Let’s start off with a quiz.  There are five questions.  

  1. Name five books that were written in the 19th century. (This one is easy. There are a ton of great books from the 1800’s. Do you have your five in mind?)  Here a handful that you could have chosen: 
    • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
    • Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky 
    • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 
    • The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
    • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and, last, 
    • Les Misérables by Victor Hugo 

All those books from the 19th century!  

  1. How about naming five great books from the 18th century? This is a little more difficult, but still very doable.  You could have listed. . . .
    • Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe 
    • Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
    • Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
    • Candide by Voltaire
    • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
    • The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
  1. The 16th century offers us a wealth of great books. Can you pick five? Here’s a good list to get you started. . . .
    • Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare (really, anything by Shakespeare)
    • The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
    • Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
    • The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne
    • Praise of Folly by Erasmus
    • Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin
  1. Can you name one book written by Mattias Henze that was published by Fortress Press in 2017?

Of course, you can.  It’s the book that is the basis for this whole study!  It is entitled, Mind the Gap: How Jewish Writing between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus. And just between the two of us, this post will quote from Henze quite heavily.

  1. Now, the tough question: Can you name five books from the Second Temple period? 

Now, if I had given you some time to think about it, you could have named quite a few, but most people freeze at the question and end up staring blankly at the scene. After all, all you really needed to do is name any five books in the Apocrypha and you would have won. But there are a lot of great books with which we should have some familiarity. Let’s talk about five of them.

1. The Dead Sea Scrolls

In 1947, Bedouin shepherds peered into a cave in the wilderness area around the Dead Sea. They decided to enter the cave, but they never could have imagined what they would find. Inside were seven ancient scrolls. And when word spread about this discovery, archeologists flooded to the region to see if they could find anything else. They did. When all was said and done, they found roughly 900 scrolls in 11 caves. Not only that, but archeologists also uncovered an ancient settlement near the caves in a place called Qumran. Scholars believe this settlement was responsible for hiding the scrolls in the caves and maybe even had a hand in producing some of the scrolls. They also believe that Qumran was founded by one of the main Jewish ascetic sects of the day, a group known as the Essenes.

Now, we can divide the 900 Dead Sea Scrolls into four categories. First, there are copies of every Old Testament book (except Esther). There is even one scroll that contains all 66 chapters of Isaiah that is 24 feet long. Second, we have scrolls that give an interpretation of several of these Old Testament books. These texts tell us what the Old Testament books meant to them in their day and time. Third, we have manuscripts that deal with how the community should function. They describe its leadership, organization and beliefs. The last category consists of liturgical texts, poems, and thanksgiving hymns. In this category we also find apocalyptic texts that predict what will happen at the end of time.  

Four things stand out here. First, some of the texts that we found in Qumran did not come from there.  Instead, they were brought there. In other words, what we find in Qumran is not just the narrow beliefs of this small group of ascetics living in the middle of the wilderness. Instead, these scrolls represent the thinking of many people in Israel. These were commonly-held beliefs. Second, we can once again see the importance of the Old Testament Scriptures in the life of Israel. They copied the books of the OT because they deeply valued the Word of God. Third, although the OT rarely is interested in speaking about the end times, the Qumran Scrolls find that topic vastly important. And that is a new kind of writing. Last, there are no Christian texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls. In fact, there is not even a single mention of anyone in the New Testament. But here’s the thing. There is certain language in the Gospels that sounds very similar to the language we find in the Scrolls.  Did the writers of the Gospels know of these views? Or even more intriguing, did they know of these texts?

2. The Septuagint

People in the Second Temple period not only copied the Bible, but they also translated it. And the first translation was called the Septuagint. It was the Old Testament translated into Greek. Now, that doesn’t sound so significant, but it is. A Greek translation speaks of the massive influence that Greek language and culture had on Israel from the 3rd century BCE and beyond. It even had a huge impact on their religious life. And the Septuagint soon became the Scripture of the early church. Anytime the New Testament authors wanted to quote from the Old Testament, it was the Septuagint they used.  And when the New Testament church read from the Old Testament, chances were really good that they read from the Septuagint. But the real kicker here is that the Septuagint is often very different from the Masoretic Text of Hebrew Bible, not just in language, but also in content. For instance, the Hebrew text does not have the Apocrypha, but the Septuagint includes it. And the books of Genesis and Jeremiah are very different (the Septuagint is roughly one-eighth shorter (that’s 2700 words) than the Hebrew version; and after Jeremiah 25:13, the chapter order differs rather substantially). There’s an old cliché that says, “an act of translation is always an act of betrayal.” Why is that? Because translation always involves interpretation.

