Ok I’m thinking about this again in relation to other texts https://twitter.com/chancepmcmahon/status/1288996852638126082

So I’m writing a chapter on the symbolic import of the Torah and the politics of authenticity in antiquity.

I’m engaging with Schwartz’ argument that the notion of One God, One Temple, and One Torah were ideologically central. To what degree is this characterization a “metahistory” that anticipates the rabbinic movement as inevitable?

I feel compelled to write a section that at least questions the centrality of the Torah among all Jews even in the Second Temple Period.

In terms of the Hebrew Bible, my evidence is Esther and Daniel. Esther quite frankly does not associate Jewishness with observance of the Torah at all. Daniel is more tricky but only references the תורת משה in the prayer in Daniel 9.

Given a more I guess “conservative” reading offered by Collins that this prayer was originally independent and incorporated by the authors of Daniel 8-12, one could argue that the Torah is ideologically important at least for these authors.

Even then, that means the symbolic importance of the Torah is a later addition to the book. Perhaps this too is evidence of Seth Sander’s argument that Daniel is much more indebted to Aramaic popular culture than an example of “inner-biblical exegesis”?

(Even Daniel 1’s reference to consumption of pure food in the form of vegetables and water lacks precedent in the food laws of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14)

For Ezekiel, I’ve always wondered if the Book of Ezekiel doesn’t like Mosaic authority. It does seem to know some version of the P/H source and D source, both of which will become part of the “canonical” Torah

Even leaving aside whether the “bad laws” (Ezekiel 29:25-26) are references to legislation that we eventually encounter in the Torah, it’s interesting that Ezekiel never cites Mosaic authority even when referencing materials from P/H and D

It makes me wonder if Ezekiel is performing the opposite strategy of D, which is putting various laws directly in the mouth of a prophet rather than appealing to Moses

Ezekiel could be similar to but goes farther than P: Moses is a legit prophet but P wants to displace prophecy and position the priesthood (or P’s version of it) as a the mediator between God and Israel. Ezekiel is just like “what if we just didn’t talk about Moses?”

It would make sense from an exilic standpoint too—D and pre-H P are written from the vantage point of living in the land. The book of Ezekiel attempts to seriously reckon with following God in a non-autochthonous context?

What brings me back to this conjecture is Second Temple pseudepigrapha that may utilize various pre-Mosaic heroes (Enoch, Noah, Melchizedek, Levi) and utilizing them in some ways competes with Mosaic authority.

Now I don’t really agree with scholarship that argues that there is an “Enochic Judaism” that is necessarily anti-Moses. But I do find Andrei Orlav’s suggestion that these pre-Mosaic figures can be viewed as being in competition with Mosaic authority as a convincing one

At the very least, it seems to me that focusing on these figures “peripheralizes” Mosaic authority

And I guess even if the notion of a discrete “Enochic Judaism” is a wrong one, that strand of scholarship does force us to question that maybe the Mosaic Torah was not always central to articulations of Jewishness in antiquity

It may also connect to texts like the “Epistle of the Hebrews” of the “Gospel of John” that appear anti-Jewish (and not to dismiss reception history, have been utilized to buttress anti-Judaism) where Jesus functions as the “central hero” rather than a pre-Mosaic cultural figure

This makes me wonder if Ezekiel aims to do something similar.

Of course, Ezekiel is written before the compilation of the Torah, it is perhaps less “shocking” but what if there is a long “subterranean history” of Jews who aren’t as invested in the Torah as central to what it means to be an “authentic Jew” /fin