 Contributor(s): I find it important to remind myself, when there is an opportunity to do so in Jewish liturgy, that there are six matriarchs of the children of Israel recognized together as the “shesh imahot” in rabbinic sources: Sarah, Rivqah, Leah, Raḥel, Bilhah, and Zilpah. This is important to me because it is important to recognize that while the Jewish people are famously endogamous, we must also remain open, honest, and respectful of our ancestors who connected to our people through exogamous relationships. . . . Contributor(s): Contributor(s): Daniel’s battle with the Dragon, one of the apocryphal Additions to Daniel, is affixed to the end of the book in the Septuagint. The editor has here included a new vocalized and cantillated edition of the Aramaic text preserved in the 12th century Divrei Yeraḥmiel (Oxford Bodleian Heb d.11 transcribed by Rabbi Dr. Moses Gaster). The language of this passage is an odd synthesis of Targumic, pseudo-Biblical Aramaic, and even some Syriac forms, so the editor’s vocalization is aiming for a happy medium of all the possibilities. (In several locations Divrei Yeraḥmiel uses incorrect Hebrew-specific forms, probably due to scribal error. These are here marked as a qere-ketiv split.) . . . Contributor(s): The story of Daniel and the dragon held captive by the neo-Babylonians found in Aramaic in the Divrei Yeraḥmiel (the Chronicles of Jeraḥmeel, Oxford Bodleian Heb d.11). . . . Contributor(s): A short discourse on the necessity for prayer by the Stoic philosopher, Epictetus. . . . Contributor(s): The thirteen exegetical rules by which halakhot from the Torah may be derived, according to Rebbi Yishmael, included with the preliminary prayers before the Psukei d’Zimrah/Zemirot of Shaḥarit. . . . Contributor(s): The story of Shoshanah & the Elders, according to the text of Theodotion translated into Biblical Hebrew. . . . Contributor(s): The story of Bel and the Dragon according to the text of Theodotion, translated into biblical Hebrew. . . . Contributor(s): Psalm 151a is unlike any other psalm, because it is openly and clearly a description of David’s own life. He describes his childhood as the youngest of the family, and his anointing. It may have not been included as part of the Masoretic canon because this dissimilarity leads to just a whiff of pseudepigraphical overcompensation. [The psalm is designated Psalms 151a to destinguish it from the text of Psalms 151 found in the Septuagint. –ANV] . . . Contributor(s): Unlike Psalms 151, 154, and 155, the apocryphal psalms 152 and 153 were not found in the Judean Desert scrolls, but only in the Syriac psalter. It is thus somewhat uncertain if they were actually ever written in Hebrew or in Aramaic. But their language and content is in keeping with other late apocryphal psalms, so it seems very possible that they were of Hebrew origin. These reconstructed Hebrew texts are largely based on the work of Professor Emeritus Herrie (H. F.) van Rooy,[1] an expert in the Syriac psalter, also factoring in some input from the work of J. A. Sanders.[2] Psalms 152 and 153 are included together here because they are framed by the ascriptions as a pair — the former being David’s prayer before going against the wild beasts (see I Samuel 17:34-36), and the latter being David’s thanksgiving afterwards . . . Contributor(s): Psalm 154 seems to be a hymn of communal eating, very appropriate for the communal life of Qumran, but also features a very Proverbs-like anthropomorphization of Wisdom as a woman. Of the three apocryphal psalms recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls, this one seems the most likely to have been written with sectarian intent, which may have been why it wasn’t included in the Masoretic canon. . . . Contributor(s): Psalm 155 is an incomplete acrostic (the Dead Sea Scrolls text records it going from ב to נ, and the Syriac can be reconstructed to include up to פ) with similarities to petitionary psalms like Psalm 3, 22, and 143. It is unclear why it was not included in the Masoretic canon, but one can hazard a guess that it was just not familiar to the compilers. . . . |
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