the resurrection of the divine assembly

Jonathan Ben-Dov The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly and the Divine Title El in the Dead Sea Scrolls The late Luigi Enrico Rossi has taught us the importance of submerged litera-ture.1 His method is an efficient way to bypass the tyranny of Canon and of the mechanisms that made this canon persist through the ages. By tracing the threads of the mainstream tradition, one is able to detect fine threads of earlier traditions, which had once existed in a full-fledged literary and social environ-ment before being stripped of their context and absorbed into a different milieu. In this work of literary archaeology, a professional excavator can achieve much by tracing early relics and reconstructing the mythology, theology, or narratives that had once been woven around them.2 This idea is as relevant to ancient Near Eastern literature or the Hebrew Bible as to classical literature.

In the present paper I wish to depict the long and elaborate life of the myth-ological tradition about the divine assembly and its master.3 The basic scene is that of the master sitting among the multitude of gods, most of them his proge-ny. There are many possible plots to attach to this basic scene: the gods may convene for judgment, for feasting, or for declaring war, but the core is always the assembly. Naturally, such a mythological picture will raise objections among those who conceive of their god as a single god, as we shall see below. This tradition, well rooted in West Semitic texts, serves to explain various facets of politico-theological reality. In the biblical tradition, the members of the di-vine assembly were conceived quite early on as representing the various nations of the world, and hence as mirroring political relations on earth. Lay readers of the Hebrew Bible will be deterred by such an explicitly mythological tradition and indeed, as we shall see, an objection took shape already within the Hebrew Bible itself.

|| 1 Colesanti and Giordano 2014. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the group working on Submerged Greek Literature, and especially to Manuela Giordano, for inviting me to pre-sent this paper in Rome. The sense of cooperation and interdisciplinary thought achieved in that session is much appreciated. 2 For the metaphor of threads, see Reeves 1994. For the metaphor of literary archaeology see Zakovitch 1999, 429439 and especially Shinan and Zakovitch 2012. 3 For the basic formulation of this entity see Mullen 1980; Niehr 1990, 7194.

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10 | Jonathan Ben-Dov

The centrality of this scene in the biblical tradition, however, is hard to de-ny, even as it has been refined or suppressed in it. While the Hebrew Bible al-ternates between accepting and rejecting the divine assembly, the scene ulti-mately found much popularity in post-biblical Jewish literature. The suppression of this tradition in the Hebrew Bible is already a commonplace of current scholarship, but its post-biblical revival is often overlooked. I will there-fore dwell briefly on the biblical life of this tradition, and then expand on its later life in post-biblical Judaism.

The present article is really about the participation of Hebrew literature in the culture of the ancient Near East. The prophet Ezekiel is the right person to assess the measure of indebtedness of Judah and the Judaeans to these neigh-boring cultures. Born and raised in Jerusalem, this junior priest was exiled to Babylon in 586 BCE and began his prophetic career in the glorious shadow of imperial Babylon. Ezekiel, sometimes called an encyclopaedist by modern scholars, was keen to absorb the rich Babylonian culture surrounding him while at the same time lending an eager ear to the vibrant cultural amalgam of other exiled communities Phoenicians, Edomites, Egyptians, Elamites, Aramaeans, and many others who were living in contemporary Babylonia.4 Ezekiel (chap-ter 16) casts his version of the biography of Judah and the Judaeans in the form of a story about a female foundling collected by a senior patron, YHWH. In that account, the prophet chose to underscore Judahs connection with the Levan-tine cultures surrounding it (16:3):

Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite5

Although Ezekiel knew the Babylonian culture quite well, he characterized the Judaeans as descendants of the Levant. Relying on Ezekiels testimony we may learn, first, that the Judaean culture was part and parcel of the Levant of the First Millennium BCE, and should be considered as an active agent in that mi-lieu rather than as a secluded cultural island. Second, while mainstream bibli-cal studies would seek parallels for Judaean literature in Mesopotamia as

|| 4 For the linguistic and cultural amalgam of Babylonia in the early 6th century BCE see Beau-lieu 2006. On Ezekiels absorption of Babylonian lore see most recently Vanderhooft 2014; Ganzel and Holtz 2014 (with earlier bibliography cited there). 5 Translations of biblical texts follow the NJPS version with slight modifications: Tanakh: the New Jewish Publication Society Bible.



The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly and the Divine Title El | 11

best preserved in cuneiform tablets we should take Ezekiels word and seek these shared regional patterns rather in the Levant.6

Religions in the Levant, as far back as we can trace their origins, conceived of a pantheon of gods headed by a revered, aged god, who sits surrounded by a company of minor gods. While there is little agreement about the constitution of the pantheon, the image of the divine council is widely accepted. In the words of Herbert Niehr:7

Fr die syrisch-kanaanische Religion ist grundstzlich horvorzuheben, da es ein ge-meinsames semitisches Pantheon nicht gibt. Vom Pantheon zu unterscheiden ist der himmlische Thronrat. Das motiv der himmlischen Thronrats kann als eines der spezifischen Elemente des Kultes der syrisch-kanaanischen Stadtstaaten betrachtet werden.

