Long-term readers may have noted a theme running through my Judaism-related posts, which is my reading ancient texts scouring them for clues as to how much ancient practice of the Oral Torah, which rabbinical propaganda portrays as going back to Moses at Sinai, actually antedated rabbinical Judaism (which arose from Pharisaic Judaism having to reinvent itself following the destruction of the Temple in the year 70, to recentre Judaism upon the home and the synagogue).

Well, I won't be blogging about this any more: I've just read a book that has given me all the answers (along with the sources for them, of which by this point, a surprising number are already on my bookshelf): The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal, by Yonatan Adler. The author's thesis is to sidestep the question of when the Torah was written, and instead look into when the literary and archaeological evidence indicates that people were actually keeping the commandments of the Torah.

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Jewish learning notes index

After years of reading my way through first the Hertz and Cohen chumash commentaries every year, then (from 2004) that in the Etz Chayim, I got bored and started seeking out new commentaries to read during the yearly Torah reading cycle, which was easy when the minyan I davened with, Assif, mostly met in my shul's library. After reading a few from traditional authors, who I can't now really remember (Nachmanides was one, I think), I diversified, and read (and blogged) my way through the Samaritan version of the Torah, in an edition with the differences from the Masoretic Text highlighted.

After moving to Germany, I read my way through R. Ludwig Philippson's 1844 translation of the Torah for the 2016–2017 Torah reading cycle, then spent the following six and a half years reading his commentary. (This was the first complete book I ever read in German; that's why it took me so long.)

Having finished that, my new project is the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, which contains the text of the Leningrad Codex with footnotes (in Latin (!)) giving variant readings in all known manuscript traditions, including Latin and Greek ones, for which the Hebrew is sometimes^* reconstructed.

* But, annoyingly, for someone with no Greek beyond the mere ability to read the letters) not always.

So far I've only got as far as פַּרְשַׁת לֶךְ־לְךָ, but a few things are already beginning to emerge:

There have been few differences from the MT thus far which I have not already seen in the Samaritan text. As an example, in place of the MT's "God drove out the human, and placed to the east of the garden of Eden the cherubim with a flaming sword &c" the Septuagint has "God drove out the human, and placed him at the east of the garden of Eden, and the cherubim with a flaming sword &c". The ages of the generations between Adam and Abraham also vary from the MT.

The Masoretic Text is often thought of as being monolithic; the reality is that it too has minor variations between manuscripts. Having spotted a few places in Gen. 14 where a דָגֵשׁ was missing in some manuscripts, for example in the שׂ of עֵמֶק הַשִּׂדִּים in verse 10, also כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר being two words (joined with a מַקַף) in one place, I was intrigued to see whether other chumashim reflected this. I found the Etz Chayim did; a little investigation reveals it uses the Leningrad Codex as the basis of its Hebrew text. Intriguingly, Wikipedia reveals that Hebrew Bibles frequently use the (reconstructed, where necessary) Aleppo Codex as their basis in preference to the Leningrad Codex.

Both the Hertz chumash and Philippson do not, however, have the דָגֵשִׁים missing, nor the word break in כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר. The latter turns out to use the Hebrew text of Meir Halevi Letteris, the former that of the British and Foreign Bible Society, which turns out to be based on Letteris' text. (The first edition of Philippson precedes Letteris' text by several years; it's not clear to me where Philippson got his Hebrew text from.)

I look forward to seeing in a few weeks if there's any difference between the two codices for one of the few early pages from the Aleppo Codex which has been photographed.

I've posted before about Rabbi Ludwig Philippson's 1844 commentary on the Torah, which I have been reading my way through since Simchas Torah in 2017, and am now nearly finished.

One of the things I didn't mention in my previous post is his ability to find patterns in what seems an arbitrary sequence. I've been meaning for a while to translate and post two extended essays of his on these lines, one pulling an overarching Divine plan out of the entire historical sequence from the beginning of the Torah up to the revelation at Sinai, and another finding meaning and pattern out of the design of the portable Tabernacle, but these are going to take a huge amount of effort and time which I don't really have, so I've been displacing from them for a long time.

However, I recently came across a much shorter example, so I would like to post it now. It's from Moses' farewell blessing in Deuteronomy 33, specifically his blessing of the tribe of Levi. The Torah text reads:

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1QS (Community Rule), Col. II (p. 73):

And the Levites shall curse all the men of the lot of Belial. They shall begin to speak and shall say: Accursed are you for all your wicked, blameworthy deeds. May God hand you over to terror by the hand of all those carrying out acts of vengeance. [...] Accursed are you, without mercy, according to the darkness of your deeds, and sentenced to the gloom of everlasting fire. May God not be merciful when you entreat Him. May He not forgive by purifying your iniquities. May He lift the countenance of His anger to avenge Himself on you, and may there be no peace for you by the mouth of those who intercede.

