Fishbane on the Temple Scroll

Michael Fishbane, “Use, Authority and Interpretation of Mikra at Qumran,” Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin Jan Mulder (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004) 339-377.

My Plunder Paper is for the same class as my Fishbane paper. My plunder paper concerns the Temple Scroll’s treatment of the Torah’s laws on plunder. Somewhere in my paper is the question of how authoritative the Qumran interpreters deemed the Pentateuchal laws to be. Michael Fishbane offers his insights.

Fishbane argues that the Temple Scroll is faithful to the biblical traditum, since it draws from books of the Torah and seeks to harmonize its different laws (349-350). At the same time, because God himself is presented as speaking the laws in 11QTemp, Fishbane maintains that the Temple Scroll was intended to be a new Torah (351). So it seems that the Qumran community (or whoever produced the Temple Scroll) viewed the Torah as authoritative, and yet not entirely, since it could be replaced.

Fishbane uses the idea of “ongoing divine revelations” to bridge these seemingly contradictory notions. 1QpHab 2:1-9 talks about the Teacher of Righteousness, who knows the mysteries of the prophets (361), which will be revealed to God’s community in the last times (361-362). Such a notion extended to the legal part of the Bible, for Fishbane states: “Indeed, on their view, God revealed to the sect the hidden interpretation of the Law by which all Israel, including even its great leaders, like David, unknowingly went astray (CD 3:13; cf. 4:13-6)” (364). Moreover, the Rule Scroll exhorts the Qumran sectarians to perform what has been revealed “at each period” (8:15-16; cf. 9:19-20).

For Fishbane, the Qumran community believed in progressive revelation. When they approached the Torah, therefore, they interpreted the laws in light of their newly-revealed meaning. They believed that God was intimately involved in their community, however, so they didn’t just act as if they were interpeting a book. Rather, they held that God was revealing to them a new Torah, which was continuous with the old Torah, yet was relevant to the end times.

In Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, Fishbane acts as if Jubilees (second century B.C.E.) was an interpretation of the biblical text, whereas others maintain that it was written as an alternative to the Pentateuch. Could both be the case, as Fishbane says is true of the Temple Scroll? Jubilees does refer to the giving of the law at Sinai, plus there is overlap between what it has and the laws and stories contained in the Pentateuch. Maybe Jubilees believed in progressive revelation. Or there’s another possibility: Jubilees refers a lot to heavenly tablets, as if a law existed before creation. Perhaps Jubilees sees itself as the perfect expression of that law.

Plunder Quotes

In this post, I’ll be working on my plunder paper, in which I look at the Qumran Temple Scroll’s interaction with the Torah’s laws on the division of plunder. I want to see how Second Temple Judaism in general interacted with those laws, primarily to see if it regarded the Torah as authoritative, or departed from the Torah in some way, shape, or form. I’ve assigned myself the following tasks, some of which I’ll get done today, and some of which I won’t. But I’ll record my results here, and if there are no results, I will record that as well.

I want to look up “spoil(s),” “plunder,” and “booty” in the Encyclopedia Judaica, the Jewish Encyclopedia, the Anchor Bible Dictionary, Josephus, the index of Yonge’s Philo translation, and the NRSV deuterocanonical writings. Here are some other ideas: I can look up what my Jewish Study Bible has to say about the division of plunder laws in the Torah. Once I learn the Greek words for “spoil(s),” “plunder,” and “booty,” I can do a search on my Philo’s Libronix, and look them up in my Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. But that’s enough for now! Allow me to type in those sources below so I can fill in beside them the information that I find, if any.

1. Encyclopedia Judaica: The article on the Wicked Priest said he plundered the poor (1 Qp-Hab. 12:8-10). The article on the Second Book of Maccabees says the corrupt priests’ plunder and bribing the king led to revolt. The article on “Solomon, Psalms of” refers to the plunder of the kingdom of David by sinners, taken to be the Hasmoneans. The article on Menelaus explains how he plundered: he plundered the gold of the Temple. The article “Leviticus, Book of” refers to the distribution of booty in the archives of Mari dating from the time of Hammurapi, in a discussion of “filling the hand.” The article on the “Tithe” talks about tithing in Mesopotamia.

