II: Original Biblical Text Reconstructed from Newly Found Fragments

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In the last issue of Bible Review, Professor Cross presented a description, based on his study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, of how the text of the Hebrew Bible developed (“The Text Behind the Text of the Hebrew Bible,” BR 01:02). In this issue, Cross concludes his account of the kinds of changes in scholarly thinking that have been produced by recent Dead Sea Scroll research.—Ed.

The manuscripts from Qumran that differ from the received texts not only provide data for the history of the biblical text, as I described in the last issue of Bible Review, on occasion we find in these manuscripts readings of exceptional interest for the reconstruction of the original text of the Bible. Let me give a single example of such a reading. In the received text of Samuel, we read about a critical confrontation between Saul and Nahash, king of the Ammonites. Saul is victorious and as a result he is confirmed as Israel’s first king.

In the biblical account as it has come down to us in 1 Samuel 11, Nahash besieged the Israelite city of Jabesh-Gilead. The men of Jabesh-Gilead asked Nahash for surrender terms. Nahash’s terms were harsh: In addition to the Israelites becoming servants to the Ammonites, the Israelite men’s right eyes would be gouged out. The men of the town asked for a week’s respite before agreeing to the terms to see if their fellow Israelites would come to their aid. Saul, hearing of their plight, rallied the militia of Israel, crossed the Jordan and met Nahash and the Ammonites in battle. Saul was overwhelmingly victorious and delivered Jabesh-Gilead, thereby demonstrating his leadership. He was promptly confirmed as king.

Why did Nahash suddenly attack Jabesh-Gilead, an Israelite city allied with the house of Saul? We are not told. The question is especially puzzling because Jabesh-Gilead lay far north of the boundary claimed by the Ammonites. And the question is particularly interesting because by his attack Nahash not only brought defeat on his own head, but more serious for Ammon’s future, the attack proved to be the catalyst that united Israel and initiated forces that led to the rise of the Israelite empire under Saul’s successor David. Ammon then became subject to this empire. Nahash’s attack on Jabesh-Gilead was a pivotal event both in Israelite and in Ammonite history.

A first-century B.C.manuscript of the Books of Samuel found in Qumran Cave 4 contains a long passage, not found in our Bible, introducing chapter 11 of 1 Samuel. This manuscript (designated 4QSam^a in the technical literature) is the best-preserved of the biblical manuscripts from Cave 4. When fully published, it will consist of more than 25 printed plates of fragments. The manuscript belongs to a Palestinian textual tradition at variance with the text type used in the Rabbinic Recension. The received text of Samuel is, in fact, notorious for its scribal lapses, especially omissions; the present example is only one of a number of instances (though perhaps the most dramatic) where 4QSam^a preserves lost bits of the text of Samuel.

This lost-and-now-recovered passage gives the background for Nahash’s attack on Jabesh-Gilead: Nahash,^a leading a resurgent Ammonite nation, had earlier reconquered land long claimed both by Ammon and by the Israelite tribes of Reuben and Gad east of the Jordan River. Nahash, in his own view, had resubjugated people occupying his own domain. Nahash therefore punished his old Israelite enemies (and sometime subjects) with a systematic policy of mutilation—gouging out the right eyes of all able-bodied men. In ancient times mutilation was the standard treatment for rebels, enemies of long standing and treaty violators. Examples of rebels or arch foes being blinded include the putting out of the eyes of Samson by the Philistines (Judges 16:21) and of Zedekiah by the Babylonians (2 Kings 25:7; Jeremiah 39:7, 52:11). Blinding as a punishment for rebels is also documented in the Assyrian annals. Mutilation or dismemberment for violation of treaty is also well documented in biblical and extra-biblical sources.¹

Mutilation by blinding was not, however, the treatment due newly conquered subjects in a city lying outside the conqueror’s domain, like Jabesh-Gilead. The mutilation as recounted in the received text of Samuel has always been a puzzle for this reason: It is unmotivated.

From the now-recovered passage we learn that Israelite warriors of Reuben and Gad who survived defeat at the hands of Nahash’s forces, some 7,000 in number, fled and found refuge north of the traditional border of Ammon (at the Jabbok River), in the Gileadite city of Jabesh. A month or so after their escape, Nahash determined to subjugate Jabesh-Gilead for sheltering his escaped “subjects.” This was Nahash’s motivation, or excuse, for striking at 028Jabesh-Gilead, far north of his claimed borders, at a Gileadite city allied with Benjamin and Saul.