In Ugaritic sources of the 2nd millennium BCE, the head of the pantheon is called by the personal name Ilu. His other name, or perhaps, rather, a frequent epi-thet, is lyn, (Hebrew elyon, the elevated one usually translated into Greek as ). The mythical past knew glorious struggles among Ilus progeny for primacy in the pantheon, but regardless of the identity of the winner the assem-bly still retains its name and character as the circle of Ilu, leaving the old god as the professed head of the family.

Thus, while Ugaritic myths depict a competition for the position of the One, the standard epithets commemorate the Many and their leader. 8 Ilu is called ab bn il, father of gods (lit. father of the sons of Ilu);9 and both warrior gods ym sea and mt death, the opponents of Baal, retain the epithet mdd il the beloved of Ilu.

Epithets which include Ilus name often refer to the totality of the gods, thus dr bn il, the circle of the gods. Other titles referring to the assembly are: ilm, gods, bn ilm, sons of gods (i.e. junior gods with respect to the senior head of the assembly), dr il, the circle of Ilu, dt / pr ilm, the congregation/ assembly of gods, pr kbkbm, the assembly of stars (equating stars with

|| 6 For the Levantine environment rather than an Assyrian imperial one of the Book of Deuteronomy see Cogan 1974, and more recently Crouch 2014. For a reconfiguration of earlier Syro-Canaanite traditions and their relations with biblical myths see Ayali-Darshan 2012; Ayali-Darshan 2014. 7 Niehr 1990, 7194. Further literature on this motif is vast and I will only name some notable studies: LHeureux 1979; Mullen 1980, 111284; Smith 2002, 3243; Parker 1999, 204208. 8 For divine epithets in Ugaritic literature see recently Rahmouni 2007. 9 Idem, 1213.




gods).10 In several places one encounters the parallelism gods / sons of qd (lm / bn qd), the latter word meaning holy in Semitic languages, being most probably an epithet for Ilu.11

This picture is by no means characteristic of the 2nd millennium only. It is prevalent also in Phoenician and Aramaean sources throughout the 1st millen-nium BCE and through the domination of the Achaemenid empire.12 In Phoeni-cian, members of the assembly are often referred to as qd, holy one or more freely god, or in the plural qdm. Thus we encounter: lnm qdm, holy gods (KAI5 14:9); dr kl qdm, circle of all holy ones (KAI5 27:12); and mprt il gbl qdm, assembly of the gods of Byblos, the holy ones (KAI5 4:45); dr kl qdn, the circle of all the gods (KAI5 27:12).13 Similarly, a god is often designated qd (later with the vowel indicated qdy) also in Aramaic, with this title usually appearing in the plural: qdn. Thus for example in the Proverbs of Ahikar, prob-ably from the Achaemenid period, (parag. 95): bl qdn, Lord of the holy ones. Generally in Aramaic, however, the god El (corresponding to 2nd millennium Ilu) functions as the head of the divine council.14

The god Ilu, together with the family descended from the primordial god () appears as late as the account of Philo of Byblos in the 1st century BCE, where his name is transcribed as , equated with Kronos.15 The picture in West Semitic is thus rather stable.

Hebrew sources of roughly the first half of the 1st millennium BCE share the same picture of the Levantine pantheon while maintaining their own religious uniqueness. We thus find in the Hebrew Bible similar titles for the divine as-sembly to those found in Ugaritic or Phoenician: , sons of gods, sons of god (Ps 29:1, Job 38:7);16 , Holy Ones, communi-ty of Holy ones (Ps 89:68); Congregation of El (Ps 82:1); assembly of morning stars17 (Job 38:7, cf Ugaritic pr kbkbm).

|| 10 For an elucidation of these designations see Mullen 1980. 11 See Van Koppen and Van der Toorn 1999, 417; previously Xella 1982. 12 Niehr 1990, 7194; see Xella 2014, 525535. 13 For an analysis of the term qd in Phoenician see the dictionary entry in Hoftijzer and Jongeling 1995, 996 as well as Van Koppen and Van der Toorn 1999, 417. 14 See Kottsieper 1997, 4042. The title bn lm appears also in Ammonite, in the Amman cita-del inscription (KAI5 307:6). 15 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 1. 10. 116 (Baumgarten 1981, 180192). On Philos treat-ment of his sources see for example Baumgarten 1981, 6393; Ribichini 1986, 4152. 16 For the reading in Deut 32:8, 43 see below. Greenstein 2013, 7071 claims that Job 38:7 is an allusion to the earlier version of Deut 32:43, as preserved in Qumran. 17 For this meaning of yd as a noun see Talmon 1953.




Most notable for the present purposes are the following sources which de-pict the divine assembly in its capacity as a choir singing the praise of its chief. The first, Ps 89: 68, comprises a relic from an ancient hymn which was merged into a classical Hebrew poem:18

Your wonders, O YHWH, are praised by the heavenly beings ( ), Your faithfulness, too, in the assembly of holy beings ( ). For who in the skies can equal YHWH, can compare with YHWH among the divine beings ( ), a God greatly dreaded in the council of holy beings ( ), held in awe by all around Him?

The second, post-classical Hebrew source is in the book of Job 38:7. The book was written during the Achaemenid period and reflects a religious identity which is not particularly Judaean, but is rather attuned to the Aramaic-Edomite background of Job and his friends:19

When the assembly of morning stars sang, and all the divine beings shouted for joy.

