A History of Research on the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls

Language and Dating

Much, if not most, of the scholarship on the Aramaic Scrolls, especially before the late 2000s, has been concerned with analyzing their language. It was not until Wacholder (1990) and later Dimant (2007) that scholars began systematically comparing the Aramaic Scrolls with one another on the basis of their shared literary features, phraseology, genres, and themes (see below). For the most recent, comprehensive overview and assessment of the history of scholarship on the language of the Aramaic Scrolls, see Machiela 2023: 326–75. For a short, helpful introduction to their distinctive linguistic features, see Cook 2022: 12–14 (cf. idem 1998; Sokoloff 2000; Gzella 2009: 66–68; Machiela 2023: 345–57). For detailed catalogue and analysis of the Hebraisms found in the Aramaic Scrolls, see Stadel 2008 (cf. idem 2010; Fassberg 1992). In what follows, I will highlight one of the most discussed aspects of scholarship on the language of the Aramaic Scrolls, namely, the use of linguistic features to date the language of the compositions in relation to one another. I will also briefly address how scholars have understood the relationship between the language of the Aramaic Scrolls in relation to other Aramaic dialects.

Kutscher, Sokoloff, and the Typological Method of Dating

It is very difficult to date any of the Aramaic Scrolls with much confidence because of their lack of both colophons and clear allusions to historical events or personages. For that reason, scholars have traditionally used linguistic analysis to determine their dates. The earliest and most influential attempt to date the Aramaic Scrolls on linguistic grounds was that of Kutscher (1957; 1958), whose typological method gained widespread support over the next several decades. Kutscher and his followers argued that the Aramaic Scrolls represented a transitional stage in the language between the older Official Aramaic of the Achaemenid chancellery and later forms of Palestinian Aramaic (Kutscher 1957: 8; Sokoloff 2000: 747; Fitzmyer 2004: 30). Their method involved using certain linguistic features to establish a relative chronology of Aramaic literature. Texts with more archaic features were placed chronologically closer to Official Aramaic, while those with more progressive features were placed closer to the later Palestinian dialects. A different but compatible dating method involves grouping the language of Aramaic texts according to chronological stages of linguistic development. The most commonly used chronological paradigm can be attributed to Fitzmyer, who divided the Aramaic language into five discrete ‘phrases’, i.e., Old Aramaic, ca. 925 to 700 BCE; Official Aramaic, ca. 700 to 200 BCE; Middle Aramaic, ca. 200 BCE to 200 CE; Late Aramaic, 200 to 700 CE; Modern Aramaic. For more on this approach, see below. For an example of how these two dating methods can be coordinated, see Fitzmyer (2004: 35–36), who, drawing on Kutscher’s typological analysis, labelled the language of the Genesis Apocryphon as an example of Middle Aramaic. For a critique of both Kutscher and Fitzmyer, see below.

For Kutscher (1957: 15, 20), the Aramaic of the Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20) could be dated somewhere between the first century BCE and the first century CE, that is, later than Daniel but earlier than the Palestinian targums (so also Fitzmyer 2004: 26, 29–30). Subsequent scholars continued using Kutscher’s method to date texts as more of the Qumran Aramaic manuscripts were published (e.g., van der Ploeg and van der Woude 1971: 3–4; Kobelski 1981: 26; García Martínez 1999: 456). Most notably, Sokoloff (1974: 9–25; 1979: 201–03) drew upon and further developed Kutscher’s linguistic criteria for dating the Aramaic of Qumran literature. He (1974: 25) assigned the Aramaic of the cave 11 Job translation (11Q10) a date between the Aramaic of Daniel and that of the Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20), and he (1979: 203) placed the Aramaic of a cave 4 Enoch manuscript (4Q201) chronologically after that of the Job translation but before that of the Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20).

Critics of the Typological Method: Wise, Cook, Gzella, Koller, and Machiela

Much of the early work on the linguistic dating of the Aramaic Scrolls was done prior to the publication of the vast majority of the relevant manuscripts. As more material was published, many scholars argued that Kutscher’s model of the linear development of the language from Official Aramaic to the later Palestinian dialects could not fully account for the complexity of the textual evidence. Scholars began highlighting the shortcomings of the typological method of dating as practiced by Kutscher and his followers, with some proposing to rehabilitate it (so Gzella 2009; Machiela 2023) and others advocating for dispensing with it altogether (so Cook 1992; Wise 1994). Even shortly after Kutscher’s initial studies, Rowley (1963: 129) raised questions about his dating of the Aramaic of the Genesis Apocryphon relative to that of Daniel, a linchpin of his typology. Following Kutscher and Fitzmyer, myriad linguistic analyses of the Aramaic Scrolls have used the language of Daniel and the Genesis Apocryphon as two poles between which to situate the Aramaic of newly published materials (see esp. Sokoloff 1974: 25). Rowley (1963: 129), however, concluded after a thorough linguistic analysis of the Genesis Apocryphon that ‘the language of the scroll is very close to that of the Aramaic parts of Daniel, though slightly later’. There was no linguistic rationale, in his estimation, to suggest that the Genesis Apocryphon could not have been composed in the second century BCE (Rowley 1963: 129; cf. Machiela 2009: 137–40). Cook (1992: 217) later questioned another linchpin of Kutscher’s typology: the dating of the Aramaic of Daniel to ca. 165 BCE, that is, the time of the book’s final redaction. Cook (1992: 217) argued that the publication of more Official Aramaic comparanda has confirmed, on linguistic grounds, the view of much historical-critical scholarship, namely, that the Aramaic Daniel court tales likely derives from at least the early Hellenistic period (ca. third century BCE) (cf. Machiela 2009: 139–40). Scholars (esp. Cook, Wise, Gzella, Koller, and Machiela) have also offered more fundamental challenges to Kutscher’s assumption of a linear development of the Aramaic language in Palestine from the Persian to rabbinic periods.

Cook (1992: 217) argued that the typological method did not sufficiently account for ‘the probability of orthographic and grammatical revision in the transmission of texts’. Nothing would have prevented later scribes from updating the language of a composition when copying it, thereby giving modern scholars the impression that a text is older than it actually is. He (1992: 217–18) also pointed to variations in different copies of the same literary composition as evidence that ‘Aramaic orthography did not follow a straight-line development’. To take just one example, he (1992: 218) noted that a first century BCE Enoch manuscript (4Q206 4ii.13, iii.16) preserves an archaic form of the genitive particle (זי), while a second-century BCE Enoch manuscript (4Q201 1ii.4, etc.) uses a more recent form (-ד). For Cook (1992: 218), the typological method does not adequately consider the role of individual scribal preference (e.g., conservative versus progressive) as an explanation for linguistic variation.

Wise (1994: esp. 117–19) levelled several critiques of Kutscher’s typological method, but his most distinctive contribution was his sociolinguistic argument. In his astute but acerbic article, he distinguished between the ‘high language’ or ‘written standard’, and the various ‘dialects of daily life’ that would have represented the spoken forms of Aramaic in Palestine. Literary Aramaic (the ‘high language’), he suggested, remained ‘essentially frozen’, and was the exclusive domain of the scribal elite. According to Wise (1994: 119), literate scribes were trained in the high, written language, but would have spoken various low dialects in their day-to-day lives, a phenomenon known in linguistics as ‘diglossia’. Wise (1994: 119) argued that from time-to-time scribes, either accidentally or deliberately, ‘would introduce a nonstandard Aramaic word or form into the text’. For Wise (1994: 119), what Kutscher and others have identified as later linguistic forms in the Aramaic Scrolls should instead be explained as the intrusion of the low dialects into the literary standard. Theoretically, these intrusions could have entered the manuscript tradition ‘at the time of original composition, or at any point in the continuous process of making copies’, and since the low Aramaic dialects were spoken in Palestine throughout the Second Temple period, it is problematic to assume that more intrusions are indicative of a later date or vice versa (Wise 1994: 146, 148).

Gzella (2009: 78) also criticized the tendency of Kutscher and his followers to assume a linear-historical model for the development of the Aramaic language in Palestine, and proposed a number of correctives to the standard approach: not to dismiss the typological method, but to refine it. One of his most distinctive contributions to the discussion was his contention that scholars should be more discerning when assessing the relevant data, since certain linguistic features were much more susceptible to later scribal intervention than others (2009: 63, 70). For example, what initially appears as an older form of the language may simply represent a more conservative scribal tradition with a preference for using archaic linguistic features. Orthography, in particular, was a poor indicator of the relative date of a composition since it would have been fairly easy for any given scribe to alter the spelling of a manuscript when copying it. Gzella (2009: 63, 70, 75) contended that morphological and syntactic features were much more, though not completely, resistant to scribal intervention, and should thus be weighted more heavily when dating compositions on linguistic grounds. It is not enough, he (2009: 75) argued, ‘simply to count “older” and “younger,” or “archaic” and “innovative,” hallmarks and compare their numbers according to usual practice. Most importantly, their respective weight must be asserted’ (cf. Wise 1994: 109–10).

Koller (2011: 199–200) contributed to the debate by arguing that more factors than previously admitted could have influenced the linguistic variety of the Aramaic Scrolls. Past studies typically explained the linguistic variety of Aramaic literature as resulting from historical development and/or geographic diversity, that is, by identifying texts as exhibiting traits associated with Old, Middle, or Modern Aramaic and/or with Eastern or Western Aramaic (see e.g., Beyer 1986). This paradigm was particularly amenable to Kutscher’s linear-historical typological method, but Koller (2011: 200) suggested that ‘a dialectological model which includes more dimensions of variation can accommodate the data more fully’. In particular, he (2011: 207–12) encouraged scholars to consider the potential role of genre or ideology in shaping an ancient author’s linguistic decisions.

Most recently, Machiela (2023: 345–68) put forward his assessment of the typological method, noting that previous scholars rarely indicated whether they were attempting to date the language of a literary composition (e.g., the Genesis Apocryphon or the Prayer of Nabonidus) or simply that of a particular manuscript (e.g., 1Q20 or 4Q242). This ambiguity reflects a tendency in past scholarship to ignore the potential for later scribes to either archaize or update the language of any given composition in the process of transmission. It is at least theoretically possible, Machiela (2023: 367) suggested, that another, now-lost copy of the Genesis Apocryphon preserved more archaic linguistic features than 1Q20. So even if Kutscher was right to date the language of 1Q20 to the first century BCE or CE, this would not necessarily tell us when the Genesis Apocryphon was composed, only when 1Q20 was copied. For that reason, Machiela’s attempt at a more sophisticated typological method begins with cataloguing every example of orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical variation across manuscript copies of the same composition (2023: 332–40). He used this data to draw the following conclusions: On the one hand, given the obvious examples of linguistic variation in parallel passages of the same composition, we should exercise caution when using linguistic variation to date different compositions in relation to one another (2023: 367). On the other hand, he contended that the linguistic variation in these examples is relatively minor, ‘with the most intensive loci of change being orthographic, such as matres lectionis and the scribal implementation of phonetic shifts (e.g., interdental ז changed to dental ד, or the interchange of ה to א due to aspirantization)’ (2023: 368). Scribes were clearly willing to make linguistic changes to the Aramaic Scrolls in the course of transmission, but he (2023: 368) argued that we find no evidence for a ‘full-scale, deliberate program of updating their language per se’. Machiela (2023: 367–68) concluded that the language of the Aramaic Scrolls falls squarely between Official Aramaic and the later Jewish and Christian dialects, and can be cautiously dated on linguistic grounds approximately between the late fourth and late second centuries BCE, with some compositions (e.g., Prayer of Nabonidus, Daniel, and Tales of the Persian Court) appearing to have been written somewhat earlier than others (e.g., Tobit, Visions of Amran, and Genesis Apocryphon) (cf. Schattner-Rieser 2004: 25).

