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The restoration of Israel: Ezekiel 36-39 in early Jewish interpretation: a textual-comparative study of the oldest extant Hebrew and Greek manuscripts
Abstract
While many have noted the differences between the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts for Ezekiel, they have done so largely to rediscover an earlier Hebrew text, or to determine which variant preserves the better reading, frequently with the aim of establishing a 'critical text' for their commentaries. This often leaves the other variant(s) in a sense 'incorrect', often attributed to various forms of scribal error.
This thesis adopts a 'textual-comparative' methodology that accords each textual witness equal status as an interpretive trajectory, enabling each to be 'heard' in its own right. The aim of this thesis is to examine these different witnesses with a view to determine what they might tell us about the way Ezekiel 36-39 was interpreted by each particular community. This entails comparing the oldest extant Hebrew and Greek texts both intra-linguistically and trans-linguistically, noting any variants, and exploring possible interpretive reasons for them.
This study finds that the Greek translators were familiar with both languages, and that they often exegetically and interpretively interacted with the text before them. The Greek (LXX) is both translation and interpretation of the Hebrew. Other interpretations are found in 'inserts' or 'plusses', occurring in both the Hebrew and Greek texts.
Included is an examination of Papyrus 967 (G967), which exhibits a different chapter order (chapter 37 follows 38-39), and is minus 36:23c-38. Rather than finding that these differences result from error, or that G967 is a maverick text, we find that it is closest to what was probably the Hebrew Urtext. All other extant Hebrew and Greek texts then exhibit theological interaction; the change of chapter order exhibiting a 'call to arms', and the inserted pericope (36:23c-38) exhibiting a 'call to purity'. Our research methodology thus elucidates the earliest Jewish interpretation of the Restoration of Israel in Ezekiel 36-39 (ca. 200-50 BCE).
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The question of the relation between priests and Levites in ancient Israel has long been a fundamental factor in the interpretation of the history of Israel. It was, of course, one if the five pillars upon which J. Wellhausen erected his version of the four-document theory of the composition of the Pentateuch, a theory which placed the so-called Priestly document last of the four, and originating in the exile. That literary theory was also and essentially a historical theory. The Priestly document was exilic. Indeed the comprehensiveness of Wellhausen's theory, in regard to both the history, and literature of Israel, is well illustrated by the centrality of a chapter of the book of Ezekiel in his argument about the Pentateuch. The belief that Ezekiel 44 pre-dates the Pentateuchal picture of the relation between priests and Levites is perhaps the strongest single factor in the continuing adherence to the view that a priestly document, or redaction of the Pentateuch, arose in the exile. On the face of it, Ezekiel 44 appears to create for the first time the relation of Levites to priests which is instituted in Numbers 3:5ff. Our ultimate concern in the paper is to ask whether that is a correct interpretation of Ezekiel 44. We must, however, first set our enquiry in a wider context. Within the limitations of this paper it is impossible and unnecessary to attempt an assessment of the vast literature on the subject of the priesthood in Israel's history. 1 But our enquiry, in its 1. I have expressed myself more fully on the subject in my thesis, Cultic Laws in Deuteronomy (Ph.D. thesis, Queen's University, Belfast, 1980; to be published in due course by JSOT Press) 205ff. (References are necessarily to the unpublished thesis.) 4 TYNDALE BULLETIN 34 (1983) endeavour to re-assess the significance of Ezekiel 44 in relation to the wider question of the priests and Levites, does have a historical dimension as well as a literary one. In the first part of the paper I shall address what I believe to be a major fallacy in the commonly accepted view of the historical development of the priesthood. And in the second part we shall turn to an interpretation of the statements regarding the clergy in Ezekiel 44 itself.
While the book of Ezekiel contains little reflex to the exodus traditions, on closer look it becomes clear that Ezekiel knew some of these traditions. Nowhere is this more apparent than in ch. 20, which culminates in God's declaration that he had given Israel 'no good laws' in order to lead them further into sin. This text functions in the book in two ways. First, as a reaction to the fall of Jerusalem, it preserves the power of God, even at the expense of God's justice. Secondly, it prepares the reader for the new laws revealed to Ezekiel in chs. 40-48.
The content of the Old Greek translation of Daniel iv-vi is significantly different compared to the so-called Theodotion version and the Masoretic Text. In addition, the best witness to the Old Greek version (papyrus 967) has an alternative order for the chapters: chapters vii and viii intervene between iv and v. The proposals by J. Lust and O. Munnich that 967 preserves a more original version of the content and order of the chapters for the Vorlage of Daniel are critiqued. Additional linguistic evidence that supports the theory that the Old Greek translation of chapters iv-vi circulated together independently is also provided. Finally, a hypothesis for the growth and stages of the book of Daniel that includes an explanation for the origins of the Greek versions is outlined.
L'analyse du Pap. (LXX) 957| du Pap. (LXX) Barthelemy des Douze Petits Prophetes| des Mss Samaritains| des formes pausales du texte biblique selon le systeme de Tiberiade revele un systeme "syro-palestinien" de ponctuation, reflet d'une lecture chantee ou declamee en usage des le 2 siecle avant notre ere et moins ornee que celle que met en oeuvre le systeme de Tiberiade. Cette constatation implique d'importantes consequences concernant l'histoire des traditions de lecture et d'interpretation de la Bible.