According to the parallelism in this poetic line, the assembly of stars (corre-sponding to Ugaritic and Phoenician dr or pr) corresponds to all the sons of gods ( ) as they praise their master.

Another non-Judaean speaker with a similar background to that of Job is Agur bin Yakeh, possibly of Edomite origin, who reports (Prov 30:23):

I am brutish, less than a man; I lack common sense. I have not learned wisdom, Nor do I possess knowledge of the Holy Ones.

The speaker contrasts his ignorance with the wisdom of the Holy Ones (). The latter beings bear outstanding wisdom, due to their proximity to God.

Many biblical authors, especially those of the Psalms, view YHWH, the god of Israel, as a master of the assembly of minor gods. An example is Psalm 82, where his ascent to power is recounted.20 In addition, several formulaic hymnic

|| 18 For ancient hymns embedded in biblical communal laments as in Psalms 74 and 89 see Avishur 1994, 234206. 19 For the date of Job and the Aramaic-Edomite affinity see in general Greenstein 2003, 651666. 20 Goldstein 2010; Parker 1995.




statements summon the divine beings to praise their lord. However, while the classical summons formula is quite clear, as in Ps 29:1 and 47:7, biblical litera-ture sometimes reveals a certain amount of objection to it, submerging it under more refined monotheistic reasoning. Compare Ps 29:12 with Ps 96:78.21

29:12 96:78Ascribe to YHWH, O divine beings,ascribe to YHWH glory and strength. Ascribe to YHWH the glory of His name; bow down to YHWH, majestic in holiness.

Ascribe to YHWH, O families of the nations, ascribe to YHWH glory and strength. Ascribe to YHWH the glory of His name, bring tribute and enter His courts.

Both psalms share essentially the same hymnic formula, but the divine beings in the original formula (Psalm 29) are replaced by the families of nations in Psalm 96 as the object of the call for praise. The replacement is based on the notion that while each of the gods has responsibility for one of the nations, YHWH alone is responsible for Israel. Calling upon the nations to praise, rather than upon the Sons of gods, is intended to avoid the mythological scene of the divine family. The verse thus maintains its universalistic connotation but with a less offensive tone. Indeed, the prophet known as Second Isaiah (40:1315) expresses dissatisfaction with the association of YHWH with the divine council and with the gods of foreign nations, underscoring him alone as the potent agent.22

The animosity towards traditions of the divine assembly continues in a well-known passage of Deuteronomy, this time not in the formation stage of biblical literature but rather in its transmission. A clear-headed reading of the song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 reveals how much it depends on the scene of the di-vine assembly. After a short proem, the poem records the way YHWH won the people of Israel as his share, at the stage when he had been a junior part of the divine assembly and when the nations of the world were divided among the members of the assembly (32:89). The division is carried out by lywn, a con-spicuous epithet of the chief of the assembly, who assigns to each minor god a share in the world.23 Once YHWH gains hold of his inheritance, a long drama of loyalty and betrayal unfolds, through which the Lord expresses love to his peo-ple, is then enraged by them, and ultimately is reconciled with them, slaughters

|| 21 See Ginsberg 1969; Rof 2012, 86. 22 For the objection of Second Isaiah to the divine council see Weinfeld 2004. 23 For the basic mythological significance of this scene see Loewenstamm 1986, and more recently Goldstein 2010; Smith 2008, 139143.




their enemies, and returns victorious. The poem then ends (32:43) with a call to the members of the divine assembly to sing the praise of YHWH. The poem thus begins and ends (32:8, 43) with explicit mythological scenes. The original text of these two scenes is reflected (with minor variations) in the Septuagint of Deu-teronomy, as well as in ancient Hebrew scrolls from Qumran (4QDeutero-nomyj.q). In contrast, the Masoretic text (= MT), later to become the textus recep-tus among Jews, reflects a corrected reading of these two verses. This is not the place to recount the intricacies of the various versions, which have been exten-sively discussed in scholarship.24 Suffice it to note that in the MT of verse 8 the name of the assembly was transformed: from the polytheistic designation the Sons of god(s) to the less blatant phrase sons of Israel. This latter reading obfuscates the original connotation of the verse and renders the poetic line less effective. Similarly, in verse 43 the call for praise has been extensively modified too. The original reading, preserved in the Qumran scroll 4QDeuteronomyq and to some extent also in the Septuagint, reads:

Praise, O heavens (), with him, worship him, all you gods ()! In contrast, the Masoretic text gives the shortened and thus enigmatic reading: Praise, O nations, (for?) His people. The transformation is readily understood if we take into account that the word Heavens () stands here for the heav-enly beings, as noted by Rof,25 and hence it was necessary to replace it with a more moderate term. While the corrected reading retains the universal tone of the original, its poetic sting has been withheld.

