can be reasonably considered to have recognized the authority of the Jerusalem temple and its leaders--and to have obtained their biblical texts in reliance on this Jerusalem leadership--and if rabbinic writings testify to the existence within the temple of a scroll of the Torah and possibly other biblical books used for corrections, then perhaps the manuscript evidence confirms these rabbinic statements and we should connect the non-Qumran textual uniformity to the temple.

Tov here says "This is a mere hypothesis" (p. 9) and he goes on in the same passage to admit that the rabbinic evidence really concerns only a Torah scroll in the temple, "but it stands to reason that other Scripture books were also found in the temple." There's the rub for our question (= canon): exactly which scripture books does it stand to reason were to be found in the temple?

So, it's a 'mere hypothesis'. On the other hand: 

The textual unity described above has to start somewhere and the assumption of master copies is therefore necessary. (same article, p. 8; a nearly identical sentence at TCHB p. 31)

So, the assumption of master copies is an assumption, but a necessary one. The location of these master copies in the temple is more of a guess, but a guess based on good sense and on the ancient testimonia that we surveyed in the first post.

That doesn't mean everyone has to like the guess. Eugene Ulrich, for instance:

Despite suggestions to the contrary, the future still awaits demonstration that the texts preserved in the medieval MT transmit the texts guarded by the priests in the Jerusalem temple as opposed to other popular or "vulgar" texts that were less well preserved by less well qualified people. Nor has a line of succession--from temple priests to Pharisees to rabbis--been convincingly shown. (here, p. 155)

In the footnote on the same page, he writes:

Moreover, to my knowledge, no one has demonstrated how we could know either the textual nature of the priests' manuscripts in the Jerusalem temple, or how the Pharisees/rabbis, usually considered a lay group, would have received them in contrast to the (probably priestly) LXX translators and the Qumran leaders who were presumably very strict priests. (p. 155 n. 18)

What does that leave us with?

First, Ulrich seems to accept the idea that the temple in Jerusalem housed some scrolls of scriptural books. The ancient statements affirming this point--and the comparative evidence from other cultures--put the matter beyond dispute to my mind. That is to say, I think it would be very hard to argue that the temple contained no scriptural scrolls, and I'm not sure why someone would want to deny it. The exact content of this temple library can certainly be disputed: besides the Pentateuch, which other scriptures were included? The entire Tanak? More than the Tanak? And which textual form were these scrolls? Just one form or multiple?

Second, Tov seems to have established that there were master copies of some scriptural books that led to the production of scrolls textually equivalent to the later MT. As he says, the idea of master copies is an assumption but a necessary one. While Ulrich does in another essay question to what extent the Masada scrolls actually reflect later MT, he must also admit in regard to his principal example (MasGen, a fragment with 8 complete and 3 broken words, containing 3 variants vis-a-vis the MT): "such small variants are to be expected even within the Masoretic group" (p. 456). Lange also says that MasGen cannot be classified, and he says the same about seven Bar Kokhba era mss (Handbuch, p. 24). Nevertheless, Lange basically agrees that all of these non-Qumran texts are protomasoretic and that they thus stand apart from the texts at Qumran (ibid.).

Granted the existence of master copies (though I'm not positive that Ulrich would grant this point), where would these master copies be housed? The Rabbis possessed MT-like scrolls, and their predecessors are usually thought to have been the Pharisees. Ulrich seems to accept this in the quotation above, so let's go with it. I guess it's possible that the Pharisees were the ones at Masada leaving behind the biblical scrolls, and at Wadi Murabba'at and elsewhere (especially if a wing of Pharisees really were into violent revolution, as Wright has argued here, pp. 185-86, and here, pp. 190-95).

But what about all those 'second-circle' texts (as Tov calls them) at Qumran? These 'second-circle' texts are copies of the proto-MT (I know Ulrich rolls his eyes when he reads that--because I'm sure he reads my blog!--sorry, it's a useful though anachronistic term) that are not quite as precise representations of the MT as are the non-Qumran Judean Desert scrolls, but they seem to have been copied from one of these latter 'inner-circle' texts. That is, they were not copied from the master scrolls themselves but from copies of the master scrolls. While the actual scrolls are earlier than the 'inner-circle' scrolls, they are typologically later. (See the summary of Tov's argument in my previous post.)

