The Menorah

[andrewcriddle]

Rāḥēl Ḥa̱klîlî seems to be making two claims which should probably be distinguished.
a/ We have no biblical evidence of multiple candelabra before late (post-exilic) sources - Zechariah and the priestly section of the Pentateuch- and hence the lamp in the pre-exilic temple, (and in the tabernacle insofar as there was an historic tabernacle), was in all probability single. I tend to agree.
b/ Although we have early post-exilic evidence of a seven fold lamp in Zechariah and ancient parallels to multiple lamps, the description in Exodus is very distinctive and has no clear parallels before Maccabees. Hence the passage in Exodus is Maccabean in date. I am much more dubious about this claim.

Andrew Criddle

[John2]

Except the verses are the same in the Samaritan Pentateuch. Theories of the Samaritan Pentateuch support the view that the Samaritan version come from prior to the Hasmonean split, i.e. that it was during the Hasmonean era that the split occurred with the Samaritans parting ways and taking their version of the scriptures with them.

I hadn't even considered this. What a fascinating subject you've brought to my attention. I will see if Ḥa̱klîlî (and whoever else) discusses this and will factor it all in.

[StephenGoranson]

Iconography may be one aspect of identifying a group, but only one, if the group developed diachronically.
Especially if a group had some reluctance toward iconography.
For example, when did the magen David, star of David, become associated with Judaism?

[John2]

I couldn't find anything about the significance of the menorah verses in Exodus in the Samaritan Torah in Ḥa̱klîlî's book on Google books (that's a mouthful), but I think I know why that may be given what is said in chapter seven ("The Menorah in Other Contexts: Samaritan and Christian").

(Pg. 263): Today the agreed [scholarly] account is that the Samaritans began in 100 BCE to develop their own religion. They grew out of Judaism but had their own separate religion developed during the second and first centuries BCE.

So I figure either I'm missing something (due to limited viewing on Google books or my own oversight) or Ḥa̱klîlî doesn't discuss the significance of the menorah verses in Exodus in the Samaritan Torah, presumably for the above reason.

In any event, I need to refresh my memory of Samaritan origins and don't recall where I left the matter as far as the time frame goes. If the schism happened before Hasmonean times, that could impact Ḥa̱klîlî's Hasmonean redaction idea.

[John2]

And what about the Dead Sea Scrolls? Are there any with the Exodus menorah verses? If they are old enough, that might undercut the Hasmonean redaction idea (if that is in fact what is being argued. I have to double check, but perhaps the argument is that the verses were interpolated by Hasmonean times).

[John2]

I used to have a book of translated biblical Dead Sea Scrolls but I don't recall if it had Ex. 37, and of course I can't see anything from Exodus in that book on Google books. And I don't know if 4Q22 PaleoExodus is the only example of Exodus 37, but it (of course) is very fragmentary and the only one I've found so far and I couldn't say one way or the other if it ever contained the menorah portion. But at the end of the day, if it's in the Samaritan Torah, I think it's safe to assume that it was known to the DSS sect and just happens to have not survived (if there aren't any examples of it).

http://dssenglishbible.com/exodus%2037.htm


At the end of the day, if it's in the Samaritan Torah, my guess is that a seven-branched menorah pre-dates Hasmonean times, but I couldn't tell you why there's no evidence for one before then (outside the OT). But there is archaeological evidence from Israel and the rest of the Near East of lamps that resemble the way the menorah is described elsewhere in the OT, So it seems fair to assume that Jews and Samaritans used some kind of sacred lamp in their sanctuaries since the misty past and it evolved over time into the one known since at least Hasmonean times.

Nothing else really changes for me then. Jews and Samaritans have existed and have been using a sacred lamp for however many thousands of years and at one point (exactly when doesn't matter to me) it became the one we know now.

[andrewcriddle]

Iconography may be one aspect of identifying a group, but only one, if the group developed diachronically.
Especially if a group had some reluctance toward iconography.
For example, when did the magen David, star of David, become associated with Judaism?

Maybe in the 17th century CE see Scholem

Andrew Criddle

[Secret Alias]

Kabbalah.

[billd89]

Scholem famously studied the Kabbalah, didn't he? In nearly my first post, on an influential question which brought me to this forum, I tried to find the context of something from Scholem's Stroock lectures at the Jewish Institute of Religion in Early 1938:

Scholem (1941) associates the Therapeutae among the earliest (proto-?) Merkebah mystics, in his oblique discussion of Jewish Gnosticism, pp.13-4:
"In the same way, all Jewish mystics, from the Therapeutae, whose doctrine was described by Philo of Alexandria, to the latest Hasid, are at one in giving a mystical interpretation to the Torah; the Torah is to them a living organism animated by a secret life which streams and pulsates below the crust of its literal meaning."

Scholem was especially connected to the Edelsteins through their mutual close friend, Leo Strauss. I am convinced they attended one or more of Scholem's NY lectures that March, and had some discussions with him about their project. (For historians, this brief period witnessed his first meeting and revealing his research and methodology to both Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer at Paul Tillich's house; for me, the Edelsteins' very peculiar approach to the Rockefeller project makes much more sense in light of a Scholem encounter at the same moment.) Whether Scholem himself steered the Edelsteins in this direction or not, his interpretation is in accord with what they produced later that year. Mere coincidence? We can only wonder. Later, Scholem would qualify and reject the idea there was a direct or unbroken linage from the Therapeutae to the Kabbalists. But elsewhere -- right or wrong -- that insinuation had appeared centuries before, in Enfield’s once highly influential The History of Philosophy [1791] for example.