Each of the scholars considered here have raised major issues with the typological method as first articulated by Kutscher and later Sokoloff, and would reject the confident manner with which earlier scholars placed the Aramaic of various compositions in a linear sequence of chronological development, but whereas Wise and Cook have jettisoned the typological method altogether, Gzella and Machiela advocate for more a nuanced typological method to be used in conjunction with other methods for dating texts (e.g., paleography and C-14 radiocarbon testing).

The Aramaic Scrolls and Dialectology

Scholars concerned with the dialect (or dialects) found in the Aramaic Scrolls are primarily interested in two related issues, i.e., the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the language used in the Aramaic manuscripts from Qumran and the relationship of the Aramaic dialect in these manuscripts to other Aramaic dialects.

On the question of linguistic homogeneity or heterogeneity, the two poles of the debate are well illustrated by the comments of Schatter-Rieser, on the one hand, and Cook, on the other. In her Qumran Aramaic grammar, Schattner-Rieser (2004: 29) introduced the material by saying: ‘L’araméen de Qumrân ne se présente nullement comme un ensemble homogène. Pour cette raison, il serait plus approprié de parler d’« araméen à Qumrân » plutôt que d’ « araméen de Qumrân » ’ (so also Koller 2011: 212–13). Cook (2014: 363), however, has drawn the opposite conclusion, stating: ‘I feel that the grammatical and lexical variation in the QA corpus, while undoubtedly present, is not suggestive of a wide chronological range … QA is a generally uniform synchronic corpus, consisting of a small selection of partially preserved didactic-religious texts written in a formal or literary register’. Machiela (2023: 367) has recently argued that whether one agrees with Schattner-Rieser or Cook may be at least in part a matter of perspective. The language of the Aramaic Scrolls appears homogeneous when ‘set against the broad sweep of Aramaic dialects, from Early Aramaic to Late Aramaic’, but when ‘we zoom in on Qumran Aramaic exclusively’, we are able to recognize ‘the finer discrepancies among texts’ (Machiela 2023: 367). As Machiela (2023: 369) has noted, we should not be surprised to find linguistic variation in the Aramaic Scrolls, since there is even some level of linguistic variation across texts written in Official Aramaic, which is otherwise widely recognized as ‘a remarkably standardized literary idiom’ (Machiela points to the magisterial work of Folmer 1995 on linguistic variation in Achaemenid-era Aramaic).

Various proposals have been offered for thinking about the language of the Aramaic Scrolls in the larger context of the development of Aramaic dialects over time. One key question is the relationship between the language of the Aramaic Scrolls and language of Daniel and Ezra (‘Biblical Aramaic’) within these larger classificatory schemes. This question will receive special attention here before moving on, because of its relevance to the rest of this article.

Scholars have presented different typological schemata of the historical and geographical development of the Aramaic language. One of the most influential is that of Fitzmyer (1979: 60–63), who divided the Aramaic language into five chronological phases: Old Aramaic (ca. 925 to 700 BCE), Official Aramaic (ca. 700 to 200 BCE), Middle Aramaic (200 BCE to 200 CE), Late Aramaic (200 CE to 700 CE), and Modern Aramaic of contemporary speakers. Our concern is with phases two and three (Official and Middle Aramaic). Fitzmyer (1979: 61) acknowledged that ‘some minor local differences’ characterized Official Aramaic, but emphasized its ‘otherwise striking homogeneity’ across vast geographical stretches. He (1979: 61) identified the Aramaic of both Ezra and Daniel (the consonantal text only) as exemplars of this phase of the language. As Aramaic enters into its third phrase, Fitzmyer (1979: 61) proposed that we begin to witness an explosion of linguistic variation across different localities from Palestine and Arabia to Syria and Mesopotamia. Here is where he (1979: 61) situates the language of Aramaic Scrolls (For an alternative, more complex typology, see Beyer 1986).

Machiela (2023: 368–72) has identified several shortcomings inherent in Fitzmyer’s typology (and others like it), especially the sharp distinction between Biblical and Qumran Aramaic. He (2023: 368) argued that, at a basic terminological level, the continued use of the categories Biblical Aramaic and Qumran Aramaic is ‘confused and untenable’, since copies of both Ezra and Daniel were discovered among the Qumran manuscripts. As Machiela (2023: 369) asked rhetorically, ‘How, then, can we speak of comparing Biblical Aramaic and Qumran Aramaic, unless we wish to cordon off the Qumran copies of Ezra and Daniel from the rest of the Qumran corpus based simply on their later theological (not linguistic) claims to canonical status?’. He (2023: 369) suggested, based on his own appraisal of the data, that the linguistic variation between so-called Biblical and Qumran Aramaic texts (e.g., Daniel and the Genesis Apocryphon) does not exceed the linguistic variation within both corpora. We have already seen, for example, that Rowley (1963: 129) noted just how close the language of Daniel was to that of the Genesis Apocryphon. Machiela (2023: 369) thus proposed ‘an emic, historically-oriented perspective [that] discourages the separation of Biblical Aramaic and Qumran Aramaic along later canonical lines’. Machiela (2023: 369) also suggested that the distinction between Biblical and Qumran Aramaic can potentially obscure the fact that Daniel and Ezra are very different sorts of books. As he (2023: 369) argued, ‘Ezra is an essentially Hebrew book integrating Aramaic documents’, whereas the Aramaic Daniel court tales circulated independently before being brought together and supplemented with Hebrew material. So despite both Ezra and Daniel achieving canonical status in later Jewish and Christian tradition, for Machiela (2023: 370), ‘Daniel is much more closely aligned with the rest of the Qumran Aramaic corpus than Ezra, even if the Hebrew-Aramaic edition of Daniel, as a final product, distances it from other Qumran Aramaic texts in important ways’ (For that reason, I will include the Aramaic Daniel court tales in my broader discussion of the Aramaic Scrolls corpus, given its close literary and historical connections to the other Qumran Aramaic texts. Note, however, that the distinction between Biblical Aramaic and Qumran Aramaic is maintained in some of the most recent and valuable resources on the Aramaic Scrolls. Muraoka [2011] does not include Ezra or Daniel in his magisterial Qumran Aramaic grammar, and Cook [2015] also excludes Ezra and Daniel from his Qumran Aramaic lexicon).

One solution to the terminological and methodological problems associated with the distinction between Biblical and Qumran Aramaic is the classificatory scheme first proposed by Greenfield (1974), and later developed by Fassberg (2010) and Machiela (2023) (cf. Sokoloff 2000; Flesher 2008). These approaches vary in some of their details, but what they share in common is a decision to identify the Aramaic of Ezra, Daniel, and the rest of the Qumran texts as representatives of a broader literary idiom that was later than (but closely related to) the Achaemenid chancellery standard (i.e., Official Aramaic). This idiom has been variously labelled ‘Standard Literary Aramaic’ (Greenfield 1974: 285), ‘Standard Jewish Literary Aramaic’ (Fassberg 2010: 67), or ‘Early Jewish Literary Aramaic’ (Machiela 2023: 375). Within this broader linguistic category, Machiela (2023: 374) argued that scholars ‘remain free to explore the finer contours and development of the dialect attested between the various compositions and copies, including the now-biblical works (traditionally, Biblical Aramaic) and those that did not achieve canonical status (traditionally, Qumran Aramaic)’.

Now, having dealt with the publication history and language of the Aramaic Scrolls, I will devote the remaining space in this article to some relatively new trajectories in research on these compositions. There has been a surge of scholarship on the Aramaic Scrolls since their official publication in DJD (2001 and 2009). Most of this new scholarship is devoted not to the particularities of their language, but to questions related to what scholars have identified as their distinctive literary content and social location.

Scholarship Before the Late 2000s: Milik and Wacholder

Interested students and scholars can find insightful early comments on the Aramaic Scrolls in the work of Milik (1957, 1959, 1978), Segert (1963, 1965), Beyer (1984), and Wacholder (1990). Of those scholars, however, Milik and Wacholder are the most important predecessors to the scholarship of Dimant, Tigchelaar, Ben-Dov, García Martínez, and Machiela. Both of these scholars have made several lasting arguments and observations that would be further developed in later research.

Milik (1959: 139; 1978: 106, 130) commented on what he understood to be the likely social and historical context of the Aramaic Scrolls. He proposed that these compositions were written prior to the sectarian movement associated with the caves and settlement at Qumran, and that they represented the literary heritage not of a small sect, but of various Jewish communities scattered across the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world. This view was based in part on his interpretation of the linguistic situation in the Second Temple period. He suggested that using Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Achaemenid empire, was a vehicle for the broad dissemination of these compositions, and may indicate that at least some of them were composed as early as the Persian period. He also posited a later nationalistic revival of Hebrew literature under the Hasmoneans as evidence of his pre-Maccabean, and therefore pre-Qumran, dating of the Aramaic Scrolls (On the re-emergence of Hebrew literature and the attendant decline of a Jewish Aramaic literary tradition in the wake of the Maccabean revolt and the establishment of a Hasmonean state, see Machiela and Jones 2021). Milik (1959: 139; 1978: 103–05) also noted that at least some of the Aramaic Scrolls shared a number of literary features in common, including their apocalyptic and testamentary character, their use of pseudepigraphic attribution, and their interest in the priesthood and the Levitical genealogy.

Wacholder (1990: 259–60), even more so than Milik, argued explicitly for the existence of robust ‘Judaeo-Aramaic tradition’ in the Persian and Hellenistic periods (ca. 500–165 BCE). For him, the Aramaic Scrolls were part and parcel of this tradition along with the Aramaic chapters of the Tanakh (esp. Ezra 4:8–6:18 and Dan 2–7), the literature found at Elephantine (e.g., Ahiqar and the Bisitun inscription), and a few other miscellaneous texts. Like Milik, Wacholder (1990: 274) also appealed to the idea of a nationalistic revival of Hebrew under the Hasmoneans in his discussion of the Aramaic Scrolls, postulating a rapid decline of Jewish literary activity in Aramaic concomitant with a re-emergence of literary activity in Hebrew in the mid-second century BCE (e.g., 1 Maccabees, Dan 8–12, Jubilees, and the sectarian texts from Qumran). Wacholder thus agreed with Milik in suggesting that the Aramaic Scrolls predate both the Maccabean revolt and the sectarian movement associated with Qumran. Finally, Wacholder (1990: 273) presaged the later work of Dimant and others when he encouraged scholars ‘to approach these texts in terms of their interrelationship, as opposed to previous patterns of studying these documents as discrete, self-contained entities’. Toward that end, he (1990: 266–73) highlighted some of the ‘generic and topical distinctions’ found throughout the Jewish Aramaic literature of the Persian and Hellenistic periods, including the Aramaic Scrolls, for example, a numerological system based on the numbers seven and twelve, dream-vision revelation, didacticism, an Urzeit und Endzeit eschatology, and a reliance on earlier Hebrew scriptures.

