Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism (review)

In this important and well-crafted volume, Hindy Najman takes on a complex and sticky issue in the hermeneutics of biblical and post-biblical literature: what were the dynamics that generated Mosaic texts, and how did the authors of these texts understand the authority of their particular interpretations of the tradition? In the course of her book Najman argues that the Deuteronomist(s) (chapter 1), the authors of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll (chapter 2), Philo of Alexandria (chapter 3), and, to a lesser degree, Ezra-Nehemiah and the rabbis participated in a single authoritative Mosaic discourse (p. 15).

In her first chapter Najman treats the problem of pseudepigraphy as it relates to the book of Deuteronomy. She offers a compelling argument that the pseudonymous writers of biblical texts do not attempt to obscure the later origins of their texts (p. 3), or "aspire to replace an older, authentic biblical tradition with a new version" (p. 7). Rather, "in some ancient cultures, the way to continue or return to the founder's discourse was precisely to ascribe what one said or wrote not to oneself, but rather to the founder" (p. 12). Thus, when the Deuteronomist(s) amended older laws in the name of Moses, the purpose was "to update, interpret and develop the content of that text in a way that one claims to be an authentic expression of the law already accepted as authoritatively Mosaic" (p. 13). With this understanding of the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy in mind, Najman then lays our the four features of the Mosaic discourse that she finds in Deuteronomy and that she will identify in later texts (pp. 16–39, summarized on pp. 16–17). (1) "By reworking and expanding older traditions through interpretation, a new text claims for itself the authority that already attaches to those traditions." (2) "The new text ascribes to itself the status of Torah . . . an authentic expression of the Torah of Moses." (3) "The new text is said to be a re-presentation of the revelation at Sinai. There is repeated emphasis on gaining access to revelation through a re-creation of the Sinai experience." (4) "The new text is said to be associated with, or produced by, the founding figure, Moses. This claim serves to authorize the new interpretations as divine revelation or dictation and as prophecy or inspired interpretation."

In her second chapter Najman explicates the Mosaic discourse in two examples of what has come to be known as "rewritten Bible," viz., Jubilees and 11Q Temple. These texts, both set on Mount Sinai, complement one another. Jubilees begins with a prologue that summarizes the last chapters of Deuteronomy and then retells the narratives from the beginning of Genesis through the middle of Exodus. The Temple Scroll reworks sections of the Pentateuch from the second half of the book of Exodus and from Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Neither text, however, is a replacement of the earlier texts; rather each, in its own way, is an authoritative explication of the material covered, often intended to solve interpretive problems. Both embody the four features of the Mosaic discourse, but their different appropriations of these features indicate that they are not two parts of a single literary product. Jubilees explicates its authority in the claim that it is Moses's transcription of the recitation of the heavenly tablets by an angel of the presence, while the Temple Scroll places its revision of the earlier tradition in the mouth of the deity, who speaks in the first-person singular. In addition, the role of Moses differs. Jubilees repeatedly emphasizes that Moses is the writer of the text, while in the Temple Scroll, he is much more in the background. (This distinction, however, should be qualified by the fact that we do not possess the first column and a good deal of the other columns of the Temple Scroll.) So, both...