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composed?
(b) Was the Wondrous Child a Qumranite, who had to be reared in what were, after all, manuals for a
sect 'preparing the way' for his advent? Fitzmyer thinks the reference is general, not specific, i.e., to
apocalyptic books such as the 'books of the living' in Enoch 47.3 or the 'heavenly tablets' mentioned ib.
81.1-2; Jubilees 30.22. This, however, I find unconvincing because, as I read the text, the three books
are something which the average man has to master in order to be educated, but with which the
Wondrous Child will be able to dispense. The books cited by Fitzmyer are, on the other hand,
heavenly books to which the average mortal would not have access. Need the number 'three' be taken
literally? My rendering presumes that no more is intended than 'two or three textbooks'. (The definite
form of the noun would mean simply 'the usual [standard]' textbooks.)
6. Reading hzyn and 'rkwbt\h\vri\. (I am not assuming that the incomplete verb was [ytkn]swn,
because the text has ]sn, not ]swn. My restoration is simply ad sensum.)
7. Restoring ad sensum, something like: wbabwhy wbabhtwhy y[tqp w'mhwn 'ark] hyn wzqynh.
8. Borrowed from I Kings 4.29-31 (of Solomon).
9. Heb. msrt, which can derive either from s-r-'/y, 'be rank, foetid, disgusting', or from s-w-r, 'defect,
turn aside'.
10. Probably also in the sense of inspiration.
11. I take these words to refer to God (an adjectival clause), not to the Wondrous Child; cp. Isa. 11.3.
12. This expression recurs in 'Zadokite' Document, vi.-15; xiii.14; cp. also Jubilees 10.3; 15.26; John
17.12; II Thess. 2.3; Gospel of Nicodemus 20; Apoc. Peter, Akhmim frag., §2. The reference could be
either to the rebel 'angels' of Gen. 6.1—4 or—I think more probably—to the generation of the Flood.
In favor of the latter is the specific use of the same word, 'corrupt', in Gen. 6.11-12.
13. Cp. Gen. 23.34; Ezek. 4.9. This is the modern Arab mujedderah, a compound of lentils, onions,
and rice stewed in olive oil. For the general idea, cp. Isa. 5.6; 7.23-24.
14. Restoring, ytbyn dy l[hwn].
15. Cp. Isa. 3.8.
16. It is not clear whether these words refer to calamities or to 'angels of destruction' who will come to
execute judgment; cp. Manual, iv.12; 'Zadokite' Document, ii.6; War, xiii.12; xiv.10; Enoch 53.3;
56.1; TB Shab-bath 88a; etc.
17. A class of celestial beings mentioned in Daniel, Enoch, etc. and, at Qumran, in the 'Zadokite'
Document and The Memoirs of the Patriarchs; see T. H. Gaster, in IDE, s.v. Watcher.
18. This sounds to me like a proverbial tag, 'Deeds, not words'. (The singular possessive suffix in the
following 'his foundation' will be distributive, i.e., we should restore something like: [klhwn] yswdh
'Iwhy ysdwn. The suffix in 'Iwhy ['thereupon'] will refer to the maxim.) A contrasting idiom occurs in
Enoch 94.6.
19. E.g., 'will vanish, be purged', cp. Enoch 107.1.
20. E.g., '[they will be like] any holy being or (like) the Watchers' (see above, n. 17).
7 - Virtue (The Wooing of Wisdom)
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Introduction
At the end of Ecclesiasticus (or The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach), in the Apocrypha of the Old
Testament, there is a curious poem (51.13ff.) in which the author describes how he pursued and
cultivated wisdom and exhorts his readers to do the same. In the Ancient Versions (on which the
conventional English translations are based) and likewise in the Hebrew paraphrase discovered, at the
close of the nineteenth century, in the Cairo Genizah, the tone of this poem is somewhat solemn and
priggish, resembling nothing so much as one of those polite moralistic 'recitations' which Victorian
school children were encouraged to inflict on their captive parents and friends at the annual prize-
giving ceremonies.
