Qumran and Canon

I'm still making my way through the latest issue of The Bible Translator, which is all about the biblical canon (previously noted here and here).

Here are some notes about the article on Qumran.

Andy Warren-Rothlin, "The Accretion of Canons in and around Qumran," The Bible Translator 67.2 (2016): 120–36. 

I find this a somewhat idiosyncratic presentation of canon issues arising from the Qumran scrolls, not an altogether helpful presentation of the data or the scholarly interpretations of it. He begins with textual diversity at Qumran, but then he wants to establish that Judaism at the time had a tripartite canon, as shown by 2 Macc 2:13–15 and Luke 24:44.

None of these "canon" statements, nor the use of the term αἱ γραφαί "the writings/Scriptures," can be shown to include any work not included in the Tanakh. This evidence thus forces us to the conclusion that the frequent attestation of other books in this period must be understood as representing, at most, a secondary, or "deutero-" canon. (p. 125)

This is a more confident statement than many scholars would be willing to make. He makes other confident statements where I would want to be more cautious, such as: "It is well known that the use of the codex by Christians contributed much to the concept of a closed canon" (p. 132). I would prefer to say: some scholars have argued that the use of the codex by Christians may have contributed to the concept of a closed canon.

He says there are two passages in the DSS that attest a tripartite canon: 4QMMT C 10 and CD 7.15–18. The former is highly debated and most scholars would not use it to establish a tripartite canon. Warren-Rothlin acknowledges part of this debate, but he confidently asserts that 'David' is "metonymous for the Psalms or Writings" in 2 Macc 2 and Luke 24:44, and he further points out (an idea which had not occurred to me before) that all of the Hagiographa are connected to David or Solomon in some way, except for Esther (not found at Qumran), Lamentations (possibly counted with Jeremiah), and Daniel (possibly included in the early period among the Prophets), so 'David' could serve as a reasonable title for this section (p. 128). As for CD 7.15–18, we have a reference to the Torah, Prophets, and an "interpreter of the Torah," which Warren-Rothlin thinks is probably a reference to David (either as Messiah or author of the Psalter) and again is "surely" metonymous for the Writings.

But he admits that the third section might be an open section, based on the Sirach prologue and the Qumran idea that inspired interpretation still occurred. And then he suggests that the reference to Paul's letters as scripture at 2 Pet 3:16 "may indicate a preparedness to accept additions to the third section of the canon" (p. 129). So, Paul's letters would be in the Hagiographa? He also says that Jubilees and Enoch would be in the Hagiographa, but actually since Jubilees seems "so clearly interpretative," it would not have "anything approaching 'canonical' status" (p. 129).

His article ends with a few pages suggesting that the UBS give thought to these issues when considering which canon to use for its Bible projects.

One last note: Warren-Rothlin says that the reason Sirach as omitted from the Protestant canon "has been based largely on its not being in Hebrew (following Jerome and Luther)" (p. 132). Well, I won't speak for Luther, but Jerome did not exclude Sirach based on its unavailability in Hebrew. Indeed, Jerome said that he had seen a Hebrew copy of the book (Preface to the Books of Solomon). [I think he also misunderstands the textual attestation of Jubilees (p. 124).]

On the canon at Qumran, I would recommend the relevant chapters in VanderKam's book and in Lim's book.

Ancient Scruples on Variant Literary Editions?

Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls and further study of the Septuagint and other texts of the Old Testament, scholars now recognize that some biblical books existed in multiple forms in antiquity. It was Eugene Ulrich at Notre Dame who started using the term "variant literary editions" to describe this phenomenon that studies not simply different copies of the same text but actually different editions of the same biblical book. His book The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible collects a number of his earlier studies on this topic. This description is now widely accepted (see, e.g., James VanderKam, pp. 12-15; Emanuel Tov, p. 186, etc.), and the textual evidence puts the matter beyond doubt. Textual evidence confirms that multiple literary editions existed for Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Daniel (list from T. M. Law, p. 28).

What does seem to me worth considering, though, is how the ancients thought about these variant literary editions. Mostly, it seems that scholars assume that the ancients would have considered it perfectly fine, no problem, to have two forms of the same book. "[T]here is no reason to surmise that Jewish experts were concerned about a measure of fluidity in the texts of scriptural books until late in the first century C.E., when Josephus wrote a surprisingly strong statement about a fixed scriptural text (Ag. Ap. 1.38-42)" (VanderKam, p. 15). "That different editions of the same biblical books could coexist in the same community seems not to have caused any concern for ancient readers of scripture" (T. M. Law, p. 25; cf. p. 31). This might be a problem for modern Christians or Jews, but it obviously was not a problem for the ancients. After all, they collected multiple forms of the same texts within the same library, such as at Qumran.