Deuteronomy 32:8 continued to live in the Israelite literary reservoir and gained much popularity through the ages. Interestingly, the version which is often quoted and interpreted is the original version, not the corrected one of the MT. In these later quotations, however, a considerable change occurred in the understanding of the myth. While the original statement in Deut 32:8 viewed the divine name elyon, the High one as superior to YHWH and hence as assigning the portions to all heavenly beings including YHWH, this kind of reading could not have been acceptable among later biblical writers. Among these writers, the epithet the High one was understood as referring to YHWH, he himself being superior over the other heavenly beings. It is thus a monotheistic transfor-mation of the original myth. This transformation is attested in the paraphrases

|| 24 For a detailed analysis see Loewenstamm 1986; Goldstein 2010; Rof 2012, 6273; Joosten 2007, 548555. 25 Cf Jeremiah 14:22; Rof 2002, 50.




of 32:8 in Deuteronomy 4:19 and 29:25, as well as in later, post-biblical para-phrases.26

My study has thus far shown how there was an ambiguous attitude towards the scene of the divine assembly in the literature of the Hebrew Bible: it was not utterly rejected, but rather corrected, interpreted, or accommodated in various ways. As we shall presently see, this scene experienced a surprising renaissance in the post-classical period of Israel and in other Jewish literature written in the Hellenistic period.

It has long been acknowledged that the biblical Book of Daniel contains a West Semitic throne scene of the divine assembly. The first half of this apoca-lyptic book, written in Aramaic, dates somewhere between the 4th and 2nd centu-ries BCE, i.e. between the Achaemenid and Seleucid rule over Judah, and most probably contains layers from both of these periods.27 The book recounts a series of magnificent symbolic dreams, by the Babylonian and Persian kings as well as by Daniel himself.

As part of Daniels dream in chapter 7 we read how the master of the assem-bly descends from heaven to resume his throne in a judgment scene among the host of heaven (Daniel 7: 910, NRSV)

As I watched, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his throne; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence. A thousand thousand served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.

The scene clearly develops the contrast between the mighty seated lord and the infinite standing multitude of his servants. It has been noted long ago that the epithet used here for the chief of the assembly: , the Ancient of Days is a reflection of an accepted Canaanite epithet for Ilu, the lord of the assembly, common already in the 2nd millennium BCE and into the 1st millennium.28 It is often identified with the Ugaritic epithet ab nm, Father of Years.29 In addi-

|| 26 See Smith 2008, 202212. 27 For the date and authorship of Daniel see Collins 1993, 2438. Chapter 7, standing in be-tween the narratives and the visions, might be later than chpters 16. 28 See Emerton 1958 with earlier bibliography; Collins 1993, 286291; Becking 1999. 29 For this epithet see Rahmouni 2007, 1821.




tion, the identity of one like the Son of Man in Daniel 7:13 brings to mind other Canaanite divine imagery.30 While the main sources of Canaanite religion attest-ing to these epithets date back to the 2nd millennium BCE, there is no reason to assume that Daniel 7 refers back to those archaic religious manifestations, which would have become entirely obsolete by the 2nd century BCE. Rather, such an epithet was part of the Levantine culture of the late 1st millennium, and the author of Daniel participated in that regional aggregate.31 Thus, after a period in which the divine assembly had been controlled and moderated, this material reentered biblical literature in the framework of apocalyptic visions, demon-strating the liveliness of Levantine mythology in Second Temple Judaism.32

The main part of this article will now focus on apocalyptic Jewish groups of the Hellenistic and early Roman period, and especially on the community whose writings were discovered at Qumran, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. There are many reasons to tie this community specifically to the religious-cultural milieu of the Levant, particularly Syria, first and foremost the fact that the community itself makes that connection explicitly. Thus, in the text known today as the Damascus Document, the community is called The New Cove-nanters in the Land of Damascus, recounting the establishment of a renewed covenant and a new community in the land of Damascus (CD VI 45, cf 4QDa 3 ii): The Well is the Law, and its diggers are the captives of Israel who went out of the land of Judah and dwelt in the land of Damascus.33

While some scholars take the reference to Damascus as a metaphor for an exile in the spirit, I see no reason to doubt the reliability of the geographical report.34 One must then ask how this Syrian affiliation was manifested in the writings of the group. In my earlier work I have explored the ways in which the Aramaic-speaking Syrian milieu mediated the transfer of Mesopotamian lore both scientific and mythological to Judaea and to Jewish scholars at the time.35

|| 30 Collins 1993, 304310 with extensive bibliography. 31 Collins 1993, 291294. Another hint of the cultural background of Daniel 7 is the depiction of YHWHs throne in 7:9, which is often compared to the scene on a coin from Yehud, showing a deity sitting on a wheeled throne. See Shenkar 20072008. 32 For the Chaoskampf motif in Second Temple literature, see Yarbro Collins 1976; Angel 2006. 33 For text and translation of this scroll see Charlesworth and Baumgarten et al. 1993. 34 For the metaphorical interpretation see Dimant 2014, 455464. For the literal interpretation see Campbell 1995. 35 Ben-Dov 2008; for a wider discussion of this cultural contact beyond the scientific material see Sanders, forthcoming.




The library of Qumran, altogether about 900 different scrolls, is rather het-erogeneous.36 Among the various classes in this collection, I will deal with and try to interconnect the biblical scrolls, the Aramaic scrolls which bear close affinities with ancient Near Eastern material, and some of the core sectarian scrolls regulating the communitys structure and practice. Let us begin with the Qumranic attestations of Deuteronomy 32 noted above.