The Late 2000s Onward: A Brief Overview

For the rest of the article, I will organize my discussion thematically around the major literary features and themes that various scholars have identified as constitutive of the Aramaic Scrolls as a corpus, rather than providing a chronological review of the relevant scholarship. This approach has the advantage of giving the reader a better sense for the corpus and its defining characteristics. I have identified the work of the following scholars as making the most important contributions to our understanding of the Aramaic Scrolls as a corpus: Dimant (2007, 2010, 2017), Tigchelaar (2007, 2009, 2010a), Ben-Dov (2008b, 2022), García Martínez (2010, 2014), Machiela (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018a, 2019, 2021c), Perrin (2015a, 2015b, 2018, 2020, 2022a), Reed (2017, 2020), and Jones (2023). These comprise the majority of studies cited below. Other relevant studies include articles by Berthelot (2010), Collins (2010), Frey (2010), Stökl Ben Ezra (2010), Thomas (2010), Stuckenbruck (2011), Brooke (2019), Pajunen (2019), and Orpana (2022). Some of these studies were published in one of three different major edited volumes devoted to the Aramaic Scrolls (i.e., Berthelot and Stökl Ben Ezra 2010b; Bundvad and Siegismund 2019; Fröhlich 2022). Many of the other studies in these three volumes represent analyses of individual Aramaic texts rather than the corpus as a whole, and so are not cited in this article. Nevertheless, these volumes are invaluable resources, and should be liberally consulted by students and scholars interested in the latest trends in Aramaic Scrolls research. See also the special issue of Dead Sea Discoveries focusing on ‘Aramaic Literature and Language in the Dead Sea Scrolls’ (Machiela and Popović 2014).

Classifying the Aramaic Scrolls according to their Narrative Setting(s)

Dimant (2007) was the first scholar to present a systematic classification of the Aramaic Scrolls from Qumran. Her organizational schema has shortcomings as a classificatory system, as was quickly recognized by Ben-Dov (2008b: 35; 2010: 379) and García Martínez (2010: 435–36), but it set the agenda for later analyses of the Aramaic Scrolls, and offered some genuine and lasting insights about the literary character of the corpus. She (2007: 200–01) divided the compositions into six categories:

1. Works about the Period of the Flood

The insights of this schema include: the recognition of the prevalence of compositions associated with the prediluvian and patriarchal periods, that is, the pre-Sinaitic setting of roughly half of the extant material (2007: 201–02), the diasporic setting of some of the Aramaic Scrolls (2007: 204), the lack of extant Aramaic literature set during the times Israel’s judges, kings, and prophets (2007: 203), and the high concentration of certain genres in the corpus, especially pseudepigraphic and testament-like texts, visionary or apocalyptic texts, and court tales (2007: 202–04). However, this schema is of limited value as an organizational system, most especially because, as Ben-Dov (2010: 379) summarized, ‘While some of the categories pertain to genre … others pertain to the purported historical setting of the composition’ (cf. idem 2008b: 35; García Martínez 2010: 435–36). Her schema thus has the potential to create confusion about how to organize the material, since many of the Aramaic Scrolls fit the description of more than one category. For example, the Book of Watchers could theoretically fall under either category 1 or 3, the Visions of Amram under 2 or 3, and Four Kingdoms under 3 or 4. García Martínez (2010: 437) offered a simpler alternative in explicit dialogue with some of Dimant’s own insights, as well as those of Tigchelaar (2007: 261), noting that ‘the Aramaic literature found at Qumran is characterized by a predominant interest in ‘pre-mosaic’ protagonists or by a setting in the Diaspora’. García Martínez (2010: 436) certainly recognized that not every composition fit one of these two broad categories, but nevertheless argued that it was ‘useful for dealing with the Aramaic corpus’.

Machiela (2015: 249–50; 2018b: 92–96; 2019: 181) adopted and elaborated on this bipartite schema, reiterating the observation that a signification portion of the Aramaic Scrolls ‘are cast as narrative stories associated with either the pre-Sinai patriarchal period or the Babylonian-Persian exile’ (2015: 250) (On at least one occasion, Machiela (2018a: 92–93) also advocated thinking about the pre-Sinaitic compositions in terms of two different ‘sub-clusters’, that is, the prediluvian texts (e.g., the Enoch–Noah nexus) and the patriarchal texts (e.g., Jacob through Amram), thus dividing the Aramaic Scrolls into three distinct ‘sub-clusters’. This division, even here, is presented as compatible with the bipartite classification that he and others use elsewhere). Machiela (2015: 249–50) referred to compositions comprising this bipartite schema as the ‘core cluster’ of Aramaic Scrolls, and distinguished them from those which he described as a relatively small group of ‘outliers’, for example, ‘the Job translations, the documentary texts from Cave 4, the magical, physiognomic, and zodiacal texts (4Q560, 561, 4Q318), the List of False Prophets (4Q339), and perhaps some very fragmentary poetic or sapiential texts (4Q563, 4Q569)’ (cf. idem 2019: 170. These ‘outliers’ roughly coincide with the texts that Dimant associated with her fifth and sixth categories, that is, ‘Astronomy and Magic’ and ‘Varia,’ respectively. Like Machiela, Dimant [2010: 42] suggested that these compositions occupied ‘the fringes of the Aramaic corpus’, inasmuch as they ‘are represented only by one or two manuscripts’, unlike the members of Machiela’s ‘core cluster’.).

Machiela (2015: 249) argued that the compositions in this ‘core cluster’ share significant literary, thematic, and conceptual features in common. He (2018: 93) also noted that these two narrative settings, pre-Sinaitic and post-exilic, were both times when the Israelites and their ancestors lacked ‘an autonomously-ruled homeland’, and so may have been chosen by the authors of this ‘core cluster’ of Aramaic Scrolls intentionally as a way of drawing an implicit comparison between the precarious experience of Hellenistic-period Jews and their ancestral heroes, that is, the protagonists of these compositions. For these reasons, Machiela (2015: 249) suggested that the Aramaic Scrolls as a corpus represented ‘a loosely interrelated group of texts deriving from a distinctive group of highly-educated, Jewish teaching scribes from (or closely connected with) priestly circles, writing during the early Hellenistic period up to the middle or late 2nd century BCE’ (cf. esp. idem 2019) (On the pre-Maccabean origin and priestly provenance of this scribal tradition, see below). We find a similar if not identical understanding of the coherence and shared social setting of the compositions comprising this ‘core cluster’ in the work of several other scholars. For example, Perrin (2015b: 230) argued that the Aramaic Scrolls can be accurately characterized as a corpus, since he has observed that ‘there are sufficient indicators of unity across a majority of the constitutive writings’, and suggested a social location for the corpus in ‘close-knit scribal circles in the fourth to second centuries’ (see also Dimant 2010: 16; Reed 2020: 116; Jones 2023: 274–76). Other scholars, however, have been quicker to emphasize the diversity of the Aramaic Scrolls. Tigchelaar (2010a: 160) and García Martínez (2014: 22) have thus suggested that the pre-Sinaitic compositions do appear to share a level of literary and conceptual coherence that would warrant speaking of them as a relatively homogeneous corpus within the Aramaic Scrolls, but these scholars are more inclined to emphasize the heterogeneity of the Aramaic Scrolls when viewed as a whole, even as they acknowledge genuine differences between the Aramaic and Hebrew Scrolls from Qumran. (It is also worth noting that scholars like Perrin (2015b: 228) and Machiela (2018b: 96) recognize and account for the diversity of the Aramaic Scrolls, even as they argue for the overall coherence of the corpus. In some ways, as Jones (2023: 24) has suggested, the differences between these various scholars on questions of homogeneity versus heterogeneity in the corpus are a matter of perspective and emphasis).

Finally, it bears mentioning that Perrin (2015b: 229) has proposed moving beyond the classificatory model altogether. This decision was motivated by two observations stemming from his systematic analysis of dream-vision narratives in the Aramaic Scrolls (For more on his specific conclusions on this topic, see below). First, Perrin (2015b: 227–28) highlighted some linguistic and conceptual similarities that can be found throughout the Aramaic Scrolls as a whole, but second, he (2015b: 228–30) demonstrated that certain other linguistic and conceptual features were not equally distributed across the entire corpus, but were instead shared by ‘pairs or clusters of texts’. Certain of these pairs and clusters comprise compositions from both pre-Sinaitic and post-exilic categories (e.g., Tobit is in a cluster with the Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Levi Document), and membership in a given pair or cluster does not preclude a composition from participating in others (e.g., the Book of Watchers and the Aramaic Levi Document comprise a pair, but the Aramaic Levi Document is also in a cluster with the Testament of Qahat and the Visions of Amram). For those reasons, Perrin (2015b: 229) argued that he was not trying to replace one classificatory or typological system with another, but to replace these systems with a ‘constellation metaphor’ as a way of conceptualizing how the compositions comprising these pairs and clusters relate to each other and to the broader Qumran Aramaic corpus.

In his subsequent work, Perrin (2019, 2022a, 2022b) continued (1) to highlight the limitations of the bipartite model and (2) to develop the constellation metaphor for thinking about the Aramaic Scrolls as a corpus. First, he (2019) pointed to the Pseudo-Daniel traditions (4Q243–245) as examples of Qumran Aramaic texts that are set in the post-exilic diaspora, and yet engage with traditions associated with Enoch, Noah, priestly ancestors like Qahat, and the kings of Israel. By incorporating these traditions into their portrayal of Daniel, he (2019: 13) argued, the Pseudo-Daniel texts situate their protagonist ‘against the backdrop of [Israel’s] earliest foundational characters and essential institutions from both the patriarchal past and Israelite history proper’.

Second, he (2021, 2022a, 2022b) pointed to codicological evidence for the scribal practice of ‘composing or collecting texts and traditions on a single scroll in the Qumran Aramaic corpus’ (2022a: 124). As examples, he considered 1Q20 (a collection of Lamech, Noah, and Abraham narratives), 4Q204–206 (each of which is a collection of Enoch traditions), 4Q112 and 4Q113 (both of which preserve multiple Daniel stories), and 4Q542 and 4Q547 (which are better understood as originally belonging to a single manuscript containing both Qahat and Amram traditions; cf. Machiela 2021b). He applied these insights to his treatment of the cluster of compositions comprising the Aramaic Levi Document, Testament of Qahat, and the Visions of Amram, and suggested that these compositions are perhaps not best interpreted as ‘three different Jewish pseudepigraphal texts but as examples of the process of Jewish pseudepigraphy in a growing collection developed around the authority of priestly patriarchs’ (2022a: 126). Notably, this analysis has demonstrated the importance of material, scribal, and codicological analysis for understanding the Aramaic Scrolls and what it means to characterize these compositions as a corpus or as clusters of compositions within a corpus. (For another example of a scholar taking material considerations seriously in her work on the Aramaic Scrolls, see van der Schoor 2021, 2022).

