In this collection of his essays, Aharon Shemesh sifts the legal documents of Qumran and the Second Temple Period to show the developments and continuities in early Jewish law. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, there was a large gap in documentation between the traditions and law recorded in the Hebrew Bible and the Rabbinic legal tradition in which the Talmud has its origins. Shemesh attempts to draw out the developmental links between Qumran and later Rabbinic Judaism.

While Shemesh distinguishes the Qumran community from later Rabbinic Judaism in its view of the ontology of divine law and receptive role of the jurist in discerning that law, he also uncovers surprising continuities. The Qumran community, which understood divine law to preexist human thought, preserved in eternity, took pains to connect its specific laws to the disclosure of divine law in the Pentateuch. In the Second Temple Period, however, the Pharisees, who were content to justify legal conclusions with the authority of tradition and custom, adopted other strategies in debates with the Sadducees, who attempted legal reform through a “return” to the biblical text.

In the context of this debate, the Pharisees developed new strategies of textual justification for their legal positions. Shemesh ably demonstrates how this tactical shift resulted in both the incorporation of the Sadduccean and Qumranic legal traditions into Rabbinic Judaism as well as the creation of new legal propositions within Rabbinic Judaism. What was once a technique for justifying customary and traditional law became a method of reform and adaptation after the destruction of the temple. Besides offering a rich and revelatory narrative of development in Jewish law, Shemesh shows in concrete historical terms how legal techniques, adopted for specific purposes, can become independent sources of reform and change.

CJM