1. On R. Moses, see Epstein, Abraham, R. Mosheh ha-darshan mi-Narbonah (Vienna, 1891;Google Scholar reprinted in Kitvei R. A. Epstein, ed. Habermann, A. M. [Jerusalem, 1950], pp. 213–244);Google ScholarAlbeck, Hanokh, ed., Midrash Bereshit Rabbati (Jerusalem, 1940-),Google Scholar introduction; and Baron, S. W., A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 17 vols. to date (New York and Philadelphia, 1958–), 6:171–172, 410–411. On the relationship of the preserved works to each other, see Albeck, introduction, pp. 5–21.Google Scholar

2. In addition to the studies mentioned in note 1, see Epstein, , “Le livre des Jubiles, Philon, et le Midrasch Tadsche,” Revue des etudes juives 21 (1890): 80–97; 22 (1891): 1–25;Google Scholar and Belkin, Samuel, “Midrash Tadshe; or, The Midrash of R. Phineas b. Ya'ir: An Early Hellenistic Midrash” (Hebrew), IJorev 11 (1951): 1–52, who goes much further than Epstein in discerning Philo's influence on Midrash Tadshe. The attribution of Midrash Tadshe to R. Moses is speculative. Albeck rejects it (Bereshit Rabbati, introduction, p. 16).Google Scholar

3. Dan, Yosef, Ha-Sippur ha-'iwi bi-ymei ha-baynayyim (Jerusalem, 1974), pp. 134–135, calls the reappropriation of texts and traditions from the Second Temple period a characteristic of medieval reworkings of biblical stories.Google Scholar

4. The Apocrypha are those books that were included in the canon of the Greek Bible used by Jews but not in the Hebrew Bible. They are all of Jewish origin. The corpus of the pseudepigrapha, on the other hand, has been defined by modern scholars. The term has the value of convenience, but there are no clear-cut criteria for membership in the corpus. The various texts contained in the collections have in common their attribution to heroes of the Hebrew Bible, but they are extremely diverse in content and in provenance. The standard English-language collection has been Charles, R. H., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1913).Google Scholar The new collection edited by Charlesworth, J. H., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (Garden City, N.Y., 1983), is much larger in scope. Both collections include works undoubtedly written by Christians. Distinguishing a Jewish work retouched by Christian transmitters from a Christian work that draws on Jewish traditions raises a variety of methodological problems.Google Scholar

5. For the Apocrypha, see the introductions to individual books in Kahana, Avraham, Ha-Sefarim ha-hisoniyyim, 2 vols. (Tel Aviv, 1956).Google Scholar For examples of the influence of the pseudepigrapha, see Dan, Ha-Sippur ha-'ivri, pp. 133–141, and Stone, M. E., Scriptures, Sects and Visions: A Profile of Judaism from Ezra to the Jewish Revolts (Philadelphia, 1980), pp. 109–111.Google Scholar On specific topics, see, for example, Himmelfarb, Martha, “A Report on Enoch in Rabbinic Literature,” in Society of Biblical Literature: 1978 Seminar Papers, ed. Achtemeier, P. J., 2 vols. (Missoula, Mont., 1978), 1:259–269 (on motifs from 1 Enoch and Jubilees);Google Scholar and Lipscomb, W. L., “A Tradition from the Book of Jubilees in Armenian,” Journal of Jewish Studies 29 (1978): 149–163CrossRefGoogle Scholar(on lists of wives of the patriarchs dependent on Jubilees, including some in medieval Hebrew works). It should also be noted that entire medieval works drawn largely from traditions of the pseudepigrapha exist in the Hebrew Testament of Naphtali (in S. A. Wertheimer, revised by Wertheimer, A. Y., Batei midrashot, 2 vols. [Jerusalem, 1969], 1:187–203)Google Scholar and Midrash Va-yissa'u (critical editions by Lauterbach, J. B., “Midrash Va-yissa'u; or, The Book of the Wars of the Sons of Jacob” [Hebrew], in Abhandlungen zur Erinnerung an Hirsch Perez Chajes [Vienna, 1933], Hebrew sec, pp. 205–222;Google Scholar and Dan, Yosef and Alexander, Tamar, “The Complete Midrash Va-yissa'u” [Hebrew], Folklore Research Center Studies 3 [1972], Hebrew sec, pp. 67–76; each edition contains MSS unknown to the other).Google Scholar