Machiela (2015: 251) also sought to nuance his claims about the relationship between the various compositions comprising his two categories of Aramaic Scrolls (i.e., pre-Sinaitic and post-exilic). Some literary features appear in two or more pre-Sinaitic compositions but not others, and some literary features appear in both pre-Sinaitic and post-exilic compositions. As a result, Machiela (2015: 251) theorized:

There is … a distinctive configuration of themes and concerns in the Aramaic works. These are not always spread across a high percentage of the texts, but are regularly shared by three or four of them. What I find interesting are the different patterns of alignment of these themes, which serve to link different texts and text-groups together like links in chain, or like a group of variously overlapping circles … This creates differing patterns of association between two or more texts, though the overall impression is that such connections exist frequently, if variously, across the corpus.

This suggests that the bipartite classification, while a useful heuristic, should not be viewed as dividing the Aramaic Scrolls into two rigid, impermeable categories. Additionally, it is helpful to consider the arguments of Perrin and Machiela alongside an extensive scholarship on the affinities and points of contact between various pairs and clusters of Aramaic compositions from Qumran. Some of these studies are in explicit dialogue with the work of Dimant, Machiela, etc., while others predate or are otherwise independent of the above-cited research on the Aramaic Scrolls as corpus: the Books of Watchers and the Aramaic Levi Document (Nickelsburg 1981; Stone 1988; Wright 1997); the Astronomical Book and the Aramaic Levi Document (Drawnel 2006a; Ben-Dov 2008a); the early Enoch literature and Tobit (Nickelsburg 1996; 2003); the Aramaic Levi Document, the Testament of Qahat, and the Visions of Amram (Milik 1972; Drawnel 2006b; Tervanotko 2014; Hama 2022; Perrin 2022b); the Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Levi Document (Machiela and Jones 2023); the Genesis Apocryphon and the Book of Giants (Machiela and Perrin 2011); the Genesis Apocryphon and Tobit (Machiela and Perrin 2014); the Visions of Amram and Tobit (Goldman 2013); the Visions of Amram and Four Kingdoms (Machiela 2021b); the Book of Giants and Daniel 4 (Angel 2016); the Book of Watchers, the Book of Giants, and Daniel 7 (Stokes 2008; Trotter 2012; Angel 2014a; 2014b; Davis Bledsoe 2016; cf. Holmes 2019); Pseudo-Daniel and the early Enoch literature (Stuckenbruck 2001); Four Kingdoms and Daniel chapters 2 and 7 (Hogeterp 2010; Perrin 2015b), Tobit and various other Qumran Aramaic traditions (Perrin 2015a; Dimant 2017); the canonical Daniel court tales and other Aramaic Daniel traditions (Perrin 2019). The scholars responsible for these studies express a range of views on the relationship between the compositions under their consideration, but taken together, this catalogue of scholarship offers some sense of the complexity of the ‘patterns of association’ (to use Machiela’s term) at play within the Qumran Aramaic corpus, and it represents an important complement to the scholarship focusing on the Aramaic Scrolls as a whole (e.g., Dimant, Tigchelaar, Ben-Dov, García Martínez, Machiela, etc.).

A Pre-Sectarian, Early Hellenistic Literary Tradition

Echoing the earlier conclusions of Milik and Wacholder, Dimant (2007) argued that the Aramaic Scrolls were not composed by the Qumran sect, and cited two specific pieces of evidence in defense of this view. First, she (2007: 199) noted that the Aramaic Scrolls did not contain the distinctive ‘sectarian terminology or ideology’ associated with texts like the Community Rule, Damascus Document, Hodayot, or Pesharim. She (2007: 199) suggested, for example, that the sort of dualistic language and worldview present in the Visions of Amram was not of the sectarian variety, but instead represented a more widespread intellectual tendency in Second Temple Judaism. Second, she (2007: 202) suggested that the Aramaic Scrolls were written in genres not typical of the Qumran sectarian literature, such as ‘systematic reworking of narratives dealing with pre-Sinaitic times' (On the prevalence of this literary form in the Aramaic Scrolls, see below). Ben-Dov (2008b: 33) concurred with this view, and took it a step further, arguing that the Aramaic Scrolls were in general not just non-sectarian but pre-sectarian, with some dating as early as the third century BCE. He (2008: 33) also noted, like Dimant, that some of the ideas in the Aramaic Scrolls would be later taken up in the sectarian literature from Qumran.

García Martínez (2010), on the other hand, did not want to rule out the possibility that at least some of the Aramaic Scrolls were written by sectarian authors. Because the Qumran sect was almost certainly a multilingual community, he (2010: 435, 439) argued that language of composition could not be used as a diagnostic for determining whether a given text was sectarian or non-sectarian. We cannot conclude, he insisted, that a text is non-sectarian simply because it was written in Aramaic (For an argument to the contrary, see below). García Martínez (2010: 435) was also critical of the assumption that a lack of distinctive sectarian terminology was enough of a reason to conclude that a given text was non-sectarian. These reservations notwithstanding, however, his own comments seem to suggest that in general he viewed the Aramaic Scrolls as non-sectarian, insofar as he speaks about them as an external influence on the worldview of the Qumran sect. As he (2010: 447) argued, ‘These Aramaic compositions were part and parcel of the religious literature of the time. Their presence in the collection from Qumran shows us that this religious literature deeply influenced the thinking of the group’.

Collins (2010: 554), responding to García Martínez, expressed basic agreement with his methodological decision not to rule out a priori the possibility that at least some of the Aramaic Scrolls were composed by the Qumran sect, but he still contended that examples of sectarian compositions written in Aramaic ‘are hard to identify’. After considering two possible cases (4Q339 and 4Q541), he (2010: 555) ultimately concluded that ‘the claim that the Aramaic texts are of non-sectarian origin seems to hold true at least as a generalization’. Collins (2010: 561) also suggested that the vast majority of Aramaic literature from Qumran ‘appears to be pre-Maccabean’, an indication for him that the corpus is, broadly speaking, not just non-sectarian but pre-sectarian (cf. Ben-Dov 2008b: 33). Rather than reflecting the attitudes of a particular movement, then, he (2010: 561) proposed understanding the Aramaic Scrolls as ‘a segment of popular Jewish literature in the Hellenistic period’. Collins (2010: 555, 561) presumed that the Aramaic Scrolls were preserved by the members of the yaḥad movement because they were ‘congenial to sectarian interests’, but he downplayed their authority within the community, arguing that there is ‘little indication that much of this Aramaic literature was normative for the authors of the sectarian scrolls’ (cf. Machiela 2015: 254).

Machiela (2015) and Reed (2017; 2020) sought to build on this general consensus and explore the implications of understanding the Aramaic Scrolls, broadly speaking, as representing a Jewish literary tradition from the pre-Maccabean, Hellenistic period (ca. late fourth to early second centuries BCE).

Machiela (2015: 253–57) offered some reflections on how the Aramaic Scrolls might have influenced the authors of the sectarian texts from Qumran. He (2015: 254) first noted that, with the exception of Daniel, the Aramaic Scrolls are rarely ‘explicitly cited or alluded to in the Sectarian texts, compared with the texts that later came to constitute the Jewish and Christian canons’. This observation led Machiela (2015: 254) to conclude that the sectarian authors invested the Hebrew Scriptures with a level of ‘formal authority’ not shared by the Aramaic Scrolls. On the other hand, he (2015: 254) argued that the Aramaic Scrolls do appear to have influenced the sectarian authors, especially their worldview and their approach to scripture. In particular, he (2015: 255–57) suggested that the Aramaic Scrolls played a role in shaping the thought of the Qumran sectarians in the following ways: their apocalyptic outlook, their dualistic conception of reality, their angelology, their use of mystery language (רז), and their pesher (פשר) mode of scriptural interpretation.

Reed, first in an article (2017) and later in her recent monograph (2020), demonstrated that the Aramaic Scrolls have the potential to shed significant light on pre-Hasmonean Judaism. As she (2020: 17) argued, ‘Inasmuch as this material mostly seems to predate the sectarian community at Qumran, it opens a further window onto the Jewish scribal cultures of the early Hellenistic age’, an otherwise poorly attested period of Jewish history. She (2020: 104) highlighted at least three ways that these compositions can deepen our understanding of this era: first, the Aramaic Scrolls are sufficiently similar to each other and different from Jewish compositions dated to the Maccabean period (and beyond) to allow scholars to trace certain intellectual developments in Judaism over time (see, e.g., Collins 2012); second, while compositions like the Daniel court tales, Tobit, the early Enoch literature, and Aramaic Levi Document were known in various forms for some time, the Aramaic Scrolls help scholars recognize that these compositions were part and parcel of a much broader Jewish Aramaic scribal culture (see also Dimant 2007: 203); and third, a synchronic reading of the Aramaic Scrolls alongside contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish comparanda from the third century BCE can reveal the extent to which Jewish scribes participated in literary and intellectual trends that spanned the Hellenistic Near East (see also Perrin 2015b: 94–96). Reed (2020: 10) is specifically concerned with uncovering what the Aramaic Scrolls can tell us about ‘the emergence of explicit and systematic Jewish reflection on angels and demons’ in the third century BCE, but her methodological insights serve as a useful model for how future scholars can use these Aramaic compositions to illuminate various aspects of Hellenistic period Judaism.

The Hebrew Scriptures, Pseudepigraphy, and Sources of Authority

Scholars have frequently noted that the Aramaic Scrolls preserve a high concentration of narratives related to persons and events known from the Hebrew Book of Genesis (e.g., Berthelot 2010: 183; García Martínez 2014: 22). As Dimant (2007: 18) noted early on, roughly half of the extant Aramaic manuscripts from Qumran ‘concern the antediluvian generations and the biblical patriarchs' (cf. eadem 2010: 201–02). This observation has prompted scholarly efforts to clarify the relationship between the Aramaic Scrolls and the Hebrew Scriptures.

Dimant (2007: 2020) compared these pre-Sinaitic Aramaic compositions to the so-called Hebrew parabiblical texts from Qumran. (The term ‘parabiblical’ is ubiquitous in Qumran scholarship. In recent years, however, there has been an increasing awareness of its limitations as a classificatory category. Related terms like ‘rewritten Bible’ and even ‘rewritten scriptures’ have also been subject to sustained critical reappraisal. For the most comprehensive recent treatment of these issues, see Zahn 2020). As Dimant (2007: 202) argued, ‘While the Hebrew parabiblical texts rework more or less closely the biblical Hebrew text and elaborate or comment on it, the Aramaic writings treat the biblical materials more freely’. With the exception of the final columns of the Genesis Apocryphon, she (2007: 202; cf. eadem 2010: 35) observed that for the Aramaic Scrolls ‘the biblical version is just a peg on which large chunks of aggadic non-biblical expansions are hung’ (For a similar conclusion, see Ben-Dov 2008b: 50). Dimant (2007: 202) also suggested that the Aramaic Scrolls deploy specific literary forms (e.g., ‘pseudepigraphic testaments and discourses, framed in aggadic narratives’) with no parallel in the Hebrew parabiblical texts from Qumran. The conclusions of Tigchelaar (2009; 2010a) and García Martínez (2014) agree in broad strokes with those of Dimant, though they have each sought to further elaborate on the relationship between the Aramaic Scrolls and the Hebrew Scriptures.