It's not radical to point out that medieval Kabbalists borrowed from Hermeticists long before the "discovery" of the Corpus Hermeticum c.1450. But was there an 'Egyptian Kabbalah' which Simeon ben Shetach (c.60 BC) brought back to Jerusalem? Moses had been long associated with Hermes Trismegistos, at that point; a Judeo-Egyptian Kabbalah from 100 BC would be most fascinating indeed. The simplest explanation.

This influential opinion was fairly typical of WHY some 19th C. scholars presumed the Kabbalah had Egyptian origin(s); this might be a precedent for another lately debated idea, that the Septuagint also had its origin in Alexandria. Personally, I find the idea that the large and wealthy (Proto-)'Jewish' community of Alexandria c.200-100 BC had a significant body of literature quite obvious. But was there a secret doctrine? See Christian D. Ginsburg, The Kabbalah: Its Doctrines, Development, and Literature. An Essay, ... (1863), p.2:

The Kabala was first taught by God Himself to a select company of angels, who formed a theosophic school in Paradise. After the Fall the angels most graciously communicated this heavenly doctrine to the disobedient child of earth, to furnish the protoplasts with the means of returning to their pristine nobility and felicity. From Adam it passed over to Noah, and then to Abraham, the friend of God, who emigrated with it to Egypt, where the patriarch allowed a portion of this mysterious doctrine to ooze out. It was in this way that the Egyptians obtained some knowledge of it, and the other Eastern nations could introduce it into their philosophical systems. Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, [as] first initiated into the Kabala in the land of his birth, but became most proficient in it during his wanderings in the wilderness, when he not only devoted to it the leisure hours of the whole forty years, but received lessons in it from one of the angels. By the aid of this mysterious science the lawgiver was enabled to solve the difficulties which arose during his management of the Israelites, in spite of the pilgrimages, wars, and frequent miseries of the nation. He covertly laid down the principles of this secret doctrine in the first four books of the Pentateuch...

In the social complex of that domain, the Asaphim would be another proof that (Proto-)'Jews' operated within Egyptian temples as heterodox mantic specialists (bolstering the 'Who?' question): Semitic magical literati (i.e. lector priests, enchanters) were our Therapeuts' immediate predecessors.



Regarding the existence of an Egyptian (proto)Kabbalah, Philo basically confirms this:

DVC 3.29: ἔστι δὲ αὐτοῖς καὶ συγγράμματα παλαιῶν ἀνδρῶν, οἳ τῆς αἱρέσεως ἀρχηγέται γενόμενοι πολλὰ μνημεῖα τῆς ἐν τοῖς ἀλληγορουμένοις ἰδέας ἀπέλιπον, οἷς καθάπερ τισὶν ἀρχετύποις χρώμενοι μιμοῦνται τῆς προαιρέσεως τὸν τρόπον·

My translation:

DVC 3.29: “They also have treatises of ancient men, founders of their sect {αἱρέσεως ‘heresy’}, who left behind many records of the allegorical interpretation of the Idea, which – according to a certain archetype {ἀρχετύποις} – they make use of {administer/experience/proclaim/etc.} to imitate the course of action/purpose {προαιρέσεως} in such a way.”

Understand what that means, in profundity:
1) The heterodox Alexandrian Therapeutae (the A. A.) possessed an extensive allegorical/occult literature.
2) This sacred literature derived from and encompassed an archetypal methodology, or esoteric process.
3) The Therapeuts' esoteric process involved a Four-Step anagogy/henosis, identifiable as "Hermetic" or Kolarbastic Gnosis.
4) The Therapeuts' exoteric practice (i.e. mystical interpretation) is commonly/trivially called 'Alexandrian exegesis'. But Philo's enigmas & allegories (Andeutungen = hints, allusions, suggestions) reveal the truly esoteric nature of this 'Judaic' literature/culture.

A literary 'Jewish' Mystery cult in the First C. also presupposes the existence of an older 'Kabbalistic'-type literature. The Edelsteins (following Cerfaux [1924] and Goodenough [1935]) recognized this cult reflected in the First C. 'Jewish' Hermetica and Philonica. Therefore, the Edelsteins' own expression -- a modern scholarly re-creation and reconstruction -- was based upon a simple thesis which others' had suggested. And so, their own 'recovery bible' (over 75mln copies printed) is effectively a 1938 Baltimore 'Kabbalah,' however cleverly disguised as a product of so-called 'First Century Christianity' for a group of clueless Akron drunks.

In any case, whether following 'Kabbalist' discussion(s) w/ Gershon Scholem in Manhattan during March 1938 or not, the Edelsteins decided to (re-)create a Jacob's Ladder of 1st C Jewish anagogy from Alexandrian materials they gathered quickly for their Rockefeller project. Of course I accept the Edelsteins' occult model of Judeo-Egyptian palingenesis, Rebirth; I'm its descendant also, having adopted their archetype and because I followed their course of action in such a way.