Henryk Drawnel

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin · Institute of Biblical Studies

A Critical Edition of the Aramaic Levi Document by Józef Tadeusz Milik (†), edited by Henryk J. Drawnel

Book Review: Mette Bundvad and Kasper Siegismund (eds.), with the collaboration of Melissa Sayyad Bach, Søren Holst, Jespers Høgenhaven, Vision, Narrative, and Wisdom in the Aramaic Texts from Qumran: Essays from the Copenhagen Symposium, 14-15 August, 2017 (STDJ 131; Leiden – Boston: Brill 2021)

Although the Visions of Levi (so-called Aramaic Levi Document) is a Jewish priestly composition written in the second or third century BCE , the largest part of its text comes from the trove of Jewish medieval manuscripts found in the Genizah of the Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo. Among the Genizah scrolls housed at the University of Manchester Librar...

Book Review: Richard Bauckham – James R. Davila – Alexander Panayotov (eds.), Old Tes- tament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Volume One (Grand Rapids, MI – Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans 2013).

Book Review: Herbert Niehr (ed.), The Arameans in Ancient Syria (Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section I, Ancient Near East 106; Leiden: Brill 2014).

The present article contains an introductory bibliography for the use of students of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It focuses on the editions of the manuscripts and additional exegetical tools as well as resources necessary in initial and further research. Short notes added to some entries are intended to help the interested reader to get acquainted with t...

The article contains elementary information concerning the manuscripts of 1 Enoch, their editions, and scientific literature that deals with the topic. The presentation begins with the list of larger bibliographic collections concerning the Enochic writings, then the Aramaic witnesses preserved in 11 manuscripts found in Qumran Cave 4 are shortly d...

In the myth of the fallen Watchers (1 En. 6-11) the giants, illegitimate offspring of the fallen angels, are depicted as exceedingly violent beings that consume the labour of all the sons of men. They also kill men, devour them, and drink blood. Finally, they sin against all the animals of the earth. The violent behaviour of the giants in 1 En. 7:2...

The present study summarizes the results of several years of research into the relationship between Late Babylonian cuneiform culture and Jewish Aramaic literature. The overview of that relationship indicates that the Jewish writers did not hesitate to adopt and adapt into the structure of Jewish religion some religious, literary, and scientific pa...

In 1 En. 8:1 one of the fallen Watchers, Asael, teaches humanity the elaboration of metals, precious stones, and the use of minerals and dyes. The article proposes to look for the cultural background of that Enochic tradition in the context of the Late Babylonian temple with its large and skilled workforce used for the upkeep of the cultic, economi...

The literary pattern of Asael's punishment in the Enochic myth does not seem to stem from biblical literature or Greek mythology. It is far more probable that one has to look for its antecedents in Babylonian anti-witchcraft literature. The Jewish author who lived in Mesopotamia in Late Babylonian period treated Asael and other Watchers as warlocks...

Since the preliminary publication of the first Aramaic fragments of the Visions of Amram, scholars have considered this priestly composition as having a testamentary form. Such a conclusion has been mostly based on the purported literary identity between the introductory narrative of the Visions and the introductory sections of the Testaments of th...

Scholarly treatments of the Visions of Levi have tended not to address the individual literary units of the text. An overview of the history of scholarship on this text reveals that neither the term “Aramaic Testament of Levi ” nor the more neutral Aramaic Levi Document offers particular insights into the content of the text. Close attention to the...

During the Persian and Hellenistic periods in Babylonia the cuneiform culture moved into the temple precincts to stay there until the extinction of cuneiform writing. The priestly groups of asipu, or incantation priests, and kalu, or lamentation priests, became main bearers of cuneiform writing and culture, astronomy, astrology and mathematics incl...

The Aramaic fragments of the Astronomical Book from Qumran were published by Milik in 1976, but since then they have attracted little scholarly attention. Their interpretation has been influenced by Milik's understanding of the Aramaic text and Neugebauer's explanation of the astronomical content. Both of them claimed that the fragments compute the...