Dear Herb, Thank you for your insightful posting! I appreciate your comments on the appropriation/use, or misappropriation/misuse, of terms that are specific to a particular religious tradition. That being said, I am a little concerned that we are being a bit too quick to point the finger at one particular group, be they Jew or Christian. There is no denying that Christian thought has had a huge impact on the way in which biblical scholars go about their business, but many of those who have used words like 'halakha' to describe the legal material in the scrolls over the last century have either been Jews, rabbis, or both (i.e. S. Schechter, G. Alon, Y. Yadin, J. Baumgarten, Y. Sussmann, S. Schiffman, so on). If Jewish scholars use a Jewish term in a way that deviates from its traditional usage, as you have suggested with Schiffman's definition from _The Halakhah at Qumran_, is this simply a case of being influenced by Christian categories etc?
Although it can certainly be argued that we have all been influenced by Christian categories, irrespective of our faith or religious tradition, I am not sure this proves that the definition for the word 'halakha' has been similarly influenced. I suppose one way to answer this question would be for someone write a dissertation on the use of the word ‘halakha’ from its first usage to the present, but, seeing that I am already working on a dissertation, that person is not me! As Stephen Goranson has argued, the mere fact that Qumran scholars use ‘halakha’ to describe the legal material in the scrolls indicates that, at the very least, it is being used anachronistically, and, at worst, inappropriately. As I have stated in previous postings, I agree that the term is anachronistic but I still feel that it is an appropriate term when applied to the legal material in the scrolls. Contrary to what some may think, this is not a recent trend in scroll scholarship. Take, for example, this quote from S. Schechter’s introduction to CD in the _Documents of Jewish Sectaries_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), xii: “The contents of the MS are in their present state about equally divided between Hagada and Halacha ... The Hagada as well as the Halacha represent apparently the constitution and the teachings of a Sect long ago extinct, but in which we may perhaps easily detect the parent of later schisms with which history dealt with more leniently.” Admittedly Schechter does not argue that ‘halakha’ is a method of interpretation, but doesn’t his use of the words ‘halakha’ and ‘haggadah’ exhibit a deviation from their traditional usage? Obviously Schechter thought that it was appropriate to use the word ‘halakha’, but in doing so he widened the semantic range of the word in order to include writings beyond those of the rabbis. Others have agreed with Schechter and the meaning of the word has since been widened to include the legal material from Qumran and other Jewish documents. Furthermore, we have seen how the term has been widened even further in recent years to include methodological considerations. As long as we are aware of these shifts in meaning, and their possible/probable sources, is this evolution necessarily a bad thing? Sorry for the length and the delay in this posting! Best, Ian -- Ian Werrett PhD Candidate St Mary's College University of St Andrews ----------------------------------------------------------------- University of St Andrews Webmail: http://webmail.st-andrews.ac.uk _______________________________________________ g-Megillot mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/g-megillot
