Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times.

• Author: Novakovic, Lidija
• Position: Book review

Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times. By SIDNIE WHITE CRAWFORD. Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature. Grand Rapids, Michigan: WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING CO., 2008. Pp. xii + 160. $16 (paper).

Crawford's book offers a fresh and insightful analysis of the process of transmission of sacred texts in the Second Temple period and the exegetical techniques that were used to interpret them for contemporary Jews. She examines these two phenomena by focusing on a specific group of texts, originally identified by Geza Vermes as a special genre called "Rewritten Bible." Crawford prefers the term "Rewritten Scripture" because there was no official canon of Scripture in the Second Temple period. After reviewing the works of Philip Alexander. Moshe Bernstein, George Brooke, and Emanuel Tov, Crawford offers her own definition of Rewritten Scripture. In her view, this term refers to "a category or group of texts which are characterized by a close adherence to a recognizable and already authoritative base text (narrative or legal) and a recognizable degree of scribal intervention into that base text for the purpose of exegesis" (pp. 12-13). She adds that such a text "will often (although not always) make a claim to the authority of revealed Scripture, the same authority as its base text" (p. 13).

With regard to the questions of the closeness to the base text and the claims to divine authority, Crawford identifies several textual groups, from those that are recognized as authoritative across groups to those that significantly rework the base text and are recognized as authoritative only by some subgroups. All her examples are taken from the Pentateuch as the best documented portion of Scripture that was subject to scribal revisions.

Crawford first examines textual characteristics of the books of the Pentateuch in their base form. She begins with the pre-Samaritan expanded version of Exodus and Numbers found at Qumran ([4QpaleoExod.sup.m] and [4QNum.sup.b]) and argues that this text-type was produced through scribal harmonization of the shorter proto-rabbinic version, preserved in the Masoretic text, which was already fixed in its general form in the "classical" period of Israel's history. Harmonization is achieved through two scribal techniques: introducing details from one text into another where they are missing and changing the text if it differs from a parallel text. She then examines the harmonized text of Deuteronomy...