Chronicles: Reading Scripture as History

 Chronicles presents as a historical text that replays many of the events covered in Samuels and Kings. Written at a later period it is more of a 'retelling' that to varying degrees changes both the content of the events described (their 'historicity') and the message it is trying to convey. Variations can be minor such is the switch out of outdated language, such as replacing 'baddim’ for 'matot' to describe the poles to carry the tabernacle. Others can seem to be more of a falsification of the historical record, such as the notion that the succession from David to Solomon was smooth and not beset by battles for succession. In either case, however, the thought is that the reader would have been familiar with the earlier accounts, which would have been required for understanding the latter (eg. the case of Saul dying for consulting a median without the story giving rise to this event).

The 'point' or 'design' of the retelling, if not a direct replacement, is to showcase a different theology, a different set of principles or a change post-exilic reality. Different priorities include embedding the authority of the Torah into earlier accounts and bringing earlier events in line with them; prioritising the lineage of Judah; and describing a more direct cause and effect ('measure for measure') between one’s actions and the reward or punishment due for it. The question arises is to how deliberate these variations are, as opposed to being a result of subconscious influence. Are these the 'point' of the retelling or just emergent after the fact?

Marc Brettler asks rhetorically whether certain values such as the stability of the temple make it worth falsifying the sources, or whether the lessons that the Chronicler conveys do not rely on the historicity of the text. Both sides of that dichotomy appeal to a deliberate (and not literally truthful) change of the story. Ultimately, he comes down against this saying there are no internal clues that the text does not depict a real past. The many changes, and impositions, are a result of the natural influence of his language, time and thought.

This approach seems to work fine with modernising language, filling in details influenced by their knowledge of scripture (eg that Uzza did not carry the tabernacle on his shoulders, but in a cart) or natural increments of phraseology (such as the use of phrase "strong and mighty" in relation of succession from David to Solomon to mimic the succession of Moses to Joshua). It may seem less defensible where there is a wholesale restructuring of the text such as moving material from Hezekiah to Solomon, to prefigure Hezekiah. It is hard to imagine this is not deliberate; and if deliberate, how would the author be able to consider it history in our modern sense of the term? Equally, though an act of omission, how would the Author expect people not to believe there was 'really' a battle of succession between the reigns of David and Solomon when it has already been established that the reader must be familiar with the earlier accounts?

It also appears that Marc Brettler (perhaps knowingly) reads a text in much the same way that the chronicler (as a historian) does. That is, he reads additional detail into the historical record based on his assessment of logical plausibility and internal connections between different texts; and does so based on what he believes "must be true" given his modern understanding and critical analysis of the text. In so doing he alters (albeit, no doubt, with a lot of academic support) a traditional reading and ordering of events. This is evident, in a number of the 'impositions' being considered as such due to the belief that the relevant parts of the Torah (eg the "P' texts) were written, and created (or at least canonised) half a millennia later than the Solomonic period. This leads, for example, to the view that the attribution of the (latterly created) tabernacle rites to the Temple as anachronistic. If one has independent reasons (textual or extra-textual) for agreeing with the dating - it is still by no means the only response to deny the modelling of the temple on the Tabernacle. One could, for example, agree with Halivni that these are maculate texts, that record an earlier oral tradition. However, he takes the historians viewpoint that he attributes himself to the Chronicler.

 

Temple Scroll: A Jewish Theocracy

 In commenting that theocracy (a term coined by Josephus) is today seen as the rule by cleric (and the abolishment of difference between church and states), Rabbi Jonathan Sacks comments that “this is not what the Torah envisages at all.  Jewish theocracy is not rule by priests.  What it means is that power within the state is delegated power”.  However, in examining the Temple Scroll, this perilously close to what is being delineated: rule by priests.  In a divergence to the Masoretic text, the Temple Scroll indicates that “they” shall write for the King a scroll of torot, as opposed to ‘he’ writing a scroll for himself.  The torot of the priests further limit the power of the king from what the Torah text itself says.  For example, such as the king only being able to marry in his father’s house, and not remarry while his first wife is alive; whereas the Deuteronomy asks him not to accumulate wives and marry within his people.  The king may only wage optional war after consulting the ‘Urrim v'Turim’ of the high priest, must be guarded by a priestly council lest he sin, and must rule in a priestly manner in order not to disrupt the purity of the Temple City.