Does not the presence of the 'second-circle' texts at Qumran indicate that the master scrolls, or at least the text represented by them, must have been important, or, let's say, available, to groups beyond the Pharisees? What's more, I think the numbers in which they are represented at Qumran would indicate not just their availability but truly their importance. While Qumran undoubtedly exhibits textual pluriformity, it is equally undoubted that the textual form that became the MT was important there.

I don't know that the master scrolls were housed in the temple, but that is a pretty good guess. I'm basing this on the previous two points: (1) the 'necessary assumption' of master scrolls that provided the model for (a) the non-Qumran Judean Desert scrolls, (b) the biblical text adopted by the Rabbis and apparently earlier used by the Pharisees, and (c) many of the Qumran scriptural scrolls at a secondary level (second-circle texts); (2) the presence in the temple of some scriptural scrolls, at least the Pentateuch if not more. Moreover, the Rabbis thought that the temple Torah scroll was used for correcting other scrolls that were more-or-less proto-MT (since that is the only text form the Rabbis seem to attest), so we apparently have some ancient evidence (granted, it's later rabbinic testimony and so open to doubt) connecting the temple Torah scroll to the proto-MT. But, given the presence of proto-MT texts at Qumran and the apparent animosity of the Qumran group to the Pharisees, they probably weren't adopting this text from each other. It seems necessary to imagine that the text was disseminated from another authoritative source.

In light of these 'second-circle' texts at Qumran, I would also want to call into question Ulrich's statement quoted above that the Pharisees somehow ended up with these standard scrolls and the group at Qumran did not. Or, again, from Ulrich:

If any group had temple texts that they preserved and copied, the Qumran group would seem to be the most likely candidate. Their early members are widely believed to have been priests in the temple who separated themselves because they believed the temple had been defiled. (here, pp. 155-56)

It's true that scrolls of the inner-circle were not found at Qumran (except for 4QGen-b; Tov, TCHB, p. 31), but plenty of 'second-circle' texts were. I don't know why the 'inner-circle' is almost completely absent, but the presence of the 'second-circle' is still significant.

[By the way, Armin Lange has his own classification of the Qumran scrolls (Handbuch, 16-17): he counts 20 semimasoretische Handschriften and 7 protomasoretische Handschriften, along with the other text types: pre-SP (2 scrolls), scrolls equally near MT and SP (11), LXX Vorlage (4), independent (47), non-classifiable (83), and some which might not actually attest biblical books (35).]

What biblical books are represented by the 'inner-circle' and 'second-circle'?

'Inner-Circle'
(See my previous post, especially the 'update' at the bottom. The following list of biblical books represents the books attested by the non-Qumran Judean Desert scrolls as give in Tov's Revised Lists, pp. 126-29. )

• Genesis
• Exodus
• Leviticus
• Numbers
• Deuteronomy
• Joshua
• Judges
• Isaiah
• Jeremiah
• Ezekiel
• Twelve Prophets
• Psalms
• Daniel
• Ezra-Nehemiah

Some of these are of course more impressive specimens than others. Not all of them have enough text to say for sure that they absolutely represent proto-MT and not other textual editions (see the doubts about MasGen expressed by Ulrich and Lange, noted earlier).

'Second-Circle'
(The following list names the biblical books of the Qumran scrolls with exclusive closeness to MT as given by Tov here, pp. 154-57.)

• Genesis
• Exodus
• Joshua
• Samuel
• Kings
• Isaiah
• Jeremiah
• Ezekiel
• Twelve Prophets
• Psalms
• Job
• Proverbs
• Daniel
• Ezra

(Once again, I have a bit of a problem with Tov's statistics. Here, p. 22, he mentions "the exclusive closeness of fifty-seven Qumran texts to the medieval texts," but he doesn't list them. In the article cited above, he does list them but they only total 24 texts. He goes on to list other scrolls that are equally close to MT and either SP or LXX, which account for the remaining 33 texts.)

(Another caveat: some of these Qumran scrolls still present problems, even if the extant portions exclusively reflect MT. For example, the Book of Psalms is listed above in the 'second-circle,' but anyone familiar with the attestation of the Psalter at Qumran will know that it's more complicated than that. See Flint.)

