Lecture: The Emergence of Jewish Identity
CAMS Lecture Series: Constructing Identities in the Ancient Mediterranean
From Ancient Israel to Rabbinic Judaism: The Emergence of Jewish Identity
Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, Yeshiva University
Wednesday 30 October, 2013 – 4:00 p.m.
Penn State, 102 Weaver Bldg. Refreshments and light fare will be served.
Ritual Purity and Impurity and the Admission Process
It is a commonplace that the nature of close-knit religious groups may often be understood by investigating the conditions for admission or initiation rites that are operative in them. In the case of the Qumran sectarians, it will be worthwhile to survey their initiation rites in order to understand the manner in which they are built upon underlying concepts of ritual purity and impurity. These principles, we will see, were actually common to the Qumran sectarians and the later rabbis, enabling us to understand them thoroughly. It may even be that these specific rules or practices were followed by the members of the havurah.
The first step towards entry into the sect was examination by the paqid be-rosh ha-rabbim, the “official at the head of the community.” If this official approved the candidate, the novice took his admission oath and was then taught the sectarian regulations. Only then did the moshav ha-rabbim, the sectarian assembly, render a decision on him, presumably based upon his performance to date. If he passed this examination, he attained a partial status. Accordingly, 1QS 6:16-17 states:
And when he draws near to the council of the community he shall not come in… Continue reading
Purity as Separation: Introduction
Comparing the Dead Sea Scrolls, Rabbinic Literature, and the New Testament
The purpose of this paper, to put it very directly, is to demonstrate that simplistic assumptions regarding the connection of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the sect that collected them to early Christianity have been vastly oversimplified. Specifically, we seek to illustrate this notion by investigating the approaches of the Qumran documents and the New Testament to ritual purity, along the way making comparisons to rabbinic literature. Many scholars have sought to see this particular aspect as a close parallel between the early Christians and the Essenes–assumed to be the Qumran sectarians–and these, in turn, have often been tied to John the Baptist and his use of ablutions to actualize repentance and spiritual rebirth. The fundamental comparison made here has been between John’s baptismal rites and the role of immersion in a ritual bath (miqveh) in Qumran and Essene initiation processes. We will argue that fuller consideration of the place of purity and impurity in the life of the Qumran sect (designated by the roots tm’ and thr) and in the early Christian community (καθαρός and ’ακαθαρτός) argues strongly against such parallels and that, in fact, these two communities,… Continue reading