Fraade views this limitation of the kings, not as a responsive to particular corrupt Hasmonean kings, but as “an articulation of [their] ideological and rhetorical culture[]”; one that is “intertwined with the dialectical diarchy of priest and king”.  This is well taken, as the source is (according to Shiffman) pre-Qumranic, without any ostensible messianism, and more reflective of its Sadducean sources, that is intertwined with the elite culture of the priesthood.  The Temple Scroll seeing itself as a complete Sinaitic revelation, and which views the Priestly order (in all its particulars) as ordained in Sinaitic revelation, without any overt interpretation.  This potentially would have been seen the Qumranic community as the order of things that would be restored in any imminent redemption.

This is contrasted by Fraade with the Rabbinic view that (usually) honours the king above the priests.  He brings the example of when mourning a High Priests, most people have to sit on a stool but the king may sit on a couch.  However, ‘honour’ is not necessarily coextensive with ‘importance’ in a political sense, or in the ability to exercise power.  As per constitutional monarchies today (e.g. in UK), the amount of honour is inverse to the effective prerogative powers they have. In these sources, the king must still get council before war, just with the council of 71, rather than the high priest.  Even when the rabbis (in Sifre) ‘rabbanise’ the king by making him a sage conversant in rabbinic source, he is not the legislator or judge in such manners; but act as a further constraint upon him. 

Not to mention the fact that where necessary the king (especially if overreaching in his powers) is asked to not overstep boundaries of the priesthood (cf. Kiddushin about King Yannai: “Suffice yourself with the keter malchut and leave the keter kahuna to the descendants of Aaron”).  Thus less a “dialectic of diarchy”, the rabbis talk about the tripartite division of powers as represented by the three crowns (ketarim): Kingship, Priesthood and Torah.  Even in the Temple Scroll theology, the ‘Torah’ of Purity may act a constraint on individual priests themselves, and the external conditions needed for the indwelling of G-d in the temple.

Interesting in this is two opposing forces.  The first is the “undetermination of theory by fact”.  The perceived gap in the biblical text – i.e. not knowing the contents of the Kings scroll – gives considerable latitude to ‘construct’ this Torah and come with very different conceptions of the relative powers of this triad based on their “ideological and rhetorical cultures”.  On the other hand, they are also very much constrained by the text that (in words of Stuart Cohen) “authorised officers of all three ketarim must combine to in order to give constitutional effect to acts of political significance” – such as prophet, priest and king present in appointing of King Solomon.  Thus while there is constant tension between these constitutional elements, instruction, priesthood and executive power must all be present in any interpretation.

Enoch: The hero who isn't

 I Enoch is a collection of five separate compositions (Book of the Watchers, Similitudes, Astronomical Book, the Book of Dreams, Epistle of Enoch) that are written at different times but which constitute an “Enochian Discourse”.  Unlike works that are part of a “Mosaic Discourse”, Sinai represents merely the “setting” of revelation but where the authority of the text comes from revelation anew.  It echoes biblical phrases, and creates biblical allusions, but through its pseudepigraphal attribution to the character of Enoch, the setting is primordial humanity and not the Mosaic covenant.  Its focus from the first verse of the Book of the Watchers – and from the beginning of humanity - is on the final judgement and the saving of the chosen elect. This and other aspects of the text (retribution beyond death, heavenly journeys, ex eventu prophecy, angelic interpretation) follow interests reminiscent of the Hellenistic age, and put it in the “apocalypse” (albeit not apocalyptic) genre of literature in which “human life is bounded in the present by the supernatural world of angels and demons and in the future by the inevitability of a final judgement”.

