Second Temple Literature
CD and 4QMMT

 

The 1896 discovery of the Cairo Genizah was one of the greatest Jewish treasures ever found. It has provided the world with the some of the most important documents of the medieval Middle East.

Credit: Jewish Virtual Library
  The Cairo Genizah
 

A genizah, Hebrew for "hiding place," is a depository for sacred Hebrew books that are no longer usable. Since they cannot be thrown out because they contain God's name, these documents, often called shemot or "names," are put in a genizah. Genizot are usually found in the attic or basement of a synagogue, but can also be in walls or buried underground. Non-religious documents can be put there as well.

The importance of the Cairo Genizah became apparant in 1896, when two Christians brought some leaves to Solomon Schechter, who at the time was a professor of Talmudic and rabbinical literature at England's Cambridge University. Schechter recognized them as the Hebrew original "Book of Wisdom," ascribed to Ben Sira. The Book of Wisdom became part of the biblical cannon (Ecclesiastus) when translated into Greek. Before its discovery in the Cairo Genizah, no known Hebrew version existed, some scholars even doubted its existence. Schechter led an expedition to Cairo where, over several painstaking months, he extracted thousands of pages from the genizah and took them to back to Cambridge. The sealed, dark room in the dry Egyptian climate allowed for the preservation the documents.

The Genizah texts are written in various languages, especially Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic, mainly on vellum and paper, but also on papyrus and cloth. In addition to containing Jewish religious texts such as Biblical, Talmudic and later Rabbinic works (some in the original hands of the authors), the Genizah gives a detailed picture of the economic and cultural life of the North African and Eastern Mediterranean regions, especially during the 10th to 13th centuries. It is now dispersed among a number of libraries, including the libraries of Cambridge University and the University of Manchester. Some additional fragments were found in the Basatin cemetery east of Old Cairo, and the collection includes a number of old documents bought in Cairo in the latter nineteenth century.

The Cairo Genizah documents include both religious and secular writings (mostly from the Middle Ages), composed from about 870 AD to as late as 1880. From a Second Temple point of view, the following documents are of great interest:

The Zadokite Fragments (Damascus Document (CD)).
Ben Sira (also known as Sirach or Ecclesiaticus)
Aramaic Levi (also found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The find consisted of six fragments in two manuscripts from cave 4 (4Q213-214). A small related fragment was also found in cave 1 (1Q21)).

The importance of Cairo Geniza for reconstructing the social and economic history for the period between 950 and 1250 cannot be overemphasized.

Damascus Document (CD) and 4QMMT

The Damascus Document (the Cairo Damascus document, CD) or Damascus Rule is one of the most interesting texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls because it is the only Qumran work that was known before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is a composite text edited together from different sections of a larger source, and scholars have attempted to place the different sections in a chronological order to generate a more complete work of the original using evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls. From the Dead Sea Scroll point of view it is also known as 4QMMT. Also known as the Halakhic Letter or the Sectarian Manifesto, is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered at Qumran in Judean Samaria. The manuscript is mainly concerned with the issue of the purity of liquid streams, a matter of great debate between the Pharisees and the Sadducees in later rabbinic texts.

4QMMT was found in Cave 4 at Qumran on six fragmented manuscripts (4Q394, 4Q395, 4Q396, 4Q397, 4Q398, 4Q399).

Provisionally designated "4QMishn" (Mishnah), it was later renamed as "4QMMT" (Miqsat Ma’ase ha-Torah or Some Precepts of the Law)