But how do we know they thought this way? The simple possession of a text does not tell us what the owner thinks about that text. Just become Jerome probably possessed some copies of the LXX translations, and these existed within the same library in which he housed Hebrew copies of the same books, does not indicate that he thought the Greek text was just as authoritative as the Hebrew text. Or, just because Augustine owned some of Jerome's Latin translations does not mean that he thought Jerome was as authoritative a translator as the Seventy.

Or, we might think about the Gospels. One could think about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and even John, as variant literary editions of the same story. Actually, maybe we would want to categorize John as rewritten scripture. Certainly for the Synoptics, there is some sort of literary relationship, such that one text was produced with some level of dependence on one (or two) of the prior texts. This seems somewhat like what we have with the multiple forms of Jeremiah, or Samuel, or whatever. Now, all four Gospels were pretty firmly in place as a fourfold collection by the end of the second century. Does that mean that the people who collected them were unconcerned with the differences among them? Not at all. Early Christians exerted a great amount of energy in trying to explain these differences. 

I realize that this is example from the Gospels is different in kind from the earlier examples of Jerome and Augustine. Whereas Jerome did possess copies of the LXX but did not think that they were as authoritative as the Hebrew (and the reverse in the case of Augustine), early Christians did attribute equal authority to the Four Gospels. Both of these avenues provide fruitful ways of understanding how some ancient religious people dealt theologically/theoretically with what could be termed multiple literary editions. In either case, the differences posed difficulties that could not be ignored.

What about for the community at Qumran? They obviously possessed multiple editions of some biblical books. Do we know what they thought about these variant editions? Emanuel Tov realizes that we cannot assume an answer to this question, but arguments must be presented.

In view of this plurality, we ought to ask ourselves which copies carried authority, some or all, and for whom? For the Qumran community, the various Scripture texts were equally authoritative since its members paid no attention to textual differences between these texts. (Tov, p. 186)

He then presents two reasons to support this assessment:

1. Pluralistic collection--"When collecting their Scripture books, the members of the community thus made no effort to adhere to a single textual group."
2. Lack of preference for a specific biblical text in the Qumran compositions--"The Qumran covenanters copied sectarian and non-sectarian texts and authored sectarian compositions containing biblical quotations. In these quotations, no specific text or text group is preferred." 

I myself am not persuaded by these two lines of evidence. The first one I have already given reasons for doubting--we cannot tell what people think about the books in their library just by looking at the library catalog, as it were. The second point is more interesting and tricky, and one would need to consider carefully how the Qumran literature cites scripture to judge whether or not their practice gives any indication as to how they felt about textual variation. My initial feeling is that we cannot presuppose that the citation of a number of different texts--editions--indicates a lack of concern for this textual plurality. There are too many instances of the same sort of thing in patristic literature, citations of a variety of different text forms, or paraphrased citations, sometimes apparently just to make an exegetical point, indicating nothing about which text form the Father prefers, or what he thinks about textual plurality. (Origen is a great example here, and a complex one. Now, as it turns out he was okay with some textual plurality, but it would certainly be inaccurate and misleading to say that it was of no concern to him, or not at all problematic. It was an issue that had to be addressed, and he devoted a great portion of his life addressing it.)

[Another issue that I can't deal with here: someone had to cause the textual plurality, someone had to revise the texts. How they thought about what they were doing is also an interesting and complex issue.]

One last point: the ideal of textual uniformity was in play very early. I guess we could think about passages like Deuteronomy 4:2, but I was thinking more like at the end of the Letter of Aristeas (310-11) where a curse is placed on anyone who would alter the translation, because it was perfect. And Philo is at pains to establish that the Greek translation he uses corresponds in every possible way to the Hebrew text (Life of Moses 2.38-44). I have written extensively about this for both ancient Judaism and early Christianity in my book, ch. 5, but see more conveniently, on Christian authors, here.

These examples, of course, do not reflect reality, but this post is not about the reality of textual diversity. I just want to raise a question about how the ancients thought about that textual diversity. In my view, the evidence indicates that--if they paid enough attention to notice the diversity (and I'm sure that many didn't)--it would have caused some concern for them, it would have been an issue that needed addressing. They may well have addressed it in their own minds in some way without leaving us a record of their thoughts.

Esther at Qumran, part 2

In the previous post, I briefly laid out the case made by some scholars for positing a knowledge--even an intimate knowledge--of the text of Esther at Qumran despite the absence of any Esther manuscript among the discoveries there. In this post I reflect on the implications of this for the status of Esther at Qumran.