If we put these two lists together, we find that all of the Torah is attested in this "standard" MT-like form, all of the Nevi'im, and five of the eleven Ketuvim. The books missing are the Five Megilloth (Ruth, Lamentations, Esther, Qoheleth, Song of Songs) and Chronicles.

If the books represented here--18 of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible--were copied from master scrolls ('inner-circle') or from copies of the master scrolls ('second-circle'), then we can say that the text form represented by the master scrolls was available and important to the Qumran group and the Pharisees.

It seems to me that the most likely location for such master scrolls to be housed is the Jerusalem temple, especially given the ancient testimonia on precisely that point.

Remaining Problems

The textual diversity presents some difficulties, especially as Ulrich argues it. Not only does he point to Qumran, but he also argues that the SP, the LXX, the NT quotations, and Josephus "all resoundingly confirm this widely accepted state of pluriformity" (p. 155). That means that the evidence from Qumran is "representative of the Jewish scriptures generally in that period." I don't see that this overturns the possibility of a standard text, though it would limit the reception enjoyed by this standard text. Whereas we don't necessarily know what the Qumran group thought about the available textual options--we don't know, in other words, that they valued all these texts the same, as Ulrich wants us to think (p. 155)--the textual diversity exhibited by the LXX vis-a-vis the MT presumably meant that the translator valued his Vorlage over other options (though maybe even here other scenarios could be imagined; and for which books is there a real difference between LXX Vorlage and MT?). But there might still be a standard text promoted by an influential group, even if not all Jewish groups or individuals accepted or had access to this standard text.

Another problem is that MT is textually inferior in some books. This is especially true for Samuel, which is the typical example given in these discussions.

Is it at all plausible to picture the MT of the Books of Samuel as the outcome of a careful comparison of manuscripts and textual traditions, when it is obvious that it is an inferior text, full of errors and lacunae which could easily have been remedied with the aid of contemporary manuscript material? (Albrektson, p. 57)

[...] it is at the same time a good text--as a whole it is clearly superior to other textual traditions like the LXX or the Samaritan--and an uneven text with obvious and in places rather embarrassing defects. (Albrektson, p. 60)

The specific texts for each book in the rabbinic collection as reflected in the MT are, as far as we can tell, not selected or chosen but chance or coincidental. The poor state of the text, for example, of Samuel and Hosea, would seem to preclude conscious textual preference and selection; and the criteria for the choices of the MT versus the Hebrew Vorlage of the LXX could not have been the same for all books (cf., e.g., Jeremiah and Daniel). (Ulrich, p. 156)

I am not sure what to do with this fact. There were scrolls of Samuel circulating in antiquity with a higher quality of text than that of the MT. Why did not one of these higher quality scrolls become the standard text of later generations (i.e., the MT)? It is tempting to say, with other scholars (such as Albrektson and Ulrich) that this simply resulted from chance, that following the desolation of Judah enacted by the Romans, only this defective text of Samuel survived among the Pharisees/Rabbis. Does this undermine the entire idea of a standard text prior to the destruction? I don't think so, because Tov's assumption of master scrolls would still be a necessary assumption. How the text of Samuel works within this assumption requires further thought.

Conclusions

How does this relate to the canon of Hebrew scripture? To quote myself from the first post in this series:

the evidence makes it probable that the temple housed a collection of scripture, but it is hard (impossible) to know the exact contents of this collection, and it seems unlikely that it contained precisely the Jewish canonical books, no more and no less.

A collection of scripture in the Jerusalem temple that may have served the function of housing master scrolls for the dissemination of a particular text form of various scriptural books does give us a possible way of thinking about how the canon (to use again an anachronistic term) might have functioned in antiquity and how the ancient Jews might have conceptualized the canon. Since we are not in a position to know the precise contents of the temple collection, we cannot determine from this line of argument exactly which books counted as canonical or, indeed, whether anyone had given any thought to delimiting the scriptural collection in such a way.

Did the ancients notice that there were different editions of biblical books?

As I have been trying to press on with my thoughts on the ancient library housed in the temple (I really have, I promise), I've read some brief pieces by Eugene Ulrich. He likes to emphasize the textual plurality of the pre-rabbinic biblical text; in other words, there were multiple editions of various books of the Bible.

