Ezra's Legacy and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Law and Narratives of Exclusion

从公元前587年第一圣殿的消失开始，此后的几个世纪里，犹太律法及其正确解释和实施的辩论在犹太教的出现中发挥了决定性的作用。关于犹太律法的要求，如割礼是非犹太人皈依基督教的强制性要求，在多大程度上存在分歧，这也是早期基督教社区在定义自己的界限时努力解决的一个重要因素（使徒行传15）。最后，律法的中心地位及其在不断变化的世界中的正确解释继续定义着今天全球犹太社区不同派别的身份。本项目探索了这段旅程中两个关键证人的证据：以斯拉-尼希米和死海古卷。《以斯拉-尼希米记》记述了一项改革计划，这项计划的灵感来自公元前五世纪的祭司兼抄写员以斯拉的使命，即把被巴比伦流放的律法带回耶路撒冷，并在人民中颁布其正确的解释。死海古卷揭示了大量以前不为人知的犹太法律文本。自从古卷全面出版以来，学者们开始将这些新材料整合到我们所知道的犹太律法的历史中，从《摩西五经》到几个世纪后编纂的《密西拿》和《塔木德》等经典犹太文本的出现。在《以斯拉-尼希米记》和《死海古卷》的全部文集中，犹太律法的性质和地位提供了一个丰富的、很大程度上未被探索的研究领域。到目前为止，死海古卷中以斯拉的形象缺乏明确的接触，这经常被认为是两种文献都来自彼此不一致的圈子。与此同时，学者们越来越多地质疑非凡个人的开创性影响的说法，他们倾向于认识到，重大变化更可信地被视为更大社区内持续复杂发展时期的高潮。通过将人们的注意力从对个人单干成就的描绘上转移开，比如在少数死海古卷中提到的以斯拉或正义之师，这个项目将揭示两种文学背后的圈子之间的一系列接触点，这些接触点迄今为止一直被忽视。我们还将密切关注排斥叙事，即我们的声音来源中被边缘化的痕迹，例如运动成员，他们的愿景和实践偏离了我们所掌握的文学中所倡导的主导议程。

Beginning with the loss of the First Temple in 587 BCE and for centuries thereafter Jewish law and debates about its correct interpretation and implementation played a defining role in the emergence of Judaism. Disagreements about the extent to which requirements of the Jewish law such as circumcision was obligatory for non-Jewish converts to Christianity was also an important factor that emerging early Christian communities grappled with in defining their own boundaries (Acts 15). Finally, the central place of the Law and its correct interpretation in a changing world continues to define the identities of different strands of the Jewish community across the globe today. This project explores the evidence of two crucial witnesses along this journey: Ezra-Nehemiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ezra-Nehemiah offers an account of a programme of reform inspired by the mission of the fifth century BCE priest-scribe Ezra to return the law from the Babylonian exile to Jerusalem and promulgate its correct interpretation among the people. The Dead Sea Scrolls have revealed a substantial number of previously unknown Jewish legal texts. Since the full publication of the Scrolls scholars have begun to integrate this new material into what we know of the history of Jewish law from the Pentateuch to the emergence of classical Jewish texts like Mishnah and Talmud that were codified several centuries later. The nature and place of Jewish law in Ezra-Nehemiah and the full corpus of the Dead Sea Scrolls offers a rich and largely unexplored field of enquiry.Until now the lack of explicit engagement with the figure of Ezra in the Dead Sea Scrolls has often been taken to suggest that both literatures emanate from circles that were at odds with each other. At the same time scholars have increasingly challenged accounts of the seminal impact of extraordinary individuals in favour of recognizing that significant changes are more credibly perceived as the culmination of sustained periods of complex developments within larger communities. By shifting attention away from the portrayal of the single-handed achievements of individuals such a Ezra or the Teacher of Righteousness mentioned in a small number of Dead Sea Scrolls this project will expose a series of contact points between the circles behind both literatures that have hitherto been overlooked. Close attention will also be paid to narratives of exclusion, i.e. traces in our sources of voices that have been side-lined such as members of the movements whose vision and practice departs from the dominant agenda promoted in the literature we have at our disposal.