Re-arrangement, anticipation and harmonization as exegetical features in the Genesis Apocryphon

Dead Sea Discoveries

Volumn 3, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 37-57

  Bernstein, Moshe J ^a  

^a YESHIVA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61949125807     PISSN: 09290761     EISSN: 15685179     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/156851796X00318     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (29)

1. An earlier version of this paper, focusing on the passages in 1QapGen 19:19-20 and the Arnem, Eshkol, and Mamre material, was read at the Aramaic Studies Section of the Annual Meeting of the SBL, November, 1986, under the title "An Exegetical Feature in the Genesis Apocryphon."
2. D.J. Harrington, "The Bible Rewritten (Narratives)," Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters, R.A. Kraft and G.W.E. Nickelsburg, ed., (Atlanta: Scholars, 1986) 246
3. G.W.E. Nickelsburg, "Stories of Biblical and Early Post-Biblical Times," and "The Bible Re-written and Expanded," Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Qumran Sectarian Writings, Philo, Josephus, ed. Michael Stone, (CRINT; Assen/Philadelphia: Van Gorcum/Fortress, 1984), 33-156
4. P.S. Alexander, "Re-telling the Old Testament," It is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture: Essays in Honour of Barnabas Lindars, SSF, ed. D.A. Carson and H.G.M. Williamson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) 99-121
5. J.L. Kugel's In Potiphar's House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1990) is a valuable study of certain of the exegetical aspects of the genre (which Kugel, p. 264, calls "Retold Bible"). Editions and translations of the various works which are generally characterized as "Re-written Bible" often have discussions of the ways in which they relate to and operate upon the biblical text
6. E. Tov ("Biblical Texts as Reworked in Some Qumran Manuscripts with Special Attention to 4QRP and 4QParaGen-Exod," The Community of the Renewed Covenant, ed. E. Ulrich and J.C. VanderKam [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994] 111-34) discusses the issue, but does not furnish definitions of what specific parameters are to be employed to distinguish one genre from the other
7. Tov has studied quite fully the many aspects of textual harmonization to be found within MT (e.g. Samuel-Kings vs. Chronicles), as well as between or among MT, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and Qumran biblical material in "The Nature and Background of Harmonizations in Biblical Manuscripts," JSOT 31 (1985) 3-29
8. Col. 12, which J. Greenfield presented at a session devoted to the Genesis Apocryphon at the SBL in Kansas City in November 1991, was published by him and E. Qimron in "The Genesis Apocryphon Col. XII," AbrN Sup. 3 (1992) 70-77. A facsimile of the column appears on p. 71, and text and translation on pp. 72-73
9. J. Fitzmyer, The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave I: A Commentary [= GAQ] (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1971) 100. For our citations of the text of the Apocryphon, we utilize this edition, unless otherwise noted
10. The fact that the Apocryphon adds daughters to each of Noah's sons' families is not of concern to us in this context. On that topic, see J.C. VanderKam, "The Granddaughters and Grandsons of Noah," RevQ 16/63 (1994) 457-61
11. G.B.A. Sarfatti ("Notes on the Genesis Apocryphon," Tarbiz 28 [1959] 256-57 [Hebrew]) writes [my translation from the Hebrew, MJB]: "One cannot understand what the relevance of Hagar is in this context if we do not take as a basis the derashah of Hazal which derives that Hagar was given as a gift by Pharaoh to Abraham and Sarah from the description 'Egyptian maid' used of her (Gen. 16:1) or the derashah on the name Hagar [= (Aramaic) agar] = "reward," that reward which Pharaoh gave to Sarah." Writing shortly after the publication of the Apocryphon and at a fairly early stage of Qumran research, Sarfatti was attempting to locate the Apocryphon between what he perceived as the poles of rabbinic and apocryphal literature. But, while I certainly agree with his first option for the source of the allusion in the Apocryphon, I believe that his choice of terminology could be improved upon. The selection of language appropriate to rabbinic midrash, like Fitzmyer's choice of that term, suggests a different frame of reference for this text from that which I think should be emphasized. I therefore prefer a more nuanced vocabulary which is suitable for discussion of the technique of "Re-written Bible" in any of its forms
12. D. Patte (Early Jewish Hermeneutic in Palestine [SBLDS 22; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1975] 234)
13. follows N. Avigad and Y. Yadin (A Genesis Apocryphon: A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judaea [Jerusalem: Magnes and Heikhal Ha-Sefer, 1956] 25) in referring to this combination as "a harmonizing of the Genesis text with Num. 13:22." According to our distinctions among these devices, this is an anticipation rather than a harmonization because the statement neither echoes the other biblical text, nor is it demanded by it. But we can also see from it how similar these devices can be to one another
14. Tov, Textual Criticism, 261
15. M. Luijken, "A Striking Case of Harmonization in the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen Col. xxii:2-3)," delivered at the International Meeting of the SBL in Amsterdam, August 1985. She borrows the term " associative" from M. Klein's important study of the targumic phenomenon which he calls "associative translation." Klein uses the term to refer to a tendency found occasionally in the Aramaic versions wherein parallel and similar verses influence the translator to render not the verse before him, but a passage which sounds like it or which is similar to it in some other way (cf. Eretz Israel 16 [H.M. Orlinsky Festschrift; Jerusalem, 1982] 134-40)
16. J. Tigay, "Editor's Note," introducing Zakovitch's essay, p. 175
17. H.L. Ginsberg, "Notes on Some Old Aramaic Documents," JNES 18 (1959) 147
18. On this section in the Genesis Apocryphon see H.P. Rueger, "1Q Genesis Apocryphon XIX 19f. im Lichte der Targumim," ZNW 55 (1964) 129-31
19. and E. Osswald, "Beobachtungen zur Erzählung von Abrahams Aufenthalt in Ägypten in Genesis Apokryphon," ZAW 72 (1960) 7-25
20. J.C. VanderKam, ("The Textual Affinities of the Biblical Citations in the Genesis Apocryphon," JBL 97 [1978] 51) points out that the Apocryphon, like LXX, lacks the 2nd feminine suffix on the word for favor (MT; LXX GA WTDQ as if), but that issue is not germane to our discussion; neither is the presence of ("whole") before the word for "kindness" in the Apocryphon
21. Cf. J. Purvis, The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Origin of the Samaritan Sect (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 72: "There are also portions of the narratives of the Pentateuch which presuppose certain incidents or speeches unrecorded in MT." The Samaritan text responds by providing the earlier incident
22. Purvis; The Samaritan Pentateuch, 71
23. P.W. Skehan, "Biblical Scrolls from Qumran and the Text of the Old Testament," BA 28 (1965) 99 (the emphases are mine, MJB)
24. The latter continues: "The Qumran caves have yielded manuscripts of the expanded Samaritan sort (but not fully Samaritan)." Cf. Skehan, "Exodus in the Samaritan Recension from Qumran," JBL 74 (1965) 182-87
25. and, more recently, J. Sanderson, An Exodus Scroll from Qumran (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986)
26. Textual Criticism, 307
27. Tov, "Harmonizations," 15
28. VanderKam, "The Textual Affinities," passim, particularly his conclusion, p. 55
29. Alexander, "Retelling the Old Testament," 107