Okay, this was somewhat of a rabbit trail. The reason I wrote down parts about the corrupt priests’ plundering is that the Torah’s laws give a lot of booty to the high priest, and I wanted to see if the priest’s used that to justify their plundering. But the plunder they did isn’t so much from battles, the topic of the Torah laws, but rather from the Temple or fellow Judeans. The Mari distribution of booty looks like a good lead, but, alas, EJ didn’t refer to specific sources. I wonder if I can track them down in Martha Roth’s book on law-codes in the ancient Near East, or do a search on my BibleWorks Hammurapi, just to see if that touches on it. Another issue: how did Saul divide the plunder in I Samuel 15?

This adds more to do, but I’ll look at the following sources before I return to the new tasks that crop up.

2. Jewish Encyclopedia: Article on “Sanhedrin”: “Ch. ii. [of the Mishnah tractate]: Rights of the high priest (§ 1); rights and duties of the king, who may neither judge nor be judged, and may declare war only with the consent of the Great Sanhedrin; his share of the booty; he may not accumulate treasure for himself; he must have a copy of the Torah made for himself; the reverence due him (§§ 2-5).” Article on “Aroer”: “David sent to the elders of this city a share of the booty taken from the Amalekites who had attacked Ziklag (I Sam. xxx. 28).” Article on “Lots”: “Booty of war is divided by lot (Joel iv. 3; Nahum iii. 10; Ob. 11; see also Judges xx. 9; Neh. x. 35, xi. 1; I Chron. xxiv. 5, xxv. 8, xxvi. 13 (see Herzog-Hauck, “Real-Encyc.” 3d ed., xi. 643 et seq.).” Article on “Joshua, Book of”: ch. 22: “Now that they have become rich in cattle, silver, gold, iron, and garments they are to divide the booty with their brethren (1-8).” Article on “Moses”: “Still another story relates that Moses received a large part of the booty captured from Pharaoh and, later, from Sihon and Og (Lev. R. xxviii. 4).” Article on “Ban”: “The practise of devoting to the Deity the spoils of war, persons or things, found among all ancient nations and primitive tribes, is inseparably connected with the idea of a holy warfare which claims all booty for the god who leads to victory and in whose honor the captured foes, as well as goods, are destroyed on the spot (see, concerning the Teutonic and Celtic tribes, Tacitus, ‘Annales,’ i. 61, xiii. 57; Cæsar, ‘De Bello Gallico,’ vi. 17; respecting the Indians, Waitz, ‘Anthropologie,’ iii. 157; and for the Arabs, the passages quoted by Schwally, ‘Kriegsalterthuemer,’ pp. 35-38)…King Mesha of Moab tells in his inscription (lines 16-18) how, after having carried off the vessels of Yhwh from the city of Nebo and dragged them before Kemosh, his god, he devoted…7,000 prisoners to Ashtor-Kemosh, and how he ‘slew the inhabitants of Attarot as a spectacle to his god Kemosh’ (line 12). As a rule, the people, before going to war, devoted, in the form of a vow, the whole booty to the deity in order to secure its victorious aid. So did the Teutons and Gauls, according to Tacitus and Cæsar; and in like manner did Israel vow to ‘ban’ the Canaanites and their cities in case God would deliver them into his hand: ‘and they banned [A. V. 'utterly destroyed'] them and their cities: and he called the name of the place Hormah’ (Num. xxi. 3).” Article on “Gorgias”: “The Syrians, seized with panic, fled into the Philistine territory, and only then did the Jews seize the rich spoils (166 B.C.).” Article on “Wisdom of Solomon, Book of the”: “It delivered Israel from its heathen oppressors, entered into the soul of Moses, enabling him to work all his miracles before Pharaoh, and, in the shape of a protecting pillar of cloud by day and of an illuminating fire by night, guided the people through the wilderness and through the Red Sea, while it drowned the Egyptians and cast them up again from the deep to enrich the Israelites with the spoils that floated upon the water (x. 15-20; comp. Mek., Beshalla, 6; Targ. Yer. to Ex. xiii. 21; xv. 12, 20; Josephus, ‘Ant.’ ii. 16, § 6).” Article on “Gentile”: “The question arose whether a Jew might share in the spoils gained by a Gentile through robbery. One Talmudic authority reasoned that the Gentile exerted himself to obtain the ill-gotten property much less than in earning his wages, to which the Mosaic law is not applicable; hence property seized by a Gentile, if otherwise unclaimed, is public property and may be used by any person. Another authority decided that a Jew might not profit by it (B. M. 111b).”