6. For Jubilees in the work of R. Moses, see Albeck, Bereshit Rabbati, introduction, p. 17; Epstein, “Le livre des Jubiles”; and Himmelfarb, “Enoch,” pp. 262–263. In addition to the Ethiopic and a few Greek fragments, the Book of Jubilees is preserved in Latin fragments which cover about a fourth of the book. This does not suggest wide circulation in the West. The question of whether a Syriac version ever existed has not been answered conclusively. See Tisserant, Eugene, “Fragments syriaques du livre des Jubiles,” Revue biblique 30 (1921): 55–86, 206–232, who argues in favor of the existence of a Syriac version on the basis of passages in a Syriac chronicle;Google ScholarBrock, S. P., “Jewish Traditions in Syriac Sources,” Journal of Jewish Studies 30 (1979): 224, who rejects Tisserant's view of the passages in the chronicle; and Lipscomb, “Jubilees in Armenian,” who shows that the Syriac list of wives of the patriarchs is translated from Greek. Lipscomb also concludes that there must have been internal Hebrew transmission of the list of wives of the patriarchs.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Korteweg, T., “The Meaning of Naphtali's Vision,” in Studies on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, ed. de Jonge, Marinus, Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha 3 (Leiden, 1975),Google Scholar argues at length that the Hebrew Testament of Naphtali preserves the content of the visions used in the Greek Testament of Naphtali better than the Greek text. Thus the author of the medieval Hebrew Testament of Naphtali must have had access to one of the sources of the Greek testament. Korteweg does not concern himself with the process of transmission by which this source reached a medieval Jew. It has long been noted that Midrash Va-yissa'u appears to preserve a source common to Jubilees and the Testament of Judah. See, for example, Charles, R. H., The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Oxford, 1908),Google Scholar p. li, or de Jonge, Marinus, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Study of Their Text, Composition and Origin (Assen, 1953), pp. 70–71.Google Scholar

8. All references to BR are to page and line of Albeck's edition (see n. 1 above). For Albeck's list of instances of R. Moses' use of the pseudepigrapha, see Bereshit Rabbati, introduction, p. 17. An example of the first category, parallels too vague to indicate dependence, is Albeck's comparison of BR, p. 51,1. 4, which says that the earth is divided into three parts, a third inhabited, a third water, a third wilderness, to 4 Ezra 6:42,47, where the world is described as six-sevenths land and one-seventh water. (This example could equally be considered in the second category, passages paralleled in rabbinic works as well as in the pseudepigrapha, because BR's tripartite division appears also in Midrash Konen [in Jellinek, Adolf, Beit ha-midrash, 6 vols. (Leipzig, 1853–77) 2:27]Google Scholar and in R. Bahya's commentary to Num. 10:35, as Albeck notes.) An example of the second category is BR, p. 51,11. 15–16, which says that man's dominion over animals was lost after the fall. Albeck's own note and Ginzberg's, Louis note in Legends of the Jews, 1 vols. (Philadelphia, 1909–38), 5:119–120, n. 13, indicate so many parallels in rabbinic literature that the Life of Adam and Eve 37–38 (or Apocalypse of Moses 10–11) seems an unlikely source. For a listing of the instances of use of rabbinic works in BR, see Bereshit Rabbati, introduction, pp. 24–36. It seems to me that Albeck lists so many doubtful cases of use of the pseudepigrapha because once he had become convinced that R. Moses used some pseudepigrapha, he assumed that he had had access to all of them as easily as to rabbinic texts. Thus if a tradition appears both in a rabbinic text and in a pseudepigraphon, there was no reason to prefer the rabbinic text as R. Moses' source. Unlike the other parallels, which are elements of larger units, most of the parallels to the Testaments constitute independent units. The traditions discussed in sections 2 and 3 below are parts of larger units, but 1, 4, 5, and 6 are independent. So too is the extract from Bel and the Dragon, also discussed below. The three parallels to Jubilees in Midrash Aggadah that Albeck identifies also merit further investigation. 1 had originally planned to discuss them together with the parallels to the Testaments in BR, but the nature of the relationship between the two midrashim and their pseudepigraphic sources turns out to be very different. I follow the common practice of abbreviating the titles of the individual testaments within the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs as T. Levi, T. Judah, T. Naphtali, etc.Google Scholar

9. The most important work for setting the tone of recent scholarship is de Jonge, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Study.