We have opposing indications for the reception of Esther at Qumran. One line of evidence--close linguistic parallels--suggests that the Qumran group did read Esther, and even this is putting the matter too mildly for some scholars, who would prefer to say that some scribes at Qumran knew the text of Esther very well. On the other hand, not only did the Qumran library yield no Esther scroll, but the community omitted Purim from their celebrations.What does this mean?

In the article by Shemaryahu Talmon mentioned last time, Talmon deals with this question in the following way (pp. 265-67). He rejects three commonly proposed reasons for Esther's absence at Qumran:

• the brevity of the book makes it more likely to have perished; Talmon responds that fragments of shorter books were found (e.g. Song of Songs, Lamentations); 
• the Community rejected the book for theological/ideological reasons; "If this were indeed the case, Yaḥad authors and scribes undoubtedly would have refrained from incorporating explicit quotations from the book in their works"; 
• though a manuscript has not turned up yet, one might be found among the unidentified fragments. Certainly this last proposal is even more unlikely in 2012 than it was when Talmon wrote in 1995. 

So, what explanation does Talmon put forward? 

It would appear that the above discrepancy is best explained by the assumptions that while the Book of Esther was well known in the late Second Temple period, when most if not all Qumran manuscripts were penned, it had not yet achieved "canonical" status, viz. was not yet recognized as part of Hebrew Scriptures. (p. 266)

I don't think this quite settles the matter. Let me offer some reflections on the evidence to hand.

The Absence of an Esther Manuscript

Recent scholarship on the biblical canon and the evidence to be gleaned for it from Qumran has emphasized that the presence of manuscripts are not necessarily decisive for the acceptance of a book as canonical. Actually, recent scholarship has argued for the complete anachronism of the concept of canonicity at Qumran, so let's say the presence of a manuscript does not necessarily mean a work is received as scripture. (VanderKam and Flint (pp. 178-79), along with many other scholars, do think that the presence of a work in many manuscripts indicates its reception as scripture.)

On the other hand, the absence of a manuscript in a community's archives--in a synagogue, for example, or a church building--would not necessarily indicate that the community did not regard that particular work as scripture. Indeed, it seems unlikely that many synagogues and church buildings around the turn of the era did possess copies of all the books they deemed as scripture. Still, Qumran is a bit different, for they obviously possessed more scrolls than an average community their size. The absence of a copy of Esther would seem to indicate that the community did not regard it as scripture, but not necessarily, especially if we posit (against Talmon but with some other scholars, noted in the previous post) that hungry worm or mouse may have served a fatal blow to Esther.

The presence or absence of a manuscript actually relates to reading habits. The 36 copies of Psalms at Qumran shows that Psalms was a popular book--many copies were required because people wanted to read/study it. Same for Isaiah, Deuteronomy, etc. Chronicles was not so popular. The one manuscript recovered of Chronicles does not mean that it was or was not deemed scriptural by the community; it means not many people cared to read it. The absence of Esther in the recovered manuscripts indicates that the community did not spend much time reading/studying the scroll of Esther. Even if there was a scroll there that succumbed to a hungry mouse, still the relative paucity of manuscript evidence for Esther confirms that Esther was not on the best-sellers list at Qumran.

All of this is, of course, related in some ways to 'scripturalness', but there is not so close a relationship as is often supposed. The Qumran community certainly housed scrolls that they would not have considered scripture, so even if they did not consider Esther to be scripture, that is really no reason to lack a copy of the scroll. Rather, they did not have a copy--or they had very few copies, all of which have perished--because not many people cared to read it.

The Linguistic Parallels

The linguistic parallels (see previous post) show that some people had read the book, or, actually, they had spent quite a bit of time with Esther and gotten some of the wording stuck in their heads. Whether this reading/studying of Esther took place at Qumran or elsewhere is a moot point. It does show that some members of the Qumran community were well aware of the existence of the scroll of Esther, so its absence from Qumran cannot be attributed to ignorance.

The Absence of Purim

Purim is not included among the festivals mentioned in the Qumran calendrical texts. The linguistic parallels between Esther and some scrolls show that some of the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls did know about Purim, including its date. Apparently they did not celebrate it. To my mind, this is the strongest argument against the idea that Esther could have enjoyed any sort of 'authority' at Qumran. The celebration of Purim is a command in the Book of Esther, some members of the Qumran community read the Book of Esther, the Qumran community did not celebrate Purim. Esther could not have been seen as scriptural.