Ezekiel's prophecies reveal with sharp clarity what is also the ironic rhetorical strategy of all Israelite prophets: to bring a faithless and unknowing people to covenant allegiance and consciousness of God's Lordship.
Technology and Culture 41.1 (2000) 170-172
The prophet Ezekiel described a vision of God that appeared to him by the shores of the Chebar River in the sixth century b.c. Strange creatures with four wings and four faces appeared in the air amid clouds and fire. Accompanying the creatures were machines of unknown purpose; wheels within wheels (or hoops within hoops), with mysterious "eyes" set all around their periphery. The wheels or hoops could fly about in the air, and as Ezekiel watched they settled briefly on the ground and then rose up. Their only apparent function was to accompany the winged creatures, whose movements they shadowed. Suddenly God himself appeared, sitting on a fiery throne. This vision, Michael Lieb argues, has had a lasting influence on religious and secular thought, and its mysterious technological components have been reinterpreted by various authors, prophets, and cults. The influence of Ezekiel's wheels, for example, is evident in Milton's Paradise Lost, in which the poet recast these mysterious flying objects as weapons of war. The fiery throne became a fiery "chariot of paternal deitie" that the Son of God employed to defeat his enemies in battle. Starting from this literary foundation, Lieb argues that Western society has sustained a culture of biblical reinterpretation that he calls "technologizing the ineffable," that is, the tendency to describe otherwise inexplicable visions in terms of known technologies, particularly technologies of war. Visionaries seem to have a need to interpret the unexplained in military terms. His book draws on literary and historical evidence from varied sources to demonstrate the persistence of this phenomenon as well as its connection to another powerful biblical notion, that of Armageddon and the Day of Judgment.
Lieb demonstrates the ways that modern people have modified the biblical notion of Armageddon so that it assumes a distinctly technological tone. Apocalyptic religious movements, mainstream politics, and popular culture have all contributed to the maintenance and continual modification of the original idea of Armageddon, transforming it into an ultimate military confrontation between good and evil involving high technology. The author is convincing in demonstrating that some recent self-styled prophets, such as the founder of the Nation of Islam, were heavily influenced by their readings of the Bible, resulting in visions that were clearly little more than updated, technologized versions of Ezekiel. Further, he shows how such imagery has crept into mainstream thought, as revealed by political, military, and religious leaders who think of modern warfare and weapons in apocalyptic terms.
Lieb also makes some intriguing connections between biblical prophesy, the UFO phenomenon, and the plight of African Americans. The concept of "technologizing the ineffable" applies both to the popular understanding of advanced weapons and to sightings of unidentified flying objects. Just as God became the wielder of advanced weapons, so too did extraterrestrial visitors become masters of technologies far beyond our reach. In the original teachings of the Nation of Islam, God and his minions operate a "mother plane" (today it might be called a mother ship) in space around earth, and will someday liberate black people and destroy whites. While most recent UFO reports, including abduction accounts, do not necessarily assume that alien visitations are military in nature, they do seem to technologize the sightings -- for example consistently identifying "unidentified" flying objects as space craft rather than simply as something that is unexplained.
The author is less consistently effective at demonstrating how such beliefs spread beyond the original literary sources, although it seems clear that they have. Implicit in his argument is the assumption that the statements or writings of particular individuals or groups can be taken literally and that they have a demonstrable influence on the thinking or actions of others. However, it is sometimes too great a causal leap from the biblical, apocalyptic language of, for example, Ronald Reagan's public statements...
Book InformationA Jewish Archive from Old Cairo, The History of Cambridge University's Genizah Collection. A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo, The History of Cambridge University's Genizah Collection Stefan C. Reif Curzon, Richmond Surrey 2000 xx + 277 Hardback £45.00 0-7007-1276-3 Paperback £21.00 0-7007-1312-3 By Stefan C. Reif. Curzon, Richmond. Surrey. Pp. xx + 277. Hardback:£45.000-7007-1276-3; Paperback:£21.000-7007-1312-3, 0-7007-1276-3 Paperback £21.00 0-7007-1312-3.
Ezekiel xxxvii. 1–14 and the New Testament - Volume 11 Issue 2 - J. Grassi
The slippery idea of "spirituality" might, with care, be put to use by biblical exegetes. Spirituality is defined in this paper as the social enactment of religious ideas. Four categories are offered to analyze the biblical witness as a record of spirituality. These categories are, first, an ultimate end; second, an ideal self-image by which this end might be achieved; third, an encoding of teachings in Scripture by which the self-image can be realized or understood; and fourth, a proposal for a way of life that makes achievement of the ultimate end a practical possibility. Accordingly, Ezekiel's "spirituality" may be understood to have, on one hand, an ultimate end of a return of the people to the land with the presence of God; and on the other, an ideal self-image of conversion of the community toward this ultimate end. Then it encodes, in oracles of judgment and deliverance, teachings that enable adherents to form the ideal self-image, and finally, as a way of life that puts these teachings into practice, it proposes a "covenant of friendship" (Ezek 34:25 and 37:36) among the exiled people and between them and their captors. Peer Reviewed http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66911/2/10.1177_014610799202200402.pdf
Thesis--John Hopkins University. Bibliographical references included in "Footnotes" (p. 103-121).