10. While his view is probably based on more general considerations, the only evidence that Albeck presents is a single passage in which he believes BR to preserve the original Hebrew where the Greek of T. Judah is corrupt (Bereshit Rabbati, introduction, p. 17, and text, p. 180, note to 1. 8). The passage is discussed below in section 6.

11. H. J. de Jonge, “La bibliotheque de Michel Choniates et la tradition occidentale des Testaments des XII Patriarches,” in Studies on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.

12. Aramaic Levi fragments from Qumran and the Cairo Geniza as well as the related passage in Greek MS e of the Testaments make it clear that a Jewish document that contained much of the material of T. Levi existed in Second Temple times. This text probably took the form of one of a series of visions of Levi, Qahat, and Amram, the progenitors of the priestly line, rather than of a testament. See Milik, J. T., “4Q Visions de 'Amram et une citation d'origene,” Revue biblique 79 (1972): 77–79;Google Scholar and de Jonge, Marinus, “The Main Issues in the Study of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,” New Testament Studies 26 (1980): 513–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In 1956 Milik announced the discovery of a Hebrew fragment from Qumran of a genealogy of Bilhah more extensive than the one in Naphtali, T. (“‘Priere de Nabonide’ et autres recits d'un cycle de Daniel,” Revue biblique 63 [1956]: 407, n. 1).Google Scholar The fragment is still unpublished, but de Jonge has expressed doubts about Milik's assumption that the original context of the genealogy was a testament of Naphtali (“Main Issues,” p. 513). Milik has recently published some fragments that he identifies as parts of a testament of Judah and a testament of Joseph (“Ecrits préesséniens de Qumrân: d' Hénoch à Amram,” in Qumrân: Sa piété, sa théologie et son milieu, ed. Delcor, Mathias, Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum Lovaniensium 46 [Louvain, 1978], pp. 99–103). For the medieval Hebrew Testament of Naphtali and the similarities between Jubilees and the Testaments suggesting a common written source, see n. 7 above.Google Scholar

13. The translations of the passages below are my own. For the text of the Testaments I used de Jonge, Marinus, ed., The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text, Pseudepigrapha Veteris Testamenti Graece 1:2 (Leiden, 1978),Google Scholar and I consulted the translation of Charles, R. H., The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (London, 1908). References to Charles's notes in the body of this article are to the commentary found in this work.Google Scholar

14. See Wutz, Franz, Onomastica Sacra: Untersuchungen zum Liber Interpretationis Nominum Hebraicorum des hi. Hieronymus, Texte und Untersuchungen 41 (Leipzig, 1914–15).Google Scholar

15. It is worth noting that Charles's attempt at retroversion (note to T. Naphtali 1:12) yields nivhalah for espeude. BR reads milbahelet.

16. Graphically, h for ro is easily explained in Hebrew. Hebrew -y for the Greek ending -os is common. Krauss, Samuel, Griechische und lateinische Lehnworter im Talmud, Midrasch und Targum, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1898), explains the Hebrew ending as derived from the Greek vocative (1:74). Although Albeck seems to view the Hebrew's addition of the ‘as standard practice (notes to p. 119,11. 12–16), Krauss gives no examples of’ before r in his discussion of prothetic vowels in Hebrew transliterations (1:136–40). M. E. Stone has suggested to me that the ‘ takes the place of the rough breathing that accompanies initial Greek r, a phenomenon with parallels in Armenian.’Google Scholar

17. Charles suggests no parallels, and the name does not appear in the Liddell-Scott Greek- English Lexicon or in Preisigke, Friederich, Namenbuch (Heidelberg, 1922).Google Scholar

18. See n. 12 above.

19. See n. 7 above.

20. See Albeck's note ad loc. and Ginzburg, Legends, 5:319–320, n. 312.

21. 1 follow Albeck, note ad loc, in reading fiasu for htanu.

