Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com
Hebrew Voices #247 – Dead Sea Scrolls & the War of Light vs. Darkness
Descripción
[https://i0.wp.com/www.nehemiaswall.com/wp-content/uploads/HV-247-1920x1080-1.png?resize=584%2C329&ssl=1]https://www.nehemiaswall.com/dead-sea-scrolls-war-of-light In this episode of Hebrew Voices #247 - Dead Sea Scrolls & the War of Light vs. Darkness [https://www.nehemiaswall.com/dead-sea-scrolls-war-of-light], Nehemia sits down with Professor Lawrence Schiffman, NYU's leading Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, to explore the sectarian battles that gave rise to these mysterious texts. From the War Scroll's apocalyptic vision to Sadducean and Pharisaic clashes over control of the Temple itself, they uncover what the scrolls reveal about ancient Judaism, drawing surprising parallels to today's Middle East conflicts. I look forward to reading your comments! PODCAST VERSION: Download Audio [https://audio.nehemiaswall.com/Downloads/Hebrew-Voices-247-Dead-Sea-Scrolls-the-War-of-Light-vs-Darkness.mp3] Transcript Hebrew Voices #247 – Dead Sea Scrolls & the War of Light vs. Darkness You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting [https://www.nehemiaswall.com/support] Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com [https://www.nehemiaswall.com]. Nehemia: So, if you went to a synagogue in the year 1,500 in Marrakesh or in Lithuania, you wouldn’t hear a sermon, you’re saying, on Shabbat? Prof. Schiffman: Not on a regular Shabbat. Nehemia: Wow. And you’re saying it’s Christian influence to have a sermon in the synagogue. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, yeah. Nehemia: Wow! Prof. Schiffman: So, I want to say something about jihad. I think the West doesn’t want to face the reality of what jihad really is. That’s why they can’t understand. And people ask them, “What good did it do to destroy the World Trade Center? All you did was kill people.” No, that is the idea, to kill people. — Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Prof. Lawrence Schiffman. He is the Global Distinguished Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Director of Graduate Studies for the MA program at New York University, NYU. He’s a specialist in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Judaism and Late Antiquity, the History of Jewish Law and Talmudic Literature. And he’s given an audio lecture, which I love the title, The Dead Sea Scrolls – The Truth Behind the Mystique in the Hebrew Bible. I found that on your website. Shalom, Prof. Schiffman. Prof. Schiffman: Hi, shalom. How are you? Nehemia: I’m doing well. I know you were just over in Israel when the war with Iran started, and before the recording you started to tell me. I said, “Save this for the guests.” What happened when you were in Israel and the missiles started flying? Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, we were in the synagogue on Shabbat morning… Nehemia: Okay. Prof. Schiffman: …when suddenly you had some kind of people, I don’t know, milling around and saying things to one another, right? And then, before maybe two or three minutes went beyond that, everybody knew what was going on. Apparently, some officers had been paged, and so they told everybody else what was going on. And at that point, the question was, how long are we going to get on with the service before we have to go to a shelter? But actually, we made it through the whole service before we had to go to shelters later on. So, that was the first beginning of the war. Then, of course, we have an apartment. I was in our apartment with its own shelter. So, I was, of course, in and out of the shelter like everybody else. Actually, that Shabbat I was at my son’s, and we were all in his shelter once or twice. And that was no worse than the sad fact that some people really have missiles hitting either where they are or very close. So, we just, so to speak, suffered running in and out of a shelter. And then I went back to Jerusalem, spent a few days there. But I had a problem because I ended up canceling one day of classes. I teach all my classes on one day. I ended up canceling them after consulting with people at NYU because I really didn’t have the right stuff to make it into an internet class. I didn’t have any of the materials with me because I expected to be home. Nehemia: Ah, so your flight was canceled and you couldn’t make it home to New York. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, all the flights were canceled because it’s dangerous. Then NYU went into action with a company, that’s a security company that they use that specializes in evacuations, and I and a colleague, his wife and son, were, in quotes, “evacuated”, close quotes, by going to Egypt, and we drove to Egypt. We had security guards (which in Israel you don’t really need, but in Egypt you do need) but in any case, we drove to Taba, which is at the border. We made a perfectly normal, orderly border crossing into Egypt, along with a lot of other people doing the same thing, one way or the other, and we crossed into Egypt. And we had a car that picked us up, again, with security. We drove to Sharm el-Sheikh. We spent seven hours in a very fancy hotel, and I found out the hotel was only 150 dollars. You could say… sort of a privilege. They were constantly writing us, you know, “Where are you, you know, are you moving on?” So, each stage of the trip… so, I joked with her later that you only put us in 150 dollar hotel, it turns out that it’s very cheap to go to Sharm el-Sheikh in the most luxurious hotel! And we were there for seven hours, got a little sleep. Twelve midnight, left for our airport to make our three o’clock flight, and then, because we wanted to get back before Shabbat, they couldn’t really get us a very good flight. So, we flew from Sharm el-Sheikh to Istanbul. We went from there to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to New York, but all those were regular flights, you know, normal, sitting in the airport, waiting, getting on the plane, you know, moving on. And that was what happened. And it was really, actually turned out to be, for me, to be a great opportunity to see a part of Egypt I hadn’t seen. I was in Egypt; my wife and I were there in 1979 between Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem and the peace treaty. And so, it was a chance here to see Sharm el-Sheikh, Sinai on the right, the desert on the right (you get a sense what it’s like) and on the left, the shore of the Red Sea, the western shore of the Red Sea. I had only seen that from a boat many years ago when I was on a cruise that went to Aqaba. And when we went to Petra and got to spend one day at Petra on horseback with some Arab driver with a rifle, and it was a lot of fun. So, anyhow, the bottom line, right, the evacuation was not bad and provided me some interesting opportunities. And I can only say that we have to be concerned for people who are suffering, but I would not put myself in that classification. Nehemia: Yeah, okay. Well, yeah, and I have a lot of family over there, and they’re… Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, everyone seems to be… our family’s in and out of shelters, but as they say, if you follow directions, you’re almost 100 percent safe. Nehemia: I saw a video the other day of this guy, he was alone in his house, and he said, “Look, my wife’s not even here, I’m not going to run into the shelter. I mean, nothing’s going to happen anyway.” And he said, “You know what? If I don’t run in the shelter, my wife will be upset with me.” He runs into the shelter, and his entire house is obliterated. The shelter is in perfect condition. Prof. Schiffman: Yep. Nehemia: So, I mean, this is happening. So, you know, I asked my sister and my mother the other day, “So, are you getting used to this? Is it becoming normalized?” And they both said, “There’s nothing normal about this. It’s surreal.” Prof. Schiffman: Yeah. I think… Nehemia: So, one of them said it’s like having a baby that wakes you up in the middle of the night, but the baby’s trying to kill you. Prof. Schiffman: But, you know, I want to point out here that the events of this war and what led up to it starting the Gaza War, et