12-17) is in point here. The sixth “week” (period of 490 years) ends
with the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar; in the seventh
a rebellious generation arises, all whose works are apostasy (the
hellenizers of the Seleucid time); at its end the “chosen righteous
men of the eternal plantation of righteousness” are chosen to
receive the sevenfold instruction about God’s whole creation
(apparently the cosmological revelations of Enoch); the historical
retrospect closes before the robbery and desecration of the temple
by Antiochus Epiphanes (170, 168 B.C.), of which the seer knows
nothing. The chronological error here amounts to sixty or seventy
years.
In the Introduction, p. xii, by a typographical error which is
repeated on p. xxii, Dr. Schechter says that the 390 years of the
text would bring us “to within a generation of Simon the Just, who
flourished about 290 B.C.,” and twenty years more would bring us
into the midst of the hellenistic persecutions preceding the
Maccabaean revolt (about 170 B.C.). Margoliouth, whose hypothesis
490 does not suit any better than 390, takes courage from
Schechter’s doubts to disregard the numbers altogether. Gressmann
(Internationale Wochenschrift, March 4, 1911) is led by metrical
considerations to treat all the chronological notices as
interpolations, and gives them no further consideration. But even if
the figures were introduced by a later hand, they may still
represent the tradition of the sect.
14 Perhaps we should emend _ma’mādō_, “station,” i.e. sect.
15 See below, p. 350, 354 f.
16 Cf. Isa. 30 20 f.
17 The Septuagint renders _yāḥīd_ most frequently by ἀγαπητός, less
often by μονογενής.
18 The same prophecy which was applied by Akiba to Bar Cocheba and by
the Dositheans to their founder (see below, p. 362).
19 The sect rejects the temple in Jerusalem and its worship. Cf. 20 21
f., in the last crisis, “they will lean upon God ... and will
declare the sanctuary unclean and will return to God.”
20 Perhaps better, keep aloof, by vow and ban, from unrighteous,
unclean gain.
21 See below, p. 353.
22 The name comes from Isa. 28 14, where the scorners are the rulers in
Jerusalem, who boast of their covenant with death and their compact
with hell, who have made lies their refuge and hidden themselves in
falsehood. See also Isa. 29 20.
23 It might be surmised that the false prophet had headed an
insurrection—perhaps a Messianic rising—which ended in disaster.
24 See above, p. 333.
25 Or, as Schechter elsewhere expresses it, “disappeared.” Among the
synonyms for death, Aaron ben Eliahu names “gather in” (Isa. 58 8).
26 Introduction, p. xiii.
27 P. xiii. “We gather from another passage that the Only Teacher found
his death in Damascus, but is expected to rise again (p. 19, l. 35;
p. 20, l. 1; cf. also p. 6, l. 11).” The verb _’āmad_ means, as
frequently in the later books of the Old Testament, “appear upon the
scene.” In this sense it occurs repeatedly in the book before us,
and there is nothing in the context here to suggest a different
interpretation.
28 Cf. Acts 1 11.
29 See Isa. 59 20.
30 The quotation is to be thus restored; see Exod. 20 6 and Deut. 7 9.
The next two or three lines are very obscure: “From the house of
Peleg, who went out (or, will go out) from the city of the
sanctuary, and they will rely on God (cf. Isa. 10 20) when the
transgression of Israel is at an end, and will declare the sanctuary
unclean, and will return to God. The prince (?) of the people with
few words (??).” The house of Peleg may be an etymological allegory
for the seceders; the city of the sanctuary is probably Jerusalem
(cf. 6 11 ff., above, p. 338); but neither the connection with the
preceding nor the meaning of the sequel is clear.
31 Text, “and confessed,” which leaves the sentence without a
predicate.
32 See also 7 20: “The sceptre” (Num. 24 17) “is the prince of all the
congregation; and when he arises he will destroy all the children of
Seth.”
33 It is not improbable that the author thought also of the other
meaning of the word _tāphēl_, here rendered “stucco,” viz. something
insipid, stupid; cf. Lam. 2 14, in a passage which, like Ezek. 13
10, refers to the false prophets. I see nothing to indicate that
“the wall” is the fence or hedge which the Pharisaean rabbis drew
around the law to protect it from infraction, as Dr. Schechter
thinks.