Now we know not only why Nahash attacked Jabesh-Gilead, but also why he insisted on mutilation as a term of surrender. He insisted on the same harsh punishment that he had inflicted on the Israelites of Gad and Reuben, the gouging out of right eyes. Those who harbored enemies merited punishment equal to that inflicted on the enemy. But Nahash thereby sealed his own fate. Saul of Benjamin, enraged by news of the affair, and “seized by the spirit,” rallied elements of the western tribes, crossed the Jordan with an Israelite militia and “slaughtered the Ammonites until the heat of the day.” Saul’s great victory over Nahash at Jabesh-Gilead consolidated recognition of Saul’s kingship over all Israel and in the end sealed the Ammonites’ fate as well.

Here is the account of the episode, with the additional passage retrieved from Qumran indicated in italics.^b The reader might try reading the unitalicized portion first, then the italicized portion, to appreciate how the newly found text illuminates the background of the received text.²

“[Na]hash, king of the children of Ammon, sorely oppressed the children of Gad and the children of Reuben, and he gouged out a[ll] their right eyes and struck ter[ror and dread] in Israel. There was not left one among the children of Israel bey[ond the Jordan who]se right eye was no[t put o]ut by Naha[sh king] of the children of Ammon; except that seven thousand men [fled from] the children of [A]mmon and entered [J]abesh-Gilead, About a month later

Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh-Gilead. All the men of Jabesh-Gilead said to Nahash, ‘Make a treaty with us and we shall become your subjects.’ Nahash the Ammonite replied to them, ‘On this condition I shall make a treaty with you, that all your right eyes be gouged out, so that I may bring humiliation on 029all Israel.’ The elders at Jabesh said to him, ‘Give us seven days to send messengers throughout the territory of Israel. If no one rescues us, we shall surrender to you.’”

The missing paragraph was lost probably as a result of a scribal lapse—the scribe’s eye jumped from one line break to the other, both beginning with Nahash as subject.

It has been suggested that the extra paragraph in this manuscript of Samuel is not part of the original composition but a late addition, a haggadic^c expansion.³ I see no evidence whatever for this. The added text gives rather flat historical “facts.” There is no edifying element, no theological bias, no theory the addition is trying to prove, no hortatory motif, in short no haggadic element that I can perceive.

On the contrary, there are a number of telltale signs that the additional passage was in the original. For example, consider the following: In the received text of Samuel, the king of the Ammonites is introduced in his first appearance simply as “Nahash the Ammonite.” This is most extraordinary. In the books of Samuel and Kings there is otherwise an invariable pattern; when a reigning king of a foreign nation is introduced for the first time, his full or official title is given, “So-and-so, king of So-and-so.” There are some 20 examples of this. The received text’s omission of Nahash’s full title is the sole exception to the practice. Indeed, the pattern obtains for the whole of the Deuteronomistic history (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and is violated in the received text only here. However, if the paragraph from 4QSam^a is original, Nahash is introduced first as “king of the children of Ammon,” his full title, precisely in accord with the Deuteronomistic historian’s unvarying practice. This is a very strong argument for the originality of the passage in Samuel and its subsequent loss by simple scribal error.

Incidentally, the Ammonite king’s official title as given in the newly found passage, “king of the 033children of Ammon,” appears on a recently discovered Ammonite inscription from Tell Siran.⁴

Now that we have this additional paragraph in our text of Samuel, we can recognize that Josephus had this paragraph in his Bible. In his Antiquities of the Jews (6. 68–70), Josephus vividly describes the background of the attack on Jabesh-Gilead, a description that he must have based on a passage in his Bible identical with the passage from Samuel that has now been recovered from Qumran Cave 4:

“However, a month later, he [Saul] began to win the esteem of all by the war with Naas [Nahash], king of the Ammonites. For this monarch had done much harm to the Jews who had settled beyond the river Jordan, having invaded their territory with a large and warlike army. Reducing their cities to servitude, he not only by force and violence secured their subjection in the present, but by cunning and ingenuity weakened them in order that they might never again be able to revolt and escape from servitude to him; for he cut out the right eyes of all who either surrendered to him under oath or were captured by right of war … Having then so dealt with the people beyond Jordan, the king of the Ammonites carried his arms against those called Galadenians [Gileadites]. Pitching his camp near the capital of his enemies, to wit Jabis [Jabesh], he sent envoys to them, bidding them instantly to surrender on the understanding that their right eyes would be put out: if not, he threatened to besiege and overthrow their cities: it was for them to choose, whether they preferred the cutting out of a small portion of the body, or to perish utterly.”

