The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

30 IMPACT OF SCROLLS ON TEXT AND CANON
But the reassessments that came about because of it differed rather
widely. David Noel Freedman, in an article on canon (in the IDBSup) in
1976 raised questions about the dates of the canonization of the Law and
the Prophets, suggesting that those two sections of the Tanak were
already basically stabilized by the end of the sixth century B.C.E., but the
Ketuvim not until Yavneh. 15 Sid Leiman also in 1976 took Lewis’s work
to mean that the Ketuvim was probably stabilized well before Yavneh
took place. 16 Then in 1985, Roger Beckwith argued that what Lewis had
done should be taken to mean that the Ketuvim was already a part of the
Jewish canon well before Yavneh, most likely effected by the bibliophile
activities of Judas Maccabaeus in the second century B.C.E. 17
In the same time frame, studies in biblical intertextuality began to take
shape. Interest in the function of older literature in new literary compositions,
oral and written, is perhaps as old as speech itself, certainly as old
as writing. 18 But such interest began to take on new aspects with the discovery
of the Judean Scrolls. One of the striking characteristics of
Qumran literature is actually typical of Jewish literature of the period
generally, especially the so-called Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Philo,
and Josephus. Jewish literature is markedly scriptural in composition:
when writers were conceiving new literature, they would write it in scriptural
terms and rhythms. My teacher, Samuel Sandmel, often remarked
that Torah is Judaism and Judaism is Torah, and until one comes to terms
with that observation, one cannot grasp what Judaism is about. He
meant Torah in its broad sense, with the traditions that flowed from it.
Jews wrote their literature traditionally and scripturally.
Along with that observation was a similar one; that Scripture at that
time was still in a stage of limited fluidity. Scribes and translators were free
to make Scripture comprehensible to the communities they served. In fact,
it is now clear that all tradents of Scripture have had two responsibilities—
whether they be scribes, translators, commentators, midrashists, or
preachers—both to the Vorlage and to the community being served by the
tradent’s activity; that is, their responsibility was to the community’s past
15. David N. Freedman, “Canon of the OT,” IDBSup (1976), 130–36.
16. Sid (Shnayer) Z. Leiman, The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture (Hamden: Anchor,
1976).
17. Roger T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985). In the 1960s Brevard Childs of Yale already began to focus
his work in “exegesis in canonical context” on “the final form of the text.” One
assumes he means one of the classical Tiberian codices.
18. See Julia Kristeva in Semiotike: Recerches pour une sémanalyse (Paris: Tel Quel, 1969),
146; and Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1990), 22.