22. See Albeck, note ad loc, and Ginzburg, Legends, 5:333, n. 79.

23. This and all subsequent references to Jubilees are to the translation and notes of Charles, R. H., The Book of Jubilees; or, The Little Genesis (London, 1902).Google Scholar

24. Genesis never gives Judah's wife a name, but refers to her as bat-shua, “the daughter of Shua” (Gen. 38:12). Both Jubilees and T. Judah take this designation as a name, on the order of Bal-sheva, Bathsheba.

25. In the parallel passage in Jub. 41:7, Bat-Shua prevents Shelah from marrying altogether. “… Bedsu'el, the wife of Judah, did not permit her son Shelah to marry. And Bedsu'el, the wife of Judah, died in the fifth year of this week.” While Bat-Shua's death is reported immediately after the notice that she did not permit Shelah to marry, no causal relationship is spelled out.

26. For examples of this play on Chezib in rabbinic sources, see Ginzberg, Legends. 5:334, n. 81.

27. Similarly the Peshitta, Onqelos, and Jub. 41:9. See Charles's note to Jub. 41:9.

28. The association of veils with brides is very ancient. In Gen. 24:65 Rebecca veils herself upon approaching her bridegroom. Laban's deception of Jacob presupposes the custom. On veils and brides in ancient Israel, see Epstein, L. M., Sex Laws and Customs in Judaism (New York, 1948; reprinted New York, 1967), pp. 36–39.Google Scholar

29. Genesis, The Anchor Bible (Garden City, N.Y., 1964), p. 300.

30. Bereshit Rabbati, introduction, p. 17, and note to p. 180, 11. 8–11, where Albeck cites B.T. Ketubot 22a as an instance of this usage. Normally the subject of the verb q-d-sh in the sense of “to marry” is the bridegroom.

31. See n. 7 above, Charles's commentaries to the relevant passages of Judah, T. and Jubilees, and Klein, Samuel, “Paläastinisches im Jubiläenbuch,” Zeitschrifl des deulschen Palästina-Vereins 57 (1934): 8–12.Google Scholar

32. As indicated in n. 7, Korteweg, “Naphtali's Visions,” does not discuss the issue of transmission. Klein, in his investigation of the place-names mentioned in the parallel accounts of the war against the Amorites in Midrash Va-yissa'u, T. Judah, and Jubilees (“Palastinisches im Jubiläenbuch,” pp. 11 – 12, 15–16), invariably prefers the readings of Midrash Va-yissa'u, although they too stand in need of some correction. But he cautions that the Hebrew text cannot be viewed as the Hebrew original but rather as a “translation or reworking” from Greek or Latin. He never makes explicit the grounds for this claim, but it seems likely that it is based on his opinion that some of the place-names preserved in Midrash Va-yissa'u are transliterations into Hebrew of a Greek (or Latin) version of a biblical place-name. Another approach to Midrash Va-yissa'u, from an entirely different angle, deserves mention here. Dan's treatment cuts through the problem of transmission by eliminating it altogether (Ha-Sippur ha'ivri, pp. 138–140; and Dan and Alexander, “Midrash Va-yissa'u”). For Dan and Alexander, Midrash Va-yissa'u is a Jewish version of the Christian literature of the exploits of knights and crusaders. Since knights were not a feature of contemporary Jewish life, Jewish authors who wished to provide a Jewish equivalent to this Christian literature drew on the great heroes of the biblical past and invented wars for them. Dan and Alexander's dismissal of the parallels to Midrash Va-yissa'u in Jubilees and T. Judah as “isolated hints” on which the author of Midrash Va-yissa'u built (“Midrash Vayissa'u” p. 67), is simply wrong, as even a quick comparison of the texts will show. Nevertheless, their remarks about the influences that produced Midrash Va-yissa'u can perhaps be applied to the preservation and reworking of the source of chapters 2–3.

