From Temple to Torah: Rabbinic Judaism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls

2 SHOFAR FROM TEMPLE TO TORAH: RABBINIC JUDAISM IN LIGHT OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS by Lawrence H. Schiffman Lawrence H. Schiffman is Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University's Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. He is also a member of the University's Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and serves as Director of Graduate Studies for the Skirball Department. In 1992/3 he will be a Fellow at the Annenberg Institute in Philadelphia where he will be part of a research team working on the unpublished scrolls. His most recent book is From Text to Tradition, A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Ktav, 1991). The study of Judaism in Late Antiquity has developed rapidly in this century. Spurred on by more general developments in the field of Religious Studies, as well as by the rise of the State of Israel where Judaic Studies in all areas plays so important a role, major steps have been taken in the production of textual editions, archaeological research, manuscript studies, and philology, and in tracing the history of the primary documents, the Mishnah, Talmuds, and Midrashim. Yet, in our view, there are fundamental questions left to be investigated and answered. Here we hope to indicate the directions in which our research has led, and to explain the methodological presuppositions of this research. Let us pause to clarify the issues involved. The basic questions to be asked of Judaism in the Second Temple and Talmudic periods relate to the "crossroads," that turn of the eras which is familiar to us but which went virtually unnoticed in texts of that time. It was in this period that the Templecentered Judaism of the First and Second Commonwealth periods gave way to the Torah-centered Rabbinic tradition. It was in this period that Judaism turned so assiduously to the cultivation of extra-biblical traditions which, in Volume 10, No.2 Winter 1992 3 Pharisaic Judaism, were known as "traditions of the fathers." These constituted the forerunner of that vast corpus of traditions later to be redacted into the Mishnah, Midrash, and Talmuds.1 It was in this period that Messianic tendencies and yearnings would lead many Jews into the Great Revolt against Rome in 66-73 C.E., the Diaspora revolt of c. 115-117, and the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-135. It is this set of transitions which must be the primary point of departure for our research. We can ask how the variegated Judaism of the Second Temple period eventually would yield the consensus which developed around Rabbinic Judaism by the onset of the Middle Ages. What were the processes and developments that led to this consensus? How did the traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures lead ultimately, on the one hand, to the Rabbinic tradition and, on the other, to the new Christian community with its distinctive religious traditions? . It is no accident that this turning point was neglected for so long by scholars of Rabbinic Judaism. The modern, scientific study of Judaism in Late Antiquity began with the onset of the Wissenschaft des ludentums in the nineteenth century. Scholars at that time, like their counterparts who worked on the history of Christianity, were only slowly uncovering evidence of the variegated texture of Second Temple Judaism. Judaic scholars dealing with this period were primarily Rabbinic scholars for whom the tasks of the day were otherwise. Rabbinic manuscripts were still to be catalogued and studied, critical editions were to be made and new texts (especially from the Cairo Genizah) published, and the methodologies of the fields of History and Religious Studies were still to be brought to bear, primarily in the twentieth century. When the Dead Sea Scrolls began to emerge from 1947 on, it became immediately clear that this find would enrich the study of Judaism in Antiquity . Yet, because of the prevalent definitions of the academic fields involved and a variety of other factors, this impact was minimized. Rabbinic scholars, by and large, continued to limit their corpus, or better, canon, to the traditional Rabbinic writings, while the new scrolls were left to...