As noted above, the MT preserves a corrected version of verses 8 and 43, which replaces the divine assembly scene with less mythological-sounding expressions of the distribution of nations in the world among the divine assem-bly. Now, one may well understand why a transmitter of the Masoretic text cor-rected the offending polytheistic lines; conversely one may also understand how the scribe who transmitted the Hebrew Vorlage of the Septuagint was wary of changing the ancient text despite its awkwardness.37 More should be said, however, about the transmission of this passage in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The poem of Deuteronomy 32 seems to have been a central one for the community, since no less than six different scrolls contain parts of the chapter.38 Moreover, some of them were not copies of the book of Deuteronomy, but rather contained only selected excerpts, probably for liturgical purposes, with chapter 32 includ-ed. In fact both 4QDeutj and 4QDeutq contain only excerpts from Deuteronomy, with the former presenting Deut 32:19 alongside selections from chapters 56, 8, 11, 21, as well as Exodus 1213,39 while 4QDeutq was probably a single sheet containing only chapter 32.40

The older, original reading of the problematic verses is attested in two scrolls (4QDeuteronomyj,q), both of them containing excerpts of Deuteronomy. The corrected reading of MT is not preserved in any Qumran scroll known to

|| 36 For a general survey of the Qumran finds and the Dead Sea Scrolls see VanderKam and Flint 2005. 37 In fact, the translation of this Hebrew Vorlage into Greek attests unease with the title sons of god. Most text witnesses of the Septuagint do not preserve this title in a straightforward way, but rather give a duplicate translation: , placing the more orthodox term next to the problematic sons of god. See Smith 2008, 201202. Only two miniscule manuscripts of the Septuagint preserve the reading sons of God as in 4QDeuteronomy j. 38 Copies c, r, j, q, b, and k1 of the 4QDeuteronomy scrolls. 39 Most of these scrolls probably served as parchment slips inserted into phylacteries. See White Crawford 2005, 127140, esp. 128130. Deuteronomy 32 is preserved on the Phylacteries scroll 4QPhylN. 40 Likewise, 4QDeuteronomyk1 contains excerpts from Deut 5, 11, and 32. See Doering 2005, 2627; Tov 1995.




us. This may be a matter of chance, since additional copies of Deuteronomy 32 may have perished in the course of two thousand years of lying in the caves. However, further evidence prompts the thought that there was some value im-puted to the polytheistic reading of Deut 32 with reference to the divine assem-bly. Thus, an allusion to 32:8 appears in a poetic sectarian text, which reflects quite clearly the older reading of that verse.41

[ ] [

][ ] [ ]

You are more honoured than the sons of El[ you fixed] the boundaries of the nations to strengthen them [ ] in order that iniquity will [not?] abound in His inheritance [ ] You have [not?] abandoned them in the hands of those who see[k their lives]

The poem addresses God in the second person, praising his dignity beyond that of other sons of El and the way He has established the lands of nations, with a clear reference to 32:8b. The word inheritance corresponds to 32:9: Israel is the Lords inheritance, and he acts to maintain it properly by not letting evil and guilt dwell in it and preventing the other divine beings from interfering with his private inheritance.42 With the caution due to the fragmentary context of this statement, one may note that these literary lines allude to Deuteronomy 32:8 in the older, Qumranic version. This is made clear by the term , sons of El, which corresponds to the reading in 4QDeutj and disagrees with Sons of Israel of the MT.

I suggest that the polytheistic reading of Deut 32 raised interest in the community of the Yahad because the scene of the divine assembly was entirely

|| 41 1QHa XXIV 3337, following Qimron 2010, 99. For the relation of this passage to Deut 32 see Kister 2012, 7677. Smith 2008, 209 mentions two other allusions to Deut 32:8 in Qumran litera-ture (1QM X 9 and 4Q418 fr. 81+81a line 3; Smith did not note the Hodayot passage mentioned here). In his examples, however, the allusion to Deut 32:8 is not as clear as in the Hodayot. 42 The term you have not abandoned them recalls other formulations in the DSS when the Israelites are given away or are saved from being given away into the hands of evil angels representing the nations. The angels of the nations are often contained under the authority of the evil lord Belial. The relationship between the angels of the nations and the (positive) lord of the assembly is best reflected in the Animal Apocalypse, where the angels are represented as seventy shepherds (1Enoch 89:5977). For a wide discussion of this motif and several new occurrences of it see Dimant 2006, 373388.




active, sacred, and revered in that community. In such a community, the old message of Deuteronomy 32 was not conceived as offending, but rather as al-ways relevant. My opinion about the use of Deuteronomy 32 at Qumran thus differs from that of Smith.43 Smith takes it as an axiom that all allusions to Deu-teronomy 32:8 both biblical and post-biblical are strictly monotheistic. Even the author of Deut 32, according to Smith, did not really mean what he wrote but rather understood El Elyon as a title of Yahweh. Despite drawing on the old polytheistic type-element, the author intended no polytheism and perhaps knew none in this case.44 In my opinion, however, readers of this verse in the Yahad community were especially fond of it precisely because it embodied the notion of multiple divine beings, which was especially suitable for their demon-ology and for their theology in general. Let us adduce some examples to that end.

