The Temple Scroll and the Halakhic Pseudepigrapha
of the Second Temple Period

Lawrence H. Schiffman

The Temple Scroll

Based on Y. Yadin's preliminary lectures on the Temple Scroll shortly after its recovery in 1967,1 M. Goshen-Gottstein wrote that the scroll represented essentially a new form of literature which he termed a halakhic pseudepigraphon.2 He assumed that the author did not intend his work as a real substitute for the Torah. In this respect the scroll would simply have been a work based on the canonical Torah which was intended to transmit the author's halakhic views.

Yadin argued against this claim by saying that this author thought he was presenting the true law, and that there was no reason to assume that his activity was any more bold in his literary stance than that of the original editors of the Pentateuch.3 Yadin cited M. Smith, who had recently written that the Pentateuch itself was in many ways pseudepigraphic in its character and who saw the Deuteronomic Code as a prime example of this phenomenon.4 Yadin therefore concluded that to the author and the members of the Dead Sea sect, whom he assumed accepted the authority of this scroll, it was "a veritable Torah of the Lord."5 To Yadin this meant that it was of the status of a truly canonical book.6

Needless to say, no decision on these two ways of looking at the scroll can possibly be made without examination of the text itself, specifically as regards the manner in which the author/redactor handled the various sources he had before him, and the manner in which the authors (or author/redactors) of the various sources handled the material before them. This issue was already examined by Yadin in his editio princeps and it is worth recapitulating his basic observations and the discussion which ensued.

In characterizing the nature of the scroll, which he seems to have believed had only one author, Yadin observed that the scroll was characterized by several forms of editorial activity. These were: "drafting the text in the first person with the object of establishing that it is God Himself who is the speaker; merging commands that concern the same subject; unifying duplicate commands, including those that contradict one another; modifying and adding to the commands in order to clarify their halakhic meaning; appending whole new sections."7 The operative assumption in this characterization was that the author began with the canonical Torah in essentially the form in which we know it, with the exception of variations in his textual substratum,8 and based on this text he performed the various editorial steps described above. For our purposes in this study, the most important of his editorial strategies is the rewriting of the biblical commands so as to present God as speaking directly in the first person throughout the scroll.

Yadin took the view that the changes of grammar were intended to make the point that God was speaking. He cited, as we mentioned, the work of Smith who argued that this technique was used in parts of the Pentateuch as well in order to transform previously existing codes into the declared word of God. Essentially, our text replaced the Tetragrammaton with the first person in many passages and phrased the supplementary sections, composed by the author, in the first person. But Yadin noted also that in entire passages the Pentateuchal construction was maintained and the Tetragrammaton appears, God being spoken about in the third person.9

Yadin goes further with the observation that the intention of the author was to present the law as handed down directly by God without the intermediacy of Moses. This is why the author had to make the alterations in Deuteronomy to accent that these were God's words and not those of Moses. But he did not have to make such alterations in the other books where God is mentioned in the third person, since in these passages it is clear that these are the words of God. He sees this as pretty much a consistent approach throughout the scroll.10

This issue was taken up in great detail by B.A. Levine11 who, like Goshen-Gottstein, saw the scroll as a "pseudepigraphic composition." Levine followed the assumption that the reformulation of biblical material in the Temple Scroll was intended to attribute the laws in the document to God himself. He recapitulated the main arguments of Smith's and then added the observation that whereas in Deuteronomy Moses' intermediation is stressed in the introductions and conclusions of the book, the author of our scroll chose instead to follow the priestly tradition according to which all laws and commandments are attributed directly to God, and Moses only "bears the message." Levine sees the scroll as methodically eliminating the intermediacy of Moses, but he also observes that the scroll's author also eliminated the claims that God had delivered the laws of the Priestly Code to Moses. In general, Levine argues, as did S. A. Kaufman as well,12 that the scroll's author was simply continuing or extending the biblical process. So Levine agreed with Yadin that the scroll presents a new Torah, not a commentary.

