Beyond the Hand of Moses: Discourse and Interpretive Authority

The literary practice of pseudepigraphy—the act of writing in the name of another, more authoritative, figure—is a complicated thing. Sometimes, as in the case of the deutero-Pauline letters of the New Testament, it reflects an attempt to gain communal influence through association with a recently departed leader. In other cases, such as those concerning the various Jewish compositions attributed to antediluvian ancestors, biblical patriarchs, and pre-exilic prophets, the appeal to authority extends further back in time and through additional layers of textuality.

The problem of pseudepigraphy, and in particular the claim to Mosaic authority in Second Temple Jewish literature, stands at the center of Hindy Najman's Seconding Sinai. Why, she asks, would a text such as Deuteronomy rewrite the Covenant Code at once overtly and incompletely? How do Jubilees and the Temple Scroll reinvent that project? And what gives Philo or the composers of rabbinic literature the authority to reinvent the lawgiver in their own image? Najman addresses these questions through the organizing concept of Mosaic Discourse. Notions of scripture and canon, authorship and textual authority all play out in her exploration of this motif in Second Temple Jewish literature.

Mosaic Discourse begins with the authorial premise of a "return to the authentic teaching associated with the prophetic status of Moses" (13). As with other discourses tied to a founder—Najman offers the examples of Freudianism and Marxism by way of comparison—Mosaic Discourse does not rely upon "the actual words of an historical individual called Moses," but rather makes the claim that the author's own views reflect the true, legitimate understanding of what Moses (or Freud, or Marx) was intending in the first place. Four features form the basic structure of Mosaic Discourse as Najman presents it. Texts operating within this discourse lay claim to the authority of older, established traditions by expanding upon them through interpretive reworkings. An interpretive text within this discourse also "ascribes to itself the status of Torah," offers "a re-presentation of the revelation at Sinai," and explicitly claims to be "associated with, or produced by, the founding figure, Moses" (16).

Deuteronomy appears as both the earliest case of Mosaic Discourse and the model against which other examples will be compared. The Deuteronomic code of law rewrites the Covenant Code, places it in the mouth of Moses, and in the process recapitulates the events of Sinai. The Deuteronomist makes no justification for the claims of the text, nor is there any attempt to "prove" that this law truly comes from Moses; this is simply assumed and asserted. In similar fashion, the classic Deuteronomistic justification for the law code (2 Kings 22–23) states only that it was discovered in the Temple and recognized as authoritative by communal leaders of the day (priests, scribe, and king), not that anyone needed proof that "the discovered text [was] part of the original Mosaic revelation at Sinai" (29).

In her second chapter, "Rewriting Rewritten: Jubilees and 11QTemple as Participants in Mosaic Discourse," Najman's use of this concept allows her to demonstrate that the two texts make some of the same assumptions but that they are not part of the same larger work. Where Jubilees retells the events of scripture with an emphasis on the writtenness of its authorizing sources (the Heavenly tablets), the source of authority for the Temple Scroll lies in the immediate presence of the divine. What the texts share in common, however, is a willingness to rewrite inherited scriptural traditions and a regular appeal to both the person and the law of Moses in that process of revision. Najman's readings of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll are particularly insightful, exploring the workings of the individual texts while also addressing the larger question of their textual tendencies.

In the third chapter, "Copying Nature, Copying Moses," the writings of Philo provide a test case for the boundaries of Mosaic Discourse. Through her readings of Philo, Najman demonstrates the flexibility of her discursive...