Tigchelaar and García Martínez offer fairly similar assessments of the evidence. In an article on pseudepigraphy at Qumran, Tigchelaar (2009: 91–93) distinguished between two sorts of parabiblical texts: (1) ‘interpretive rewriting’ of existing scriptures and (2) new scriptures ‘which are implicitly or explicitly attributed to biblical figures'. The first category comprises what scholars have traditionally called ‘rewritten Bible’ or ‘rewritten scripture’. These compositions (e.g., Jubilees or the Temple Scroll) follow their scriptural base-text fairly closely, and are generally understood as a form of ‘interpretative rewriting’ (2009: 93). Of all the Qumran texts that Tigchelaar (2009: 91) includes in this category, only the Genesis Apocryphon was written in Aramaic (See, however, his qualification regarding the Genesis Apocryphon (2010a: 166). By contrast, the texts in his second category ‘do not primarily interpret or rewrite scripture, but present new compositions’ (2009: 93). Rather than following a scriptural base-text, they associate innovative traditions with ‘biblical’ personages, and thus ‘are the texts that are most commonly described as pseudepigrapha’ (2009: 93).

Tigchelaar (2009: 93–95) included both Aramaic and Hebrew texts as examples of this second category, but almost all of the pre-Sinaitic Aramaic Scrolls are included here. Notably, he (2009: 93–94) observed that the pre-Sinaitic Aramaic Scrolls differ from the Hebrew texts in this second category in two primary ways. First, he (2009: 94) argued that certain genres are represented in the pre-Sinaitic Aramaic Scrolls that are not attested in the Hebrew parabiblical texts from Qumran, namely, apocalyptic, visionary, and testamentary narrative forms (cf. Dimant 2007: 202). Second, he (2009: 93) suggested that the use of first-person narrative voice in the pre-Sinaitic Aramaic Scrolls also sets them apart from the Hebrew parabiblical texts. Scholars have frequently explained this particular literary device in the pre-Sinaitic Aramaic texts as an authorizing strategy, and in some cases that may be true, but Tigchelaar (2009: 93–96) demonstrated that the data are much more complex, and challenge the simple conflation of fictive first-person speech and pseudepigraphy. For example, he (2009: 94–96) noted that there is a ‘relative preponderance in Aramaic narrative compositions’ of first-person speech, even in texts that we would not classify as pseudepigrapha in the technical sense (e.g., Tobit, Four Kingdoms, Prayer of Nabonidus, Ahiqar, etc.). (In fact, other scholars have also demonstrated that first-person narrative voice is a common literary feature in the Qumran Aramaic corpus, occurring in both the pre-Sinaitic and post-exilic compositions. For example, see Stuckenbruck 2011; Perrin 2013; Machiela 2015: 250; Reed 2020: 117).

García Martínez (2014) offered a slightly different, though compatible, organizational paradigm for thinking about the relationship between the pre-Sinaitic Aramaic Scrolls and the Hebrew Scriptures. Instead of two categories, he (2014: 24) proposed three: (1) compositions that depend directly on the text of Genesis; (2) innovative compositions that nevertheless take events from Genesis as a point of departure; and (3) innovative compositions that simply appropriate personages known from Genesis. His first category basically corresponds with Tigchelaar’s first category, and his second and third categories together roughly correspond to Tigchelaar’s second category. García Martínez (2014: 24–27) used the Genesis Apocryphon as an example of how different parts of a given text could fit within different categories, i.e.: (1) 1Q20 21.23ff. closely conforms to the actual text of Gen 14–15; (2) 1Q20 19–21.22 depends on the story of Gen 12–13 but departs significantly from its Hebrew base-text; and (3) 1Q20 0–18 has some correspondence with the Genesis narrative but essentially appropriates ‘biblical’ characters (e.g., Enoch and Noah) to serve as protagonists in new narratives (cf. Tigchelaar 2010a: 166).

Both Tigchelaar and García Martínez also came to quite similar conclusions on the question of whether the Hebrew Scriptures were authoritative for the authors of the pre-Sinaitic Aramaic Scrolls (Their articles dealt primarily with the pre-Sinaitic, rather than the post-exilic Aramaic compositions). Both of them observed that these Aramaic compositions rarely quote, or make direct references to the Hebrew Scriptures (Tigchelaar 2010a: 163; García Martínez 2014: 23–24). This observation, however, did not mean for them that the Hebrew Scriptures were not authoritative for the authors of the Aramaic Scrolls, since a lack of direct engagement with the Hebrew Scriptures could just as easily be explained as an attempt to maintain the literary fiction that these compositions were written before Moses and the prophets (Tigchelaar 2010a: 163; García Martínez 2014: 24). Tigchelaar (2010a: 165) also argued that many of the Aramaic Scrolls ‘are visionary or prophetic, a genre that claims itself to be revelatory, and therefore also not likely to refer to other Scriptures’. Both Tigchelaar (2010a: 171) and García Martínez (2014: 40) contended that the Hebrew Scriptures were in fact authoritative for the authors of the pre-Sinaitic Aramaic Scrolls, citing as evidence their clear engagement with traditions from the Book of Genesis and their myriad, sometimes subtle, allusions to other scriptural texts. (Scholars studying individual pre-Sinaitic Aramaic Scrolls have frequently suggested that these compositions allude to or creatively engage with the Hebrew Scriptures. To take just one classic example, there is near unanimity that New Jerusalem relied on Ezek 40–48. So, e.g., Fujita 1970: 306–15; Jongeling 1970: 59; Wacholder 1990: 264; García Martínez 1992: 193; DiTommaso 2005b: 107–08; Tigchelaar 2007: 257; 2010b: 117. And while Tigchelaar and García Martínez are specifically discussing the pre-Sinaitic Aramaic Scrolls, scholars have also argued that some of the post-exilic Aramaic Scrolls, like Tobit and the Daniel court tales, are indebted to earlier Hebrew Scriptures. So e.g., Nowell 2005; Novick 2007; Segal 2009; Machiela and Perrin 2014). Finally, while Tigchelaar and García Martínez both agreed that the authors of the pre-Sinaitic Aramaic Scrolls viewed the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative, they also argued that these authors embraced other sources of authority, including dream-visions and other heavenly media, books associated with prediluvian ancestors like Enoch and Noah, and oral instruction passed down from father to son for generation after generation (Tigchelaar 2010a: 171; García Martínez 2014: 39–40).

Scholars working on the Aramaic Scrolls (esp. Reed, Peters, and Perrin) have also shown that these textual traditions have the potential to contribute to ongoing theoretical discussions on the practice of pseudepigraphic attribution in ancient Judaism. In the past few decades, scholars like Najman (2003, 2010) and Mroczek (2016) have advanced our understanding of Jewish pseudepigraphy in significant ways, challenging the notion that pseudepigraphic attribution was simply an attempt at investing new texts with scriptural authority by associating them with a venerable (or ‘biblical’) figure from Israel’s sacred past. This is not to say that pseudepigraphic attribution was never used to authorize new texts, but rather that this model does not exhaust the reasons an ancient author or scribal community might choose to compose pseudepigrapha. Najman and Mroczek have also explored how the process of pseudepigraphic attribution involved the expansion of traditions about, and a transformation of, figures from Israel’s past. The Aramaic Scrolls, as Reed, Peters, and Perrin have demonstrated, have the potential to test, further, and refine these new models of ancient Jewish pseudepigraphy.

Najman’s work on Second Temple Moses traditions introduced the language of ‘Mosaic discourse’ into the scholarly lexicon. She (2003: 11) called attention to how Second Temple authors participated in and expanded upon the Mosaic discourse in Jewish antiquity by portraying him ‘as prophet, as lawgiver, as divine amanuensis, as king, and as divine man’. To be sure, for Najman (2003: 16), contributing to the Mosaic discourse allowed Second Temple authors to invest their new texts with authority by associating them with the authority that was already ascribed to earlier Mosaic traditions, but this was not the only possible motivation for expanding and transforming traditions about ancestral figures. In her work on 4 Ezra, for example, Najman (2010: 239) argued that pseudepigraphy could also function as an act of ‘authorial self-effacement’, with ‘Ezra’ becoming an idealized exemplar for ‘emulation and imitation’ in the wake of the destruction of the Second Temple. The process of transforming ‘Ezra’ for the post-destruction audience of 4 Ezra involved extending the traditions about him, and depicting him ‘not only as a scribe, but also as a Mosaic lawgiver, as a Daniel-like dreamer, and as a Jeremianic prophet’ (Najman 2010: 239). Here, the author(s) of 4 Ezra participated in and extended the Ezra discourse so as to construct an ‘Ezra’ suitable to emulate and imitate after the cataclysmic events of 70 CE. Mroczek (2016), building on the work of Najman, also sought to complicate earlier treatments of Jewish pseudepigraphy, using the figure of David and Second Temple David traditions as her example. For her (2016: 53), Davidic attribution is not primarily about investing the psalms with authority or even about Davidic ‘authorship’ per se. Instead, she (2016: 53) proposed another way of understanding pseudepigraphic practices, namely, ‘to think of them also as effusions of historical, ethical, and aesthetic interest in a compelling character—as biography, not bibliography’. Mroczek (2016: 58) suggested that the practice of what we typically call pseudepigraphic attribution is not always a way to ‘confer authority on a text’, but is more often ‘borne out of the compulsion and desire to continue telling stories about a favorite character’.

Research on the Aramaic Scrolls, sometimes (though not always) in direct dialogue with the theoretical work of scholars like Najman, has much to contribute to this way of understanding pseudepigraphy, that is, as a practice of extending traditions about, and elaborating on the biographies of, venerated or exemplary figures from Israel’s past.

Reed (e.g., 2004, 2011, 2020) has emphasized the extent to which the Enochic traditions, including those found among the Aramaic Scrolls, attest to the development of Enoch as a character in Second Temple Judaism. Enoch does not emerge in the Second Temple period as a fully formed character, but gradually evolves over time as different textual traditions contribute to Enoch’s growing but variegated literary profile. There are certainly parallels in the characterization of Enoch across various Enochic pseudepigrapha, including his ‘reception of special knowledge through heavenly ascent and angelic revelation’, but Reed (2004: 47) argued that the precise ‘scope of this knowledge varies among the five originally independent writings’ now comprising 1 Enoch. She (2004: 47) noted that the Astronomical Book associated Enoch with ‘calendrical and cosmological matters’, while the Book of Watchers associated Enoch with ‘information about ouranography and geography’. And while the Book of Watchers (ca. 3rd cent. BCE) already ‘increasingly integrated’ its scientific knowledge with ‘eschatological and ethical exhortations’, the second-century BCE Aramaic Enoch compositions (the Book of Dreams and the Epistle of Enoch) witnessed the conflation of ‘heavenly secrets with ethical pronouncements, historical predictions, and eschatological prophecies’ (Reed 2004: 47). Reed (2011: 32; cf. 2020: 167) has also suggested that the Enochic traditions vary in their portrayal of Enoch as a writer: for example, ‘reading, writing, and seeing are associated at every stage in the transmission of heavenly knowledge to humankind’ in the Astronomical Book, whereas ‘writing plays a relatively minor role in the self-authentication of the Book of Watchers’. Reed (e.g., 2020) has shown that Enoch’s development as a literary character is not confined to the Aramaic Scrolls (see, e.g., Jubilees, Pseudo-Eupolemus, 2 Enoch, and 3 Enoch). The Aramaic Scrolls, however, do contribute several previously unknown traditions to the literary portrayal of Enoch in Jewish antiquity, including the Genesis Apocryphon and the Book of the Watchers, whose characterizations of Enoch differ markedly from those of the books now comprising 1 Enoch (see, e.g., Angel 2016 on Enoch in the Book of Giants).