In response to Levine's long review article Yadin objected, among other things, to Levine's position regarding the role of Moses.13 In doing so, he seems to have "nuanced" his original claims. Here he notes those passages in which, despite the fact that Moses' name does not appear, it is clear that he is addressed. In discussing the gate of Levi, "the sons of your brother Aaron" (11QT 44:5) are mentioned. In 11QT 51:5-7 God refers to the forms of uncleanness, "which I declare to you (singular) on this mountain."14 Yadin concludes that Moses is indeed being addressed by God in the scroll. Hence, in Yadin's view the scroll has to be distanced from the apocryphal books to which Levine had compared it-Jubilees, Enoch and other apocryphal works.15 Then Yadin emphasized that "the transposition into first person was intended to turn the whole scroll into a Torah that God reveals to Moses, and not words uttered by Moses himself." To Yadin the scroll was "for the sect a sort of second, additional Torah delivered by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, just like the Masoretic one." This Torah, in his view, was revealed only to the members of the sect. It appears that he identified this scroll with the "hidden" law of the sect, the nistar.16 Only in this way can we understand the title of his popular book, The Temple Scroll, The Hidden Law of the Dead Sea Sect.17 We should note that Yadin never really considered this text as a substitute for the canonical Torah, no doubt because so many issues are left out totally, such as the prohibition of murder for example. This was a selective work which never intended to replace the original on which it was based.

The debate over the nature of the Temple Scroll was also joined by B.Z. Wacholder. He also argued that this was a second Torah revealed at Sinai. His views were essentially the same as Yadin's on this matter and he saw the use of the first person direct address by God as advancing his argument. But he saw the "I-thou" syntax as borrowed from the Tabernacle texts of the Torah where the "thou" is clearly Moses. In Wacholder's view the "thou" throughout the Temple Scroll is Moses.18

The notion that the Temple Scroll is fundamentally addressed to Moses, and that he is the "thou" of the scroll would effectively assume that in the lost beginning of the scroll, or at its conclusion, there appeared mention of Moses' name in the text, much as in the case with Deuteronomy. But we will have to hold this matter in abeyance while we clarify some terms.

The truth is that we have seen fundamental confusion in the views we have surveyed. Certain basic facts have been agreed to, but no clear terms have been used for definition. There are really several possibilities under discussion regarding this scroll. It could be that it is simply a case of re-redacted Torah. This would mean that the author/redactor had simply reorganized passages, eliminated duplications, and in some ways continued editorial activity of the kind which is usually attributed to the biblical redactors. But clearly more has been done. There is no question that Moses' name does not appear in the preserved document. Nor is there any argument about the attempt of the author/redactor to present the scroll as a direct divine revelation. What is at stake is the question of whether this revelation occurred through the intermediacy of Moses, which is certainly the case in the canonical Torah, or whether Moses has been eliminated. If he has not, then we easily understand the few references to him which appear in the text, when the second person addressed turns out to be Moses even if obliquely. But it is also possible that he was meant to be totally eliminated, and that accidentally his presence was not totally effaced from the book.

To make matters worse, this issue seems to be tied up with other problems. If the scroll was the product of one author, then it would have been possible to say that even the slightest oblique reference to Moses shows that he is meant to be everywhere present in the second person pronouns. But we know that the scroll was put together from sources.19 It is perfectly possible that the work of the redactor involved eliminating Moses from these sources, and that he accidentally allowed the oblique references to slip through. In such a case, we could easily maintain that Moses' presence-not just his name-was supposed to be effaced from the entire document.

To clarify these possibilities we need some kind of useful terminology. Below we will discuss Moses pseudepigrapha. For now let us agree that a Moses pseudepigraphon takes a position similar to that of the canonical Deuteronomy, namely that Moses received the divine word and passed it on to Israel. A Moses pseudepigraphon does not claim Moses as the actual author, any more than does the Torah, but rather as the vessel through which God revealed Himself to Israel. A text eliminating Moses even from this intermediate role could be termed a divine pseudepigraphon (or, less politely, a God pseudepigraphon) since it places God in the position of revealing Himself directly, without even the intermediacy of Moses described in the canonical Pentateuch. This distinction must be fundamental to our discussion since it defines the issue at stake here. Is the Temple Scroll a Moses pseudepigraphon or a divine pseudepigraphon?