The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness depicts the ultimate cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil at the end of days.45 Column XII of the largest copy (1QM) recounts the collaboration of hu-man beings with angels throughout the battle (1QM XII 15):46

For [th]ere is a multitude of holy ones in the heavens, and the hosts of angels (are) in your holy habitation to pr[aise] your [truth]. The elect ones of the holy people, you have set for yourself [ ]. The names of all their hosts (are) with you in your holy dwelling;[ ] In your glorious habitation. . and to muster [] according to their thousands and their myriads, together with your holy ones [ ] your angels, so that they have a mighty hand in the battle [] the rebels of the earth in the strife of your judgments, and the people of the elect ones of the heavens shall be victo[rious..]

Lines 45 depict a recurring scene in Qumran literature: the chosen ones among mankind stand shoulder to shoulder with the heavenly beings. They will fight together with the angels and ultimately win with them. The heavenly beings are called here not only , the usual word for angel, but also , holy ones the normal word in other West Semitic languages for denoting a heavenly be-ing, the same as the holy ones of Byblos encountered above.

Coexistence with heavenly beings is practised in another fundamental role of the community. A passage from the poetic-liturgical Hodayot recounts the foundation of the sectarian identity: membership in the sect elevates the indi-

|| 43 Smith 2008, 208242. 44 Quotation from p. 203. 45 For the War Scroll see Duhaime 2004. 46 English translation follows J. Duhaime, in Charlesworth and Baumgarten et al. 1993.




vidual from poverty and selflessness to the position where they can participate with the angels in their duty of praising God (1QHa XI 1923).47

I give thanks to You, O Lord, for You have redeemed my soul from the pit. From Sheol and Abaddon You have raised me up to an eternal height, so that I might walk about on a lim-itless plain, and know that there is hope for him whom You created from the dust for the eternal council. The perverse spirit You have cleansed from great transgression, that he might take his stand with the host of the holy ones, and enter together (or in the Yahad) with the congregation of the sons of heaven. And for man, You have allotted an eternal destiny with the spirits of knowledge, to praise Your name together with a community (Yahad) of praise, and to recount Your wonders before all Your creatures.

Of special importance is the phrase , entering togeth-er / in communion / in Yahad with the congregation of the sons of heaven. The word yahad appears here not only as an adverb connoting communion, but serves also as the most common self-designation of the community, denoting the coexistence of the community with the heavenly beings. The poetic sentence from the Hodayot alludes directly to the biblical verse from Job 38:7 quoted above, which has, it seems, affected quite significantly the religious world-view of the Yahad.

Of all the texts at Qumran, the scene of the assembly is most prominent in the collection known as Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, attested in over ten cop-ies from Qumran and Masada.48 Here, the people of the Yahad community recite weekly prayers in which they (re-)enact a human performance of the liturgy of the heavenly temple. The priests of that temple are the heavenly beings, so that the human recitation of these prayers creates a mystical-mythical setting for human communion with the divine.49 I quote here a typical example (Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice 1 I 16):50

[For the instructor. Song of the whole-offering of the] first [Sabba]th on the fourth of the first month. Praise [the God of ]h, O god-like ones of all the holiest of the holy ones ( ); and in His divinity [ ]among the eternally holy, the holiest of the holy ones ( ), and they have become for Him priests of [ ], ministers of the Presence in His glorious shrine. In the assembly of all the gods of [ ]god-like ones

|| 47 Translation follows Stegemann and Schuller 2009 (DJD 40). Italics added. On the commun-ion with the angels in prayer among the Yahad community see Chazon 2000. 48 See Newsom 1998. 49 For the sort of encounter practised in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice see Schfer 2006, 3766. 50 Translation follows Newsom 1998.




(). He inscribed His statutes concerning all spiritual matters and precepts of [ ] knowledge, people of discernment, honoured by God.

The heavenly beings which constantly praise the Lord are called here by the old West Semitic title , often with a typical syntactic duplication and intensi-fication: , holiest of the holy ones. Moreover, they are straightfor-wardly called , gods (in various construct combinations as for example gods of wisdom), a highly surprising appellation in a Jewish environment which is supposed to have shunned polytheism already centuries before.51

Not dissimilar from the usage noted above is the conspicuous biblical inter-pretation in the so-called Pesher of Melchiedek (11Q13). In that scroll, the title , god, of Psalm 82:1 is interpreted to refer to none other than Melchise-dek, a semi-divine semi-human primordial figure acting here as a leader of the assembly (11Q13 II 910).52

The use of such divine appellations as and may not be so surprising if one takes into account that there is considerable continuity, even affinity, between Qumranic thought (presented in Hebrew) and a variety of literature, both earlier and contemporary, written primarily in Aramaic. In that literature, such as Book of Giants, Book of Watchers, Genesis Apocryphon etc. epithets such as , lofty, , Great Holy one, , Holy one, are frequent. For example, the throne scene, noted above, of Daniel 7:910 is paralleled in both 1 Enoch 14 and in the Book of Giants (4Q530).53 The title , the Great Holy One, is quite common in Qumran Aramaic to denote the chief of the divine assembly (e.g. 1Qapocryphon Genesis II 14, XI 15, XII 17). The Book of Enoch, an important predecessor of the Yahad, expands on the myth of the fallen angels, using that mythological kernel to construct a wide-ranging worldview with recourse to many religious and even political issues.54 The myth of fallen angels relates in many ways to the scene of the divine assembly. Especially noteworthy is a passage in 1 Enoch 1:3 (= 4Q201 i 56), which recounts how the Great Holy One will rise () with his multitude of hosts. Similar wording to that particu-lar phrase appears in 1QM I 16, where God appears () with holy ones

|| 51 For an analysis of the divine epithets in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice which stresses their un-conservative orientation see Mizrahi, forthcoming. 52 The restoration and overall interpretation of this theme in the Pesher of Melchisedek re-main debated. A short discussion may be found in Collins 2000, 1819. 53 See Trotter 2012, 451466. In fact in the Book of Giants (4Q530) the lord of the assembly is called Great holy one rather than Ancient of Days as in Daniel e. For the continuity between Yahad theology and apocalyptic literature see Hempel 2013, 231252; Collins 2010. 54 See Reed 2005; Stuckenbruck 2014.




