Noam Mizrahi
CURRENT PROJECTS
(a) The preparation of a new commentary on the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (supported by the Israel Science Foundation).
(b) The construction of an electronic database that would collate and classify all linguistic and textual variant readings found in the biblical scrolls from the Judean Desert (supported by Georg-August-Universität Göttingen in conjunction with the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen).
Address: Department of Hebrew Culture Studies,
The Lester and Sally Entin Faculty of Humantities,
Tel Aviv University
POB 39040, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69978,
ISRAEL
(a) The preparation of a new commentary on the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (supported by the Israel Science Foundation).
(b) The construction of an electronic database that would collate and classify all linguistic and textual variant readings found in the biblical scrolls from the Judean Desert (supported by Georg-August-Universität Göttingen in conjunction with the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen).
Address: Department of Hebrew Culture Studies,
The Lester and Sally Entin Faculty of Humantities,
Tel Aviv University
POB 39040, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69978,
ISRAEL
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Books by Noam Mizrahi
Since the beginning of his career, Licht stood out for his sound judgement and incisive understanding of the apocalyptic mindset that characterizes Second Temple literature in general and the Dead Sea Scrolls in particular. He was also a prominent figure in the scholarly trend to study anew the other branch of Second Temple literature, namely, the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.
Licht’s personal biography holds in a nutshell the historical drama that has tilted the Jewish world between destruction and re-institution along the twentieth century. His scholarly legacy reveals the intensity of a renewed encounter with ancient—sometimes enigmatic—Hebrew literature, which wrestled with immense spiritual challenges, some of which find contemporary counterparts.
The investigation of a particular text has important implications for the textual and compositional history of Jeremiah as a whole. Rather than settling for the common opinion that Jeremiah developed in two main stages, reflected in the MT and LXX respectively, a nuanced supplementary model is advocated, which better accords with the complexity of the available evidence.
Papers by Noam Mizrahi
This is an abridged version of papers published in English:
Part 1: “Linguistic Change through the Prism of Textual Transmission: The Case of Exod 12:9,” in Advances in Biblical Hebrew Linguistics: Data, Methods, and Analyses, ed. Adina Moshavi and Tania Notarius (LSAWS 12; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 27–52.
Part 2: “Text, Language, and Legal Interpretation: The Case of Exod 12:9,” in Philology and Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, ed. Jan Joosten and Innocent Himbaza (FAT II.118; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 93–116.
Jer 10:1-16 is a prophetic unit that takes very different compositional forms in the Masoretic Text (MT) on the one hand and the Septuagint (LXX) on the other. Most conspicuously, the MT includes three hymnic passages (vv. 6-7. 10, 12-13), the first two of which are absent from the LXX, thereby suggesting their original independence and later integration into the prophetic unit. This study focuses on one of them, Jer 10:10, whose historical-linguistic profile supports its late date. The paper explores its literary structure—paying special attention to its stylistic texture against the background of Kugel’s seminal observations regarding the nature of biblical poetry—as well as the poem’s thematic content, theological message, and tracers of textual history. The latter aspect also explains the motivation for interpolating the poetic fragment into its present context.
Psalm 102, which belongs to the genre of individual lament, asserts that God “He will regard the prayer of the ʕarʕɔr, and will not despise their prayer” (v. 18 [NRSV v. 17]). The word ʕarʕɔr has been a crux interpretum for readers of all generations. This study reviews the history of its interpretation, paying special attention to one, surprising solution that is recorded in two sources distanced from each other in both time and place—the idea that ʕarʕɔr is a kind of worm, which surfaces in a Qumran Psalms scroll (11QPsa) on the one hand, and the medieval commentary of R. Isaiah di Trani on the other. Analysis of the sources suggests the possibility that despite the huge distance between them, they might reflect a single, continuous exegetical tradition, even though its channel of transmission remains largely unknown to us.
Cet article traite des termes démonologiques mentionnés dans les Cantiques du Sage (4Q510 1 4-6, en particulier ligne 5), tous dérivés d’une conflation de nature exégétique d’Is. 13:22 et 34:14 également attestée dans la démonologie rabbinique. En nous appuyant sur les conventions orthographiques de l’hébreu de Qumrân, nous soutenons que la lecture שד אים doit être préférée à שדאים : ce lemme doit être interprété comme comprenant deux mots. Nous avançons en outre que le terme אים doit être compris comme une orthographe phonétique du אִיִּים attestée dans le TM d’Is. 13:22 et 34:14, et que שֵד correspond à l’équivalent araméen de שָׂעִיר (au singulier, tel qu’il apparaît en Is. 13:14), conformément à une tradition documentée de manière indépendante dans le Targum Jonathan.
Since the beginning of his career, Licht stood out for his sound judgement and incisive understanding of the apocalyptic mindset that characterizes Second Temple literature in general and the Dead Sea Scrolls in particular. He was also a prominent figure in the scholarly trend to study anew the other branch of Second Temple literature, namely, the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.
Licht’s personal biography holds in a nutshell the historical drama that has tilted the Jewish world between destruction and re-institution along the twentieth century. His scholarly legacy reveals the intensity of a renewed encounter with ancient—sometimes enigmatic—Hebrew literature, which wrestled with immense spiritual challenges, some of which find contemporary counterparts.