The Qumran biblical MSS show that at least six books (or possibly ten) of the twenty-four in the Masoretic canon circulated in variant literary editions in the closing centuries of the Second Temple period: Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges(?), Samuel(?), Jeremiah, the Twelve Prophets(?), Psalms, Song, and Lamentations(?). When the study is widened to include the witness of the LXX and SP, seven (or eight) more can be added or become clear: Genesis (chapters 5 and 11), Samuel (at least 1 Samuel 16-17), Kings, Ezekiel, the Twelve Prophets, Job(?), Proverbs, and Daniel. Thus, we have MS evidence that Judaism during the last two and a half centuries while the Second Temple stood knew variant literary editions for half or more of the books that would become Tanakh: thirteen (or up to sixteen) of the traditional twenty-four books. ("Two Perspectives," p. 460). 

This is all well-known. There would certainly be disagreement among scholars as to how much variation, or which types of variation, render a copy a "variant literary edition," and some would want to dispute whether certain biblical books are actually attested in multiple editions--and Ulrich's question marks show that he himself is not sure about some of these--but the fact that variant editions of some books did circulate in antiquity I will take as a matter beyond serious doubt.

But, what did ancient people think about these multiple editions? I think that is a question to be pondered (as I have done before). I am led to think about this issue again by another of Ulrich's essays, which contains this paragraph:

It is possible, although undocumented, that some individuals may have been conscious of differences between variant editions of particular books and may have chosen one deliberately instead of another. But scrolls not in use were usually rolled up; and if there was more than one scroll of a book, it seems more in line with the evidence that a reader would have picked up one of the available rolled-up scrolls marked "במדבר" without knowing, and apparently from the Qumran evidence, without caring which text form of Numbers was inscribed inside. If there were an awareness of different editions and a conscious choice between them, the articulation of the choice is less likely to have been in terms of "pre-Samaritan versus proto-MT" and more likely "the newer, fuller edition versus the earlier, shorter edition. ("Determining Scriptural Status," p. 156). 

I assume Ulrich had a wry smile on his face as he typed that last sentence. I too doubt that an ancient person would have thought about the textual diversity (if he thought about it at all) in terms of proto-MT and pre-Samaritan. Point well-taken. These are anachronistic names for the textual forms of antiquity, and if we want to get inside the heads of the ancients, we might want to think about how they labeled these variant editions (if they thought about the issue).

But did ancient persons think about the issue? Ulrich wonders whether people were even "conscious of differences between variant editions of particular books."

Surely some people were conscious of the differences. First of all, someone had to have created the "newer, fuller edition," so he must have known about it. I don't guess we can say confidently much more about this scribe, but we might speculate that he would have a desire to disseminate his "newer, fuller edition" and so would have wanted to tell others about it. But how that would have happened, and how it would have been received, we can only guess.

Second, the Samaritans apparently made a conscious choice as to their text form. I think Carr more-or-less represents the consensus when he dates this to no later than the mid- to late-second century BCE (Formation, p. 177), so right during the time of the textual plurality attested at Qumran. For their Pentateuch, the Samaritans chose basically the same type of text for each book (except for Leviticus, which only existed in one form; Ulrich, "Two Perspectives," p. 459). They chose expanded texts, but not the most expanded texts (Kartveit, Origin, 285-88; Eshel and Eshel, "Dating," 237). According to Kartveit: "This makes the SP a deliberately chosen text" (Origin, p. 299).

Third,

Those who studied scripture intensively, which of course includes Essenes and Pharisees in particular, knew the material inside out and could evoke a whole world of textual reference with a word or phrase. The rabbis continued this tradition. (Wright, Paul, 176-77)

This sounds about right to me, that is, Wright's description of ancient Jews knowing the text "inside out." At least the Rabbis surely had a lot of scripture memorized. I don't guess we really know this for the earlier period, but Carr has presented a thesis (developed in Writing and Formation) in which memorization was an important part of textual transmission. If that is the case--if some literate ancients can be assumed to have had a good amount of scripture stuck in their heads--then the chances increase that they would notice when they are reading a different edition of a biblical book. That is not to say that they would have cared about the textual variation, though I suspect that at least some ancients would have noticed and cared. Despite Ulrich's assertion (quoted above), it is not at all apparent from the Qumran evidence that the ancients would have picked up a scroll of Numbers "without caring" about the textual form. It is possible that they did not care, but it is also possible that they did care. (See again this earlier post.) The evidence of the Samaritan Pentateuch suggests that the Samaritans did care.

