Table Of ContentNew Approaches to the Study of Biblical
Interpretation in Judaism of the Second Temple
Period and in Early Christianity
Studies on the Texts of the
Desert of Judah
Edited by
Florentino García Martínez
Associate editors
Peter W. Flint
Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar
VoluME 106
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/stdj
New Approaches to the Study
of Biblical Interpretation in Judaism
of the Second Temple Period and
in Early Christianity
Proceedings of the Eleventh International
Symposium of the orion Center for the Study
of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated literature,
Jointly Sponsored by the Hebrew university Center
for the Study of Christianity, 9–11 January, 2007
Edited by
Gary A. Anderson, Ruth A. Clements, and David Satran
lEIDEN • BoSToN
2013
library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
orion Center for the Study of The Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated literature. International
Symposium (11th : 2007)
New approaches to the study of biblical interpretation in Judaism of the Second Temple period
and in early Christianity : proceedings of the Eleventh International Symposium of the orion
Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated literature, jointly sponsored by the
Hebrew university Center for the Study of Christianity, 9–11 January, 2007 / edited by Gary A.
Anderson, Ruth A. Clements, and David Satran.
pages cm. — (Studies on the texts of the Desert of Judah ; volume 106)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-90-04-20743-1 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-24500-6 (e-book)
1. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—History—Congresses. 2. Bible—Hermeneutics—
Congresses. I. Anderson, Gary A., 1955– II. Clements, Ruth. III. Satran, David. IV. Title.
BS531.o75 2007
220.609’01—dc23
2012041324
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CoNTENTS
Preface ............................................................................................................. vii
Abbreviations ................................................................................................... xi
Some Considerations on the Categories “Bible” and “Apocrypha” ... 1
Michael E. Stone
PART oNE
INTERPRETATIoN IN CoNTEXT
“For from Zion Shall Come Forth Torah . . .” (Isaiah 2:3):
Biblical Paraphrase and the Exegetical Background of Susanna 21
Michael Segal
Different Traditions or Emphases? The Image of God in Philo’s
De Opificio Mundi ...................................................................................... 41
Gregory E. Sterling
The Implied Audience of the letter of James ........................................ 57
Maren R. Niehoff
James on Faith and Righteousness in the Context of a Broader
Jewish Exegetical Discourse ................................................................... 79
Serge Ruzer
PART TWo
CoMPARATIVE STuDIES
You Will Have Treasure in Heaven ........................................................... 107
Gary A. Anderson
Allegorical Interpretations of Biblical Narratives in Rabbinic
literature, Philo, and origen: Some Case Studies ........................... 133
Menahem Kister
vi contents
Hermeneutics of Holiness: Syriac-Christian and Rabbinic
Constructs of Holy Community and Sexuality ................................. 185
Naomi Koltun-Fromm
The Parallel lives of Early Jewish and Christian Texts and Art:
The Case of Isaac the Martyr ................................................................. 207
Ruth A. Clements
PART THREE
INTERPRETIVE TRAJECToRIES
Didymus the Blind and the Philistores: A Contest over Historia in
Early Christian Exegetical Argument .................................................. 243
Richard A. Layton
Exegeting the Eschaton: Dionysius the Areopagite and
the Apocalypse ........................................................................................... 269
Sergio La Porta
Index of Modern Authors ............................................................................. 283
Index of Ancient Sources ............................................................................. 287
PREFACE
The present volume represents the fruits of the Eleventh International
orion Symposium, which took place June 18–21, 2007, at the Hebrew
university of Jerusalem, and was cosponsored by the university’s Center
for the Study of Christianity. This symposium, the second cooperative ven-
ture for the two Centers, drew its inspiration from the foundational work
of their initial joint project, the Ninth International orion Symposium:
“Text, Thought, and Practice in Qumran and Early Christianity” (2004).
At that earlier gathering, Jewish and Christian scholars articulated what
was then emerging as a new paradigm for thinking about the connec-
tions between Qumranic and early Christian texts—less a conception of
direct connections or genetic influence than a renewed assessment of the
light these corpora mutually cast on one another, as expressions and out-
growths of a shared milieu. The participants in that first symposium con-
curred that an important next step in the investigation of the relationship
between early Jewish and Christian literary creativity would be to explore
innovations in method.
Hence the theme of the Eleventh Symposium and of this collection
of papers: “New Approaches to the Study of Biblical Interpretation in
Judaism of the Second Temple Period and in Early Christianity.” The
symposium itself adopted an innovative format, combining conven-
tional presentation–discussion sessions with workshops, some team-led,
where participants were able to work through specific texts, while bear-
ing in mind the larger question of relationships to outside materials. All
the papers included in this volume began as presentations at the confer-
ence and benefitted from the spirited and collegial exchanges that took
place there. Some of the papers directly tackled the theoretical issues of
methodology raised by specific approaches to target materials, while oth-
ers focused more explicitly on the texts themselves and addressed the
issue of interpretive frameworks and methods in the course of their pre-
sentations. The goal was to provide a wide-ranging survey of some of the
new perspectives that have been brought to the study of early biblical
exegesis, highlighting the ways in which these perspectives have begun
to transform both our understanding of early Judaism and Christianity
and, just as importantly, our appreciation of the manner in which these
systems interacted with and influenced one another in these formative
early centuries.
viii preface
Given the wide-ranging and highly variegated character of the materi-
als that might be explored under such a rubric, the papers included in the
volume have been distributed, somewhat restively, into three divisions.