Peters (2008; cf. 2011) and Perrin (2019) have made similar observations about the proliferation of Noah and Daniel traditions in the compositions attested among the Aramaic Scrolls. Peters (2008: 124) argued that in the Qumran Aramaic corpus, Noah becomes ‘an idealized archetype’ and takes on ‘greatly expanded roles’. In these Aramaic traditions, she (2008: 60) suggested, we witness a ‘conversation in process’, whereby Noah is gradually elevated to ‘full archetypical status’. Noah’s portrayal in these compositions was in part shaped by biblical precedent, but was also indebted to various Aramaic traditions about other heroes from Israel’s past, including Enoch and Levi (Peters 2008: 60). She (2008: 60) explained this phenomenon by suggesting that ‘biblical characters were easily interchangeable’ in these compositions, because their authors were less interested in doing ‘a character study of a particular figure’ than in presenting these characters as members of a ‘particular lineage'. This observation, however, does not necessarily mean that these characters were indistinguishable, but it does mean that the authors of the Aramaic Scrolls sought to emphasize the continuity of Israel’s prediluvian, patriarchal, and priestly ancestors. In summarizing the results of her analysis of the Aramaic Noah traditions, Peters (2008: 124–27) highlighted the fact that Noah was frequently portrayed as a priestly progenitor, a paragon of righteousness, and a recipient of divine revelation. She (2008: 126) also noted that this interest in Noah in the Aramaic Scrolls coincided with a broader interest ‘in biblical figures who, at some point, lived outside of the land: Enoch, Noah, Levi, Qahat, Amram, and Daniel’ in these compositions (see above).

Perrin (2019) has sought to reframe how scholars think about the various Daniel traditions discovered among the Qumran Aramaic manuscripts. As I have noted above, there was a tendency in past research to assume that the non-canonical Aramaic Daniel traditions (esp. 4Q243–245, the so-called Pseudo-Daniel texts) were dependent upon the biblical Book of Daniel. Perrin (2019: 9), however, has argued that the literary relationship between the Pseudo-Daniel texts and the Book of Daniel is difficult to establish, and more importantly that the Aramaic Daniel traditions from Qumran (both canonical and non-canonical) ‘do not seem to be crafted upon a clear antecedent, a “book” of Daniel. Rather, they are oriented around a figure: Daniel’. Thus, the ‘core’ of the early Daniel tradition ‘is a character, not a particular text within that tradition’ (Perrin 2019: 25). As he (2019: 25) proposed, the Jewish scribes responsible for the Aramaic Daniel traditions did not necessarily rewrite earlier Daniel narratives, but instead ‘cast Daniel in several scenes and stories and, therefore, cultivated a dynamic persona for the figure that worked itself out differently in different narrative settings’. Perrin (2019: 13; cf. 2015b: 237) has also noted that, though ‘Daniel is a relative latecomer to Israelite tradition’, the Aramaic Daniel literature bears a close resemblance to the Qumran Aramaic pseudepigrapha, inasmuch as both corpora are more interested in developing new traditions about particular characters (e.g., Enoch, Noah, Levi, etc.) than in rewriting a specific base-text (see above). He (2019: 19–20) also drew attention to the fact that ‘Daniel’s association with booklore’ invites comparison with the ‘redrawn portraits of ancestors’ in the rest of the Aramaic Scrolls, who are frequently characterized as possessing scribal skills and transmitting written knowledge (see below).

Apocalyptic Literature and the Aramaic Scrolls

Before research on the Aramaic Scrolls began in earnest, most scholars assumed that the Daniel 7–12 and the books comprising 1 Enoch represented the earliest Jewish apocalypses. Even now, Enochic and the now-canonical Daniel traditions tend to dominate scholarly treatments of early apocalyptic literature.

Already in 2007, however, Dimant recognized that the Aramaic Scrolls had contributed previously unknown compositions to the apocalyptic repertoire, and could thus offer new insights to the study of the ‘origins and background of Jewish apocalyptic literature’ (204). In that article, she (2007: 201) focused her attention on the compositions in her third classificatory category ‘Visionary Compositions’, that is, the New Jerusalem, Four Kingdoms, the Apocryphon of Daniel, the Words of Michael, the Birth of Noah, the Apocryphon of Levi^a–b?, and Pseudo-Daniel^a–c. She (2007: 203–04) characterized these compositions as ‘a complex of Aramaic visionary apocalyptic tales’, and described their most distinctive feature as ‘visionary scenes, often dealing with figures and events of the eschaton’. Notably, she did not include any of the compositions from her first or second categories (e.g., 1 Enoch or the Visions of Amram) in this discussion of Aramaic apocalyptic literature, an indication of the limits of her classificatory scheme, though she (2010: 36) did note, in a follow-up article, that the ‘predictive dream-vision’ is also one of the unifying features of the prediluvian and patriarchal compositions, for example, 1 Enoch, Book of Giants, Aramaic Levi Document, Visions of Amram, and Genesis Apocryphon.

García Martínez (2010: 438), building on Dimant’s observations, also recognized the importance of the Aramaic Scrolls for the study of Jewish apocalyptic literature, arguing that there was a ‘predominant interest in apocalypticism’ throughout the corpus. After a brief overview of the relevant material, he (2010: 438) concluded that ‘a disproportionately large amount of these Aramaic compositions show an apocalyptic outlook’. He (2010: 438) clarified his comments by distinguishing between the apocalypse as a genre (as defined by Semeia 14) and compositions that, though not apocalypses in terms of their genre, nevertheless display an apocalyptic worldview. The Aramaic Scrolls, in his estimation, did preserve a handful of previously unknown apocalypses, but even more of them were representatives of the latter category: compositions with an apocalyptic worldview (cf. DiTommaso 2010: 456–57).

Collins (2010: 555–56) was critical of this way of distinguishing between apocalypse as a literary genre and apocalypticism as worldview. Any composition, corpus, or worldview bearing the label ‘apocalyptic’, in his view, needs to reflect the ‘conceptual framework’ of the genre apocalypse, including mediated divine revelation and an eschatological horizon. Because many of these compositions lack one or both of these features, Collins (2010: 558) was unwilling to classify the Aramaic Scrolls as an apocalyptic corpus. This conclusion, however, did not mean that he considered the Aramaic Scrolls irrelevant for the study of the apocalyptic genre or worldview. He (2010: 558) in fact argued that the Aramaic Scrolls have the potential to shed light on ‘the kind of milieu in which the earliest apocalyptic writings developed’. Highlighting just three examples, Collins (2010: 558–59) suggested that Aramaic Scrolls demonstrated that this milieu could be characterized by an interest in scientific (or at least quasi-scientific) speculation, esotericism or secrecy, and Babylonian and Persian lore. (For more on the last example, see below).

Machiela (2014: 116) offered some reflections on Collins’ insistance that terms like ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘apocalypticism’ ‘must be controlled by a defined group of texts that are widely agreed to be apocalypses’. Most notably, he (2014: 116) argued that a rigid adherence to a pre-established definition of ‘apocalypse’ (Semeia 14 or otherwise) when analyzing previously unknown compositions can prevent us from ‘re-jigging the base definition of our constructed genre’. According to Machiela (2014: 115–16), a focus on identifying compositions conforming to the Semeia 14 definition of apocalypse has in effect ensured that the ‘special connection between the Aramaic writings from Qumran and apocalypticism (or an apocalyptic worldview) … is widely underappreciated’. In response, he (2014: 115) offered a survey of all the compositions in the Qumran Aramaic corpus that he identified as having apocalyptic attributes so as to ‘draw further attention to the prominent apocalyptic character of this group of texts’. After his survey, Machiela (2014: 134) concluded that ‘the beginning of Jewish apocalyptic is to be found … in the Jewish Aramaic literature of the late Persian and Hellenistic periods’, since in this corpus are both the earliest exemplars of the genre apocalypse and compositions that blend apocalyptic features with other literary forms. For that reason, he (2014: 134) argued that the Aramaic Scrolls may represent an early stage in genre’s development prior to the emergence of ‘later, more “pure” examples of the genre apocalypse, at least as defined by Collins and others (e.g., 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, and Apocalypse of Abraham.)’ (For a more general discussion of the relationship between the Aramaic Scrolls and early apocalyptic literature, see Machiela 2016).

DiTommaso (2010: 453) was similarly critical of allowing the genre apocalypse to function as ‘the touchstone by which the other phenomena were defined’, that is, apocalyptic eschatology and apocalypticism as a worldview. He (2010: 435) argued, for example, ‘The primacy accorded to the genre … precipitated minimalist definitions of apocalypticism as, e.g., the worldview of the movements that share the conceptual framework of the apocalypses’. He (2010: 454) thus proposed that future scholars should shift their focus from the genre ‘to the worldview, since both apocalyptic literature and eschatology devolve from apocalypticism, a hierarchy which any modification of the taxonomy must reflect’. In the rest of the essay, DiTommaso (2010: 454) sought to work out ‘a new general theory of apocalypticism’. For our purposes, it is most relevant to note that he (2010: 456) emphasized the significance of the Aramaic Scrolls for any scholarly theory of apocalypticism, especially its earliest historical iteration(s). As he (2010: 456) noted, ‘Of the ninety-odd Aramaic manuscripts recovered from the Dead Sea caves that contain literary compositions sufficiently preserved to warrant identification, approximately two-thirds contain portions of either formal apocalypses or texts that are otherwise constitutionally informed by the fundamental axioms of apocalypticism’ (DiTommaso’s study differs from the others cited in this section, insofar as it is not primarily a discussion centered on how the Aramaic Scrolls contribute to the study of apocalypticism. Instead, he sought to integrate the Aramaic Scrolls into a much broader treatment of apocalypticism as a worldview).

Perrin (2015b) made a major contribution to the discussion of apocalyptic literature and the Aramaic Scrolls in his monograph on dream-vision revelation in the Qumran Aramaic corpus (see also idem 2018). His study was a comprehensive analysis of the idiomatic, thematic, and conceptual features associated with visionary experiences throughout the Aramaic Scrolls. In it, he (2015b: 227) demonstrated that ‘dream-vision revelation figured in twenty identifiable compositions among the some twenty-nine narrative works fragmentarily attested among the Qumran Aramaic collection’. The prevalence of this sort of revelation in the Qumran Aramaic corpus led Perrin (2015b: 238) to propose four ways that these compositions can potentially shed light on ‘the origins and development of the apocalyptic genre and worldview in the Second Temple period’. First, he (2015b: 243) argued that the Aramaic Scrolls can help to further solidify the connection between apocalyptic literature and dream-vision revelation. Second, he (2015b: 245) noted that many of the dream-vision pericopae in the Aramaic Scrolls are not standalone compositions, but are situated within texts representing various genres. For that reason, he (2015b: 245) contended that scholars interested in the development of apocalyptic literature cannot limit themselves to studying ‘those works that in their entirety comprise an apocalypse', but must also focus on ‘the important examples of embedded apocalypses’. Third, he (2015b: 245) drew attention to the prominence of dream-visions related to the priesthood in the Aramaic Scrolls, and suggested adding a category of ‘apocalypses with strong priestly bents and concerns' alongside the standard categories of otherworldly journeys and historical apocalypses (see the discussion of the priesthood and the Aramaic Scrolls below). Finally, he (2015b: 245–46) argued that, given the historiographic interests on display throughout the corpus, the Aramaic Scrolls ‘are integral to tracing the lineage of the historical apocalypse in particular’.