cetera; this is sort of on the scale of the Six Day War in terms of major, major change in the whole power structure. I mean, when you think about it, that Israel is clearly the main military power. And, you know, Turkey is staying out, wisely. They are a serious military power, but they know that they’re certainly not a competitor, and they’re not interested in the whole thing. So, what happens by the time this is over is that Israel unquestionably is the main military power, and you’ve got, right now, Arab nations being protected in different ways by Israel. And forgetting for a moment about the constant discussion about diplomatic relations, the fact is that the relations between Israel and their neighbors, and those countries that used to be their enemies, are just radically different. And even if they’re not the ones that we would best prefer, that these differences are really important. I think the big deal that we have to wait to see is what happens with the government of Iran. And I know that Israel has backed down from claiming that they’re there to overthrow Iran, but it would be a great shame if Iran didn’t return to being the great country that it used to be. And I’d love to visit. That’s another thing. And by the way, I live on a street where most of the people living on the street are either people who had their childhood in Iran, or, if they didn’t have their childhood in Iran, they were born in America shortly after the parents’ arrival from Iran. I mean, most of the families on my street are Persian Jews. So, you know, I’m sort of, like, in closer contact with what’s going on there. It would be a shame if it didn’t go back to being a great country. Nehemia: Yeah. Prof. Schiffman: And what’s really interesting about Iran is how they can talk the way they can talk, begging the U.S. and Israel to attack them, when they have no resources at all. Very strange. Nehemia: So, this is a good segue to your field of expertise, which is the Dead Sea Scrolls. And what comes to mind here is milchemet b’nei or u’bnei choshekh; the war of the sons of light and the sons of darkness… Prof. Schiffman: Yeah. Nehemia: …who, you had another group of people who perhaps weren’t living quite in reality, who thought they were going to fight an apocalyptic war against a foreign adversary, although those were Jews wanting to fight the Romans. So, this is really an interesting parallel. Is the mindset of these people in Iran, these fanatics; how does that compare to the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? In other words, you can’t possibly defeat the Romans. What are you thinking? Prof. Schiffman: Right. So, I would go back for a second and say there are two different questions to discuss here. One question is the one you’ve already hit on, which is simply the question, how does a group, and this happened with the Jews in the revolt against Rome. It happened several times. These guys expected to revolt. They prayed to revolt. They wrote a text to revolt, but they didn’t do it. Now, imagine what happens. We have, first of all, 63 BC, the Romans conquered the place. Then you’ve got the two revolts of 66 to 73, 132 to 5, which are totally hopeless from the start. Josephus has the speech of Agrippa that says they’re totally hopeless. So, our friends at Qumran, they share with a lot of other people the hope to overthrow Rome and be independent, even if it’s literally messianic. And even in the case of two revolts, if it fails. So, that is something they do indeed share with our friends, apparently, in Iran, who thought that they could overpower the great powers. Nehemia: What do you mean by “it’s literally messianic?” I’m not sure that my audience knows… That’s an Israeli term that I think means something different to most of the world. Prof. Schiffman: No, I think it’s something that’s very important to realize. Now we’re back to what I was going to say is the second thing. The second thing is that the type of Islam, this particular Sunni Islam and its Iranian variety, believe in a messianic redemption, which is not the case in most forms of Islam. Now, the Mahdi is supposed to come after great suffering of the people. So, you have a kind of ascetic messianism here, which seems to be part of this kind of Islamism. Now, when we go to the Dead Sea Sectarians, you have an apocalyptic form of Judaism, but I don’t know whether or not the almost suicidal desire to suffer along the way is part of that. There’s an assumption when you read the War Scroll and some of the other texts that they’re simply going to win a gigantic battle against the enemies of good who represent, as you said earlier, the children of darkness, sons of darkness. So, I think in each case, there is a certain form of apocalypticism that is motivating them. One can sort of jokingly say that the Qumran Sectarians were smart enough, apparently, not to start the war that the Iranians started, right? Nehemia: So, this raises a really interesting… and you said messianism, and I want you to define that because I think a lot of my audience will not understand. So, in Israel, we’ll talk about, you know, something being meshichi, messianic, but it doesn’t mean the same thing in Jewish culture as it does outside of Jewish culture. So, what do you mean by “there’s a messianism?” Prof. Schiffman: Well, I think the point is like this; that in a messianic ideology, messianic ideologies of Judaism come in two forms, the restorative and the utopian. This is something the great scholar Gershom Sholem worked out, and Shemaryahu Talmon wrote about it also for Dead Sea Scrolls. I wrote about it. The idea is like this: that in restorative messianism, that’s a kind of natural thing. That there once was a great empire, and you want to restore it. So, you work to re-attain the greatness of the empire that you had before. And you have a vision of restoring this greatness after having lost it. This is a rational thing, because this goes along with trying to make all the improvements, what they call in Kabbalah “tikkun”, to try to make the world better and better, and to bring about a redemptive state. But then you have the other form. The other form, which is the utopian, is looking to create a society that never existed. That society that never existed is going to be created, usually, after some kind of violent war. This violent war is going to lead to an overturning of the whole world order. Now, it is expected that this type of violent war will lead to the destruction of all evildoers. This is the war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness. The destruction of all the evildoers, and in the end, the group itself is the remaining, so to speak, winners in this apocalyptic process. Now, both are messianic. This is a messianic-type view which we would probably use the word apocalyptic, despite the tremendous scholarly debate about what that word really means. I like to use the word the way the dictionary uses it. I think that’s sometimes the best thing to do. Nehemia: Which is what? So, what does apocalyptic mean? Prof. Schiffman: Looking at that, that’s a kind of messianism which they usually mean when they say something is messianic, because it’s not realistic. And it’s not realistic and expects that something is going to happen to provide some kind of ideal situation that never existed. Like when the Jewish sources say there’ll be no disease, in some sources, at the end of days. That would be absolutely phenomenal. Nehemia: Mm-hmm. Prof. Schiffman: But we realize that the rational type messianists, like Maimonides, will come and say, “No! What are you talking about? Of course there’ll be disease. But people will be better people, and they’ll try and help the diseased person more. The guy will never have to wait to get someone to cross the street for him if he can’t walk. But the fact of the matter is that there’ll still be natural order.” So, the utopian type of messianism is what you’re talking about in the Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness. And that’s the type of messianism which is part of, I say part, of the Iranian type view, because we can never discount the fact that the Iranians have taken over the whole heritage of Islamism and reshaped it in