The paper by Michael Stone opens the volume and addresses explicit
theoretical issues that constitute a prolegomenon of sorts to the other
essays, examining the terminology of “Bible” and “canon” and assessing
its appropriateness for the literature of the Second Temple period. The
essays by Gregory Sterling and Michael Segal, as well as the complemen-
tary papers by Maren Niehoff and Serge Ruzer on the letter of James,
focus primarily on the contemporary contexts of the texts under investi-
gation and the interpretive backgrounds underlying them. Segal investi-
gates the exegetical transformation of Isa 2:1–4 in Diaspora contexts and
the eventual use of these verses in the lXX story of Susanna; from this
vantage point he is able to suggest the resolution to a thorny interpretive
crux and consequently to propose a new understanding of the message
of the tale. Sterling focuses on the interpretation of Gen 1:27 in order to
articulate Philo’s central role within an established tradition of neopla-
tonizing Jewish biblical interpretation in Alexandria. The papers by Nie-
hoff and Ruzer emerged from their joint workshop; read in concert, their
essentially, indeed almost diametrically, opposed (but equally enlighten-
ing) analyses of the letter serve to exemplify the possibilities inherent
in highly divergent interpretive understandings and the fruitfulness of a
dialectical approach to this text.
The next set of essays presents a range of comparative studies. Gary
Anderson, Menahem Kister, and Naomi Koltun-Fromm each investigate
the potential connections between the interpretations of specific biblical
passages in the intertwined traditions of early Judaism and Christianity.
Anderson examines conceptions of almsgiving from the Second Temple
period onward; Koltun-Fromm tracks rabbinic and patristic transforma-
tions of the biblical notions of holiness and sexuality; and Kister compares
the range (and limits) of allegorical or figural interpretations of a number
of biblical passages, with a focus on Philo, the rabbis, and origen. Ruth
Clements’s essay concludes this section by injecting a visual dimension
into the comparative efforts, as she explores the connections between
Second Temple readings of the Akedah and early Christian and Jewish
art, with a view to understanding the broader cultural reception of biblical
stories and their extrabiblical ramifications.
And finally, the two remaining essays of the volume follow exegetical
trajectories into later literature. Richard layton charts the Alexandrian
legacy over nearly four centuries, examining attitudes toward biblical
preface ix
“ literalism,” from Philo through origen to Didymus the Blind. Sergio la
Porta traces the transformation of the first-century apocalyptic eschatol-
ogy of the book of Revelation into a vision of long-term perfection of the
cosmos in the sixth-century writings of Dionysius the Areopagite.
The present volume is by no means a conspectus of an entire field of
inquiry. The study of biblical exegesis has “exploded” over the past decades,
and no single volume can hope to encompass the whole. Yet even this
brief survey of the contents of this collection indicates the extent to which
the papers touch upon a broad array of exegetical subjects and scholarly
issues: ranging from the basic problematic of determining what is a bibli-
cal as opposed to an apocryphal text; through the complex philosophical
discourse that Philo introduced into the ancient exegetical workshop; to
the patterns of reading demarcated in rabbinic and patristic works that
continue to shape Jewish and Christian identities in our own day. The
scholars whose studies are included in this volume were asked to do
what they do best, and the result is a set of cutting-edge essays that will
open new vistas onto the exegetical heritage that the early Synagogue and
Church have left to us. Taken together, the papers well represent the spirit
of the symposium for which they first were conceived and demonstrate
repeatedly the conceptual gains that have been (and remain to be) made
from the vantage point of considering early Jewish and Christian docu-
ments as heirs to and developers of a shared biblical and extrabiblical
interpretive heritage.
one of the striking features of the volume certainly has been the inter-
disciplinary and intraconfessional nature of this work. The reader enjoys
the fruits of Jewish scholarship critically engaged with the New Testament
and early Christian literature, and of Christian scholarly assessments of
rabbinic texts. A careful reading of the latter, for example, suggests new
ways of approaching origen; and a deeper consideration of Jewish tradi-
tions embedded in the Gospels leads to fresh ways of reading Tannaitic
and Amoraic materials in the rabbinic corpus. Not satisfied with a sim-
ple genealogy of how a specific Jewish or Christian exegetical tradition
emerges, many of the authors push further in an attempt to see how the
interaction of the two traditions shaped the way their proponents read
these sacred texts.
We would like to thank the orion Center and the Center for the Study
of Christianity for their sponsorship and administrative support of the
symposium and the resulting volume. Thanks also go to the orion Foun-
dation and the Sir Zelman Cowen universities Fund for their support of