().55 This is further demonstration of the continuity between Yahad tradi-tions and earlier Aramaic angelology.

In the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, the Qumranic polytheism is carried to the extreme. The angels of heaven are simply called gods and function as an essential part of the communitys conceptual universe, plain and simple. The multiplicity of agents in heaven is not a mere ornament in the poetic atmos-phere of the Songs; rather, this multiplicity constitutes the very essence of the entire composition, since the effect can only be achieved with a multi-vocal heavenly choir singing Gods praise.

While what we call monotheistic religions made it their mission to eradi-cate the dimension of multiplicity from the heavenly realm and assign agency to a single god, many followers of these religions could not have functioned with such a bereft divine realm. A single god was simply not enough to fulfill the religious imagination of worshippers. The divine realm required the supplemen-tation of multiple other figures, which in monotheistic religions are called an-gels to conceal the polytheistic point.56 While some religious currents would seek to play down the role of angels in the divine realms, others would seek to underscore it.57 The community of the Yahad, as we saw, belongs to the latter current. Members of the community felt the multiplicity of heavenly beings on a daily basis and could not have run their spiritual life without recourse to them. In that sense, the theology of the community is similar to the religion of the surrounding Levant. In other words, the Yahad was not influenced by the Le-vantine culture, but rather took part in the formation of Levantine religion as an active agent, although with a unique and particular hue.

Was the community at Qumran polytheistic? The terms monotheism and polytheism are misleading. We as modern readers, after millennia of Abraham-ic religions, may expect more of these terms that the ancients would. Members of the Yahad would certainly succumb to the statement of Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear O Israel, YHWH our Lord, YHWH is one, a verse often quoted in Qumran and copied in numerous phylacteries.58 Yet they would qualify it with a very active host surrounding the one single god.

At this point we may conceive of a connection between the Yahads belief in multiple heavenly beings and the popularity at Qumran of Deuteronomy 32,

|| 55 Curiously this verse from 1 Enoch is also quoted in verse 7 of the Epistle of Jude from the New Testament. 56 For this move see Koch 1994. 57 See especially Rof 2012, 8197. 58 See Lange and Weigold 2012, 147177.




particularly with the original, polytheistic-like reading of 32:8, 43. I believe it is no coincidence that these two phenomena appear within the same community. They seem to be two sides of the same coin: the continuing significance of the divine assembly as a religious category in the Yahad. In contrast, other Jewish streams of the Second Temple period, which may have been less well-attuned to the multiplicity of angels, introduced corrections in these two verses which ultimately found their way into the Masoretic text.59

My argument connects with the well-known and much discussed habits for representing the divine name in the Dead Sea Scrolls.60 The scribes of these scrolls do not write the Tetragrammaton in free Hebrew composition and usual-ly use the title , El, as the standard divine name. In addition, the same title is quite often used when quoting biblical texts within non-biblical compositions. The choice of this title is intriguing, given that earlier Hebrew scribes, repre-sented already within the Hebrew Bible, chose the more common title . In fact, the divine title El was not only used as a substitute to the Tetragrammaton, but rather functioned in sectarian literature as the standard divine name. Thus to take a single example from the Damascus Covenant (CD II 3): El, who loves true knowledge, has positioned Wisdom and Cleverness in front of him. The Dead Sea Scrolls also use the divine name El to build chains of constructs for designating the deity and the nation of Israel: , , , El of the gods, El of Israel, the Yahad of El, the lot of El etc.

Why is it that the members of the Yahad avoided the designation Elohim, already attested in numerous biblical writings before them, and chose instead the designation El? It may be noted that El is rather infrequent in other Jewish literature of the corresponding period. It may not be too far-fetched to claim that the mythical scene of the divine assembly, which was so powerful for the self-construction of the community, is what prompted the choice of El as the main divine title within the Yahad. In the special worldview of the Yahad, the main characteristic of the supreme God was His position as the chief of the assembly, i.e. the special dynamic that was achieved within the realm of the divine be-tween the One and the Many. There is of course only one supreme god, but his greatness and power can only be manifested by way of interacting with the other divine beings surrounding Him. The title El is most suitable to convey this

|| 59 Based on various circumstantial evidence, Van der Kooij 2005, dated this correction to sometime during the 2nd century BCE. 60 I have addressed this topic myself in an earlier study (Ben-Dov 2010) but did not include the main point suggested here. For earlier studies see mainly Stegemann 1978.




particular sense, because it had been used for at least a millennium throughout the Levant as an indication for the head of the divine assembly.