their own Sunni variety. So, it’s not the same as the Muslim Brotherhood because they’re influenced by Shi’ism. The two groups are influencing one another, but the fact is that what we call Islamism involves a commitment to a violent overthrow of the reality that we have today. And that’s where there’s some kind of continuity here, where… Nehemia: So, I guess maybe I have a little bit of a different question. So, I’m young enough where, when I was growing up, there was this new movement, which was when Chabad started the chanting, “We want Mashiach now, we don’t want to wait.” But even Chabad didn’t mean “we’re going to implement,” I don’t think they meant, “we’re going to implement actively some of the things that we expect to,” let’s just say it. Meaning like, in other words, part of the Mashiach coming in Judaism is that the Third Temple is rebuilt. But nobody in Chabad in the 1970s was saying, “Oh, let’s go tear down the mosque,” because that will require some kind of supernatural intervention. Prof. Schiffman: Right, right. Nehemia: And the difference is, so in Judaism, at least as I’ve experienced it, this messianism is somewhat hypothetical. And then in Israel, when they’ll say meshichi, messianic, what they mean is somebody who takes it from the hypothetical to the active and says, “Okay, we’re going to go and settle on a hilltop in Judea because that will bring closer the coming of the Mashiach.” And I’m not saying whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, let’s leave those politics aside. Prof. Schiffman: Right, right, right. Nehemia: And I heard this from Haviv Retig Gur in a video he did where he was talking about that Twelver Shi’ism was very passive. Right? You would fast for the coming of the Mahdi and you would pray for the coming of the Mahdi. And then Khomeini comes in the 70s and says, “No, let’s make this happen…” Prof. Schiffman: Right. You got it. Nehemia: “…by triggering a world war.” So, to what extent was the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, when they wrote The War of the Sons of Light and Sons of Darkness, was this Chabad saying, “We want Mashiach now, we don’t want to wait?” Or was this, “No, let’s trigger this war?” That’s my question. And do we know? Prof. Schiffman: Well, it looks… here’s the problem. The problem is that we still can’t figure out the extent to which the War Scroll is a kind of theoretical hope or something realistic. First of all, we need to remind people that in the War Scroll, there is a whole system of scheduled battles one after another with the nations around Israel, who are the ancient biblical enemies of the Jewish people. And each one is getting defeated one by one. Now, of course, we know that no war actually would work that way. So, there’s something idealistic about the way they pose the war. And then there are idealistic legal rulings that the text has regarding fulfilling the laws of war of Deuteronomy and ritual purity and other stuff like that, that does make it seem that it’s some kind of theoretical framework. And of course, as everybody knows, they were apparently not collecting arms. Or at least none were found at Qumran in the excavations. Somebody took one knife that he found there and made a big deal about it, “Well, maybe this is the war.” No, that doesn’t make any sense. You’re not making a war with one knife. So, the point is, these are not the people of Masada (even if some of them may have run away there during the destruction of Qumran) but it’s not the people of Masada who are actively involved as the Sicarii in a revolt against Rome. So, it seems that what you’re dealing with here is a theoretical framework, and whether they really thought this framework would come about soon or not, I think they thought that there would be, soon, a divinely inspired messianic revolution. But there are others who think the opposite. The difference, however, is, if we come back to the Israeli example, I think virtually all, if you want to call them more messianic forms of Israeli Judaism, have certain lines that are created by Jewish law which prevent certain types of actions. And once in a while, they may be violated. And there also may be some very confused people, because some of these groups do indeed have very confused people who do think that they should take actions that Judaism basically doesn’t think they should take. Nehemia: What are some of those laws? Because you’re an expert on Jewish halakha historically. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, so I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. I teach a class almost every morning in our synagogue between two morning services. That is to say, people go to one or the other, and depending on where you’re going, you can stay after for the class or come early for the class. And it’s in the Sefer Hachinukh, which is a work that goes through the entire 613 commandments and laws pertaining to them, et cetera. Now, we are almost done with this book, having started in 2019. We used a 10-volume edition, and we are now on commandment 604. Nehemia: Oh, wow. Prof. Schiffman: Now, why do I mention this? Because we right now are on the destruction of Amalek. Now, this is a perfect example that a crazy messianist might think he’s supposed to destroy Amalek. Guess what? According to Jewish law, you may not destroy. Yes, you must remember. Yes, you must read a portion in the Torah that reminds you what Amalek did to the Jewish people, but you’re not allowed to kill an Amalekite because, A, we don’t know who the Amalekites are, and B, you’re not allowed to kill anybody without giving them a right to surrender or run away. Now, the point is that here you see Jewish law coming and making, obviously, a crazy messianist would think the end of days is a great way to kill all the bad guys. So, who’s Amalek? So, we can all make our own judgments. I think today many Jews tend to associate a certain group of people, a certain subgroup of that group as Amalek, right? And you can’t just kill them! Nehemia: In other words, this is a law… Prof. Schiffman: … a person in a Hamas uniform who’s just standing there, right, and think, “Oh, I think he’s Amalek, I’ll kill him,” right? You may not do that. If he shoots at you, sure, right? But the point I’m making is that Jewish law has cut off the ability to put this almost messianic idea of destruction of all evil. To do it. You can’t do it! Or the conquering the seven nations. You can’t decide that the Palestinians are the Seven Nations, and therefore that you can kill them to get them off the land. Now, we see in the news there are some very unfortunately sick individuals who seem to be perpetrating crimes against innocent Palestinians. But of course, we all know that any sensible person thinks that this is horrible and thinks they should be arrested and thrown in jail or whatever else. So, the point that I’m making is that Jewish law, in that example, stops you from putting through what someone might think is messianic. Now, when it comes to the Temple, according to Jewish law, most people believe you’re not even supposed to go on the Temple Mount because of our ritual impurity. So, you can’t just go up there and destroy the mosque, et cetera, et cetera. This is not to mention minor issues, if you want to call it that, like Jewish legal restrictions on destroying someone else’s property. There’s a building there. Who are you? So, the point is, what happens in all these situations is that it gets put off for a real Messiah, where we will really believe this person is divinely sent, and the whole world will turn to worship God and want this to happen. That’s the point. Nehemia: So, what’s interesting here is… Prof. Schiffman: Your point is right. These things are put off in a way that certain actions can’t be taken. But other actions, and we’ll go back to Chabad for a second… Nehemia: Mhm. Prof. Schiffman: …trying to create a world, which is a perfect world in which we have brought about the messianic era, that you should do. That’s the difference. Nehemia: But they do it not by killing people, they do it by saying, “We’re going to put on tefillin, phylacteries every morning…” Prof. Schiffman: Right. Nehemia: “…we’re going to keep Shabbat