A reversal of the Priestly Blessing. The attitude is the opposite of that of modern Judaism, in which the sinner is encouraged to give up their sinful ways and return to the fold.

4Q252 Commentary on Genesis A (p. 503), Col. II:

On that day, Noah went out of the ark, at the end of a complete year of three hundred and sixty-four days.

At the time the DSS were written, the Jews were divided between those who believed the Jewish calendar was solar, and had always been solar, and that those who observed the lunisolar calendar were sinning by observing the festivals on the wrong days; and vice versa. Of course, the lunisolar camp ended up winning out, but the question is which was the original custom? The smoking gun, as far as I'm concerned, is in the Noah story, in which Noah goes into the ark on the seventeenth day of the second month (not February, as a Christian colleague once described it to me!), and the ark rested on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, after one hundred and fifty days: There is no way you can get that to work with a lunisolar calendar of months averaging twenty-nine and one half days! Though it also doesn't fit how the four non-month days are distributed in the solar calendar in use in the Qumran community, which is why the Book of Jubilees has Noah carry out calendrical reform after the Flood.

4Q179 Ages of Creation A (p. 371); the solidi enclose text inserted between the lines by the copyist:

And this is engraved upon the [heavenly] tablets [for the sons of men, for] /[a]ll/ the ages of their dominion.

Having read A Walk Through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of its Creation, I now recognise the reference to the Heavenly Tablets as not only referencing a Mesopotamian concept, but also reflecting the worldview of the Interpolator of the Book of Jubilees, who introduced frequent references to these to counter any suggestion that the holy laws of the Torah originated in the actions of mere mortals (the Patriarchs, which was the theme of the original Book of Jubilees), rather than being of divine origin.

4Q504 Words of the Luminaries דברי המאורות, Col. V (p. 1015)

and they served a foreign god in their land. And their land too became a wasteland [...] because your rage and your fiery anger [were po]ured out in your zealous fire [...]. But in spite of all this You did not reject the descendants of Jacob, nor despise Israel to destruction, annulling the covenant with them.

This also, according to the above book, ties in with a major theme of the Book of Jubilees, which is addressing the fear that with the Destruction of the (First) Temple, the covenant between God and the Jews established at Sinai was abrogated, as the תּוֹכָחָה (admonition) passages in the Torah might seem to suggest. This is why the (original) author of Jubilees sought to backdate the origin of the cultic practices to the Patriarchs, thus implying that they, and God's relationship with Israel, are still valid even if the specifically Sinaitic covenant has been abrogated.

Blessings

1QS (Community Rule) Col. VI (p. 83):

In every place were there are ten men of the Community council, there should not be missing amongst them a priest. [...] And when they prepare the table to dine or the new wine for drinking, the priest shall stretch out his hand as the first to bless the first fruits of the bread and the new wine.

Similarly in 1Q28a Col. II (p. 103).

Rabbinical Judaism is characterised by many blessings as part of daily life, including on eating and drinking, of which there is no sign in the Toraitical religion. Here we see that blessings on eating and drinking, and indeed commencing a meal with a blessing over bread, preceded rabbinical Judaism.

Another example is given in 1QA (Community Rule) Col. X (p. 95):

And before stretching out my hand to get fat on the tasty fruit of the earth (להדשן בעדני תנובת תבל) [...] I shall bless Him for (His) great marvels.

In rabbinical Judaism, all blessings begin with the fixed formula ברוך אתה ה׳ אלהינו מלך העולם "Blessed are You, Lord our God, Sovereign of the Universe". The first three words of this occur twice in the Bible; at some point they got picked up as the definitive way to start a prayer. In col. XI and elsewhere we see blessings beginning ברוך אתה אלי; in 1QHa V, ברוך אתה אדוני; in 4.Q414 and elsewhere, ברוך אתה אל ישראל.

War Scroll Col. XX (p. 191)

[For the Instructor למשכיל, pr]aises and prayer, to bow down and entreat always, from period to period: when the light comes to [its] domini[on] through the course of the day, according to its regulation, in accordance with the laws חוקות of the great luminary; at the return of the evening, at the departure of light, when the dominion of the darkness begins. [Etc]

Reminiscent of the forms of the first blessing before the שמע in the morning and the evening.

4Q428 4QHodayot.b = 1QHa XIX

[Blessed are You, L]ord, Who have given [your servant] [the insight of knowledge to understand your works] [ברוך אתה א]דוני אשר נתתה[ לעבדכה] [שכל דעה להבין בנפלאותיכה]

Reminiscent of the blessing אשר נתן לשכוי בינה להבחין בן יום ולילה in the modern פסוקי דזימרא.