Qumran, however, has brought a surprise. Included in what has come to be known as the Psalms
Scroll—really, a more extensive liturgical compendium—is a portion of the same poem in its original
form, and it there appears as a series of artful double-entendres (1) (composed as an alphabetical
acrostic) each of which possesses an erotic as well as a moralistic sense. To be sure, the thing is no
Kama Sutra or Ovidian Ars Amatoria but still an edifying piece of exhortation-else it could never
have found place in the liturgical repertoire of a community of ascetics—and the author therefore
takes care to point out that, for all his ardor, he did indeed observe the proprieties. Nevertheless, the
imagery is far more sexual than has hitherto appeared.
(a) The poet begins by saying that already in his childhood, before he had 'gone a-roving', he went in
quest of Wisdom, and whenever he gained access to her, he explored her shapely form 'to the (lit. her)
limit'. Here is referring, on the one hand—with a sly erotic undertone
—to a children's game like our own 'blind man's buff', (2) in which the 'catch' is identified by 'feel',
and on the other
—in a less sensual vein—to searching for Wisdom and studying it, or to praying for it and obtaining
it, the words 'seek' (b-q-sh) and 'explore' (d-r-sh) being also technical terms for these more innocent
pursuits. Moreover, the allusion to 'going a-roving' bears the double sense of leave-ing home and of
straying from the path of virtue.
(b) Then, he continues, during his own adolescence, when the comely lass had blossomed into
womanhood-, 'when the buds became berries and the grapes grew ripe and luscious'—he still kept
company with her, but, because he had known her from childhood, he kept to the straight and narrow
and did not let himself be swept off his feet The relationship was strictly platonic; he enjoyed and
profited from her companionship and conversation (dulce loquentem Lalagen amabo, dulce ridentem).
The doublet entendre, however, again obtrudes itself: what he ob-tained from her is described by the
Hebrew word, leqah, which means at once 'learned discourse' and 'captivating charms'.
(c) In the succeeding stage the lady served him virtually as a nursing mother (Heb. 'alah): he drank in
Wisdom The fusion of erotic and moralistic nuances is, however again apparent, and the image is
admirably illustrated both by the famous remark of Juliet's nurse, 'Were I not thine only nurse/I would
say thou hadst sucked wisdom from thy teat', (3) and by the philological connection of the word
'sapience' and 'sap'. (4)
For this benefit, adds our author, he duly 'rendered his meed of hod to his tutor'. The phrase is derived
from Prov 5.9, which warns, en revanche, against forfeiting that quality by consorting with loose
women. Normally mean ing 'honor, dignity', it here bears the added nuance of 'thanks' (like the post-
Biblical hoda'ah, which is indeed substituted for it in the Genizah paraphrase), and it is no impossible-
seeing that Greek was a second vernacular in Palestine at the time when the Dead Sea Scrolls were
composed—that it carries also the nuance of the Greek time, 'honor', in the specific sense of
'remuneration paid to a teacher', i.e., 'honorarium'.
(d) Next comes the awakening of sexual desire. The poet has now 'acquired a zest for pleasure'-a stage
expressed by words which bear at the same tune the more innocent meaning of 'developing a zeal for
goodness'. He plans to 'take his fun without ever turning back' (or, according to a variant reading in
the Versions and the Cairo paraphrase, 'unabashedly'). He becomes inwardly 'on fire' for the lady, and
pursues her unremittingly. He perseveres in quest of her favors, the Hebrew word which is employed,
viz. tarahtl, (5) denoting at once the assiduous pursuit of his amours and—again more
innocently—painstaking absorption in study. He does not 'keep lolling on her heights' —an
exquisitely chosen expression suggesting, on the one hand, a supine indolence like that of the amorous
goatherds in the Idylls of Theocritus or the Eclogues of Vergil and, on the other, a lingering on the
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