Not too much help here. I see something about the Bible on the division of plunder. And that article on Sanhredrin looks interesting, since it shows that the Mishnah may apply the law of the king to the high priest. There are leads on the ban in the ancient Near East. But I don’t really see anything about the division of spoil in Second Temple Literature.

3. Anchor Bible Dictionary: I didn’t find any specific articles on booty, plunder, or spoil(s), so I’ll skip this and maybe come back to it later.

Josephus (BibleWorks translation): Ant. 5:48–Joshua divided spoils among all the soldiers. Antiquities of the Jews 6:367: “and from that time this law obtained among them, that those who guarded the baggage, should receive an equal share with those that fought in the battle. Now when David was come to Ziklag, he sent portions of the spoils to all that had been familiar with him, and to his friends in the tribe of Judah. And thus ended the affairs of the plundering of Ziklag, and of the slaughter of the Amalekites.” Antiquities of the Jews 15:402: “and around the entire temple were fixed the spoils taken from barbarous nations; all these had been dedicated to the temple by Herod, with the addition of those he had taken from the Arabians.” Antiquities of the Jews 3:55: “So our forefathers obtained a most signal and most seasonable victory; for they not only overcame those who fought against them, but terrified also the neighbouring nations, and got great and splendid advantages, which they obtained of their enemies by their hard pains in this battle: for when they had taken the enemy’s camp, they got ready booty for the public, and for their own individual families, whereas till then they had not any sort of plenty, of even necessary food.”

Index of Yonge’s Philo Translation: I didn’t find anything here under “spoil(s),” “booty,” and “plunder.” In the Scripture index, I found commentary on Numbers 31:25ff. It didn’t really comment on the division of plunder, but it liked the part that said tribute belongs to the LORD (pp. 266, 390).

NRSV Deuterocanonical Writings: 1 Maccabees 5:28: “Then Judas and his army quickly turned back by the wilderness road to Bozrah; and he took the town, and killed every male by the edge of the sword; then he seized all its spoils and burned it with fire.” 1 Maccabees 6:6: “that Lysias had gone first with a strong force, but had turned and fled before the Jews; that the Jews had grown strong from the arms, supplies, and abundant spoils that they had taken from the armies they had cut down[.]” I Maccabees 11:51: “And they threw down their arms and made peace. So the Jews gained glory in the sight of the king and of all the people in his kingdom, and they returned to Jerusalem with a large amount of spoil.” II Maccabees 8:28: “After the sabbath they gave some of the spoils to those who had been tortured and to the widows and orphans, and distributed the rest among themselves and their children.” II Maccabees 8:30: “In encounters with the forces of Timothy and Bacchides they killed more than twenty thousand of them and got possession of some exceedingly high strongholds, and they divided a very large amount of plunder, giving to those who had been tortured and to the orphans and widows, and also to the aged, shares equal to their own.” II Maccabees 8:31: “They collected the arms of the enemy, and carefully stored all of them in strategic places; the rest of the spoils they carried to Jerusalem.” Judith 15:11: “All the people plundered the camp for thirty days. They gave Judith the tent of Holofernes and all his silver dinnerware, his beds, his bowls, and all his furniture. She took them and loaded her mules and hitched up her carts and piled the things on them.” Sirach 37:6: “Do not forget a friend during the battle, and do not be unmindful of him when you distribute your spoils.” 1 Esdras 4:5: “They kill and are killed, and do not disobey the king’s command; if they win the victory, they bring everything to the king– whatever spoil they take and everything else.”