34 The text explains, “this is the prater of whom it says, they prate
unceasingly” (4 19 f.; cf. Mic. 2 11). Dr. Schechter regards this
explanation as “a disturbing parenthesis.”
35 The Jannes and Jambres of 2 Tim. 3 8.
36 Such marriages, especially with a sister’s daughter, are not only
permitted, but especially commended in the Talmud (Yebamoth 62b-63a;
see Maimonides, Issure Biah 2 14), and are still common in countries
where the Jews are free to follow the rabbinical law. On the Karaite
prohibition of marriage with a niece, see below, p. 366.
37 On the pollution of the sanctuary, cf. Assumption of Moses 5 3;
Testament of Levi 14 5 ff.; Psalms of Solomon 2 3.
38 On the portals of the sun, see Enoch 72, etc.
39 Perhaps an error of the text for 2000; see below, § 8.
40 Cf. Jubilees 50 8.
41 This holds on week-days as well as on the Sabbath.
42 Perhaps we should read, “make an ‘_erūb_’ ” (a legal fiction by
which dwellings or limits were treated as one). The Sadducees and
Samaritans rejected this evasion of the law.
43 See 12 12 ff.
44 Similarly the Essenes, at their reception into the order, bound
themselves by the “tremendous oaths” which Josephus describes, B. J.
ii, 8 7.
45 The oath by the Tetragrammaton included _a fortiori_.
46 The Essenes excluded oaths altogether, except in the initiation of
members. See also Slavonic Enoch 49 1; Philo, De spec. legibus ii,
1, and elsewhere (Charles, Secrets of Enoch, p. 65). Our sect
recognizes judicial oaths (9 8 ff.) and imprecations (9 12), as well
as vows under oath (16 6 ff.).
47 On the relation of the Jubilees to the sect, see further below, p.
359.
48 Cf. Jubilees 2 9, God appointed the sun ... for sabbaths, and
months, and feasts; and Jubilees 6 37, the observation of the moon
disturbs the calendar.
49 It seems necessary to supply these words.
50 “The book of _hagu_.” The rendering “Institutes” is not offered as a
translation of the name, but as indicating the probable character of
the work. See below, p. 353 f.
51 Dr. Schechter renders “Censor,” and remarks, “Such an office,
entirely unknown to Judaism, could only have been borrowed from the
Romans.” But the functions of the Inspector or Supervisor bear no
resemblance to those of the Roman censors; and for the identity of
the title the translator is solely accountable, not the constitution
of the sect. Mr. Margoliouth talks loosely about dependence on Roman
administrative models; it would be interesting to learn in what
particulars. With the very large authority vested in the Supervisor
may be compared that of the managers, or administrators
(ἐπιμεληταί), among the Essenes, “without whose directions they do
nothing”; though the functions of the managers in the Essene
coenobite establishments were of course quite different from those
of the Supervisors of our sect.
52 In the partly illegible lines that follow, his dealing with the
congregation is compared with that of a shepherd with his flock.—Dr.
W. H. Ward suggests that the title _mebaḳḳer_ may be connected with
Ezek. 34 11 f., where the verb is used of a shepherd’s looking out
for his flock.
53 As in Mishna _Yoma_ the High Priest has to be instructed by experts
in the ritual of the Day of Atonement, and made to swear not to
depart from his instructions.
54 Probably the lands belonging to the sect.
55 That a court must consist of ten judges, the Karaites deduce from
Ruth 4 2. So Anan quoted by Poznanski, Revue des études juives, vol.
xlv, p. 67, and p. 69, n. 1.
56 This seems to be the meaning of the somewhat obscure passage.
57 It is not clear whether imprisonment or surveillance is meant.
58 On the spirit of Belial (ruling over Israel) see Jubilees 1 20.
59 “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,” 1 Sam. 15 23.
60 In contrast to the Samaritans.
61 In 8 18 ff., after saying, “Such will be the judgment of every one
who despises the commandments of God, and he forsook them and they
turned away in the stubbornness of their heart,” A adds: “This is
the word which Jeremiah spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah and Elisha
to his servant Gehazi,” referring probably to otherwise unknown
apocryphal books. Johanneh and his brother, whom Belial raised up
against Moses, are familiar figures of Jewish legend.