Obviously, Josephus is here paraphrasing the lost passage from Samuel.

In such ways do the Dead Sea Scrolls help us to restore a more original stage of the biblical text.

Another major area of study that will be greatly affected by the manuscript discoveries in the Jordan Rift is the history of biblical religion—or perhaps we should say the development of biblical religion.

For example, we are now in a better position to compare the psalms of the canonical Psalter with the corpus of later Hellenistic hymns found at Qumran, especially in the collection of psalms from Cave 11; or we can describe the development of slave law in Persian Palestine on the basis of Samaria papyri.

The Impact of the discovery of the Qumran manuscripts has nowhere been greater than on our emerging view of the apocalyptic movement and its place in the history of late biblical religion.^d

The term apocalyptic usually conjures up the Book of Daniel, a late, full-blown exemplar of the apocalyptic literature. The Bible also contains a much earlier apocalypse in the Book of Isaiah (chapters 24–27), the date of which has been debated by several generations of biblical scholars. From Qumran, we now have an immense apocalyptic literature and works colored by apocalyptic eschatology.^e

As reflected in the Qumran literature, these apocalyptists saw world history in terms of warring forces, God and Satan, the spirits of truth and error, light and darkness. The struggle of God with man and the struggle of man with sin, evil and death were objectified into a cosmic struggle. Dualistic themes from archaic myths were transformed into historical myths. The world, captive to evil powers and principalities that had been given authority in the era of divine wrath, could be freed only by the Divine Might. The apocalyptist saw—or believed he saw—the dawning of the day of God’s salvation and judgment. The old age had come to the end of its allotted time, and the age of consummation was at hand, the age when the world would be redeemed and the elect vindicated. The apocalyptist saw the signals of the approaching end of days. For him, the final war, Armageddon, had begun. The Messiah was about to appear “bringing the sword.” The Satanic forces., brought to bay, had already lashed out in a final defiant convulsion, manifested in the persecution, temptations and tribulations of the faithful. In short, the apocalyptist lived in a world in which the sovereignty of God was the sole hope of salvation; in the earnestness of his faith and the vividness of his hope, he was certain that God was about to act.

Apocalypticism has generally been regarded as a late, short-lived phenomenon in Judaism. This view is changing, however, in the light of massive new data and careful research utilizing old and new data. The earliest parts of the Enoch literature, for example, dated a generation ago to the Roman period (after 64 B.C.), or at the earliest to the late Hellenistic period (second or early first centuries B.C.), must now be pushed back in date to the late Persian period (fourth century B.C.). We actually have an Enoch manuscript—certainly not an autograph of 034the original—from about 200 B.C.Studies of early biblical apocalyptic (or proto-apocalyptic) literature, notably the Isaianic apocalypse (lsaiah 24–27) have shown that it should be dated to the sixth century B.C.Indeed, the first strains of apocalyptic dualism and eschatology arise, I should argue, with the decline of classical prophecy in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.And we must now recognize that proto-apocalyptic works, together with later apocalyptic works, reflect a religious development spanning more than half a millennium in duration.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, apocalypticism figured tittle or not at all in scholars’ descriptions of the history of Israelite religion. Apocalypticism was treated as an idiosyncratic product of a few Jewish seers, a fringe phenomenon.

For Christian scholars of the older view (which largely disregarded apocalypticism), biblical religion developed according to a dialectic in which the “free, ethical, and historical spirit” of prophetic religion was frozen in legalism whose “enslaving and static modes” marked post-Exilic religion. According to this view, the free and gracious spirit of prophecy reemerged only in New Testament Christianity. Hence, Christian scholars were inclined to bypass apocalyptic works in an attempt to trace continuities between prophecy and primitive Christianity. Older Jewish scholars shared the prevailing distaste for apocalyptic literature, viewing it as sectarian, even though a bit of it had slipped into the Hebrew canon. Influenced by the anti-apocalyptic and anti-Gnostic reaction of Rabbinic Judaism, Jewish scholars read back into Hellenistic- and even Persian-era Judaism the prevailing ethos of later Rabbinic Judaism. As late as 1929, George Foote Moore wrote in his influential study of Judaism:

“… inasmuch as these writings [the apocalypses] have never been recognized by Judaism, it is a fallacy of method for the historian to make them a primary source for the eschatology of Judaism, much more, to contaminate its theology with them.”