Jewish Study Bible: No help here.
Philo’s Libronix:
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament:

Some Sources for My Plunder Paper

The following is for my benefit as I write my paper on plunder in the Temple Scroll. My paper concerns how the Temple Scroll (of the Dead Sea Scrolls) and other Second Temple literature interact with the Torah’s laws on plunder.

Temple Scroll.

Brin, Gershon, “Concerning some of the uses of the Bible in the Temple Scroll,” Revue de Qumran 12,4 (1987) 519-528.

Charlesworth, James H., “The date of Jubilees and of the Temple Scroll,” Society of Biblical Literature: Seminar Papers 24 (1985) 193-204.

Baumgarten, Joseph M., “The first and second tithes in the Temple Scroll,” Biblical and Related Studies (1985) 5-15.

Swanson, Dwight D., “How scriptural is re-written Bible?,” Revue de Qumran 21,3 (2004) 407-427.

Stegemann, Hartmut, “The institutions of Israel in the Temple Scroll,” The Dead Sea Scrolls (1992) 156-185.

Frolov, Serge, “‘King’s law’ of the Temple Scroll : mishnaic aspects,” Journal of Jewish Studies 50,2 (1999) 298-307.

Schiffman, Lawrence Harvey, “The law of vows and oaths (Num. 30,3-16) in the Zadokite Fragments and the Temple Scroll,” Revue de Qumran 15,1-2 (1991) 199-214.

Rothstein, David, “The laws of immolation and second-tithe in 11qta : a reassessment,” Dead Sea Discoveries 14,3 (2007) 334-353.

Schiffman, Lawrence Harvey, “The laws of war in the Temple Scroll,” Revue de Qumran 13,1-4 (1988) 299-311.

Schiffman, Lawrence Harvey, “Legal texts and codification in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Discussing Cultural Influences (2007) 1-39.

Sweeney, Marvin Alan, “Midrashic perspective in the ‘Torat ham-Melek’ of the Temple Scroll,” Hebrew Studies 28 (1987) 51-66.

Altshuler, David A., “On the classification of Judaic laws in the ‘Antiquities’ of Josephus and the Temple Scroll of Qumran,” AJS Review 7/8 (1983) 1-14.

Baumgarten, Joseph M., “On the non-literal use of ‘ma’aser’/'dekate’.” Journal of Biblical Literature 103,2 (1984) 245-251.

Finkel, Asher, “The oracular interpretation of the Torah and Prophets as reflected in the Temple Scroll and Pesharim of Qumran,” WCJS 11,A (1994) 179-184.

Hengel, Martin, “The polemical character of ‘on kingship’ in the Temple Scroll, an attempt at dating 11QTemple,”Journal of Jewish Studies 37,1 (1986) 28-38.

Schiffman, Lawrence Harvey, “Priestly and levitical gifts in the ‘Temple Scroll,’”
The Provo International Conference (1999) 480-496.

VanderKam, James C., “Questions of canon viewed through the Dead Sea Scrolls,” The Canon Debate (2002) 91-109.

Lust, Johan, “Quotation formulae and canon in Qumran,” Canonization and Decanonization (1998) 67-77.

Christian, Mark A., “Reading Tobit backwards and forwards : in search of ‘lost Halakhah,’” Henoch 28,1 (2006) 63-95.

Brin, Gershon, “Regarding the connection between the Temple Scroll and the Book of Jubilees,” Journal of Biblical Literature 112,1 (1993) 108-109.

Wacholder, Ben Zion, “The relationship between 11Q Torah (the Temple Scroll) and the Book of Jubilees : one single or two independent compositions,” Society of Biblical Literature: Seminar Papers 24 (1985) 205-216.

Crawford, Sidnie White, “The ‘rewritten’ Bible at Qumran : a look at three texts,” Eretz-Israel 26 (1999) 1-8.