62 The simplest explanation of the form would be to take it as an
abstract noun of the type _fa‘l_, like _sáḥu_; “swimming” or _fi‘l,
fu‘l,_ like _séku_ (n. pr.), _tóhu_, _bóhu_, etc., from the verb
_hagah_ (root _hagw_), “reflect, give thought to something,” also
“read” (aloud), so that the noun might literally mean “study,”
equivalent to _midrash_, or perhaps “reading.”—If the opinion which
connects the sect with the Dositheans were tenable (see below, p.
360 ff.), another explanation of the name might be suggested by a
passage in Abul-Fath’s account of the origin of the Dositheans. He
narrates that a son of the Samaritan high priest, named Zar’ah, a
man preëminent for learning in his time, having been expelled from
the community for immorality, betook himself to Dositheus, who made
him the chief of his sect. This man “wrote a book in which he
vituperated all the Samaritan religious heads and set forth
heresies.” The words are, _haja fīhī kul al’ a’immetin wa’abda’a
fīhī_. Inasmuch as the Arabic _hajwun_ formally corresponds to the
Hebrew _hagu_, the Book of _Hagu_ in our texts might be identified
with this controversial writing of Zar’ah, the disciple of
Dositheus. The Hebrew verb _hagah_ is thought by Kohut (Aruch
Completum, III, 177) to occur in Echa Rabbathi on Lam. 1 4 and 3 33
in the sense “contemn, deride,” equivalent to the Arabic _haja_,
“lampoon, vituperate.” It might then be conjectured that Abul-Fath
had heard of a Dosithean book of _hagu_ (in Hebrew) and, taking the
word in its Arabic meaning, evolved his description of the character
of the work from this etymology.
63 Some Karaite authorities, also, transferring to the synagogue the
holiness of the temple, forbade a man in a state of uncleanness to
enter the inner room of the synagogue (Nissi; see Winter und
Wünsche, Die jüdische Litteratur, vol. ii, p. 74).
64 The coincidence of the name with the Arabic _masjid_, “place of
bowing down,” mosque, is hardly a sufficient reason for suspecting
Moslem influence, as Dr. Schechter does, who thinks it possible that
the word was introduced by a later (Falasha?) scribe as a substitute
for the original term.—Elia Bashiatzi (Adereth Eliahu, p. 58), a
Karaite writer of the 15th century, gives _Beth hishtaḥawīya,_
together with _Beth hakeneseth_ and _Beth hamidrash_, as the three
names of the place of worship. Moslem influence can here hardly be
questioned; in a later chapter Elia describes the postures of prayer
quite after the Moslem pattern, alleging Biblical authority for all
of them.
65 The opinion that after Josiah’s reform, or after the restoration of
the temple by Zerubbabel and Joshua, Jerusalem was the only place
where Jewish sacrifices were offered is refuted by an accumulating
volume of evidence from various regions. See D. S. Margoliouth,
Expositor, 1911, pp. 40 ff.
66 Cf. the accusation against the orthodox Jews (5 6): “They defile the
Sanctuary in that they do not separate according to the law,”
etc.—It is possible that the prohibition quoted above applied, not
to the inhabitants of the city, but to persons who visited it for
the purpose of worship, as is the rule for pilgrims to Mecca.
67 The holy spirit in them. Dr. Schechter adduces parallels in Jewish
writings. Cf. Jubilees 1 21, 23, “Create in them a clean heart and a
holy spirit.”
68 Dr. Schechter conjectures that the author wrote _Sar ha-Panim_, the
Prince of the Presence, but the passages from Jubilees which he
quotes in support of this opinion are hardly convincing.
69 See Slavonic Enoch 42 5; cf. 9.
70 So far as may be argued from silence, this is an important
difference from Jubilees.
71 See 7 2; cf. Slavonic Enoch 50 4: “When you might have vengeance, do
not repay either your neighbor or your enemy. For God will repay as
your avenger in the day of the great judgment. Let it not be for you
to take vengeance.” (ed. Charles, p. 67); cf. Ecclus. 28 1.