The interest in Enoch is not purely in its pre-Mosaic setting, but in the character of Enoch himself or lack of it.  We do not know a lot from Genesis, other than that he is the seventh generation from Adam, and “walked with Elo-him”.  From the Book of the Watchers we know he is righteous, but what made him righteous is not overly elaborated on.  We meet Enoch “standing, blessing the Lord” which is a very static, non-Action oriented pose; and learn that as a “scribe of truth” he is invited to “come here, and hear my voice”.  As an empty vessel, he becomes the archetypal intercessor between the Watchers, G-d and humans.  On behalf of the watcher he dutifully “recited (to G-d) the memorandum of their petition”; and realises that his sole function is that “he created and destined me to reprimand the watchers, the sons of heaven”.  Collins discusses Competitive histography – a one upmanship of heroism: “Enoch was developed as a Jewish counterpart of such heroes as Enmeduranki – no less than them in antiquity, status, or access to divine knowledge”.  Yet Enoch does not seem heroic in the usual sense, and where his passivity is possibly the point.

The Watchers take an overly activist line, and not at all in line with their creation.  Their creation consisted of “originally exist[ing] as spirits, living forever and not dying for all the generations of eternity therefore I did not make women among you”.  This seems to echo the admirable quality of not changing or acting other than ones nature.  The author marvels: “Contemplate all his works, and observe the works of heaven, how they do not alter their paths; and the luminaries of heaven, that they all rise and set, each one ordered in its appointed time, and they appear on ther feasts and do not transgress their appointed order”.  Yet the watchers joined the earthly realm: “And they began to go into them, and to defile themselves through them, and to teach them sorcery and charms, and to reveal to them the cutting of roots and plants”.  The physical conjugation with humanity, and improper revelation of heavenly power into the earthly realm, corrupts and contaminates the world. 

Boccacini says that this introduces a “[p]articular conception of evil, understood as an automous reality antecedent to humanity’s ability to choose, the result of a ‘contamination that has spoiled nature”.  In this view, large parts of humanity may be corrupt, but it is not necessarily something that they can do much about.  It is perhaps for this reason that G-d instructs Enoch to tell the Watchers: “You should petition in behalf of humans, and not humans in behalf of you”.  This lack of ability to change this nature is reflect in the instruction to Enoch too: “Go to Noah and say to him in my name, ‘Hide Yourself.  And to reveal to him that the end is coming, that the whole earth will perish.”  In Rabbinic literature, Noah is criticised for his passivity (in contrast to Abraham) and yet this “hiding” in Enoch is a positive thing: Wait it out until the end in his own righteousness.

The literature suggests that ideal in Enoch is to leave an angelic life.  I think this is too easy on two grounds: 1. It was precisely the mixing of realms that led to the corruption, and Enoch could only go on this heavenly journey as a tabula rasa; 2. The ultimate aim is  “eternal peace all the days of their life” on earth.  The lesson is perhaps instead a form of quietism.  “Not for this generation do I expound, but concerning one that is distant I speak.  And concerning the chosen I speak now and concerning them I take up my discourse”.  In the apostate generation of post-exilic Judaism, they should wait and “hide themselves” like Noah and Enoch.

Jubilees: Is history one damned thing after another?

 Is history “just one damned thing after another” per the view the historian Arnold Toynbee criticises?  Or does one take the view that both philosophers and mystics tend to be drawn to that everything that is true about the past (and future) – regardless of the tensed language - is in some sense true at all times, all at once?  After all, for a statement to be true there have to be truth conditions that are met, and the facts about history must ‘exist’ in a way to support that proposition.  And what, in either view, is the relation between the events that seem to occur within time, to these timeless truths?  Is how and when truths ‘unfold’ something relevant to those truths themselves?