Prayer(s)

1QA (Community Rule) Col IX (p. 93) (may be better preserved in 4Q256 XVIII, 4Q258 VII, VIII, 4Q259 III, IV, 4Q260 I):

He shall bless his Creator [... and with the offering of] his lips he shall bless Him. [ותרומת] שפתים יברכנו

(Similar phraseology in col. X, and also in 4Q256 (Community Rule), Col. XIX (p. 515).)

With the destruction of the Temple, ritual sacrifices ceased. Prayers became instituted as "the offering of our lips", based on Hoshea 14:3, but here we see this was also used to describe prayer whilst the Temple still stood. Possibly this description arose following the destruction of the First Temple; it's worth also remembering that the institution of the synagogue arose whilst the Second Temple stood.

Col. X (p. 95):

When I start to stretch out my hands and feet I shall bless His name; when I start to go out and to come in, to sit and to stand up, and lying down in my bed I shall extol Him;

Most of this is putting Deuteronomy 6:7 and 11:19 into practice; the first part is also reminiscent of the practice amongst some communities of saying באיאמ״ה מתיר אסורים (in ברכת השחר) whilst stretching in bed prior to getting up.

4Q504 Words of the Luminaries דברי המאורות Col. V (p. 1015) (following immediately upon the final quotation given from this work below):

For You are a living God, you alone, and there is no other apart from you. כיא אתה אל חי לבדכה ואין זולתכה

Reminiscent of אין אלהים זולתך in the first ברכה after the שמע, though a quick grep reveals similar wording (though in the third person) in Mark 12:32 and 1 Corinthians 8:4, though. As mentioned above, the Words of the Luminaries is Herodian, so antedates the NT.

4Q215a Time of Righteousness (p. 457)

The age of peace has arrived [...]. Every t[ongue] will bless Him, and every man will bow down before him, [and they will be] of on[e mi]nd.

Reminiscent of עָלֵנוּ, which the commentary in the Birnbaum Machzor says that the lack of reference to rebuilding the Temple or Jerusalem suggests antedates the Destruction of the Temple.

Pre-Midrashic Midrash

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Angelology and Enochian material

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There are certain texts which function almost as macguffins to the cultures which produced them: Everyone is aware of them and holds them to be a central text in the foundational period of their culture, but few have actually read them. "Beowulf" is an example for the English (is there something similar for the Germans?); I would say that the Dead Sea Scrolls constitute one for the Jews.

Having attended a number of Limmud sessions on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but not actually read any of the scroll contents myself apart from brief quotations, when an acquaintance gave away part of her library prior to emigrating, I took her copy of The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, ed. Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar (thanks, Shani!), which contains all of the non-Biblical material in the scrolls, presented along with English translation but no commentary.

( My insights from reading the docuiments )

I get a bit annoyed when I hear people talking about the Egyptian princess who rescued Moses as a baby as Batya (or Basyŏ) as if that was a fact from the biblical text.

It's not; it's a midrash dating from centuries later. Other, more ancient, traditions assign her different names. Josephus, writing over nineteen hundred years ago, calls her Thermutis; the Book of Jubilees, written two and a half centuries earlier, concurs, calling her Tharmuth.

So much you might have heard me say before. Now I have learned from Rabbi Ludwig Philippson's commentary on the Torah of still another name: The third-century church historian Eusebius (whom Philippson frequently makes reference to, but I never got around to looking up who he was until now) calls her Merrhis.

Today I also learned from (Wikipedia via) Philippson of the existence of Ezekiel the Tragedian, the oldest known Jewish playwright, who retold the story of the Exodus in a five-act play (of which 20–25% survives). "This drama is unique in blending the biblical story with the Hellenistic tragic drama." I'm intrigued; I think I'd like to read this, now.

Crossposts: https://lethargic-man.livejournal.com/554888.html

A while ago I discovered that the Singer's Prayer Book editorship made quite a lot of tweaks to subsequent early impressions of the first edition. I'm intrigued to know how the earliest impressions were different from the late first edition (from the 1950s) that my father has, and have been keeping my eye out for a few years for early impressions online. Unfortunately, truly early ones (pre-1895, or for that matter even pre-1900) don't seem to be turning up. When I had another look a few days ago and found the 1904 impression scanned and readable online, I thought this was probably going to be as good as I was going to get, and I had a look through this volume to see what it offered.

(I'm aware that most of my readership to whom this would be meaningful will be reading from Facebook, not LJ or DW; but I'm posting it here anyway, so that I can find it again afterwards.)