Thus, all joined hands in a conspiracy of silence on the subject of apocalypticism.

In the last generation, apocalypticism was rediscovered, so to speak, in its special import for the study of Christian origins. The rich resources from Qumran confirm and reinforce these new insights. Indeed, the study of Christian origins has been transformed by new data from the Qumran library. The pace of this new research will increase as new manuscripts are published.

The movements of John the Baptist and of Jesus of Nazareth must now be redefined as apocalyptic rather than prophetic in their essential character. Gershom Scholem shocked my generation by his demonstration of the survivals of apocalyptic mysticism in the era of Rabbi Akiba (late first and second centuries of the Common Era). In the younger generation of scholars, I venture to say, these insights into the importance of apocalypticism for both early Judaism and primitive Christianity will be confirmed and extended.⁵

The apocalyptic communities of the last centuries B.C.were a major force in the complex matrix in which both Christanity and Rabbinic Judaism were born. We are now beginning to recognize the enormous distance through which Judaism evolved, from the origins of the Pharisees in the multi-hued religious milieu of the Hellenistic era, down to the oral codification of the Mishnah (about 200 A.D.). This should not be surprising if we remember that in an even shorter period the Christian community moved from its Jewish sectarian origins in Jerusalem to 035Nicene orthodoxy in Constantine’s Byzantium.

In my judgment, in the years ahead the apocalyptic movement will become recognized as a major phase in the evolution of biblical religion, flourishing between the death of prophecy in its institutionalized form in the sixth century B.C.and the rise of Rabbinic Judaism, gentile Christanity, and Gnosticism in the first and second centuries of the Common Era. In this interval of more than 500 years, Jewish apocalypticism was a mainstream of religious life as well as speculation. Non-apocalyptic strains existed alongside apocalypticism, of course. But there can be no question that the apocalyptic movement was one of the ancestors of both Pharisaic Judaism and Jewish Christianity, as well as of the Gnostic syncretism that characterized both movements in the first centuries of the Common Era.

I venture to predict that the descriptions of the Jewish parties of the Hellenistic and Roman periods to be written for our histories and handbooks will become far more complex and nuanced, replacing the simple, neat images of the past. The Sadducees whom we have pictured as religious conservatives and worldly bureaucrats now prove to have spawned a radical apocalyptic wing at Qumran. The Pharisees also appear to have been variegated within their communes (habuÆroÆt in Hebrew), accepting in their canon such apocalyptic works as Deutero-Zechariah and Daniel, though rejecting such others as Enoch and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. By and large, the Pharisees appear to have been dominated by moderates. Their radical elements broke off to join in the Zealot movement. Their conservative members were overcome by the school of Hillel.

The discoveries in the Jordan Rift, especially at Qumran, have initiated a new era in the study of the history of late biblical religion and of Jewish sectarianism. The assimilation of the new data will be slow. Older scholars will prefer to ignore the new materials: The ferment they produce is too strong for their stomachs. I listened to the late Yigael Yadin read diatribes against his colleagues accusing them of ignoring the Temple Scroll he published. Of course, it is uncomfortable to be told that here is a new scroll—go rewrite all your books. Or, “Here is a new Jewish library of the third to first centuries; examine all your old presuppositions, retool, and start afresh.” New directions in research will rest largely on a young generation of scholars. I envy those who will have to read the new syntheses the future will bring.^f

In the last issue of Bible Review, Professor Cross presented a description, based on his study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, of how the text of the Hebrew Bible developed (“The Text Behind the Text of the Hebrew Bible,” BR 01:02). In this issue, Cross concludes his account of the kinds of changes in scholarly thinking that have been produced by recent Dead Sea Scroll research.—Ed. The manuscripts from Qumran that differ from the received texts not only provide data for the history of the biblical text, as I described in the last issue of Bible Review, on occasion […]