72 That Zadok was the name of the “interpreter of the law,” the founder
of the sect, is a much less probable opinion; the name stands in no
connection with the origin of the sect or its legislation, but with
the bringing to light again of the Pentateuch. The author cannot
have supposed that the _written_ law remained unknown till the
second century B.C.; the reforms of Josiah, based on another
recovery of the book by Hilkiah, would preclude such a notion.
73 The coincidence of names does not count for very much. Abul-Fath
names two Samaritan “Zadokite” subsects among the later Dositheans
alone.
74 See Hilgenfeld, Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums, 1884, pp.
155 ff.; Montgomery, The Samaritans, 1907, pp. 252 ff.
75 See also Epiphanius; the Sadducees were an offshoot from Dositheus.
76 Not in the time of Alexander the Great, as Dr. Schechter has from
Montgomery. Abul-Fath, indeed (and Adler’s Chronicle after him),
introduces this whole story before Alexander, and makes Simon a
protégé of Darius; but the testimony that Dositheus appeared after
the time of Hyrcanus, which, as a matter of Samaritan history, may
be conceived to rest on tradition, is not to be set aside because,
in fitting his Samaritan traditions into the framework of universal
history, Abul-Fath is in error by two or three centuries about the
date of Hyrcanus. This used to be understood; see, e.g., De Sacy,
Chrestomathie arabe, vol. ii (1806), p. 209.
77 Epiphanius avers, on the contrary, that the Dositheans kept their
festivals at the same time with the Jews.
78 See Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie,
vol. i, pp. 437 ff., 517; Ginzel, Handbuch der mathematischen und
technischen Chronologie, vol. i, pp. 170 f., 287. On the calendar of
Gaza, Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes (3 ed.), vol. ii, pp.
88 f.
79 We have experience of the inconvenience of this system in the
wandering of Easter and the Christian festivals dependent on it; a
reform by which Easter should come on a fixed date in the solar year
has repeatedly been proposed, and a movement is now on foot in
Europe to bring this about by agreement of governments and churches.
80 The year of 364-days is found also in Enoch 72-82, and (by the side
of the true solar year of 365-¼ and the lunar year of 354 days) in
the Slavonic Enoch. The intercalary days are introduced one at the
beginning of each quarter of the year (Enoch 75 1); this is also the
method in Jubilees; see 6 23. In effect this is equivalent to a year
in which eight months have thirty days and four—those in which the
equinoxes and solstices fall—have thirty-one (Enoch 72 13, 19). It
is not impossible that this system is implied in the chronology of
the flood in Genesis; see B. W. Bacon, Hebraica, vol. viii
(1891-1892), pp. 79-88, 124-139; Charles, Jubilees, p. 56.
81 This is not the place to discuss the value of Epiphanius’s
testimony. His description of the Scribes and Pharisees at least
admonishes to caution.
82 The text is certain enough, in the sense that all the manuscripts
hitherto collated have the same reading.
83 Nicetas, in reproducing Epiphanius’s account of the Dositheans, has
τεκνῶσαι, “after having begotten children,” which also agrees very
well with the context.
84 The familiar title of Porphyry’s book on vegetarianism, Περὶ ἀποχῆς
ἐμψύχων, will occur to every one. Epiphanius himself explains the
word in Haer. 18, 1, “they (Nasaraei) thought it unlawful to eat
meat.”
85 Haer. 9, 3; cf. 30, 2: “The Ebionites, like the Samaritans, avoid
touching an outsider.” A still more extreme fastidiousness on this
point is attributed by Josephus to the Essenes; cf. B. J. ii, 8, 10.
86 Photius, Bibliotheca Codicum, cod. 280 (ed. Bekker, p. 285).
87 The Kitab al-Anwār was published in 937, not 637, as by a misprint
on p. xviii.
88 Schechter’s translation, Introduction, p. xviii.
89 Schechter, p. xxxvii, n. 21.
90 Founder of a Jewish sect which arose in Persia about the end of the
seventh century.
91 On this point see above, p. 362.
92 Quoted in the original by Poznanski, Revue des études juives, vol.
xliv (1902). p. 162, n. 2.