3. 1 Enoch

Matthias Henze writes: 

“The scribes of the Second Temple period continued to write new books at an astonishing rate. While their books are new, typically the characters in them are not; they are familiar characters from Scripture. And it is very common to find that one of these biblical characters becomes the fictitious author of the book in which he appears.” 

It is true, we find that upsetting. You don’t need to tell us your name or anything about you, but you should never lie and say you are someone else. You should never write under a pseudonym. But in the Second Temple period, this was a very common literary technique. They would even write as if their book had been written in biblical times. But instead of us criticizing this as a form of reverse-plagiarism, it is better to ask what purpose it served in its day. From what we can tell, it is clear that pseudepigraphy was an attempt to continue or to expand upon the biblical story. As such, it acted like a sequel, but its purpose was to add some insight or to provide a new twist. A pseudonym involving Enoch would expand upon the story of Enoch in some way (Genesis 5), and a pseudonym involving Abraham would involve something in his story. You could be forgiven if you don’t know much about Enoch. He is only mentioned in 4 verses, and one of those verses (vs. 24) is rather strange. It reads:

“Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.”

You can see why someone would want to use Enoch as his alter-ego. Enoch was righteous, dear to God and never died. Instead, he was “translated” into heaven. There’s enough mystery here to build upon for anyone who wants to address a contemporary issue using Enoch’s name.  

The first 36 chapters of 1 Enoch are called the Book of the Watchers. If you saw the Russell Crowe movie, “Noah,” you know much of the story. In it, some heavenly angels (aka, the Watchers) came down from heaven to have sex with human women (Gen. 6:1-4). Since Enoch is already with God, he can intercede for these Watchers before God and does so. Henze adds: 

“The story of the fallen angels enjoyed great popularity in early Judaism, and it is told in many different versions.”

And Henze is right. Jude even mentions Enoch. But why would anyone want to expand upon these odd verses in Genesis 6? It seems that the Watchers helped explain the origins of evil; they provided a warning about the coming of God’s wrath on sin and spoke of the dangers of mixing the sacred and the secular. And perhaps, there is a lesson here: Just as Noah escaped the sin of the world by retreating from it, so we also must escape our sinful culture by separating ourselves from the world.  These books were not simply works of fiction. They were theological works designed to answer specific questions that had only recently come to mind, questions like “where did evil come from?” “How will God respond to the evil nations that oppress his people?” and “how should God’s people respond to the influence of foreign cultures?” The answers to these questions, they felt, interestingly enough, was found in the story of the Watchers.

4. Jubilees

All four types of books written during the Second Temple period make sense to us. Of course, there will be copies of the Scriptures. Of course, there will be new liturgies. Of course, there will be books on what our communities should look like. Of course, there will be books on interpreting the Hebrew Bible. And when we look at each of these, they all look close to what we would suspect, except that last one. We write out the text and then give an explanation for how we are to understand it properly.   And while this form of interpretation was available to Jews in the Second Temple period, they also liked to blend the biblical text and their interpretation of it, mixing them together if you will.  Henze again: 

“This form of biblical interpretation took the form of rewriting, or rephrasing, the biblical text. Rather than quoting a particular passage and then commenting on it, the interpreter simply retold the entire biblical passage in the interpreter’s own words, while leaving out certain parts of the biblical text, rearranging others, or adding new sections to it.”  