Implications and Conclusions

What does all this mean for the status of Esther at Qumran? Talmon mentioned four scenarios that might explain the absence of an Esther manuscript, only the last of which did he support: (a) an Esther scroll housed at Qumran perished; (b) the Qumran community rejected Esther for ideological/theological reasons; (c) an Esther scroll still might turn up; and (d) the Book of Esther was not considered scriptural in Judaism at the time.

The third option must be judged as extremely unlikely now (though the recent discovery of a Nehemiah scroll, in private hands for decades, cautions us against judging this scenario impossible).

Although Talmon thinks the first option to be wrong, the evidence he himself provides shows that some members of the Qumran community did read Esther, so they must have encountered a scroll, at Qumran or elsewhere. Possession of a scroll does not imply attribution to the scroll of religious authority. I don't see anything that would indicate that this option is not possible. But, in any case, that doesn't really answer our question as to what the Qumran community thought about the scroll of Esther.

To understand the status of Esther at Qumran, the options--it seems to me--are really between Talmon's second and fourth scenarios. Either the Qumran community consciously rejected Esther as scripture (as VanderKam and Flint think, discussed in the previous post), or the book of Esther had not achieved scriptural status in Judaism yet, either at Qumran or elsewhere. Talmon dismisses the second option because he does not believe that a community that rejected Esther as scripture would incorporate into their own writings phrasing from Esther. Is this reasoning valid? Might a Protestant incorporate into his writing some phrasing derived from a deuterocanonical book? Might a Jew incorporate into his writing some phrasing derived from the New Testament? Might a Christian or Jew incorporate into their writing phrasing derived from the Quran? This does not strike me as impossible or even improbable. Rejecting a document as scripture does not imply anger at the document, refusal to read the document, or any such thing. Some early Christians were quite explicit on the point that certain 'rejected' documents could be quite helpful. (For more, see this fantastic article.)

So, both Talmon's second option and his fourth option seem possible. How to decide? One would have to determine whether Esther was seen as scriptural in Judaism outside Qumran. This would help determine whether the Qumran stance on Esther as non-canonical was a conscious rejection or not.

Evidence for the scriptural status of Esther in Judaism before the turn of the era is difficult to come by, and what is available is difficult of interpretation, but I'll briefly mention some things. The celebration of Purim seems to have been widely established by the end of the second century BCE. The "Day of Mordecai" (ἡ Μαρδοχαϊκὴ ἡμέρα) is mentioned in 2Mac 15:36 (ca. 100 BCE or earlier; see new Schürer, 3.1.532-33) as a recognized festival, and this is apparently an early name for Purim. The colophon of LXX Esther (which will receive treatment in a future post on Melito's canon) also mentions the feast of Purim, and this would date to around the same time as 2Mac. Josephus speaks of Purim as if every Jew in the world celebrated it annually (Ant. 11.292-95). This indicates that the directive in Esther to celebrate this feast was taken very seriously at this time. As for evidence for the book of Esther itself, it was translated into Greek fairly early, as I mentioned, and Josephus (note especially his terminus for the end of "the exact succession of the prophets," C.Ap. 1.40-41) and 4Ezra both seem to assume that it is canonical. That's admittedly not very early.

Does this mean that Esther was viewed as scripture in wider Judaism and consciously rejected by the Qumran community? That still seems most likely to me. Indeed, the scriptural status in wider Judaism would help to explain why some scribes at Qumran were so familiar with the text. Nevertheless, they rejected it because it prescribed a festival unknown to the Torah, a festival which would have fallen on a Sabbath according to their calendar, and thus a festival in conflict with the way they perceived the cosmos as ordained by God. In other words, surely the covenanters knew about Purim (the celebration of which has to be based on the authority of the Esther scroll) and consciously chose not to celebrate it and thus consciously declined to cede religious authority to the Book of Esther.

Esther at Qumran, part 1

No scroll of Esther was discovered among the 220 or so biblical scrolls recovered in the eleven caves around Qumran, making it the only book of the current Hebrew Bible omitted from the discoveries. A good case can be made that the Qumran community consciously rejected Esther as a scriptural book. Indeed, VanderKam and Flint assert: "Research and evidence from certain nonbiblical scrolls, however, show that Esther was rejected by the Qumran community for theological reasons" (Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 119). They mention as possible reasons for this rejection (a) the lack of any mention of God, (b) the marriage of Esther to a pagan, and (c) the book's emphasis on retaliation as contrasted with the Community's own teaching (c.f 1QS 10.17-18). But the real reason, "almost certainly," is the innovation in Esther of the Purim festival, not mentioned in the Torah. Confirmation that the Community did not celebrate Purim comes from the calendrical texts, which lack this festival.