2. The Book of Jubilees

To clarify the issues we will first take a look at Jubilees. This work has often been compared to the Temple Scroll, and the two texts do indeed have a fair number of halakhic parallels. At the beginning of the text, the Prologue, which may or my not have been part of the original book, states that the book was given to Moses "as the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai" when he received the "tables of the law and the commandments according to the voice (command) of God." Clearly the notion is put forward that this book was received by Moses at Sinai. But immediately afterwards, at the beginning of the book itself, the story is a bit more complicated. In chapter 1 God commands Moses to come up to the mountain to receive the tablets of the law "which I have written." There God teaches Moses the entirety of the book of Jubilees, which is identical with the tables of the law and the commandments, and he is commanded to write them in a book. After God tells Moses what the future of Israel holds, he falls on his face, and God tells him of the ultimate repentance of Israel. Then He again tells Moses to write down the book of Jubilees which He will give on the mountain. After all this, God then tells the angel of the presence to write the book for Moses.20 The angel takes the tables, then in chapter 2 commands Moses to write the book. In fact, Moses is commanded several times to write the book which he received orally.

J. C. VanderKam has suggested that the confusion results from an error in which the hif(il of btk was incorrectly replaced by the qal in the relevant passages in the Greek forerunner of the Ethiopic Jubilees. The correct text would have spoken of the angel's dictating the book to Moses, not of his having written it for him. VanderKam argues that the consistent picture in this book is that Moses received the Torah from God via an angel who dictated it to him.21 VanderKam's suggestion has been proven correct by 4Q216 to Jub. 1:27 which has bytkhl, "to dictate."22 Here and there throughout the book we can see that the you (or "thou" in Wacholder's terminology) is Moses. Moses appears again prominently in the narrative at the time of his own birth and career (chapters 47-48). This section makes it clear that Moses is still being directly addressed, God is still speaking to Moses, and he is revealing this book to him at Sinai.

So here also we have the same problem: is this a Moses pseudepigraphon or a divine pseudepigraphon? Who is the author of Jubilees claiming is the real author, God or Moses? Here the matter is even more complex since an angel functions as an additional intermediary, charged with dictation to Moses. But in reality, God is seen as revealing a book to Moses, which Moses is expected thereafter to reveal to the children of Israel. So this is really a pseudo-God text, with Moses never portrayed as the author, only as a recipient and as the bearer of revelation. This approach accords with neither of the two approaches found in the Torah. It is neither the approach of the Priestly Code where Moses is bypassed and God speaks directly to the Children of Israel. Nor is it the Deuteronomic approach where Moses makes a speech and appears as the "author." Rather, it combines both elements, relegating Moses to the role of divine mouthpiece, through the agency of an angel, but maintaining him in this way as an intermediary.

Comparing Jubilees to the Temple Scroll leads to a few conclusions. We may say that the Temple Scroll as we have it, without the mention of Moses's name, would make it a divine pseudepigraphon, even if Moses appears as a recipient of revelation, since he is never claimed as the author by the scroll. On the other hand, we may also consider the possibility that like Jubilees, the Temple Scroll originally had an introduction in which Moses is described as receiving the law from God and delivering it to Israel. In any case, the elimination of his name and of his intermediacy from the body of the text itself would render the entire document the revelation of God to Israel though the agency of Moses. We still would have no aspect of Mosaic composition, only of divine composition.

Before passing to a comparison of a number of other so-called pseudo-Moses compositions, we should speak briefly about the theological ramifications of all this. After all, both Jubilees and the Temple Scroll make the claim, with or without the intermediacy of Moses, that the material they contain was revealed directly, and that it is a divine Torah. In this respect they are asserting a one-time revelation of God to Israel at Sinai in which this text was revealed. This approach must be strongly contrasted with that of both the Qumran sectarians and the Pharisaic-Rabbinic tradition. Both the sect and the Rabbis assumed that God gave a revelation of the written Torah-the canonical document-and then gave some form of explanation as well. The Pharisees speak of traditions of the fathers which the Rabbis later understood to be divinely given at Sinai. But the Qumran sectarians understood the law to be divided into the hlgn and rtsn which are the revealed, written law, and the hidden or supplementary sectarian law.23 The rtsn was not revealed at Sinai, but rather is assumed to stem from the inspired biblical exegesis of the sectarians--a notion which is very different from that of the Temple Scroll. Yadin's claim that the rtsn can include the Temple Scroll24 is therefore impossible, because the sectarian documents representing the rtsn involve a totally differently theological source of authority and different assumptions about the nature and duration of divine revelation to humanity.

