E-Book Overview
<em>Before the Biblereveals the landscape of scripture in an era prior to the crystallization of the rabbinic Bible and the canonization of the Christian Bible. Most accounts of the formation of the Hebrew Bible trace the origins of scripture through source critical excavation of the archaeological "tel" of the Bible or the analysis of the scribal hand on manuscripts in text-critical work, but the discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our understanding of scripture formation. Judith Newman focuses not on the putative origins and closure of the Bible, but on the reasons why scriptures remained open, with pluriform growth in the Hellenistic-Roman period. Drawing on new methods from cognitive neuroscience and the social sciences as well as traditional philological and literary analysis,<em>Before the Bibleargues that the key to understanding the formation of scripture is the widespread practice of individual and communal prayer in early Judaism. The figure of the teacher as a learned and pious sage capable of interpreting and embodying the tradition is central to understanding this revelatory phenomenon. The book considers the entwinement of prayer and scriptural formation in five books reflecting the diversity of early Judaism: Ben Sira, Daniel, Jeremiah/Baruch, Second Corinthians, and the Qumran Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns). While not a complete taxonomy of scripture formation, the book illuminates performative dynamics that have been largely ignored as well as the generative role of interpretive tradition in accounts of how the Bible came to be.
E-Book Content
Before the Bible
Before the Bible The Liturgical Body and the Formation of Scriptures in Early Judaism
vwv
Judith H. Newman
1
1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978–0–19–021221–6 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
To David
CON T E N T S
Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 I.1. Before the Bible: Understanding Text in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls 2 Textual Pluriformity 4 I.2. The Liturgical Body and the Ubiquity of Prayer 7 Redefining the Liturgical 8 Embodiment and the Liturgical Body 11 I.3. The Formation of Scriptures and Discerning Revelation 14 I.4. From Literary Text to Scripture 17 Outline of the Book 19 1. Shaping the Scribal Self Through Prayer and Paideia: The Example of Ben Sira 23 1.1. Prayer and the Formation of the Scribe 24 What Does Prayer Do? 27 1.2. The Self Through Neurological Lenses 28 Decentering the Self of the Scribe 28 1.3. The Self as a Cultural Achievement 30 The Indigenous Psychology of Ben Sira 31 Humanity and the Impulse to Worship 32 The Importance of Characterizing God in Self-Formation 32 The Communal Context for Sel