But perhaps the lack of an Esther manuscript at Qumran is a mere accident. Frank Moore Cross has written:

The library [of Qumran] contains specimens of all the works of the Hebrew canon with the exception of the book of Esther. Its absence, however, may be owing only to chance. The Book of Chronicles has survived at Qumran only in a single small fragment despite its larger size; an additional hungry worm, and Chronicles, too, would have been missing. (From Epic to Canon, p. 225)

Similarly, Armin Lange says that Esther's absence from Qumran's library could result from "the appetite of the Mouse in Qumran" (Handbuch, p. 502).

In fact, some scholars have found what they deem to be evidence that the Qumran community, or at least some of its scribes, knew the Book of Esther. While he had his predecessors in asserting that the Qumran community did know and use Esther, Josef Milik created a bit of a stir in 1992 when he proposed that 4Q550 was an Aramaic 'proto-Esther'. This seems not to have been well-received by scholars; Shemaryahu Talmon (here, pp. 252-56), Sidnie White Crawford (here), Kristin De Troyer (here, pp. 405-11), and Lange (Handbuch, pp. 497-98) all think that the common themes and language shared by Esther and 4Q550 might demonstrate a common literary tradition but fail to demonstrate that the MT Esther descends directly from the Qumran document.

But, three of those scholars--Talmon, De Troyer, and Lange--try to make the case that linguistic similarities between Qumran sectarian literature and the Hebrew text of Esther show that Esther was known at Qumran. Talmon bases his case mostly on eight biblical hapax legomena occurring only in Esther but recurring also in certain Qumran sectarian literature. Lange makes a similar move, and since his contribution is more recent and briefer, I'll mention his evidence.

Lange first states that case that he seeks to make: "At least for the author of some texts found in the Qumran library, allusions to the Book of Esther and recordings [Aufnahmen] of the same prove knowledge of the text" (Handbuch, p. 498). He gives five examples of such allusions and recordings. Lange gives the Greek text for the biblical examples along with the Hebrew text; I'll just give the Hebrew text.

1. Esther 2:9: וַתִּשָּׂא חֶסֶד לְפָנָיו and Esther 2:17: וַתִּשָּׂא־חֵן וָחֶסֶד לְפָנָיו compared with 1QS 2:4: וישא פני חסדיו לכה. 
2. Esther 3:7: מִיּוֹם לְיוֹם וּמֵחֹדֶשׁ לְחֹדֶשׁ compared with 4QD-b 9 1:1: מיום ליום ו]מחודש לחודש
3. Esther 3:14: לִהְיוֹת עְַתִדִים and Esther 8:13: וְלִהְיוֹת הַיְּהוּדִיים עְַתדִים compared with 1QSa 1:26-27: להיות כול הב עת[יד. 
4. Esther 8:15: וְתַכְרִיך בּוּץ וְאַרְגָּמָן compared with 1QapGen 20:31: ולבוש שגי בוץ וארגואן. 
5. Esther 9:22: וְהַחֹדֶשׁ אְַשֶׁר נֶהְפַּךְ לָהֶם מִיָּגוֹן לְשִׂמְחָה וּמֵאֵבֶל לְיוֹם טוֹב compared with 4QpHos-a 2.16-17: ו[כול שמחה  ]נהפכה להם לאבל. 

According to Lange, two conclusions result from the above linguistic parallels (p. 501). (1) "There can be no doubt that the Book of Esther was known and read in the Essene movement." (2) The text of Esther read could not have been the Alpha-text, and in most cases could only have been the Hebrew text (not the LXX).

With regard to the second example mentioned above, Jonathan Ben Dov published a brief article in which he argued (persuasively, I think) that the phrase in 4QD-b מחודש לחודש was actually a scribal mistake arising from a remembrance of Esther 3:7 and inserted in a context in the Qumran scroll where it actually does not make good sense. Ben Dov says about the scribe of this manuscript: "His acquaintance with the Book of Esther must have been so profound that characteristic words from its text occurred in his mind while copying other compositions, and found their way into the copied text."

So, quite a bit of evidence--some of it rather strong--indicates that some of the Qumran sectarians did read Esther. Lange does not think this indicates that Esther "enjoyed religious authority," and he even suggests that the "reverse quotation" of Esther 9:22 in 4QpHos-a 2.16-17 may "point to a distancing from the Purim festival." Nevertheless, they did read the scroll, and so they probably possessed a copy, Lange thinks (pp. 501-502), and so our failure to discover their copy of Esther may be due to the mouse, as I mentioned earlier.

In the next post, I'll offer some reflections on the place of Esther at Qumran.