The investigation of a particular text has important implications for the textual and compositional history of Jeremiah as a whole. Rather than settling for the common opinion that Jeremiah developed in two main stages, reflected in the MT and LXX respectively, a nuanced supplementary model is advocated, which better accords with the complexity of the available evidence.
This is an abridged version of papers published in English:
Part 1: “Linguistic Change through the Prism of Textual Transmission: The Case of Exod 12:9,” in Advances in Biblical Hebrew Linguistics: Data, Methods, and Analyses, ed. Adina Moshavi and Tania Notarius (LSAWS 12; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 27–52.
Part 2: “Text, Language, and Legal Interpretation: The Case of Exod 12:9,” in Philology and Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, ed. Jan Joosten and Innocent Himbaza (FAT II.118; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 93–116.
Jer 10:1-16 is a prophetic unit that takes very different compositional forms in the Masoretic Text (MT) on the one hand and the Septuagint (LXX) on the other. Most conspicuously, the MT includes three hymnic passages (vv. 6-7. 10, 12-13), the first two of which are absent from the LXX, thereby suggesting their original independence and later integration into the prophetic unit. This study focuses on one of them, Jer 10:10, whose historical-linguistic profile supports its late date. The paper explores its literary structure—paying special attention to its stylistic texture against the background of Kugel’s seminal observations regarding the nature of biblical poetry—as well as the poem’s thematic content, theological message, and tracers of textual history. The latter aspect also explains the motivation for interpolating the poetic fragment into its present context.
Psalm 102, which belongs to the genre of individual lament, asserts that God “He will regard the prayer of the ʕarʕɔr, and will not despise their prayer” (v. 18 [NRSV v. 17]). The word ʕarʕɔr has been a crux interpretum for readers of all generations. This study reviews the history of its interpretation, paying special attention to one, surprising solution that is recorded in two sources distanced from each other in both time and place—the idea that ʕarʕɔr is a kind of worm, which surfaces in a Qumran Psalms scroll (11QPsa) on the one hand, and the medieval commentary of R. Isaiah di Trani on the other. Analysis of the sources suggests the possibility that despite the huge distance between them, they might reflect a single, continuous exegetical tradition, even though its channel of transmission remains largely unknown to us.
Cet article traite des termes démonologiques mentionnés dans les Cantiques du Sage (4Q510 1 4-6, en particulier ligne 5), tous dérivés d’une conflation de nature exégétique d’Is. 13:22 et 34:14 également attestée dans la démonologie rabbinique. En nous appuyant sur les conventions orthographiques de l’hébreu de Qumrân, nous soutenons que la lecture שד אים doit être préférée à שדאים : ce lemme doit être interprété comme comprenant deux mots. Nous avançons en outre que le terme אים doit être compris comme une orthographe phonétique du אִיִּים attestée dans le TM d’Is. 13:22 et 34:14, et que שֵד correspond à l’équivalent araméen de שָׂעִיר (au singulier, tel qu’il apparaît en Is. 13:14), conformément à une tradition documentée de manière indépendante dans le Targum Jonathan.
The discovery of the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls had an incomparable impact on the historical understanding of Judaism and Christianity. ‘‘Piecing together’’ scroll fragments is like solving jigsaw puzzles with an unknown number of missing parts. We used the fact that most scrolls are made from animal skins to ‘‘fingerprint’’ pieces based on DNA sequences. Genetic sorting of the scrolls illuminates their textual relationship and historical significance. Disambiguating the contested relationship between Jeremiah fragments supplies evidence that some were imported from outside Qumran; significantly, they demonstrate that divergent versions of Jeremiah circulated in parallel throughout the land of Israel (ancient Judea). Similarly, patterns discovered in non-biblical scrolls, particularly the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, suggest that the Qumran scrolls represent the broader cultural matrix of the period. Finally, genetic analysis divorces debated fragments from the Qumran scrolls. Our study demonstrates that interdisciplinary approaches enrich the scholar’s toolkit.
This paper discusses demonological terms occurring in the Songs of the Sage (4Q510 1 4-6, with special attention to line 5), which are all derived from an exegetical conflation of Isa 13:21-22 and 34:14, also recorded in rabbinic demonology. Based on the orthographic conventions of Qumran Hebrew, it is argued that the reading שד אים should be preferred over שדאים and interpreted as comprising two different terms. It is further argued that אים is to be understood as a phonetic spelling of MT’s אִיִּים (occurring in both Isa 13:22 and 34:14), while שֵׁד is the Aramaic counterpart of שָׂעִיר (in the singular, as occurring in Isa 34:14), in accordance to a tradition that is independently documented in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan.
Since the published report in the New York Times included a very short segment of my actual comments, and in light of a considerable number of reactions that were either sent to me or posted in various blogs and websites, I thought it might be of some interest to present here the full text of my comment as it was sent to the reporter.
While my comment hardly meant to make an original contribution to the evaluation of the history of camels, as things turned out it seems that a comparison of the original and published texts may yield intriguing insights into the dynamics of textual transmission.
The spreadsheet underlying this printout is subject to periodic update as part of the research project "Revealing the Sealed Document: Revisiting the Qumran Isaiah Scrolls" supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF 1000/20).