Schiffman, Lawrence Harvey, “The Septuagint and the Temple Scroll : shared ‘halakhic’ variants,” Septuagint, Scrolls and Cognate Writings (1992) 277-297.

Milgrom, Jacob, “Studies in the Temple Scroll,” Journal of Biblical Literature 97,4 (1978) 501-523.

Callaway, Phillip R., “The Temple Scroll and the canonization of Jewish law,” Revue de Qumran 13,1-4 (1988) 239-250.

Schiffman, Lawrence Harvey, “The Temple Scroll and the halakhic Pseudepigrapha of the Second Temple period,” Pseudepigraphic Perspectives (1999) 121-131.

Schiffman, Lawrence Harvey, “The Temple Scroll and the nature of its law : the status of the question,” The Community of the Renewed Covenant (1994) 37-55.

Weinfeld, Moshe, “The Temple Scroll or ‘the law of the king,’” Normative and Sectarian Judaism in the Second Temple Period (2005) 158-185.

Rokeah, David, “The Temple Scroll, Philo, Josephus and the Talmud,” Journal of Theological Studies 34, 2 (1983) 515-526.

Brooke, George J., “The textual tradition of the Temple Scroll and recently published manuscripts of the Pentateuch,” The Dead Sea Scrolls (1992) 261-282.

Schiffman, Lawrence Harvey, “The theology of the Temple Scroll,” Jewish Quarterly Review 85,1-2 (1994) 109-123.

Fraade, Steven D., “The Torah of the king (Deut 17:14-20) in the Temple Scroll and early rabbinic law,” The Dead Sea Scrolls as Background to Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity (2003) 25-60.

Mink, Hans-Aage, “The use of scripture in the Temple Scroll and the status of the scroll as law,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 1 (1987) 20-50.

Gmirkin, Russell, “The War Scroll, the Hasidim, and the Maccabean conflict,” The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years after Their Discovery (2000) 486-496.

The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls pages 296-297.

Plunder.

Troxel, Ronald Lewis, “Economic plunder as a leitmotif in LXX-Isaiah,” Biblica 83,3 (2002) 375-391.

Elgavish, David, “The division of the spoils of war in the Bible and in the ancient Near East,” Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte 8 (2002) 242-273.

Mann, Vivian B., “Jewish ceremonial art and private property,” The Spoils of War (1997) 84-87.

Paper: Plunder

I want to quote something from Jacob Milgrom’s The JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1990). This may come in handy when I write my (tentative) paper on the Temple Scroll’s interpretation of Numbers 31:25ff.

“Divine decree ordains the division of the persons and animals taken as spoil. The soldiers and civilians each get one-half, from which a levy is exacted for the clergy, the soldiers paying one-tenth as much as the civilians. Specifically, one-five-hundredth of the army’s share goes to Eleazar (i.e., the sanctuary) and one-fiftieth of the civilians’ share goes to the Levites. The older tradition in the Bible and the ancient Near East is that the temple (and its personnel) receives a tithe (see Gen. 14:20; 28:22). The Koran prescribes that ‘to God belongs a fifth’ of the spoil (8:42). Here the clergy receives a much smaller proportion, but, considering the huge quantities involved, the amount is substantial.

“David also decrees that the battlefront and home front should divide the spoil equally, and since the text records that ‘from that day on it was made a fixed rule for Israel, continuing to the present day’ (I Sam. 30:25), it has been suggested that David’s rule was retrojected into this account of the war against the Midianites in the wilderness. Yet the Mosaic ruling does not divide the spoils equitably since the clergy receives unequal shares (the Levites ten times as much as the priests). The mathematics is as follows:

“SOLDIERS
(X/2)-(1/500)(X/2)=(499X/1000)

“CIVILIANS
(X/2)-(1/50)(X/2)=(490X/1000)

“Thus for every thousand persons or animals taken captive the soldiers receive nine more than the civilians. The difference, though paltry, is enough for the Temple Scroll of the Dead Sea sectaries to ordain that the clergy should receive its share first, that is, one-thousandth for the sanctuary and one-hundredth for the Levite to be taken from the total spoil; the remainder is then to be divided equally between the soliders and the civilians. In that way, the prescriptions of Moses and David harmonize perfectly” (262).