But if someone in antiquity did care about the textual form of Numbers, still, how could he have determined which text form he was picking up? The physical scrolls do not seem to have been distinguished in any way (at least not in a way that is still apparent to us). So I don't know how he could tell. But I do know that when someone at church asks me about a new translation of the Bible, which I've never before seen or heard of, there are certain verses I'll read to see how the new translation rendered them, usually some familiar verses (John 3:16, etc.), but also some that I know some translations have messed up in the past (e.g. Gen 2:8; Isa. 7:14; etc.). Okay, I know, if someone handed me a biblical scroll in Hebrew with no vowels or chapter divisions, it would be somewhat more difficult to look up these verses. But I'm just using this modern analogy to say that there are ways of figuring out what kind of Bible you're looking at, even when you can't tell from the cover. 

The Election of Israel as an Act of Love

I am so used to reading that God chose Israel to be his special people so that they could do a job for him--witness to his goodness to the rest of humanity--that it is refreshing and illuminating to read another take. This is provided by Walter Moberly in his Old Testament Theology (ch. 2). He bases himself especially on Deuteronomy 7:6-8, which text prompts Moberly to say:

YHWH's delight in Israel and commitment to Israel is formulated strongly: the idea of Israel as a "treasured possession" conveys the image of Israel as the object of YHWH's special delight, and the verb "set his heart on" (hashaq) is used elsewhere for the passionate emotion of a man's falling in love with a woman and desiring her. The nature of election as rooted in, and expressive of, the act of divine loving is thus clear. (p. 44)

Moberly then talks about the "why me?" response that often follows such an act of love: "The question expresses sheer marvel at the gratuitous wonder of being loved (gratuitous, because even the most admirable personal qualities are no guarantee of being loved by another). The reality of love surpasses the realm of reason" (p. 44). This section of Moberly's chapter ends with a paragraph that starts with this sentence: "One prime fact about Israel's election, therefore, is that in an important sense it is an end in itself" (p. 46).

Up to this point in chapter, Moberly has barely mentioned the 'instrumental' interpretation of Israel's election, but his next section is titled "Is Election Instrumental?" Here he cites as prime examples "popular Christian apologist Rob Bell" and the OT scholar Daniel Block. Both Bell and Block emphasize the instrumental nature of Israel's election. As Moberly (p. 47) quotes Bell's Velvet Elvis (p. 165): "God doesn't schoose people just so they'll feel good about themselves or secure in their standing with God or whatever else. God chooses people to be used to bless other people." Moberly pushes back against this notion. He does not deny completely the instrumental idea of election (at least, I don't think he does), but he does argue that this notion is not the dominant note in the OT presentation of Israel's election. Rather, God's love for Israel is.

Interestingly, both Bell and Block [...] shy away from YHWH's election of Israel as an end in itself by depicting such a notion pejoratively ("just so they'll feel good about themselves"; "that he might merely lavish his attention on her as if she were a pet kitten or a china dish on a shelf" [a quotation from Block, p. 157]). It is curious that they are unable here to articulate the nature of love of one to another as a wondrous good, of value in itself, even though I imagine that they would have no difficulty in doing so in other contexts. (p. 48)

Moberly compares God's love for Israel (and Israel's "why me?" response) to human relationships (as, indeed, the Bible itself does). A husband and wife often have trouble offering an "explanation" for why they love each other, and they would probably deny that they do it so that the other would be good to him/her. It's not instrumental, it just is. "Love has its own reasons."

Why did God elect Israel? Because God loved Israel.

How the Bible Became Holy

Well this looks interesting. Michael Satlow (at Brown; here's his blog) is about to release a new book on the formation of the Bible with Yale University Press. The blurb sounds provocative.

Drawing on cutting-edge historical and archeological research, he traces the story of how, when, and why Jews and Christians gradually granted authority to texts that had long lay dormant in a dusty temple archive.

I am interested in every aspect of that sentence.

Then, in the first century B.C.E. in Israel, political machinations resulted in the Sadducees assigning legal power to the writings.

And that one.

We see how the world Jesus was born into was largely biblically illiterate and how he knew very little about the texts upon which his apostles would base his spiritual leadership.

