Posted by: Jim | November 12, 2008

Hanan Eshel: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hasmonean State

The kind folk at Eerdmans have sent along a copy of Eshel’s new book (in English- published first in Hebrew in 2004) which consists of the following nine chapters (which follow the preface and introduction):

ONE: The Roots of the Hasmonean Revolt: The Reign of Antiochus IV
TWO: Questions of Identity: The “Teacher of Righteousness,” the “Man of Lies,” and Jonathan the Hasmonean
THREE: The Succession of High Priests: John Hyrcanus and his Sons in the Pesher to Joshua 6:26
FOUR: Alexander Jannaeus and His War against Ptolemy Lathyrus
FIVE: A Prayer for the Welfare of King Jonathan
SIX: The Pharisees’ Conflict with Alexander Jannaeus and Demetrius’ Invasion of Judaea
SEVEN: The Successors of Alexander Jannaeus and the Conquest of Judaea by Pompey
EIGHT: The Assassination of Pompey
NINE: The Changing Notion of the Enemy and Its Impact on the Pesharim

It’s a fine volume and I recommend it.

Posted in Books, biblical studies, dead sea scrolls

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Responses

  1. I am really looking forward to reading your review, Jim. I would especially appreciate any insights on socio-political matters (if the book deals with it). Thanks. Manu

    By: Emanuel Pfoh on September 5, 2008
    at 10:13 am

  2. Thanks for the review, Jim — it’s good to get it in such a timely fashion, via your blog.

    Does Eshel engage with Wise’s conclusions that the Scrolls name the Teacher of Righteousness, the Wicked Priest and Man of the Lie along with known historical figures such as John Hyrcanus I, Alexander Jannaeus, Shelamzion/Alexandra, and Hyrcanus II — and so centering on the first half of the first century BC?

    Doesn’t Vermes now agree (I’m not sure)?

    By: ntwrong on October 7, 2008
    at 5:29 pm

  3. still working on it.

    By: Jim on October 7, 2008
    at 5:34 pm

  4. Hmm. Dead Sea Scrolls and the Intertestimental Period History in one book. Sounds intensely interesting.

    Blast! Just when I was cutting back on book buying!

    (Is anyone believing the last sentence?)

    By: Chuck Grantham on October 31, 2008
    at 2:32 pm

  5. On page 122 Eshel reconstructs lines3/4 of Pesher Nahum as: ‘but afterwards [the city] will be trampled [and will be given into the hand of the rulers of the Kittim]‘ presumably that is because ‘rulers of the Kittim’ is in line 3. But ‘the kings of Greece’ is also in line 3. So what made Eshel plumb for ‘rulers of the Kittim’ in the reconstruction? Was that to suit his own interpretation of Kittim = Romans led by Pompey here?

    Now Vermes reconstructs the same text as: ‘But then she shall be trampled under their feet…’ Now one could take that to mean that after the Kittim have taken Jerusalem, THEN the Kings of Greece (presumably led by Demetrius III) will do the same. Kittim followed by Greeks puts Romans out of the time frame.

    By: Geoff Hudson on November 2, 2008
    at 5:40 pm

  6. Eshel makes no mention of coin data throughout his book. Does anyone know if any coins were minted for queen Salome Alexandra?

    By: Geoff Hudson on November 4, 2008
    at 4:33 pm

  7. I now have it on good authrority in an e-mail from a coin expert:

    “There are no coins minted by the widow of Jannaeus, queen Salome
    > Alexandra. (76-67 BC)
    > despite the fact that several scholars tried to attribute the letter
    > A at the top of some coins,
    > as the initial of her name. But the letter A is probably the date.”

    Can one then draw the logical conclusion that queen Salome Alexandra never ruled alone? Or to put it another way, did her husband Alexander continue to live after the time he was supposed to have died from disease as described in the writings attributed to Josephus? And is it possible that Alexander and Salome continued to live until Pompey was let into Jerusalem?

    Why didn’t Eshel discuss this important coin information about Salome Alexandra, or any other coin data related to Hasmonean rule?

    By: Geoff Hudson on November 5, 2008
    at 5:01 pm

  8. I also had a noncommittal reply from another coin expert on the subject of coins issued by queen Salome Alexandra as follows:

    “i’m pleased that you keep up with BAR. the issue of whether or not coins were issued under shlomozion. in fact it the subject of considerable current research. certainly she did not issue coins with her name on them, but there may have been other circumstances.”

    I didn’t even know BAR was saying anything about the subject. I had a genuine suspicion (from what I had read in the writings attributed to Josephus) that may be Salome hadn’t issued any coins, and my suspicion prompted my e-mails to the experts.

    From the above response, it appears that I am not alone in my thinking. May be the ‘current researchers’ are dreaming-up some sort of answer that will explain why the queen did not issue coins, so that the currently understood history will not be compromised.

    In fact it seems to me that many scholars (and here I include Eshel) do not give priority to the data that comes form the ground, but try to fit the data from the ground to what they already believe from other sources, in particular the writings attributed to Josephus. By data from the ground, I mean coins, inscriptions, documents such as the DSS – any relevant material that has been buried for 2000 or so years, and has not been tampered with after burial.

    There seems to be a great reluctance to question what is in the writings attributed to Josephus, may be because so much work has been done by scholars that depends upon literalistic interpretations of the extant texts. I believe the difficulties are worse for Jewish scholars.

    By: Geoff Hudson on November 6, 2008
    at 9:48 am

  9. When I was in college, I tried to reconstruct the history of secession of Judea under the assumption that the Books of Maccabees were for the most part Hasmonean political propaganda.

    Here are my thoughts.

    By the time of the establishment of Hellenistic dynasties that replaced the Persian Empire, the people of the land have fully assimilated to the religious practices of the Persian-created elites in both Judea and Samaria, and the main tensions no longer manifest themselves between Mesopotamian “returnees” and the people of the land but between Samarians and Judeans. Depending on when the texts of Ezra and Nehemiah were composed, they either reflected these tensions or were modified for consistency with the later historical situation.

    For more than a century after Alexander’s conquest of the Middle East, the “returnee” elite in Jerusalem manages to cling to authority in Judea, but the Maccabees seize an opportunity to displace this elite shortly after the Romans humiliate Antiochos in Egypt. There may have been some minor skirmishes with a Syro-Greek garrison that supported the old Persian elite, but in the end Antiochos probably did not care whether the old or a new elite held power in Judea, and from his standpoint an independent buffer state between Hellenistic Syria and Roman-dominated Egypt provided many benefits.

    Supporters of the Hasmoneans wrote the history of the Maccabean triumph to minimize the intra-Judean conflict by emphasizing or fabricating a conflict between Hellenism and Second Temple Judaism. Yet the Hasmoneans themselves became thorough-going Hellenizers while they simultaneously legitimized their dynasty by injecting their victory into the core of the Jerusalem Temple Religion by adding Hanukkah into the sacred calendar in a way that radically reshaped Second Temple religious concepts.

    By: Joachim Martillo on November 11, 2008
    at 9:35 pm


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