The early impressions, 1904 included, made much use of references to save page-count (to keep the price down to 1/–), something that was eliminated in subsequent volumes but without retypesetting the complete book; hence the joke: How can you tell someone who uses the first edition Singer's siddur? Get them to count to one hundred and see if they go 94, 94a, 94b, 94c etc. In the 1904 impression mincha consists of a list of references to prayers found elsewhere, and takes up a single page, expanded in later impressions to no fewer than fifteen pages.

Tallis and tefillin are to be donned after, rather than before, ברכת השחר.

No Kaddish deRabbanan after ברכת השחר or, later on, פִּטּוּם הַקְּטוֹרֶת. (Even the second edition (1962) merely says some congregations recite it there.) This kaddish is included in the 1904 impression after Shacharis with the legend "Kaddish to be said after reading Lessons from the Works of the Rabbis".

מזמור שיר חנוכת הבית לדוד is found after Shacharis, with the label "In some Congregations the following Psalm is said daily before ברוך שאמר". The subsequent Mourner's Kaddish is missing altogether.

ויברך דויד is only said standing until משתחוים.

In ובא לציון and elsewhere Aramaic is described instead as "Chaldee".

No עלינו or subsequent kaddish in mincha on Friday. (The idea, so I've heard, is that these are both recited at the end of the service, and when services are recited back-to-back, you're not really ending it. We still do this between mincha and ne`ila on Yom Kippur.)

No meditation before kindling the Shabbos lights.

No Mourner's Kaddish after במה מדליקין. (This was also the case in the second edition.)

A little to my surprise, וְדִי בְּכָל אַרְעָת גַלְוָתָנָא "and in all the lands of our dispersion" is already added to the first יְקוּם פָּרְקָן in this edition. (This is one of the rare cases of an Orthodox authority tweaking the traditional wording of a prayer; the rest of the Orthodox world (e.g. ArtScroll) still has here "in Israel and in Babylonia" and expects the reader to infer the rest of the world as well.)

The Prayer for the Royal Family is somewhere I was expecting change; over the years the wording of the mediaeval prayer הַנּוֹתֵן תְּשׁוּעָה לַמְּלָכִים. was gradually shortened. (Of course, that prayer was written about absolute monarchs, which is why my (non-Orthodox) shul in London replaced it with a prayer for the government, not one for the Queen with a single short reference to the government ("her counsellors").) The wording given here, with changes compared to the second edition in bold, reads:

He who giveth salvation unto kings and dominion unto princes, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, who delivered his servant David from the hurtful sword, who maketh a way in the sea and a path in the mighty waters,—may he bless, guard, protect and help, exalt, magnify, and highly aggrandize [in the Hebrew only, redundantly repeating the following words: אֲדוֹנֵינוּ הַמֶּלֶךְ] our Sovereign Lord, King Edward, our gracious Queen Alexandra, George Prince of Wales, the Princess of Wales, and all the Royal Family [in the Hebrew only: יָרום הוֹדָם may their glory be exalted].
May the supreme King of kings in his mercy preserve the King in life, guard him and deliver him from all trouble, sorrow and hurt. May he make his enemies fall before him; and in whatsoever he undertaketh may he prosper. May the supreme King of Kings in his mercy put a spirit of wisdom and understanding into his heart and into the hearts of all his counsellors, that they may uphold the peace of the realm, advance the welfare of the nation, and deal kindly and truly with all Israel. In his days and in ours, may Judah be saved, and Israel dwell securely [missing here: the text of the second edition, and probably also later impressions of the first edition, is missing altogether: "may our Heavenly Father spread the tabernacle of peace over all the dwellers on earth"]; and may the redeemer come unto Zion. O that this may be his will, and let us say, Amen.

No Prayer for the State of Israel, of course, as it didn't exist yet.

Duchaning is, surprisingly, missing.

The traditional wording for מָעוֹז צוּר is given. (Chief Rabbi Hertz later changed לְעֵת תָּכִין מַטְבֵחַ מִצָּר הַמְּנַבֵחַ "when thou shalt have prepared a slaughter of the blaspheming foe" to לְעֵת תַּשְׁבִּית מַטְבֵחַ וְצָר הַמְּנַבֵחַ "when you have caused the slaughter to cease, and the barking of the enemy" [translation by myself], but it was changed back in the second edition.) דְּבִיר, which I would translate "shrine", and designates part of the Temple, is translated here as "oracle".

The four verses after the psalm before bentshing on Shabbos and yomtov are not given. (Only the first two are there in the second edition.)

Psalm 150 to be recited at the end of the wedding service. (Also in the second edition; reduced to "Some congregations" in the third.)

At the end of the last page, the end. :o) Total page count: 660, as against 841 in the second edition, 903 in the third and 926 in the fourth.