The Priesthood, Sacrificial Cult, and Temple

Scholars writing as early as Milik (1959: 139; 1978: 103) have recognized that at least some of the Aramaic Scrolls display an interest in priestly matters, for example, Levitical genealogy, sacrificial instruction, purity, and temple worship. The vast majority of these studies, however, dealt primarily with one or two compositions (esp. the early Enoch literature and/or the Aramaic Levi Document), and did not seek to situate them within their broader Qumran Aramaic context (see, e.g., Suter 1979, 2007; Kugler 1997; Schiffman 2005; Himmelfarb 2007, 2013; Loader 2007) (Much research on the priesthood in the early Enoch literature and the Aramaic Levi Document argues that these compositions were written as polemical treatises in opposition to the contemporary priests in Jerusalem. For a critique of this view, see Jones 2023 and the discussion below). Some scholars have also posited a literary relationship between the Aramaic Levi Document, the Testament of Qahat, and Visions of Amram on the basis of their shared interests in the priesthood (see e.g., Milik 1972; Drawnel 2006b; Tervanotko 2014; Perrin 2022b). (Machiela [2021a] has suggested that 4Q542 originally belonged to 4Q547, and thus may in fact be not a copy of a separate composition, i.e., the Testament of Qahat, but a previously unattested section of the Visions of Amram).

More recently, Perrin (2015b), Machiela (2019), and Jones (2023) have suggested that an interest in the priesthood and its associated institutions (e.g., sacrificial worship and the temple) is one of the constitutive features of the Aramaic Scrolls as a corpus, with the three of them proposing that these compositions were likely written by priests associated with the Jerusalem temple. However, for an article contesting the prominence of priestly themes in the Aramaic Scrolls, and disputing their purported origin in priestly circles, contra Perrin, Machiela, and Jones, see Orpana 2022.

Perrin (2015b: 229) argued that a major cluster of Qumran Aramaic compositions, including the Enochic Astronomical Book, the Testament of Jacob?, New Jerusalem, the Aramaic Levi Document, the Apocryphon of Levi^b?, and the Visions of Amram, used dream-vision revelation as a means of ‘advancing priestly concepts and concerns’. Some of the main themes predominating this cluster of compositions include calendrical science, priestly lineage, proper sacrificial procedure, temple architecture, and the role of priests in ushering in the eschatological age (see the summaries in Perrin 2015b: 188–89, 229). He (2015b: 245) gestured toward the implications of these observations in the conclusion to his monograph, and developed them further in a later article (2018). Perrin (2015b: 245) noted that the Aramaic Scrolls ‘provide important evidence for priestly application of apocalyptic revelation in the mid Second Temple period’, and on this basis advocated that ‘in addition to parcelling out the apocalypses into otherworldly journeys or historical apocalypses (a la Collins), a space should be reserved for apocalypses with strong priestly bents and concerns’ (cf. idem 2018: 128–31). These ‘priestly apocalypses’, he (2018: 131) argued, provide evidence of an early Jewish apocalyptic tradition wherein ‘priests played a central role in otherworldly revelation and in the eschaton’ (For a more general discussion of the contribution of the Aramaic Scrolls to scholarly understandings of early apocalyptic literature, see above). When thinking about the social location of the corpus, Perrin (2015b: 230) noted that ‘it would be without precedent in the ancient world to have this sort of revelatory writing originate outside of a priestly group in some proximity to a temple’. One avenue for future scholars to explore, he (2015b: 232–33) suggested, is whether ‘priestly teachers’ used these Aramaic compositions as instructional material in the context of the synagogue.

Machiela (2019: 183–85) has argued that the Aramaic Scrolls were probably authored by priests, a claim that he based on two observations about the compositions in the corpus, namely, their high literary character and their overwhelming interest in the priesthood and its associated institutions. First, he (2019: 183–84) contended that the composing works of literature as sophisticated as the Aramaic Scrolls would have required the sort of advanced education available to only a tiny scribal elite comprising less than one percent of the Judaean population. Machiela (2019: 184; cf. Jones 2023: 264–65) noted that priests, while not the only well-educated members of Judaean society, were among the most likely to have achieved elite levels of literacy. Second, he (2019: 184–85; cf. Jones 2023) highlighted the preponderance of Qumran Aramaic texts with an interest in Israel’s priestly ancestors (Levi, Qahat, Amram, and Aaron), the sacrificial cult, and Jerusalem temple. Machiela (2019: 180) suggested that the priestly authors of the Aramaic Scrolls sought to develop a literary tradition aimed at reaching their compatriots in Judaea and the diaspora, to offer them ‘a paradigm for how to live in a way faithful to their God and his laws in light of the challenging political and cultural conditions that prevailed under the Persians and/or Greeks’ and to ‘reinforce the legitimacy of the Aaronic priesthood and its teachings’.

Jones (2023) recently published a monograph on literary representations of the priesthood, sacrificial cult, and temple in the Aramaic Scrolls (a revised version of his 2020 McMaster dissertation). It is the first comprehensive and systematic investigation of priestly themes and concerns in the Qumran Aramaic corpus. He (2023: 225–26) argued that interest in the priesthood and its associated institutions could be found in at least fourteen, or roughly half, of the identifiable compositions comprising the Qumran Aramaic corpus, especially (though not exclusively) those associated with Jacob, Levi, Qahat, and Amram (i.e., the Testament of Jacob?, New Jerusalem, the Aramaic Levi Document, the Apocryphon of Levi^b?, the Testament of Qahat, and the Visions of Amram). After a lengthy literary analysis of the relevant data, Jones (2023: 195) sought both to demonstrate that ‘the Aramaic Scrolls, when considered together, offer a consistent conception of the priesthood, cult, and temple’, and ‘to situate the Aramaic Scrolls within their socio-historical context’. Of his various arguments, the most noteworthy was his claim that previous scholars have often mischaracterized the Aramaic Scrolls, including the early Enoch literature, the Aramaic Levi Document, and the Visions of Amram, as advancing a polemical attack on the contemporary Jerusalem priesthood. By way of contrast, Jones (2023: 243) suggested that ‘those responsible for composing these Aramaic Scrolls were most likely supporters of the contemporary Aaronide priesthood in Jerusalem, and many (if not most) of them probably traced their own lineage back to Aaron and Levi’ (cf. Jones 2020a).

The Aramaic Scrolls as International Literature

As scholars have argued in various ways and to varying degrees, the Aramaic Scrolls can be understood as representing international or cosmopolitan literature. This characterization of the corpus allows us to highlight at least two of their defining features, both of which are closely related: (1) their language of composition and (2) their engagement with the intellectual culture of peoples from across the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world.

Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Achaemenid empire, and remained a prominent literary, administrative, and commercial language across the ancient Near East, including Palestine, even after the rise of Alexander the Great and his successors (See, e.g., Gzella 2015, 2021. For a recent overview of the relevant primary sources from Persian- and Hellenistic-period Palestine, see Machiela and Jones 2021). Scholars have offered competing theories for precisely why the authors of the Aramaic Scrolls chose to write these texts in Aramaic, rather than Hebrew (For the most useful theories, see Dimant 2007: 203–04; Ben-Dov 2008b: 38–49; Machiela 2018a: 99–106; 2019: 181–82; Reed 2020: 126–28. Other proposals deal only with Daniel or Daniel and Ezra. See e.g., Rabin 1976: 1013–14; Snell 1980; Buth 1992: 300–01; Sérandour 2000; Portier-Young 2010). What I would like to highlight, however, is the recognition among at least some scholars (e.g., Machiela and Reed) that the decision to write in Aramaic reflects the cosmopolitan character of the corpus.

Machiela (2018a: 99–106; 2019: 181–82) surveyed the literary, epigraphic, and documentary record, and concluded that Aramaic ‘remained the lingua franca of the Levant and Egypt during the early Hellenistic period’ (cf. Machiela and Jones 2021). He (2015: 105) thus offered a rather practical explanation for the decision of these authors to write in Aramaic, that is, the authors of the Aramaic Scrolls sought ‘a wide Israelite audience, in diverse geographic locations, with the goal of providing readers and hearers moral guidance and encouragement for living, as faithful Israelites, under Greek (and perhaps in some early cases, Persian rule’ (cf. Bickerman 1988: 51; Wacholder 1990: 273). This desire to address a broad (Palestinian and diasporic) audience, he (2019: 105) posited, was motivated by the self-understanding of these authors (‘likely a priestly, scribal group’) as the rightful teachers of Israel. On this view, writing in Aramaic helped these authors reach an audience that could at least in theory have stretched from Upper Egypt to Central Asia.

Reed (2020: 126–28; cf. Ben-Dov 2008b: 42–49), on the other hand, emphasized the extent to which Aramaic was the language of an emergent ‘translocal cosmopolitan scholasticism’ in the Achaemenid-era Near East (cf. Sanders 2017: 196). She (2020: 127) argued that Aramaic thus facilitated what we see in the Qumran Aramaic corpus, namely, the participation of Jewish authors in ‘a newly cross-cultural ideal of scribal expertise’. For Reed (2020: 127–28, 186–87), the fact that the majority of this literature was composed after the demise of the Persian empire is significant. Writing in Aramaic after the rise of Alexander and his successors, she (2020: 128) proposed, reflects:

the defense of the continued significance of Near Eastern scribalism against the globalizing and totalizing claims of Greek paideia. At the same time, it enables the appropriation of astronomical and other elements of Mesopotamian scholasticism as originally Jewish in an era in which new empires were increasingly cultivating Greek as the language of both imperial administration and the enculturation of elites.

It is worth noting that the proposals of Machiela and Reed are not necessarily incompatible. Each offer valuable insights on the choice of Aramaic from different, though not mutually exclusive perspectives.

Additionally, the Aramaic Scrolls can also be characterized as international or cosmopolitan inasmuch as they display an awareness of a wide range of cultural elements from across the Mediterranean and Near East. Scholars have long recognized that specific Aramaic texts, especially the early Enoch literature, display an awareness of Mesopotamian intellectual traditions (e.g., Grelot 1958; VanderKam 1984; Kvanvig 1988; Drawnel 2007; Ben-Dov 2008a; Sanders 2018), with some suggesting that the Aramaic language may have functioned ‘as a medium for the transmission of Babylonian astronomical and astrological material to the Jewish world’ (Popović 2014: 176; see also Ben-Dov 2008a: 259–66; Sanders 2017:153–96). (There is also a longstanding scholarly tendency to identify Persian intellectual influences on Qumran literature, including some of the Aramaic texts. See e.g., Winston 1966; Shaked 1972). As scholars began analyzing the Aramaic Scrolls in relation to one another, there was a consistent recognition that engagement with non-Jewish tradition and culture was one of the hallmark features of the corpus as a whole. Dimant (2007: 205) called attention to the fact that ‘Babylonian elements are clustered in writings related to the Flood on the one hand, and both Babylonian and Iranian elements are found in non-biblical court-tales and visionary narratives on the other hand’ (cf. eadem 2010: 17 n. 6). Collins (2010: 559) reiterated Dimant’s observations, and concluded similarly that ‘the Mesopotamian/Iranian background of this material is certainly significant’, and Reed (2020: 127), in her recent monograph, described the authors of the Aramaic Scrolls as having ‘access to astronomical, cosmological, didactic, and other elements of Mesopotamian scholasticism’. Recent studies on individual and groups of Aramaic compositions from Qumran have only reinforced the claim that their authors knew and appropriated a wide range of non-Jewish traditions, especially Babylonian (Ben-Dov 2008b; Goff 2009; Lemaire 2010; Popović 2010; Newsom 2010; Fröhlich 2011a; Drawnel 2013) but also Greek and Egyptian traditions (Collins 1999; Eshel 2007; Machiela 2009: 87–94; idem 2010; Hogeterp 2010; Fröhlich 2011b; Peters 2011: 440–41; Holm 2013). (For an important collection of essays on Babylonian science in the Aramaic Scrolls, see Fröhlich 2022).