3. The Pseudo-Moses Texts

All this must be put into the framework of discussion of the so-called pseudo-Moses texts or Moses apocrypha.25 This material has been recently reviewed by J. Strugnell and D. Dimant in the course of publishing various cave 4 texts. Strugnell26 has dealt with a number of texts. He has shown that 4Q376 and 1Q29, Liturgy of the Three Tongues of Fire, constitute the same work. He further claims that 4Q375 is a third manuscript of the same text, a view which we find somewhat questionable. He sees 1Q22, the Words of Moses, as a text of similar genre.

In arguing for his identification of these texts, and for the possibility that Words of Moses may belong to the same text, Strugnell makes an extremely important distinction between Moses' appearance in a document ex parte sua and ex parte Domini. In Words of Moses, Moses appears on his own behalf, not on behalf of God. He then goes on to say that nothing in either 4Q375 or 1Q29=4Q376 "excludes such a pseudonymous author," and maintains that it is appropriate to suggest that they are Moses pseudepigrapha. But here he glosses over an important consideration. Other than 1Q22, none of these texts contains an actual address to Moses. If this is the case, then like the Temple Scroll, as it is presently preserved, these would not be Moses pseudepigrapha, in the Deuteronomic style, but divine pseudepigrapha, in the priestly style-whatever other Deuteronomic features they may or may not contain.

Strugnell goes on to ask whether there is indeed a school of pseudo-Moses that created the documents of this genre in antiquity. He distinguished these documents from those such as Jubilees where Moses serves (in his view) as an amanuensis for an angel and the Temple Scroll where Moses (in his view) functions as an amanuensis for God Himself. Strugnell goes on to characterize the Mosaic pseudepigrapha as involving a "proclamation of law" by Moses (speaking in the first person) to Israel (in the second person) or occasionally to Aaron, but not to Moses. God is usually referred to in the third person singular. In this way he has defined the Moses pseudepigrapha as following in the footsteps of Deuteronomy. Hence, he describes these texts as "Pseudo-Deuteronomies" or "Deutero-Deuteronomies." Strugnell notes the presence in the Torah of texts in which the "I" is God and refers to the Temple Scroll which he later terms a "divine pseudepigraphon." He suggests that there may be ideological links between these two types of pseudepigraphical writing. He further notes that the Moses pseudepigrapha as he has defined them are not connected to the Qumran community, a fact we have noted regarding the Temple Scroll as well. He finally concludes that evidence is not sufficient to propose an actual school of pseudo-Moses that generated the texts he has discussed. He speculates that the pseudo-Moses texts may have been produced by the same school of pre-Qumranian Jerusalem Zadokite priests that produced the Temple Scroll.

Finally, the Moses pseudepigrapha are taken up by D. Dimant in the context of her study of 4Q390.27 In this article, when discussing "Pseudo-Moses," she begins by saying that most of the fragments of this work contain "parts of a divine discourse" which she says is "written in the deuteronomic style typical of the divine addresses to Moses" and having a "close affinity with a similar divine address to Moses in the first chapter of Jubilees."29 and Jubilees. She feels they should be called Moses apocrypha and that they are really pieces of rewritten Torah resembling the Temple Scroll.30 On the other hand, she sees 2Q21, Apocryphon of Moses,31 written in a third person narrative style, to be closer to her text. We should note that in this text God appears to speak in the first person, so that Moses' actions and words are described in the third person.

In general, Dimant seems to see the issue of narrative style as key in identifying a Moses pseudepigraphon. We should note that the fragments she has published of 4Q390 never mention Moses although it is likely that he is being addressed by God in the text.32 She emphasizes that this text involves the direct speech of God, and argues that it is addressed to Moses. She claims that it is modeled on the Deuteronomic addresses to Moses. Indeed, the task of the addressee is to receive divine commandments and transmit them to Israel-the role of Moses who is lawgiver and mediator of the divine message to Israel. In her view, one fragment, 4Q389 2 1-9, contains a direct speech of Moses himself. But she compares this material to chapter 1 of Jubilees, claiming that there we also have "pseudepigraphic divine speech addressed to Moses," and this lends further support to the view that Moses is the addressee in 4Q390. By the way, she states that the Temple Scroll was "certainly written as a divine address to Moses," a matter about which we have seen there is considerable controversy. She has no problem, therefore, in terming the Temple Scroll a Moses pseudepigraphon with halakhic rather than apocalyptic content.