33. This is, of course, a disturbing thought with important methodological implications for a source critic. I feel justified in considering it only in relation to Tamar's brothers because I have been able to account for all of the other details in BR without recourse to hypothetical sources.

34. Sharf, Andrew, Byzantine Jewry (London, 1971), pp. 122–123, 163–172.Google Scholar

35. Benedict, B. Z., “On the History of the Torah Center in Provence” (Hebrew), Tarbif 22 (1951): 91, 94–95.Google Scholar

36. Baron, History, 7:29–31.

37. Bereshit Rabbati, introduction, pp. 22–24.

38. Ibid., pp. 18–19.

39. Ibid., p. 6.

40. The Book of Tobit (Oxford, 1878), pp. xiii–xiv; text, pp. 39–43. There are a few small differences between the MS and the Peshitta.

41. My translation. The Hebrew is found in Neubauer, Tobit, p. 43, with a translation on p. xcii.

42. I do not know what our scribe has in mind here. The total of twenty-four books is common in Jewish tradition for the Bible as a whole, and the three extra books could refer to apocrypha known to the scribe. But the scribe refers to twenty-four books of the prophets. Daniel is indeed included among the prophets in the Greek Bible, and there are three additions to Daniel in the Greek and its daughter versions that do not appear in the Masoretic text: Susanna, the Prayer of Azariah, and Bel and the Dragon. But the scribe does not seem to include Bel and the Dragon among the three. The total of twenty-four books of the prophets remains mysterious.

43. The causative of the root '-t-q can mean either “copy” or “translate” in medieval Hebrew (see Eliezer ben Yehudah, Thesaurus). Perhaps in this context the best translation of ma'atiq would be “transliterator.”

44. See Marx, Alexander, “An Aramaic Fragment of the Wisdom of Solomon,” Journal of Biblical Literature 40 (1921): 57–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Nahmanides quotes Judith 1:7, 8, 11, in abbreviated form in a discussion of the root '-m-r in the commentary to Deut. 21:14. He quotes Wis. Sol. 7:5–8, 17–21 again in a sermon entitled, “The Torah of the Lord Is Perfect” (Ps. 19:8). In explaining why he chose not to use Nahmanides' quotations from the Wisdom of Solomon as witnesses to the Peshitta text, Emerton, J. A. writes that the passages “represent the Peshitta with slight modifications, which are partly dialectal” (The Peshitta of the Wisdom of Solomon, Studia Post-Biblica 2 [Leiden, 1959] p. xxxiii). For example, the gar of Syriac, borrowed from Greek and not found in Jewish Aramaic, does not appear in Nahmanides' quotations. The list of 7:17–20 is not identical in Nabmanides and the Peshitta.Google Scholar

45. My translation. The passage comes from Nabmanides', “Sermon on the Works of Qohelet.” A critical edition is found in Charles Chavel, ed., Kitvei Rabbenu Mosheh b. Nahman, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1963). Our passage is found on 1:182.Google ScholarChavel, translates the sermon in Ramban: Writings and Discourses, 2 vols. (New York, 1978). Our passage appears on 1:154–155. Marx, “Aramaic Fragment,” translates the passage on p. 60.Google Scholar

46. This is the title of the book in Syriac.

47. Again, the root '-t-q. Does Nahmanides mean that the nations copied it in their form of Aramaic (Syriac), or that the nations translated it into the various languages in which the work was found in the Middle Ages? I suspect that the first suggestion is correct, since the Syriac version is of special importance for Nabmanides.

48. Again the root '-t-q. See Prov. 25:1.

49. Chavel (in notes to both works) suggests that Nahmanides understands Prov. 25:1, “These also are the proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied,” to imply that the proverbs of Proverbs 25, like those of the first part of the work, were inspired, and thus they were copied by the men of Hezekiah, but that other proverbs of Solomon, not inspired and thus not copied, were also in existence.

50. See n. 44 above.