There is disagreement, however, over what these observations imply about the geographic provenance of the Aramaic Scrolls. Studies on individual Qumran Aramaic texts often reflect a range of opinions on whether they originated in Palestine or the diaspora, and, if they are diasporic, whether they were composed in Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, or somewhere else. Commentaries on, for example, Daniel or Tobit give some indication of the various scholarly opinions on the geographic provenance of any given composition in the corpus (see e.g., the summaries in Collins 1993: 48; Fitzmyer 2003: 52–54), though there does appear to be a tendency in some scholarship to identify at least certain Qumran Aramaic texts with Mesopotamia (see e.g., Lemaire 2010). The arguments for the geographic origin of any particular text will need to be assessed on their own merits, but it is worth noting that some scholars have cautioned against the inclination to move too quickly from, say, the recognition of Babylonian cultural elements in a text to a hypothesis about its Babylonian provenance, or from a diasporic narrative setting to a diasporic provenance. These reservations were aptly expressed by Dimant (2010: 17), who argued that ‘in the centuries under the Persian and Hellenistic rules Eretz-Israel was a focus of various cultural influences, so the appropriation of external motifs by Jewish Aramaic works does not necessarily mean that they were authored abroad’ (so also Collins 2010: 559; Machiela 2019: 185–86). Jones (2023; cf. Machiela 2019: 186) similarly posited a Palestinian, and specifically Jerusalemite, origin for the vast majority of the Aramaic Scrolls, even though he acknowledged that this hypothesis could not be established with complete certainty. (On the Jerusalem temple as a locus of intellectual activity, see Honigman 2022). He (2023: 38–39) argued that the literary elites in Judaea ‘were not so isolated so as to be unaware of traditions and concepts from a diverse range of cultural milieux’, and suggested that, as a corpus, the Aramaic Scrolls are best described ‘as reflecting the situation of cultural contact and interchange that obtained throughout the Hellenistic world, including Judea’. When considering the range of cultural elements on display in the Aramaic Scrolls, including Greek, Egyptian, Judaean, and Babylonian, he (2023: 39) concluded that these texts, though likely authored in Judaea, ‘participate in a broader Aramaic scribal culture that transcends the geographical boundaries of any one locale’, and could thus accurately be characterized as ‘international literature’ (on the concept of an international Aramaic scribal culture, see Sanders 2017).

Scribalism and Representations of Literate Activity

Another distinguishing feature of the Aramaic Scrolls is what Reed (2020: 126) has called their ‘self-conscious scribalism’. Many of their protagonists have the title ‘scribe’ (ספר) or are presented as practicing the scribal arts, including the consultation, composition, and transmission of written documents (see esp. the early Enoch literature, the Book of Giants, the Genesis Apocryphon, the Birth of Noah, the Words of Michael, the Testament of Jacob?, the Aramaic Levi Document, the Apocryphon of Levi^b?, the Testament of Qahat, the Visions of Amram, Daniel 7, Tales of the Persian Court, and Tobit). For example, Perrin (2015b: 44–89) has demonstrated that the consultation of heavenly tablets is one of the primary modes of divine revelation in the Aramaic Scrolls, and he (2013) has also called attention to the use of incipits in these compositions as a literary device for depicting various protagonists as the authors of books and other written documents bearing their names (cf. Ben-Dov 2008b: 43; Popović 2017). Pajunen (2019) has recently enumerated examples of narrative accounts in the Aramaic Scrolls of protagonists preserving written documents by passing them on to their children (see also Dimant 2010: 34–35). Finally, Ben-Dov (2008b: 43) has noted the frequent use throughout the corpus of technical terminology related to the scribal profession, such as פרשגן, כתב, ספר, איגרה, לוחא, and מגלה (cf. Drawnel 2010: 527). These narrative representations of scribal and literate activity in the Aramaic Scrolls occur in a wide range of contexts and in various literary forms, including dream-visions, court tales, and accounts of the lives of the patriarchs and other pious ancestral heroes.

Endogamy and Marriage between Close Relatives

Scholars have analyzed the theme of proper marriage in specific texts or clusters of texts found among the Aramaic Scrolls, such as Tobit (e.g., Hieke 2005; Miller 2011), the Genesis Apocryphon (e.g., VanderKam 1994), the Book of Watchers (e.g., Suter 1979), and the Aramaic Levi Document (e.g., Himmelfarb 1999; Schiffman 2005). These studies, however, do not attempt to explicate how proper marriage functioned as a theme within the Qumran Aramaic corpus as a whole. By contrast, Perrin (2015a: 35–42), Dimant (2017: 391–99), Machiela (2019: 180, 194), and Jones (2020b; 2023: 201–03) have all set out to explore the various points of contact between these five texts on this issue. In so doing, they have argued that the Aramaic Scrolls seem to reflect a shared approach to proper marriage. (For an analysis of the similarities between marriage traditions in the Genesis Apocryphon and Tobit, see Eshel 2010: 34–36; Machiela and Perrin 2014: 121–26. For a comparison of marriage traditions in the Aramaic Levi Document and the Visions of Amram, see Tervanotko 2015. For a comparison of marriage traditions in the Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Levi Document, see Machiela and Jones 2023: 446–47).

Perrin (2015a: 35–42) and Dimant (2017: 391–99) have each framed their studies as an attempt to situate Tobit within its broader Qumran Aramaic context (For an excellent history of Tobit scholarship, see Perrin 2014). Their analysis has produced some key insights. For example, endogamy in the Aramaic Scrolls is defined not just as marriage to a fellow Israelite but as marriage to a close blood relative, for example, uncle–niece marriage (Uzziel and Miriam in the Visions of Amram); aunt–nephew marriage (Amram and Jochebed in the Aramaic Levi Document and the Visions of Amram); marriage between cousins (Levi and Melcha and Levi’s sons in the Aramaic Levi Document and Noah and Emzera and Noah’s children in the Genesis Apocryphon); or marriage to the closest available relative (Tobiah and Sarah in Tobit). Endogamy of this sort is required not just of priests, but of all Israelites, and the paterfamilias plays an active role in ensuring the proper marriages of his descendants by giving them instructions or by arranging their unions in the Genesis Apocryphon, the Aramaic Levi Document, the Visions of Amram, and Tobit. As scholars have noted, several of these marriage passages in the Aramaic Scrolls bear striking idiomatic and syntactic similarities to each other, for example, Aramaic Levi Document 6:1–4 and Tob 4:12 (Perrin 2015a: 41); 1Q20 6.6–7 and Tob 1:9 (Machiela and Perrin 2014: 126); 1Q20 6.8 and Aramaic Levi Document 12:1 (Machiela and Jones 2023: 446–47).

Jones (2023: 49–50, 57–66, 141–45) and Machiela (2019: 180, 194) have applied these insights in different but compatible ways. Jones has contested the common claim that the prohibition against exogamy in the Aramaic Levi Document was specifically directed toward priests (so, e.g., Himmelfarb 1999; Schiffman 2005). He also rejects the tendency to interpret the watchers story in 1 Enoch as a condemnation of exogamous priestly marriages (so, e.g., Suter 1979). Instead, he suggests that the Aramaic Scrolls are not narrowly concerned with the sexual behaviour of priests but of all Israelites. He argued, on the basis of the relevant comparanda, that the Aramaic Levi Document envisions endogamous marriages between close relatives as the ideal for both priests and laity (cf. Loader 2007: 101–02), and that the Book of Watchers reflects a much broader anxiety about illegitimate marriages of all sorts. On his view, priests may have written the Aramaic Scrolls (see above), but their conception of proper marriage did not apply to priests only. Machiela (2019) also views the prohibitions against exogamy in the Aramaic Scrolls as directed toward all Israel. He (2019: 179) pointed to evidence for mixed marriages between Judaeans and non-Judaeans in the documentary record from Idumea and Al-Yahudu as a potential context against which to understand at least one of the social functions of the Aramaic Scrolls (cf. Ray 1992; Stern 2007). For Machiela (2019: 193), the documentary evidence suggests that the priestly authors of the Aramaic Scrolls were likely dissatisfied with the marital practices of some of their compatriots, and would have written these compositions as a means of teaching their fellow Judaeans ‘what it looks like to be wise and upright, especially as those who live amidst foreigners’ (On Machiela’s view of the priestly authorship of the Aramaic Scrolls, see above).

Other Common Literary Features, Shared Themes, and Avenues for Future Study

Other features and themes that scholars have identified as characterizing the Aramaic Scrolls (or at least some of them) include: some specific terms and phrases (Machiela and Perrin 2011: 122–24; 2014: 126; Machiela 2014: 237–41; 2023: 72; Machiela and Jones 2023; Jones 2023), some specific divine epithets and a general avoidance of the tetragrammaton (Meyer 2017: 112–23; Machiela 2018a: 91–92; Machiela and Jones 2023), a two-paths metaphor for ethical behavior (Eshel 2009: 91–97; Machiela 2014: 231–35; Machiela and Jones 2023), scenes of familial instruction (Perrin 2015a: 32–35), an interest in the activities of angels and demons (Nickelsburg 2003; Machiela 2015: 251; Dimant 2017: 339–401; Reed 2020), the four-kingdoms schema (Perrin and Stuckenbruck 2021); an eschatological horizon involving the advent of a new Jerusalem (Perrin 2015a: 42–46; Jones 2023), an Urzeit und Endzeit eschatology (Wacholder 1990; Perrin 2015b: 197–209), and a preference for the 364-day calendar (Stone 1988: 168; Wacholder 1990: 271; Ben-Dov 2008a, 2008b; Jones 2023).

It is also worth highlighting, for scholars of the New Testament and the early Jesus movement, that both Brooke (2019) and Perrin (2020), building on the observations of earlier scholars (e.g., Fitzmyer and Bauckham), have argued that the author of Luke-Acts appears to have been familiar with many of the traditions found in the Aramaic Scrolls from Qumran. As Brooke (2019: 203–04) has suggested, ‘Luke seems to have had access, directly or indirectly, to a set of Aramaic traditions, either oral or more likely written or possibly both, which he could use as a resource as he sought to tell and retell his version of the Gospel’. New Testament scholarship has yet to grapple with the implications of this argument, and could benefit from giving close attention to the Aramaic Scrolls.