Conclusion

The material we have surveyed here, and the analysis of the views of the various scholars, enable us to set down some clear criteria for distinguishing a Moses pseudepigraphon from a divine pseudepigraphon. We may say at the outset that the contents of the text are not at stake. Deuteronomic content will not place a text in the class of Moses pseudepigrapha. We must distinguish three classes of material:

    divine pseudepigrapha in which God speaks directly to Israel with no intermediary, on the model of the Priestly Code,

    divine pseudepigrapha in which an intermediary appears, usually Moses cast as simply an amanuensis, as in the book of Jubilees,

    Moses pseudepigrapha, in which Moses appears as a full partner, so-to-speak, speaking for himself even while teaching the word of God, as in Deuteronomy and the Testament of Moses.

Either form of a divine pseudepigraphon with which we might identify the Temple Scroll will carry with it the notion of direct divine revelation, on the model of the Priestly Code. Indeed, we may say that much of the literary activity of the author/redactor was directed at converting Deuteronomic material to this priestly form, so as to cast the entire text as directly revealed (even if possibly through Moses as a mouthpiece). The Temple Scroll, therefore, has little in common with 1Q22 Words of Moses in which Moses is directly addressed by God and then delivers a speech in which he instructs the people regarding the observance of the law. 1Q29=4Q376 Apocryphon of Mosesb? never mentions Moses at all and so resembles the Temple Scroll to some extent. Its fragmentary state does not allow us to determine if it is a divine pseudepigraphon, with or without the intermediacy of Moses, or a Moses pseudepigraphon. 4Q375 Apocryphon of Mosesa is so Deuteronomic in content that it is reasonable to assume that it is originally a Moses pseudepigraphon, but the preserved material never mentions his name. Regarding 2Q21 Apocryphon of Moses (?) we may note that it resembles the Temple Scroll only in that God speaks in the first person, but the appearance of Moses distinguishes it from the scroll. Finally, 4Q390 Pseudo-Moses, which also does not mention Moses at all, may be a text related to Moses, like Jubilees, but is best labeled a divine pseudepigraphon with the possible intermediacy of Moses, not a Moses pseudepigraphon.

In essence, then, the Temple Scroll stands alone in its literary character, at least in its presently preserved form. It is clearly a divine halakhic pseudepigraphon. But only a true deus ex machina would ever allow us to know if it was delivered through the intermediacy of Moses or directly to the people of Israel.


Notes

1 Cf. Y. Yadin, "The Temple Scroll," New Directions in Biblical Archaeology (ed. D. N. Freedman and J. C. Greenfield; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971) 156-66 which is a written form of Yadin's lecture. [Back to text]

2 Ha-Aretz, Oct. 25, 1967. Cf. His treatment of a similar issue in "The Psalms Scroll (11 QPsa), A Problem of Canon and Text," Textus 5 (1966) 22-33. [Back to text]

3 Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983) 1.391-2 n. 8. These views were first put forth in the Hebrew edition, Megillat Ha-Miqdash (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1977) 1.299-300 n. 8. [Back to text]

4 See M. Smith, "Pseudepigraphy on the Israelite Literary Tradition," Pseudepigrapha I (Entretiens sur l'antiquité classique XVIII; Vandoeuvres-Genève: Fondation Hardt, 1972) 191-215 and discussion, 216-27. Cf. Also R. Polzin, Moses and the Deuteronomist, A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History (New York: Seabury Press, 1980) 25-72 on the alternation of the divine and Mosaic voices in Deuteronomy. For a totally different approach to the speeches of Moses, see M. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972) 10-58. [Back to text]

5 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.392. [Back to text]

6 Yadin is closely followed by D. W. Swanson, The Temple Scroll and the Bible, The Methodology of 11QT (STJD 14; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995) 6-7. [Back to text]

7 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.71. [Back to text]