And that one.

At the moment I'm reading ch. 2 of N.T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God, in which Wright is arguing extensively that there was a pretty common 'story' in which Second Temple Jews understood themselves to be living, and that this story was based on the 'story' of scripture as summarized in places like Deuteronomy 27-30, Nehemiah 9, Psalms 105 and 106, etc. I realize Wright (and others) make this same argument in numerous publications, but I believe this is Wright's most extensive presentation of the case. He's got a long section on Second Temple literature (pp. 121-35), and then another long section on the idea of a continuing exile even after Zerubbabel (pp. 139-63; as he notes at 142 n. 273, this is the most extensively he has argued this case). So, anyway, given this as a prominent theme in the literature, I'm intrigued by how Satlow will argue that the first century Jewish world "was largely biblically illiterate." I'm sure he'll have a sophisticated argument, so I look forward to reading it.

[I was alerted to this book by Jim Davila at PaleoJudaica. At least, his post on this book showed up in my reader. But I can't find it on the blog itself. If I could find the post, I would link directly to it.]

UPDATE (27 Jan. 2014): Here's the link to PaleoJudaica.

The Sadducees on the Canon of Scripture

The Church Fathers tell us that the Sadducees accepted only the Law of Moses as scripture. Most scholars reject this claim, and for good reason. It seems odd that we would not hear about this rejection of prophetic literature, etc., in Josephus, or the New Testament, or rabbinic literature. The Sadducees are often grouped with the chief priests, the rulers of the temple (cf. Acts 5:17). Are we really supposed to believe that the rulers of the temple rejected all scripture except for the Pentateuch? It is easier to believe that the Church Fathers got things wrong (so Schürer, 2.408-9).

But why do the Church Fathers insist on this wrong information? It's not just a few ignorant Fathers either; look at that same page in Schürer and you will find a list of citations (p. 408 n. 24) that includes Origen, Jerome, Hippolytus, and Ps.-Tertullian, with the Greek and Latin text.

Some scholars think they confused the Sadducees with the Samaritans. This is the position of Le Moyne (p. 151).

But might a misreading of Josephus have been involved?

At Antiquities 13.297, Josephus says this:

What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers. (Whiston, from PACE; go there for the Greek)

Josephus is talking about what in rabbinic literature will be called the 'Torah in Writing' and the 'Torah in the Mouth,' or the written Torah (= the actual text of scripture) and the oral Torah (= the tradition of the elders, as it is called in the NT, Mark 7:3, etc.). Josephus means that the Sadducees do not accept the Pharisaic Oral Torah but only the written Torah.

But I wonder...

If a Church Father read ταῦτα τὸ Σαδδουκαίων γένος ἐκβάλλει, λέγον ἐκεῖνα δεῖν ἡγεῖσθαι νόμιμα τὰ γεγραμμένα, would he perhaps have seen νόμιμα and thought νόμος Μωϋσέως?

Maybe it wasn't this particular passage, or any passage in Josephus that gave rise to the patristic misunderstanding about the Sadducean acceptance of scripture. But it seems worth considering whether an early Church Father was reading a Greek discussion of the Sadducean acceptance of only 'written Torah' and interpreted this as saying that the Sadducees accepted only the Pentateuch. 

The misunderstanding then became exegetically useful as some of the Fathers explained Jesus' response to the Sadducees--in which he quotes Exod 3 to prove the doctrine of the resurrection (Matt 22:29-32)--as a concession to their rejection of all scripture outside the Pentateuch (Jerome, Comm. in Matt. 22:31-32). In other words, Jesus argued from texts that they accepted and still showed their ignorance of the scriptures and the power of God. 

UPDATE (23 Jan 2014): McDonald (pp. 138-42) shows me that Bruce (pp. 40-41) has already thought of this (and I bet Bruce wasn't the first). Also, McDonald himself is doubtful of this whole line of thought; he rather thinks that the Sadducees may have just accepted the Pentateuch, or at least that their scriptures were not identical to those of the Pharisees and Essenes, since they rejected the doctrine of the resurrection. I'm still going with what I wrote above, but that'll teach me to read a little more widely before I suggest an idea (that was already suggested decades ago) or talk about what scholars believe (without reading one of the most accessible accounts of the topic).