93 Quoted by Poznanski, l. c., p. 170.
94 Harkavy attributed it conjecturally to Sahl ben Masliah; Poznanski,
whom Dr. Schechter follows, thinks it more likely that the author
was Hasan ben Mashiah.
95 As the Karaites do. See e.g. Mishna, Rosh ha-Shana, 1 7 ff., 2 1 f.
96 See Poznanski, Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. x (1898), pp. 159, 248,
273.
97 Quoted in the original by Poznanski, Revue des études juives, vol.
xliv, p. 176.—The point is that the “Zadokite” writings known to the
author said nothing about fixing the beginning of the month by
observation. Saadia doubtless based his assertion, not on anything
he found in “Zadokite” books, but on Rosh ha-Shanah 22 a-b.
98 Poznanski, l. c., p. 177; cf. also Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. x,
pp. 246 ff.—Saadia probably means that “Zadok” argued from the fact
that the 150 days of Gen. 7 24, 8 3, make an even five months (7 11,
8 4), that each month had thirty days (cf. Jubilees 5 27), while for
the Karaites thirty days was only the extreme length of a lunar
month. See Poznanski, Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. x, p. 241.
99 See above, p. 359 f.
100 In “Belial is let loose,” Mr. Margoliouth finds a witless pun on
Paul’s apostolic claims.
101 Mr. Margoliouth is led to the opinion that they were Boëthusians by
the obscure passage in 2 13, which he interprets, “in the
explanation of his name (sc. the Messiah’s) are also their
names,”—the name of the sect points mysteriously to the name of the
Messiah. “Now the Boëthusians derived their name from a priest named
Boëthus, and the meaning of βοηθὸς is the same as that of the Hebrew
name represented by Jesus. The inference would be that the section
of the Zadokite or Sadducees who adopted an attitude of belief
toward John the Baptist and Jesus were none other than the
Boëthusians (perhaps identical with the great company of believing
priests of Acts 6 7), who not unnaturally liked to dwell on the
identity of meaning between their names and that of the
Teacher.”—_Boëthos_, it may be remarked, is probably a Greek
equivalent for the name Ezra, not for Jeshua.
102 Mr. Margoliouth thinks that “the end of the destruction of the
land,” after which the migration to Damascus took place, “can hardly
be anything else than the completion of the Roman conquest in A.D.
70.” “At the end of the devastation of the land” means, however, not
when the destruction was complete, but when the period of desolation
was over. The phrase itself, therefore, is no more appropriate to
Titus than to Nebuchadnezzar—or to Hadrian. Mr. Margoliouth does not
say how he interprets the rest of the passage. Are the men who, at
the end of the devastation of the land, “removed the boundary and
led Israel astray,” the great rabbis of the generations after the
destruction of Jerusalem, and does the sequel, “and the land was
laid waste because they spoke rebelliously against the commandments
of God by Moses and against his holy Anointed one,” refer to the war
under Hadrian?
103 As has been noted above, _yāhīd_ is sometimes rendered in the Greek
Old Testament by μονογενής.
104 See above, p. 341.
105 The commandment to love one’s neighbor as himself, for example. In
the context of the covenant formula, in contrast to Jewish orthodoxy
no less than to Christianity, the neighbor is not the fellow man,
nor even the fellow Jew, but the fellow member of the schismatic
church.
106 See above, p. 334.
107 That the repentance of the people was brought about by the work of
“the root” is not suggested in any way in the text; on the contrary,
the only natural construction and interpretation of the passage
would make the penitent generation the same with that which is
called “the root.”
108 See above, p. 334.
109 Gressmann is sure that this “man of lies” must be Bar Coziba (Bar
Cocheba), the Messianic leader of the rebellion under Hadrian. He
might have added that the contrast to the true star out of Jacob,
the founder of the sect, would be peculiarly pertinent. The punning
etymology, “Say not ‘Star,’ but ‘liar’ ” (Echa Rabbathi on Lam. 2
2), is ascribed to the Patriarch Judah.
110 Perhaps the manuscripts may have been in the possession of some
Rabbanite controversialist in Egypt, and thus found their way, like
various Karaite writings, into the Genizah of the Synagogue.