Take for example the designation , the god of gods which appears in the War Scroll (e.g. 1QM XVIII 6). In turn, this title is similarly used in Daniel 11:36, in a chapter which probably served as the backdrop to the war accounts in the War Scroll.61 Both literary contexts make much of the conflict between the angels of the nations and the chief divinity, the God of Israel. The construction god of gods is a partitive genitive connecting the singular and plural of the word El. It is an intriguing play between monotheism and polytheism: the phrase is meant to convey the greatness of the One, but this cannot be ex-pressed without recourse to the way He stands out among the Many. The more common biblical name does not lend itself to such a construct, since it is grammatically plural even in designating the one and only God.62 A scribal cul-ture like that of the Yahad which wished to make constant references to various powers in heaven cannot use the standard Hebrew titles for God; the old West Semitic title El would be a perfect choice for that purpose.

I therefore suggest that a deeper understanding of the Yahads fascination with multiple divine beings in the assembly may explain not only various liter-ary expressions throughout its literature, but also the fundamental choice of divine epithets used in constructing that literature. The very same El who func-tions in the West Semitic culture as the head of the assembly is called into duty in a most unexpected literary milieu in early Roman Judaea.

Conclusion The task of this article was to trace submerged lines of thought behind the front row of canonical literature. This task was carried out with regard to the West Semitic motif of the divine assembly. This motif was shown to be stable throughout the religion of the Levant, from 2nd millennium BCE Ugarit, through the 1st millennium in Phoenician and Aramaean religion, and even later to the Syrian culture of the early 1st millennium CE. This motif and the literary tradition which arose out of it rely on the frequent religious need to contrast the One and the Many in the realm of the Divine. This juxtaposition was required also in the more monotheistic world of Hebrew biblical literature. While the motif is readily

|| 61 See Flusser 2007. 62 Why this is so, is an interesting question which cannot be answered here.




apparent in Hebrew literature of the Iron Age, in that age of bellicose monothe-ism there is a degree of resistance to it, and authors use various techniques to play down the polytheistic undertones of the motif. In the words of Mark Smith, biblical writers sought to reduce the translatability of the tradition.

The main appearance of this motif, in Deuteronomy 32:8 and 43, acquired a central place in the Hebrew biblical tradition, but it was transmitted in an oblique way: it was either reinterpreted to place YHWH as the chief of the as-sembly, or, more boldly, corrected by means of the replacement of words in order to obfuscate the divine identity of the members of the assembly.

Despite the biblical ambiguity towards the scene of the Divine assembly, this scene experienced a radical revival in Jewish literature of the Second Tem-ple period, especially in Aramaic and in apocalyptic texts such as Enoch, Dan-iel, the Genesis Apocryphon, and the Book of Giants, and later in the sectarian literature of the Yahad. This revival reintegrated the Jewish literary tradition into the wider religious tradition of the Levant. The revival has been traced here in the variety of divine appellations and titles used in Jewish Aramaic, which correspond to the same or similar titles in contemporary non-Jewish texts.

On the same continuum, these traditions can also be seen in Hebrew, main-ly in the writings of the Yahad community. The indebtedness of the Yahad to its apocalyptic predecessors mainly the circles that produced the Aramaic apoca-lypses is quite clear. In addition the Yahad declares its origins to be located in the Land of Damascus, where the renewed covenant took place and the com-munity was established. Within the Yahad there is a significant revival of the divine assembly, which played a central part in almost every field of the sectari-an religion. It was suggested here that due to the Yahads commitment to the divine assembly, its scribes chose to use the divine epithet El, one which was not very popular among contemporary Jews, but which was most efficient for a religion based so strongly on the divine assembly. Thus, either deliberately or not, the community of the Yahad joined forces again with the Levantine religion of its times, at least in some aspects of describing the godhead.

How does the mechanism of absorbing and reviving mythological elements work? Is it fair to say that the absorbed mythological elements remained within the confines of apocalyptic literature while leaving the mainstream Jewish writ-ings pure of foreign mythology? As the historian of ideas Amos Funkenstein taught, such an expectation would be nave. The ideas of apocalyptic literature existed side by side with more formal shapes of religion, and the two forms




could not have avoided mutually influencing each other.63 Thus, the submerged will necessarily sooner or later find its way also from the back alley to the main road.

The present article suggested a further way of benefiting from the mecha-nism of submerged literature. The Israeli scholar Frank Polak proved that the Aramaic stories in the Book of Daniel are based on a previous, oral tradition, based on their formulation and on epic formulas preserved in them.64 This earli-er oral tradition is the tip of the iceberg of the lost Aramaic oral tradition, which contained all sorts of religious and narrative literature. While most of that Ara-maic literature perished through history, significant parts of it survived because they were submerged in Jewish apocalyptic literature. Of course, this is not to say that the apocalyptic Jewish literature is a polytheistic Levantine product. It was based on components of the regional Aramaic tradition, but it did its best to tame its most offensive parts, and to acclimatize it within a normative Jewish tradition. Some circles in Jerusalem saw it as their duty to oppose even the faint traces of the divine assembly tradition, and so they refashioned the text of Deu-teronomy 32, the main proof text for that tradition in the Hebrew Bible.

The Qumran Yahad is thus not only a radical Jewish sect, but also a thriving locus of Levantine religion. A careful study will allow that both aspects of this vista could live side by side.

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