These are questions that pose themselves prominently in the reading of Jubilees, through the juxtaposition of historic events and eternally binding law; with an event (the Sinaitic revelation) that both is narrated as happening at a particular point in time and yet connects with the “Heavenly Tablets” that stands outside of that frame.  As an example of rewritten scripture, Jubilees (re)covers many of the events of Genesis and Exodus – stories that occur both in time and at a time prior to the Sinaitic Law that is (seemingly) binding a parte post.  Yet the setting of the book is the Lord and Moses conversing on Mount Sinai, scribing (and not inventing) from the Angel of the Presence’s dictation of the Heavenly Tablets. 

It says (1:27) “Dictate to Moses from the beginning of the creation until the time when my temple is built among them throughout the ages of eternity”.  Here the ages of eternity modifies beginnings and ends into logical and not temporal terms.  To use Hele Kvanvig’s differentiation, there is a distinction between the stories from Genesis and Exodus (which occurs in time) and the narration about Moses (which put those stories in a timeless frame).  This narration provides an authority larger than the Torah (the “first law”) given in the story – detailing a concept and not just an event.

This is put in further relief through how it backdates later law and interpretation into the earlier events.   First, however, certain readings could full squarely within the bracket of interpretation, no different than the Rabbinic Oral Law (a conclusion Martinez, quoted by Vanderkam comes to).  For example, the litigation and exoneration of one ancestor’s misdeeds (e.g. how Jubilees shows Judah’s transgression with Tamar was not adulterous) may be no different to how the Rabbis try to present David as not really sinning with Batsheva.  Filling in gaps of the story are also in the same vein as midrashic exegesis: such as the relation (in Jubilees, but not Genesis) between Abraham and Jacob during their joint 15 years alive.  Both may be “a pious effort to convey what is taken to be the essence of earlier traditions” or VanderKam’s assertion that “this is not a replacement but a guide”

Yet certain interpretations and laws are done in such a way not just to resolve textual difficulties but to buttress a deterministic (and timeless) approach to creation.  The laws of Shabbat are given in the account of creation itself to “keep sabbath with him in heaven”.  This is not G-d resting, nor a universalistic message of creation, but one designed to sanctify the Jewish people from amongst the nations and given to them alone.  And it is not a time-bound law, or one derivable from revelation alone, but “He made his commands rise as a fine fragrance which is acceptable in his presence for all times”.  This is less revelation than it is Natural Law, or a Spinozistic mode of G-d. Equally, the priesthood is just a part of the fabric of creation – Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Levi are all priests who officiate at alters.  This is less “prefiguring” the future and more “re-enacting” a timeless present.  

Where time does come in is in progressive revelation of this eternal truth.  VanderKam: “according to Jubilees the heroes of Genesis received legal revelations (and other kinds as well) and passed them down through the generations in permanent form.  They knew more and more of the law through the generations but not all of it”. They may not empirically have known all the truth in history, but when they did it was no less binding; and no time in which the ancestors lived “law free” -as the law is an expression of reality.  Though there is “progressive revelation”; nothing ‘new’ was introduced in any point history but to paraphrase: “All roads lead to Jerusalem” and it ever was thus.

Where then does this leave the Sinaitic revelation?  According to Najman “only at Sinai does the entire people become obliged to obey the Law.  Thus Sinai remains unique.  Indeed through its repeated emphasis on pre-Sinaitic revelation Jubilees does now downplay the authority of Sinai”.  This is true at the narrative level – and thus the author uses Sinai to buttress the authority of Jubilees.  It – and its metaphor of scribing from a Heavenly Torah – is the ultimate symbol for the escape from temporal to eternal truth.  But if there is a story and a narrative, there is also a meta narrative.  That a later writing taps into the same metaphor supplants the event of Sinai and its concrete first law; in favour of the eternal truth it now tells – with a revelation that goes beyond it.