Lawrence M. Wills

Literary Sources of the Temple Scroll

The Temple Scroll (11 QTemple), the last of the known scrolls from Qumran to be published, is a heterogeneous document whose contents cover various topics of cult, architecture, ritual purity, and civil law. Nonetheless, most exegetes have treated the scroll as the work of a single author. The question whether there might be several independent literary sources behind the document will be the subject of this study.

Jewish Novellas in a Greek and Roman Age: Fiction and Identity

Although Jewish novellas (Esther, Daniel, Tobit, Judith, and Joseph and Aseneth ) have received more attention recently as a distinct genre within ancient Jewish literature, their relation to Greek and Roman novels is still debated. This article argues that, although some of the Jewish novellas arise earlier, they should be considered part of the same broad category of novelistic literature. The rich research on the cultural context of Greek and Roman novels applies to the Jewish as well. But a further question is also explored: if the Jewish texts were originally considered fictional, how did they come to be considered biblical and historical? Two suggestions are proposed: the protagonists of the narratives first came to be revered as heroes of the faith aside from the texts, and the rise of “biblical history” required the use of Esther and Daniel to fill in the gaps in the chronology.

Greek Philosophical Discourse in the Book of Judith

Recent scholarship on Jewish and Christian authors from the turn of the era often emphasizes the influence of Greek philosophical terms and concepts, but there is still some question as to how early this influence can be discerned, especially in Judea as opposed to Egypt. The Greek notion of ἐγκράτεια, or self-mastery, has been a central part of this investigation. After a consideration of ἐγκράτεια in Greek philosophy and of analogous approaches in Israelite moral psychology as found mainly in Proverbs and in the transitional case of Ben Sira, it is argued that four aspects of the book of Judith reflect Greek philosophical influence: (1) Judith’s determination suggests Greek self-mastery (ἐγκράτεια); (2) the angry foreign tyrants suggest ἀκρασία, or lack of self-mastery; (3) Judith’s division of time into past, present, and future reflects Greek philosophical discourse about time; and (4) Judith’s criticism of the Bethulians’ prayer calls to mind the Greek philosophical reflections on rational prayer. Greek philosophical expressions are not unambiguously present, however; this text likely reflects the changing conditions of the interrelations of Israelite and Greek discourse in Judea.

Wisdom and Word among the Hellenistic Saviors: The Function of Literacy

Parallels for developments in Jewish Wisdom and the Jewish use of Word are often sought in Hellenistic cults such as that of Isis, and increasingly the mechanisms of the spread of such religious movements are being investigated. In the Hellenistic period there appeared a number of social and religious developments that may be correlated with the reverence for textuality among some groups, especially among those who revered those cosmic saviors more associated with creation than with fertility or rescue: Isis and Sarapis outside of Egypt, Hekate of the Chaldaean Oracles, Hermes/Thoth of the Egyptian Hermetic literature, Word, Jewish Wisdom, Jesus Christ, and Sethian redeemers such as Barbelo. The philosophical development that formed the intellectual basis for these divinities was Middle Platonism, with its three-tiered system of transcendent divinity, cosmic savior, and human beings, and the social development that formed the political and economic analogy for this was patronage, with its three-tiered system of patron, broker, and client. The cosmic savior was then an alternative broker for an alternative patron, and there was a strong investment in texts that provided a portable focus for the sanctum and an alternative myth of origins for the adherent.

Erich Gruen. Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition. Hellenistic Culture and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xx, 335 pp.

Erich S. Gruen, a leading Greco-Roman historian, here presents the results of several years of research in the field of Jewish history. Positioning himself as the gadfly in his adopted field, he describes certain consensus positions of scholars in Jewish studies and proceeds seriatim to question or deconstruct them. This makes for interesting reading, and in some cases a significant challenge to the standard views of textbooks on the subject. Only some of his challenges can be mentioned here.