Granted, this retelling of the text seems somewhat inappropriate to us, because it seems to force an interpretation on the text, but in ancient Israel this approach was quite common. By retelling the text in one’s own words and way, the text became a means for the commentator to share his insights about what the passage was saying to God’s people in that day. And we can see this in Jubilees which is a dramatic retelling of Genesis and half of Exodus. In that retelling, certain themes are emphasized, themes like:

  • The proper calendar is 364 days and not 365 days (a wrong calendar interferes with when Israel’s festivals should take place, festivals like Jubilees)
  • Ritual purity
  • Separation from Gentiles
  • And the involvement of angels and demons in our world

Again, these were new ideas in theology. Angels don’t occupy a huge role in the Old Testament, but their role increased dramatically in the theology of the Second Temple period. And Jubilees was not alone in the insistence that angels (and demons) were actively involved in our lives.

5. 2 Baruch

In 66 CE, the Jews in Israel revolted against Rome. This revolt became known in history as the Great Jewish War.  The Romans quickly and with great malice suppressed the uprising. In 68 CE, Qumran was decimated (even though they had nothing to do with the revolt). In 70 CE, the temple was razed.  In 73 CE, the last holdout of Jews was defeated at a place called Masada. The books of 1 Baruch and 4 Ezra were written in the late 1st century CE, one generation removed from the destruction of the temple. Both books reflected on this terrible tragedy and sought to answer the questions, “How could God allow the pagan and despised Romans to defeat God’s people?” and “Where do Jews without a temple, without a land, and without any visible signs of the promise, go from here?” It is interesting to note that the real Baruch was Jeremiah’s scribe at the time when the first temple was destroyed (see Jeremiah 36), so it makes sense that a Jewish author after the destruction of the second temple would choose his character for his pseudonym. Who better could write about the destruction of the temple? 

It is also interesting to realize that when 2 Baruch was composed, parts of the New Testament were probably still being written. No other Jewish Second Temple books were written during this period.  Also interesting is the thematic overlap that we see between books like 2 Baruch and the New Testament. See, 2 Baruch is an apocalypse, a new genre of literature that was developed during this time. And if the word “apocalypse” reminds you of something, it is because the book of Revelation was an apocalypse. And an apocalypse looks into the future to answer questions of the day. Henze wrote: 

“The only way imaginable to repair the damage inflicted by the Roman destruction of Jerusalem was through divine intervention. Rather than dwelling on the past, 2 Baruch imagines a future in which God defeats Israel’s last enemy, restores Jerusalem, brings home those who are in exile, sends the Messiah, resurrects the dead, and ushers in a new, incorruptible world.” 

All of these are new questions that plagued the Jews after the destruction of the temple, but note how they answered them. They answered them by focusing on the future. Once again, the focus of some of the Second Temple books is on the future, a characteristic that is rarely developed in the Old Testament. New situations give birth to new thoughts about old theology.  

Here’s the point: the literature of the Second Temple period gives us great insight into the questions that were weighing heavily on the hearts and minds of the Jewish people during very turbulent times.  Many of these questions and themes (although perhaps not in the same form), are found in the gospels of the New Testament, but are not found in the Old Testament. So, without these books, we would be at a complete loss as to where they originated and what prompted their popularity. As we have been saying, the Second Temple period gives us insight to the world of Jesus that is nowhere else to be found. One more quote from Matthias Henze: 

“There is a long list of religious topics that we might think today have been debated in Judaism since biblical times. But a closer look reveals that we find either very little or no discussion of them at all in the Old Testament. It was only during the gap years that these topics became a prominent part of religious discourse. Such topics include the expectation of a Messiah, a divine agent who will come at the end of time to bring about the restoration of Israel, an interest in cosmology, demons and unclean spirits; a focus on the Torah as the rule book that defines Jewish practice and identity; a concern about what will happen to humans after we die; and the hope for the resurrection of the dead and the afterlife. These topics, and others, could be added, all have in common that they are virtually absent from the Old Testament, but emerged during the late Second Temple period and quickly moved to the center of religious debates.” 

And I find that very interesting. I may not know all that this means for how we are to understand Jesus and his culture and the issues that he addressed, but I find that very interesting. But one thing is certain: We can’t nap on the gap.  

Thanks for reading. More next week.