Milgrom’s argument assumes that the Temple Scroll treats Numbers 31 and I Samuel 30 as authoritative traditums (or traditi) that should be harmonized.

My Agenda for a While: Three Papers

I have three papers to write for this month (and maybe the next). I’m going to brainstorm some on this blog.

Writing papers can be hard. I don’t always know where to start. This blog can be a place where I can get my thoughts out, refine my ideas, do some of the hard work of documentation (which will save me time when I actually sit down to write the papers), and maybe get some feedback.

Warning: a lot of what I write will be rough. I may retread some of the same ground over and over. I will not always be crisp in my questions and proposed solutions. But I’ll identify my “paper” posts with the word “paper.” Then, if people don’t want to read them, they can go on to my more interesting posts.

So what are my topics? They are three:

1. I’m writing a book review of Michael Fishbane’s Biblical Interpretation of Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988).

2. I’m doing a project that relates to the interpretation of the Bible. I’m planning to talk more with my professor about this sometime soon. What I’m doing is looking at how the Temple Scroll (in the Dead Sea Scrolls) interacts with a particular Scripture. I’m also going to trace how other Second Temple sources interact with that same passage. Part of my question is this: Can we determine how Second Temple scribes viewed the passage by looking at how they treated it?

You see, Fishbane has a traditum-traditio sort of model in his description of inner-biblical exegesis. The traditum is the authoritative tradition, which the scribe considers to be sacred Scripture. The traditio is the scribe’s method of interpreting that Scripture. Like the rabbis, the biblical scribes and authors tried to understand, clarify, and update biblical traditions. They do this when they add notes to the text itself, or refer to the text and add clarification, or rewrite a text according to their own ideology (as I-II Chronicles supposedly does with I-II Samuel and I-II Kings). Eventually, the traditio itself becomes a traditum–the sacred text that is subject to interpretation. (Fishbane 7-8, 10-11, 262)

I guess my question is this: Does the Temple Scroll view the passages with which it interacts as an authoritative traditum? On some level, this is a no-brainer, since the Temple Scroll is obviously appealing to the laws of the Pentateuch. Why would it do so if it did not deem them to be authoritative (Fishbane 7)? At the same time, it does not always adhere rigidly to those laws. It sometimes alters them or adds new laws altogether!

My professor recommended that I look at one passage or theme. Right now, there are two that come to mind: plunder and conquest.

a. Plunder. In Temple Scroll 58, we read the following:

“If they triumph over their enemies, smash them, put them to the sword and carry away their booty, they shall give the king his tithe of his, the priests one thousandth and the Levites one hundredth from everything. They shall halve the rest between the combatants and their brothers whom they have left in their cities.” The translation is from Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Penguin, 1997). I’ll get into the Hebrew later on in my research.

What makes this topic fruitful is that I know it appears in Second Temple literature: II Maccabees talks about the division of spoils. II Maccabees 8:28 says, “After the sabbath they gave some of the spoils to those who had been tortured and to the widows and orphans, and distributed the rest among themselves and their children” (NRSV).

As far as the Hebrew Bible is concerned, the division of spoils is discussed in at least two places: Numbers 31:25-30 and I Samuel 30:20-25.

Numbers 31:25-30 has:

“The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘You and Eleazar the priest and the heads of the ancestral houses of the congregation make an inventory of the booty captured, both human and animal. Divide the booty into two parts, between the warriors who went out to battle and all the congregation. From the share of the warriors who went out to battle, set aside as tribute for the LORD, one item out of every five hundred, whether persons, oxen, donkeys, sheep, or goats. Take it from their half and give it to Eleazar the priest as an offering to the LORD. But from the Israelites’ half you shall take one out of every fifty, whether persons, oxen, donkeys, sheep, or goats– all the animals– and give them to the Levites who have charge of the tabernacle of the LORD.’”