8 Cf. E. Tov, "Megillat Ha-Miqdash U-Viqoret Nusah( Ha-Miqra'," EI 16 (1981/2) 100-11. [Back to text]

9 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.71. [Back to text]

10 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.71-2. Some exceptions are discussed by G. Brin, "Ha-Miqra' Bi-Megillat Ha-Miqdash," Shnaton 4 (1979/80) 210-12. Cf. Also M. Weinfeld, "'Megillat Miqdash' (o 'Torah La-Melekh,'" Shnaton 3 (1978/9) 219. [Back to text]

11 B. A. Levine, "The Temple Scroll: Aspects of its Historical Provenance and Literary Character," BASOR 232 (1978) 17-21. [Back to text]

12 S. A. Kaufman, "The Temple Scroll and Higher Criticism," HUCA 53 (1982) 29-43. [Back to text]

13 Y. Yadin, "Is the Temple Scroll a Sectarian Document?" Humanizing America's Iconic Book, Society of Biblical Literature Centennial Addresses: 1980 (ed. G. M. Tucker and D. A. Knight; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982) 153-69, esp. 156-7. Cf. Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.406-7 in the "Addenda and Corrigenda" added to the 1983 English translation. [Back to text]

14 A second manuscript, 11QTb reads "you" (plural) but has been corrected by erasure into a singular (Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2.225). [Back to text]

15 Levine, 20. [Back to text]

16 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.392 n. 9. [Back to text]

17 New York: Random House, 1985. On p. 232 he describes the Temple Scroll as "what both author and sect believed to be the hidden law given by God to Moses and revealed and known only to the founder of the sect and his followers." [Back to text]

18 B. Z. Wacholder, The Dawn of Qumran, The Sectarian Torah and the Teacher of Righteousness (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1983) 1-9. [Back to text]

19 A. M. Wilson, L. Wills, "Literary Sources of the Temple Scroll," HTR 75 (1982) 275-88. [Back to text]

20 On this contradiction, see J. C. VanderKam, "The Putative Author of the Book of Jubilees," JSS 26 (1981) 209-15. [Back to text]

21 VanderKam, 215-17. [Back to text]

22 J. C. VanderKam in H. Attridge, et al. Qumran Cave 4, VIII, Parabiblical Texts, Part I (DJD 13: Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 11-12. [Back to text]

23 See L. H. Schiffman, The Halakhah at Qumran (SJLA 16; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975) 22-32; revised in idem., Halakhah, Halikhah U-Meshih(iyyut Be-Khat Midbar Yehudah (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 1993) 45-53. [Back to text]

24 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.392 n. 9. [Back to text]

25 Cf. M. R. James, The Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament, Their Titles and Fragments (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; New York: Macmillan, 1920) 42-51 which deals with Moses pseudepigrapha. [Back to text]

26 J. Strugnell, "Moses Pseudepigrapha at Qumran: 4Q375, 4Q376, and Similar Works," in Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University Conference in Memory of Yigael Yadin (ed. L. H. Schiffman; Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series 8; JSOT/ASOR Monographs 2; Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), 248-54 and J. Strugnell in M. Broshi, et al. Qumran Cave 4, XIV, Parabiblical Texts, Part 2 (DJD 19; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 129-36. [Back to text]

27 D. Dimant, "New Light from Qumran on the Jewish Pseudepigrapha-4Q390," The Madrid Qumran Congress: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid 18-21 March, 1991 (ed. J. Trebolle Barrera and L. Vegas Montaner; STDJ 11; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992), 2.405-47. [Back to text]

28 Dimant, 409-10. [Back to text]

29 See J. Priest, "Testament of Moses," The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume I, Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments (ed. J. H. Charlesworth; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983) 919-34. Preserved in a Latin palimpsest from the 6th century, the document dates from somewhere between the second century B.C.E. and the second century C.E., with recent opinion tending toward a date during the Maccabean Revolt. The text is essentially a rewriting of Deuteronomy 31-34. Moses appears here as a mediator. [Back to text]

30 Dimant, 410 n. 18. [Back to text]

31 M. Baillet in M. Baillet, et al. Les "Petites Grottes" de Qumrân (DJD 3; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 79-81. [Back to text]

32 Dimant, 421, to Ll. 3-4. [Back to text]


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