perfectly,” right? That’s Chabad’s strategy, which is a very different strategy… Prof. Schiffman: I’ve often made a not-nice joke… Nehemia: Okay, what’s that? Prof. Schiffman: There’s one group of people where, if you’re really very, very religious you kill people. And there’s another group of people where, if you’re really very, very religious you study Torah all day and don’t work, and that’s a very big contrast. Because I’ll take the second one over the first one anytime. And it’s a very important contrast, because sometimes we like to criticize some Jewish brethren who have become very fanatical. Nehemia: Mm-hmm. Prof. Schiffman: But at least the fanaticism almost always is limited to that type of activity. And when it’s not, the Jewish community opposes them. For example, that crazy sect that was mistreating children and marrying the… Nehemia: Lev Tahor in Guatemala, or something… Prof. Schiffman: …but they’re condemned by everybody, right? I remember a very interesting thing. When they were in Montreal, the government in Montreal wanted to take away the children. Who was ready to take in the children? The Belzer Hasidim. Why? Because these are Hasidim, they like the same clothes, but, of course, they were completely against the sick behavior of these people. So, the point I’m making is that, within the Jewish community, when somebody doesn’t understand where the proper lines are for this type of activity, the community comes and says, “You’ve gone overboard. Sorry, you can’t do this.” Nehemia: So, this is a really important point. It’s a bit beyond the Dead Sea Scrolls, but I think it’s a really important point. So, leading up to October 7th, there were all these broadcasts on Al Jazeera. I watched a lot of them. And they were showing Jews, particularly in the context of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or it’s actually the Dome of the Rock, because most Jews don’t care about the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Prof. Schiffman: You’re right. Nehemia: So, there’s a confusion there on their part. They don’t know the difference. But in any event, they were saying, “Well, the Jews want to build their temple. They’re going to destroy our mosque, and we have to go defend it.” Right? Prof. Schiffman: Right, they do that all the time… Nehemia: They were whipping up the Palestinian population, because I think a Qatari likes nothing more than a dead Palestinian, unfortunately. So, Al Jazeera is whipping them up into this frenzy. And what they don’t understand is, and I want you to comment on this; I think it kind of fits with what you’re saying. The prayer for Jews to rebuild the Temple is, “Well, God’s going to have to do that. We’re not going to tear down any mosque.” But in the Muslim mind, and this is interesting, so, this is a debate within Islam; is jihad an individual obligation or is it an umma, a national obligation? And people like bin Laden were saying it’s an individual obligation. If you see a Jew… or ISIS in particular, they literally said this. They put out things to the Muslims of America. They said, “You have these gun shows. Go buy the guns and start killing people. What’s wrong with you?” And a rational Muslim says, “Wait a minute. Yes, maybe there’s some obligation to wage war in the name of Allah, but I’m not individually going to do that!” Is there any Jew… and of course, maybe there’s crazy people, right? But most Jews are not looking and saying, “Oh, we should go personally tear down the mosque.” The world will decide that when… Prof. Schiffman: That’s right. There’s something also very important to understand, and this is going to sound a little funny. The government of the State of Israel exercises a certain legal control, which makes very clear to people that certain activities are not going to be permitted. So, just as an example, the people who want to bring an animal for Passover onto the Temple Mount and sacrifice, will not get onto the Temple Mount with that animal. On the other hand, the government has decided that if a Jew wants to open a prayer book on the Temple Mount, they should be allowed to. Because they decided this now. They used to forbid it. Now, the point I want to make, though, is that the government and its laws exercise a certain control which is there, besides the inner religious control. So that if a person is going to go overboard in some of these things, the government will say this is not right. Now, these other governments are telling their citizens that they should kill people! So, I want to say something about jihad. I think the West doesn’t want to face the reality of what jihad really is. That’s what they can’t understand. People ask them, “What good did it do to destroy the World Trade Center? All you did was kill people.” No! That is the idea, to kill people. Now, this is something we have a lot of trouble with, right? We don’t totally understand why someone thinks that simply killing people is a good thing. And we have to face reality that some of the Islamist groups are at that level of commitment to a type of jihad which may be destructive. Now, in the Jewish messianic idea, the idea is to be constructive. So, that also is going to affect the whole scene. But the problem about the jihadist is, the jihadist doesn’t care if it’s destructive. And I think, you know, with ISIS, you see this functioning in the extreme. But I think it’s important to understand that, like, I’ve got to tell you that people don’t realize this, that the type of Islamist point of view that has now become what we call Islamism, in reality is encouraging, as you saw on the TV, this type of stuff. And as you said, the rational Muslim knows better, because it doesn’t accomplish anything. Or wants to live according to classical Islam, in which the Jew and the Christian is a protected minority. Nehemia: So, there’s a really important point here that I think some of my audience will miss. I’m familiar with the terminology, but they might not be. You use the term Islamism, and then Islam or Islamic, and there’s a difference. Prof. Schiffman: Yes. Nehemia: Would you explain that? Because… Prof. Schiffman: Okay, there’s this person called a Muslim, okay? That’s a person who believes in Islam. Islam is the correct name for the religion, like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. However, Islamic today is used in one and two different ways. I usually avoid using it for that reason, because it’s sometimes used just to describe what is the adjective Muslim would describe, but sometimes it refers to what we call Islamists. Now, Islamists are people who believe in what we consider to be a fanatical form of Islam in which jihad is a central idea. Now, this is complicated because it comes in different varieties. Because the main varieties of it are, I would say, maybe now three. You have, I guess what we could call the most crazy, ISIS, right, which is almost dead, but not totally dead. It’s still operating in the Syrian desert. You know, I was in Syria for two days. I have now my passport… Nehemia: You were in Syria for two days? Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, I was in Syria for two days in September. It was great, fascinating. Nehemia: What… Prof. Schiffman: We were guests of the government. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience. Nehemia: Wait, wait, hold on. You were openly a guest of the government of Syria for two days? In 2025? Prof. Schiffman: Correct. My wife, too. And a group of 12 Jews. Another group went in December, but we were guests… Nehemia: Wow. Prof. Schiffman: And from our point of view, we got to see the Dura-Europos paintings up close. Nehemia: Oh, wow! Prof. Schiffman: They’re sitting on… from the 3rd century. To go back to the question now… Nehemia: Wow. Prof. Schiffman: …so, Islamist refers to what we consider to be fanaticism. I mean, where you have a guy giving his eight-year-old kid a gun to shoot someone in the head, right, in front of a video, which I never watched one of those videos. I am a strict observer of the Jewish law that you may not get benefit from a dead body. I do not watch videos of people being killed. However, here’s what I want to say; that that’s the extreme extreme, right? Where violence becomes even just, you know, completely out of sight. Then you’ve got the problem of the two forms; the Muslim Brotherhood, which of course is Hamas, et cetera, in which, again, however, violence that’s normally prohibited by Islamic law becomes permitted. Namely violence against non-military personnel. And you see that with October 7th. But you also see the sickness of it when you get to baking babies and all these raping dead women, and a guy calling his mother to say he killed 10 people. It’s “good news,” you know. Okay. Then you’ve got the Shiite Islamism of a country, Iran, that is willing to dedicate the entire country, strangely to supporting other Islamists who are Sunnis, right, to somehow or another upset the whole world, and, at least they claim, destroy the State of Israel. Now, nobody believes that’s real, that they could destroy the State of Israel, but having them build an atomic bomb when they say they want to use it? I don’t know. It’s worse than North Korea, because North Korea, they don’t intend to use the bomb, right? They’re not intending to use it. Nehemia: North Korea has the bomb for the purpose of remaining in power… Prof. Schiffman: Right. Nehemia: Iran openly says they have the bomb for the purpose of destroying Israel… Prof. Schiffman: Openly says, they’ll use the atomic… So, the point is that these are forms, these three forms, Muslims that are prominent today. Muslim Brotherhood, which in a certain sense, that and Hezbollah is the organization of massive guerrilla war, right? Then you got the ISIS thing, which is almost dead, but the U.S. is pulling out of the Syrian desert, so who knows whether the Syrian government will be able to keep them under control. They’re trying. And then you got this Iran thing. Now, the Iran thing, as they called it, was the octopus that fed the others. But ideologically, they’re not exactly the same. Even though they’re not exactly the same, they all constitute a massive danger to what we call the civilized world. Now, here’s the point I want to make. That’s what we call Islamism. As opposed to the regular religion, which may see some of these things in its ideal system, but isn’t doing them. That’s more similar to your example of the Jewish system, where the guy who’s pumping gas, who came to the U.S. from Pakistan or driving the Uber car, is not interested in any of that. He just wants to support his family, and he wants to go to the mosque and worship God. And observe the holidays and stuff like that. And so, that guy is not in this. So, that’s what we distinguish between Islam and Islamism. That’s the way the terminology works. Nehemia: Okay. So, now let’s go backwards 2,000 years. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah! Nehemia: Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? I was taught years ago that it was the Essenes, but what is your view? Prof. Schiffman: The first question that I always have to point out about this is the word “wrote”. I don’t use this word and I’ll tell you why. Because there are several issues. There’s the composition and the copying. Now, about one-third of the material found in Qumran is the Hebrew Bible. Nehemia: Okay. Prof. Schiffman: So, who composed? You know, anybody from Moses to Ezra, right? So, it’s got nothing to do with the people living there, they just copied and owned these manuscripts. Then we get to the question of who composed, which is what you really want to know, the Sectarian Scrolls. Because remember, there’s Second Temple literature composed by other Jews and either physically brought to the Sectarian center at Qumran, or maybe just copied at the Sectarian center at Qumran. But they weren’t composed by the people there, they were “written”, in quotes, when they copied them. So, good. Now we get to, who composed the Sectarian? So, the dominant view is the Essenes. The question that we have to ask is a funny question; who are the Essenes? We have the descriptions in Josephus and Philo. They tell us certain things about the practices, and a few other places, but that’s the main thing. But what’s very important is Pliny the Elder, because Pliny the Elder says that there was a sect at a place north of En Gedi, of Essenes, and that is why most people think that Qumran was occupied by the Essenes. Now, the problem is, as I say, who are the Essenes? Because the word Essene… we don’t know what it means in Hebrew, right? It’s never found in Hebrew, except from the Renaissance on, when Jews started reading Greek texts. They read about it in Josephus and Philo. But before that, it’s never mentioned. It’s not in the Talmud. It’s not in the New Testament. So, the question is, is that the correct word for the people we’re talking about? Khirbet Qumran? Or is it then… We don’t know what the word means. Somebody put an article together; he mentioned 22 possible explanations of the word Essene. Nehemia: Wow. Prof. Schiffman: And actually, the guy advocated a strange one; a beekeeper from a cult of Artemis on some island in the Aegean, and he advocated that they’re beekeepers. But there are no bees found in the Qumran caves that we know about, so it was pretty funny. But leaving aside the humorousness of this, we don’t know! Now, a funny fact is that the word Isi’im in modern Hebrew has come to mean the Sectarians of Qumran. So, I once was giving a lecture to an Israeli audience in a Hebrew program somewhere, and a woman raised her hand she said, “Ha’im ha’Isi’im hayu ha’Isi’im?” “Were the Essenes the Essenes?” Were the Dead Sea Scrolls the Essenes? Now, what I want to say about this is, there are two possibilities… Nehemia: Okay. Prof. Schiffman: …and this is a kind of simplistic way of putting it. Either they are the Essenes, and we have to change the way we understand the Essenes in accord with the Qumran materials, as the main sources about the group. Or the word Essene may refer to a whole variety of groups of which the group who left us the scrolls may be one of them, that therefore shares certain things with the ones that Josephus and Philo described, but they’re not exactly the same group. But you can’t throw out the fact that Pliny says that they were located above En Gedi. Now, a funny fact is that somebody tried to come up with the idea that “above En Gedi” meant up on the hill above En Gedi. And the late Yosef Aviram, who was working until he was like 104, told me that when he was like 102, he went on a tour to see this place that they claimed was really the Essene settlement. And when he got there, he said all the pottery was Byzantine, and he didn’t know what the heck they were talking about. Nehemia: So, I’ve done that hike from the entrance to the Ein Gedi reserve. You go up the mountain… Prof. Schiffman: Right. Nehemia: …over the mountain, down the mountain, and you come out at, I believe it’s Nachal Arugot. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah. Nehemia: It’s said to be a seven-hour hike. I was in much better shape about 15 years ago… Prof. Schiffman: [Laughter] Nehemia: …and I did it in five hours. But I don’t think… I wouldn’t make it today. Prof. Schiffman: [Laughter] Nehemia: So, I can’t imagine anyone… But there are water sources about, maybe like halfway up. That’s where the Ein Gedi Water Company gets their water from. Prof. Schiffman: Yes. Well, they make believe they get it from there. Who knows? Nehemia: Or it’s from the tap, but they put the label on that it’s from there. Prof. Schiffman: Well, I don’t think… Someone pointed out to me, the genius that started selling water in bottles. I only buy a water bottle if I need an ice water somewhere. I’ll tell you a funny story. NYU had a project. We did a lot of research, together with the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University, about Caesarea. So, I went with my wife to spend a day, an entire day in Caesarea. I wanted to see every single thing there from the beginning to the end. So, they sell water there for a fortune, but it’s ice water. And if you’re in Caesarea in July and you’re there the whole day, it’s well worth buying the ice water. So, we bought the ice water for four times the price, bottle after bottle after bottle, and it didn’t bother me. But normally, I would never buy water. Nehemia: That’s supply and demand, is what they call it. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah… Nehemia: So, all right, so, back to who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah! Nehemia: So, Rachel Elior famously says it was the Sadducean Temple Library. Prof. Schiffman: Right. Nehemia: What is your thought on that? Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, so, here’s a problem about this. I’ve advocated the fact that the halakhic system of the scrolls is based on Sadducean approach. This seems to me to be proven without any question from a whole variety of places, in which case it gives us an opening to understand the exegesis in the Temple Scroll as an example of how Sadducean exegesis would have worked, and let us understand much better Rabbinic references, which are very partial and very unclear, et cetera. So, that part of this… here’s the irony; I think that’s correct, but she didn’t know that I wrote that. Nehemia: Okay. Prof. Schiffman: She didn’t know that anybody ever discussed any of this, because she never read the literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls field. Now, the problem is when you go one step further and you say “the Sadducean Temple Library”, because the material is anti the Temple… Nehemia: So, how could it be the Temple Library? Prof. Schiffman: …the Temple Library have only works against the Temple, saying it’s not kosher! It makes no sense. They would have works that support the Temple. Nehemia: Can we back up a little bit and do a little bit of order? Who are the Sadducees? Prof. Schiffman: Okay, good. Nehemia: Let’s assume the audience doesn’t know anything beyond what they read in one of the New Testament books. Who are the Sadducees? Prof. Schiffman: Okay. Right. So, Sadducees are in the New Testament. So, anyhow… By the way, the New Testament is a great source for the history of Judaism. People don’t understand that. Nehemia: Right. Prof. Schiffman: Right? Really a great source. Now, there were, at this time, according to Josephus, three main Jewish sects. He discusses this starting in about 150 BCE, when he gets to that point in his history. He says, “And there were three Jewish sects.” The Pharisees are the forerunners of the Talmudic rabbis. That means that they are the forerunners of the Judaism of today, because all forms of Judaism today, with the exception of Karaism and Samaritanism, are based on the Pharisaic-Rabbinic approach. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, it’s all based on Pharisaic-Rabbinic approach. Nehemia: Is that a controversial position? Because I’ve heard people say, “Rabbis have nothing to do with the Pharisees, and the rabbis of the Mishnah didn’t consider themselves Pharisees,” and I think that’s kind of a… Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, this is because people want to say something that sounds exciting. But the reality of the situation is, it’s not that they consider themselves Pharisees, they consider the Pharisees to be their forerunners. That’s not the same thing as considering yourself a Pharisee… Nehemia: Well, when they talk about the zugot, the appearance… those are the Pharisees… Prof. Schiffman: In other words… when we go into our university office, we’re doing something that started out in monasteries. Monasteries became universities. Does that mean if I say that that I think I’m in a monastery? Of course not, right? So, I mean, this is a… right? The argument that Pharisaism is not the origin of the Rabbinic movement is a bit specious. Though people say it. Nehemia: Okay. Prof. Schiffman: The second group that we need to talk about, we’ve already talked about the Essenes, whether they are the Dead Sea Scroll sect, but we need to talk about the Sadducees. The Sadducees represent the high priestly elite, and we know that they had specific beliefs that differed from those of the Pharisees. We know this from Josephus, and they had specific legal rulings in Jewish law and sacrificial law that differed from the view of the Pharisees. And certainly differed from views later on in Rabbinic sources, who in a later period retroactively disagreed with the Sadducees. Nehemia: Okay. Prof. Schiffman: So, this group of Sadducees, however, seems to have imparted its view on Jewish law to the Dead Sea Sectarians and some other groups as well, because Samaritanism and Karaism ultimately trace back to that kind of approach to Jewish law. To put it another way, there are two main approaches to Jewish law historically… Pharisaic Rabbinic on the one hand, and on the other hand, the one which starts with the Sadducees and is, besides being Sadducean, has tremendous influence on Samaritan and Karaite law. Nehemia: So, can you just give an example? That’s interesting to me. What sense does the Sadducee approach influence the Samaritan law? Prof. Schiffman: I’m going to have to remember these examples, I don’t remember them too well. There’s this guy, Boyd, who wrote about this. And what happens is that you have this tremendous stringency about menstrual impurity, and the actual separation of the menstruant, right? Which it also shares with Karaism. Nehemia: And the Ethiopian Jews have that as well. Prof. Schiffman: Yes, that’s right. Now, there is one manuscript of the Mishnah that seems to indicate that there may have been some regular Jews who did this. But the Temple Scroll has it. And so, it’s in Qumran, it’s in Samaritanism and Karaism. Now, we went on a visit to the Karaite synagogue in Jerusalem. You’ll like this story. So, first of all, the rabbi, whose name was Hefetz Hayim… Nehemia: Oh, that’s a very long time ago. Okay. Prof. Schiffman: Yes, yes. Nehemia: Like, you’re talking about the 80s or 90s? No, 90s, it would have to be. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah. Any women who are ritually impure should not go in, because that’s the rule of Karaites, something which tried to spread to Rabbinic Judaism, but didn’t make it, right? Nehemia: Hmm. Prof. Schiffman: However, not one woman didn’t go in, because what Rabbinite Jewish woman is going to admit in a public place that she’s ritually impure? So, they all went in. Okay. And the point I want to make is that he told us that the way in which they operate is that menstruation, because of the separation thing, is not private. So, you call your friend up and you say, “Would you like to go out for pizza tonight?” Obviously, he means with their wives, right? And the guy says, “No, my wife can’t come because she’s nida.” She’s menstrually impure. Now, in a Rabbinite thing, why can’t she go have pizza? But this particular approach was to separate the woman, although they treated the woman luxuriously during this period (he explained that to us also) that the woman would be served, everything in bed, and taken care of, as if she was literally a sick person. Whereas, of course, in Rabbinism, you ignore the whole thing. Now, this comes up in New Testament studies, because you have in the New Testament an example of this woman who’s impure, and many of the commentators mistakenly believe that in the Pharisaic type of world of Jesus, that she would have been separated. But she’s not separated at all, because she’s part of the community. Nehemia: So, that’s really interesting. Are you saying that the Sadducee approach, and I guess we’re saying Sadducee in a very broad sense, perhaps… Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, yeah. Nehemia: So, this broader Sadducean approach influenced, can we say, early Jewish Christians? Or I don’t know what the terminology here is… Prof. Schiffman: No, I would say it like this; what it influenced was the exegetes of the New Testament who didn’t understand that, in Rabbinic Judaism, the impurity of the woman extends only to going to the Temple, having relations with her husband (which is forbidden in that period) and/or making a sandwich for someone who’s going to the Temple because it’ll be impure. And other than that, there’s no restriction. She could go to work, take your kids to school, go to a social occasion, go out for pizza. I don’t know, could you believe there was a time before pizza? I actually saw somebody suggesting that, you know, tuna’s in the Talmud, tuna fish, right? So, maybe that pizza was invented by Jews. Nehemia: Well, I mean, they had some early form of pizza, presumably without tomato sauce. But I was just over in Rome, and I had a bunch of pizza that had no tomato sauce, so… Prof. Schiffman: [Laughter] Nehemia: …anyway. So, even today, pizza potentially could be… it’s not necessarily New York style. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, yeah. Nehemia: So, you’re saying this broader Sadducean approach is embedded in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Prof. Schiffman: Right. Now, I want to point out something else, which is interesting. I mentioned before that the idea that a menstruant woman shouldn’t come to the synagogue sort of tried to make it into Rabbinic Judaism. Nehemia: Aren’t there some Rabbinical sources that have that idea? Am I wrong about that? Prof. Schiffman: Well, you have some later discussion in the time of the Ga’onim, the early Middle Ages. Now, the reason I mention this… this is just a small example of the fact that, we have to reckon with cross-fertilization of all Jewish groups, all the time, over time. How this happens, why it happens, whatever, right? We have to do that. And there are some funny examples that you can come up with, even in modern times. But one example that I like is reciting the Kiddish prayer on Saturday morning in the synagogue when everyone is going to go downstairs to eat it or outside to eat it in another room. Right? Which started in reform synagogues, spread to conservative synagogues, and spread to Orthodox synagogues, as opposed to letting everybody say it himself and make his own blessing when he gets to the place where they’re serving what used to be cake and wine and now became more extensive. Here, you see it moving; Reform, Conservative, Orthodox. And there are other examples like that, and maybe the best example of that is the sermon on Saturday morning. So, in modern times, we also see that Jewish groups exchange, even when they claim to disagree greatly with one another, they exchange ideas, no matter what you say. Nehemia: Wait, so tell us about the sermon. I assume my audience doesn’t know what the significance of that is. Is that something that comes from outside Judaism? Or, what’s the significance? Prof. Schiffman: The sermon is originally a Christian thing that became part of Reform Judaism when it came into being in the 1820s through 40s in Germany and then began to become a serious movement. And then, when the Conservative movement came into being, it picked up the sermon and then the sermon made it into the Orthodox community. There used to be two sermons a year in Orthodox synagogues, not during the services, held in the afternoon. Nehemia: When were the sermons? When were the sermons? Prof. Schiffman: So, that’s where it comes from. Nehemia: No, when were the two sermons a year? I didn’t know this. Prof. Schiffman: The two sermons of the year were on Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and before Passover, the Sabbath before Passover. Nehemia: Wow. So, you’re saying if you… Prof. Schiffman: And the rabbi gave two sermons! And they were very… Nehemia: So, if you went to a synagogue in the year 1500 in Marrakesh, or in Lithuania, you wouldn’t hear a sermon, you’re saying? On Shabbat? On a regular Shabbat? Prof. Schiffman: Not on a regular Shabbat. Nehemia: Wow. And you’re saying it’s Christian influence to have a sermon the synagogue. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, yeah. Nehemia: Wow! Prof. Schiffman: So, that’s how it became. It’s… you know. Look, the wedding procession is a Christian thing, the white dress is a Christian thing, right? So, the point is that the influences go back and forth. Nehemia: There’s a thing recently that the… Prof. Schiffman: So, I just wanted to make the point… Nehemia: Go ahead, yeah. Prof. Schiffman: …you can’t talk about the Pharisaic and Sadducean-like Jewish legal systems as if they don’t have any influence on one another. They do. Nehemia: Were there things in the Sadducean system… Do you have an example of something in the Sadducean system that influenced Rabbinical Judaism, other than the whole thing of the menstruant woman? Is there anything like that? Prof. Schiffman: I think it’s mostly in the stringencies of menstruation. That’s really where it was. I don’t think we can document much more than that. But I just gave the one example of women coming to the synagogue. There are some texts in the Middle Ages that tried to make menstrual impurity even stricter, and these things somehow didn’t make it. But there are other examples of this, like preparing food and stuff like that, revival of some of these purity laws from Temple purity. Because, remember one thing very important; in the origin of all this, Sadducean-type law wants to take Temple purity laws in daily life. But Pharisaism does too, they just don’t want as much. Sounds funny, right? Nehemia: Isn’t there something about the… Prof. Schiffman: Each one wants to take over Temple purity. So, Pharisaism wants to take over Temple purity a certain amount. And Sadduceism seems to want to take over much more of it and put it into the regular system of life. And so, you get greater stringencies on these issues. Nehemia: So, in other words, there are certain things in the Torah apply to sacrificial contexts, and you’re saying both the Pharisees and Sadducees wanted to extend those outside the Temple. Prof. Schiffman: A perfect example of this is purity, not kosherness, but purity of food. Now, purity of food, the Pharisaic Rabbinic law, in the end, when it completely stopped after the destruction of the Temple, got left with one thing; washing the hands before eating bread. Nehemia: So, what’s the origin of that? That’s a fascinating topic for the audience. What is the origin of… Because that’s not in the Torah, right, in the written Torah. Prof. Schiffman: That’s not in the Torah. Washing your hands before eating bread is mentioned in Mark 7. I joke sometimes if I’m at a dinner with some Christians and I’m about to go and wash my hands before eating the bread, say, “Excuse me, I have to go fulfill what it says in Mark 7.” They may or may not know what I’m talking about, right? Nehemia: All right. So, what’s the origin of that, if it doesn’t come from the Torah? Prof. Schiffman: What is… it’s like this. It’s that the priests had to wash their hands, purify their hands, before eating the truma, which was the holy offerings that they got to support them. So, they and their families had to be ritually pure in order to share in this food. Now, in order to do this, right, so, one of the things they had to do was wash their hands. So, Jews, to this day, wash their hands before eating bread. Now, we’re not talking about cleanliness, right? Because people wash their hands for cleanliness, too. But they wash their hands for ritual purposes, even if they just washed them, you know, 20 minutes of soap and water, like they tell you to make sure you don’t get a disease. I’d like to see anybody washing his hands for 20 minutes. I mean, by the time you get finished… Nehemia: You’ll be flaking skin by the time you’re finished. Prof. Schiffman: Yes, it would be kind of tiring, also, right? But anyhow, jokes aside, right, irrespective of personal cleanliness (which is, by the way, required in Jewish law) you wash your hands to fulfill this ritual because the priests used to do this in the Temple when they ate the truma. So, you’re doing a Temple ritual, but you’re doing a Temple ritual when you carry a lulav and etrog in a synagogue, right, on Sukkot, because the main ritual was in the Temple, and that’s where it was required by the Torah. So, there are quite a number of things in regular Rabbinic Judaism that emerges out of the Pharisee tradition that imitate Temple worship. Okay. But the Sadducees seem to be stricter about this. And also, of course, the stricter way of understanding the words of the Torah more literally, which comes out in quite a number of examples. So, a lot of people think, you know, Sadduceism just died when the Temple was destroyed. But it didn’t die when you see its legal tradition affecting these various groups. By the way, people who want to get a really interesting experience should see the movie about the Samaritans that accompanied the exhibit in the Museum of the Bible. The exhibit was arranged by Prof. Stephen Fine of Hebrew University, but the movie was fascinating, about Samaritans marrying women from the Ukraine because there are too few women. But the most interesting thing to me there was, you know, they do the paschal sacrifice. They actually slaughter the lambs. And there was a woman talking about how the tremendous joy that she experiences when she hears the noise of the animals being slaughtered. And it made me realize that we are so far away from the idea of sacrificial worship that, even if we study it in the most open way, we don’t totally understand how it works. And here’s a woman speaking Hebrew, right, wearing modern clothes, a nice up-to-date type person, explaining the tremendous joy at hearing the animals as they’re being slaughtered. Very interesting. Nehemia: That’s really interesting, because there’s an experiential side of religion, I’ll call it. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, but we’re not used to it. Nehemia: Well, not just that we’re not used to. So, you’re obviously, I’m going to make some assumptions here, a religious person. But I have some colleagues who are scholars who are just avowed atheists… Prof. Schiffman: Yeah. Nehemia: …and I think there’s a side of religion that they don’t understand. And then they look at… especially they look at Islam, and they just have no idea what’s going on. They’re like, “Oh, well, they’re going to surrender if Gaza is blown up.” And I’m like, “You don’t understand how, certainly, a religious fanatic thinks. You clearly do not understand.” Prof. Schiffman: I think, though… this is a little bit different, because no matter how much a Jewish person could be… I’ll use this word with a small f, fanatically, involved in fulfilling Jewish practices, I think that they still wouldn’t understand the Islamism in its conceptual framework. So, I think they understand Muslim religious practice, yes. But the other thing about what you’re saying, which is important, is to realize, I think when it comes to something like the sacrificial system, any modern person would not have a very good sense of how to understand it, simply because we don’t experience it no matter what. Nehemia: Well, in Islam, they have, I want to say it’s Eid al-Fitr, but someone will correct me in the comments, and they slaughter a lamb or a goat… Prof. Schiffman: Yes. Nehemia: …if I’m not mistaken, and the whole family consumes it. And it’s obviously modeled on the Passover sacrifice. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah. Nehemia: So, they probably understand it, maybe better than we do. Prof. Schiffman: That may be the case. Nehemia: Because I’ve never participated in an animal sacrifice. I once went to see the Samaritans do it, but I’m a tourist there, it’s not the same thing. Prof. Schiffman: Yeah. Well, I watched it on TV once. It was in Israel. It was a different night from the Jewish Passover. But you see in this movie, you get to see much of it, and it’s quite interesting. And they interview the woman afterwards. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in the movie Nehemia: So, on the one hand you say the Dead Sea Scrolls reflect Sadducean Halakha… Prof. Schiffman: Legal tradition, right. Nehemia: Legal tradition. But on the other hand, they’re opposed to the Temple, the people who wrote… the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of them, or many of them are… Prof. Schiffman: Yeah… Nehemia: …avowedly opposed to the Temple, right? There’s the famous… the wicked priest… Prof. Schiffman: Yes. Nehemia: …attacked the teacher of righteousness in the day of his Yom Kippur… Prof. Schiffman: Yes. Yes. Nehemia: Pesher Habakuk. So, how is it that you have this quasi-Sadducean belief, or ritual, that’s opposed to the Temple, which is dominated by the Sadducees? What am I missing? Prof. Schiffman: Okay, so, I personally think… now we’re not talking about something that everyone agrees to. I got to admit that. I personally think that what happened is, in 152 BCE, when Jonathan the Hasmonean gets the approval, basically, to rule over Judea from the Seleucids, this is the real end of the Hanukkah story, not the lighting of the menorah. Because after those events, right, and the conquest by Judah the Maccabee, we see that the Temple was taken back by Hellenistic forces. So, Jonathan, only in 152, gets the right to rule, and that’s the beginning of the Hasmonean Empire. And my assumption is that, because the Sadducees were seen as responsible for everything that went on leading up to the Hellenistic reform and everything that went on there, that he basically threw them out and priests who agreed with the Pharisees were in control in that point. Nehemia: From 152 BCE… Prof. Schiffman: And therefore, the Qumran Sectarians leave the Temple. At least their priestly leadership, leaves the Temple and sets up this sectarian group in opposition to the Temple that they no longer approve of, because it’s following halachic rulings that they think are incorrect. Nehemia: I’m having trouble following here. So, 152 BCE, Jonathan the Hasmonean, who, I think we have coins of his in Paleo-Hebrew… so, he adopts Pharisaical halacha? Is that what you’re saying? Prof. Schiffman: It’s not a question of what he adopts. He puts priests in control of the Temple who are going to follow what we later would call the Pharisaic-Rabbinic or Pharisaic way, rather than the Sadducees, whom he blames for the extreme Hellenism that went on in the Temple. Remember, they even had an idol in there! Nehemia: But if Sadducees are so strict in their observance of the Torah law, how were they having idols in the Temple? Prof. Schiffman: Well, because they were corrupt. The people who did it, obviously, were corrupt extreme Hellenizers. Now, here we’ve got to get into something else very important. It seems that there are two different kinds of Sadducees. There are pious Sadducees who do what you’re supposed to do according to Sadducean way of understanding the Torah, and these are your middle-level priests. And then there are these big-shot, highly Hellenistic people who are part of the Sadducean group. And the one group is constantly, in Josephus’ stories, leading people down the wrong path. And the other group is the real pious people, who when, whoever takes over in the aftermath of the Hasmonean Empire coming into existence with Jonathan in 152, our group opposes them. And that you can see from the so-called MMT Text in which they write a letter to the mainstream guys running it and say, “If you’ll do X, Y, and Z, we’ll come back. But you know we’re right, and we are following the true way.” Nehemia: Can you talk a little bit about 4QMMT? That’s a really important… miktzat ma’asei torah. Prof. Schiffman: Yes. Nehemia: Can you talk about… That’s a really important text. Prof. Schiffman: Yes, in which presumably the Sectarians are writing to the leadership in Jerusalem and to these priests that are now running it, and saying, “You’re doing it all wrong!” And this becomes a matter of laws, sacrificial law, impurity law, that it’s all being done not according to the way the Sectarians think. Why? Because they’re following a Pharisaic approach. Nehemia: So, 4QMMT clearly aligns with Sadducean Halakhah as it’s brought down in the Talmud in particular, right? Prof. Schiffman: Yeah, that’s right? Nehemia: Okay. And so, this is why I think maybe you’re saying there’s two Sadducean varieties… Prof. Schiffman: Two kinds of… Nehemia: There’s one that very much cares about the Torah, and there’s another one that’s like, “Eh, an idol that’ll make our masters happy and…” Prof. Schiffman: I want to give you an example of the same phenomenon. You know that the term Reform Jew is used for two kind of people;
Empieza 7 días de prueba
$99 / mes después de la prueba. · Cancela cuando quieras.
- Podcasts solo en Podimo
- 20 horas de audiolibros al mes
- Podcast gratuitos
Todos los episodios
507 episodios
Comentarios
0Sé la primera persona en comentar
¡Regístrate ahora y únete a la comunidad de Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com!