And I Samuel 30:20-25 states:

David also captured all the flocks and herds, which were driven ahead of the other cattle; people said, ‘This is David’s spoil.’ Then David came to the two hundred men who had been too exhausted to follow David, and who had been left at the Wadi Besor. They went out to meet David and to meet the people who were with him. When David drew near to the people he saluted them. Then all the corrupt and worthless fellows among the men who had gone with David said, ‘Because they did not go with us, we will not give them any of the spoil that we have recovered, except that each man may take his wife and children, and leave.’ But David said, ‘You shall not do so, my brothers, with what the LORD has given us; he has preserved us and handed over to us the raiding party that attacked us. Who would listen to you in this matter? For the share of the one who goes down into the battle shall be the same as the share of the one who stays by the baggage; they shall share alike.’”

So let’s summarize, going from the earliest text to the latest:

Numbers 21:25-30: The spoil is divided, with half going to the warriors, and half going to everyone else. Of the warriors’ spoil, 1/500 goes to the high priest, and 1/50 goes to the Levites.

I Samuel 30:20-25: I guess everyone gets the same amount of spoil.

II Maccabees 8:28: The soldiers distributed the spoils among themselves and their children, while giving some to the widows, the orphans, and the tortured.

Temple Scroll 58: The king gets a tenth of all the spoil, the priests 1/1000, and the Levites 1/100. Then, the rest of the spoil is divided between the warriors and the congregation.

You know, come to think of it, Temple Scroll 58 may think that it’s actually being faithful to Numbers 21:25-30. In Numbers 21:25-30, the high priest gets 1/500 of 1/2 of the spoil, and the Levites get 1/50 of 1/2 of the spoil. 1/500 times 1/2 is 1/1000, and 1/50 times 1/2 is 1/100, which are the numbers that appear in Temple Scroll 58. I haven’t yet looked at the similarity (or dissimilarity) in language and vocabulary between the two passages, but I’ll do so at another time.

Here’s another factor: Temple Scroll 60 says the following:

“To the Levites shall belong the tithe of the corn, the wine, and the oil that they have sanctified to me first; the shoulder from those who slaughter a sacrifice and a proportion of the booty, the plunder and the catch of birds, wild animals and fish, one hundredth; the tithe from the young pigeons and from the honey one fiftieth. To the priests shall belong one hundredth of the young pigeons, for I have chosen them from all your tribes to attend to me and minister (before me) and bless my name, he and his son always.”

There are echoes here of Deuteronomy 18:1-5, but I can’t think of anywhere in the Pentateuch that specifies that the Levites will receive 1/100 of one type of plunder, and 1/50 from another. I’m not sure if it arrives at these numbers through exegetical math, or what exactly.

b. Conquest. I won’t spill my guts here as I did on the plunder. Basically, the Bible tells the Israelites to slaughter all of the Canaanites. But I read in a commentary on Wisdom of Solomon that God actually wanted to have mercy on the people of Canaan. And I wonder if, in I Maccabees, it is people of Canaan who surrender to the Maccabees and get spared. In rabbinic literature, the Canaanites are offered a chance to repent, and they’re only destroyed if they do not do so. I know that the Temple Scroll touches on this topic, but I’m not sure at the moment what it says. I’ll look into that today.

3. I’ll cut to the chase here too, and offer more details in a coming post. In II and IV Maccabees, Antiochus is God’s punishment on Israel for what it is already doing: Hellenizing. Hellenization involved a change in Israel’s ancestral constitution, or politeia, as Jerusalem was converted into a Greek polis. Why did the Maccabees, or the authors of II and IV Maccabees, or other defenders of the Maccabees deem that to be wrong? As Victor Tcherikover points out through an analysis of the sources, it’s not as if Hellenization meant Israel had to worship idols. So what was the problem?

I know that this third topic needs to be crisper, but that’s why I’m writing all this. Consider it a rough draft.

More to come!