Old Testament Pseudepigrapha

More Noncanonical Songs of David

Four additional Songs of David were published in More Noncanonical Scripture (edited by Bauckham, Davila and Panayotov (Eerdmans, 2013). Geert Wouter Lorein and Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman provide the introduction and translation for the songs.

These four songs may have been part of a larger liturgical collection, but only these four survived in the Cairo Genizah in a tenth century manuscript. Despite this, many consider these psalms to come from a much earlier period, possibly the Qumran community. As Lorein and van Staalduine-Sulman comment, this is possible but no definitive proof exists for these Psalms originating with the Qumran community. In fact, the eschatological use of David in the psalms seems to point more toward the Targum and early rabbinic writings than Qumran (MNS, 261). Nevertheless, As Lorein and van Staalduine-Sulman conclude an origin for these psalms in the later-Qumran period “seems a valid option” and suggest these psalms were among the manuscripts discovered at Qumran about A.D. 790 and were taken to the Qaraite community in Cairo around A.D. 800.

David Flusser published a translation of these Psalms and concluded the way David is portrayed has some affinity with the world of the Essenes, the universal tone “accords better with the environment which produced the Biblical Antiquities” (Judaism and the Second Temple Period I, 282).

These psalms make use of earlier canonical psalms as well as prophetic material for example, in 1:14-23 (note the Roman numeral refers to the column rather than the psalm).

Psalm I.14-23 You prophesied by Your spirit through the mouth of Your servant for I have brought nigh the end and You will no longer delay it. 15 From the beginning You swore to David Your servant and You anointed Jesse’s root with Your mercy. 16 You sustained his arm with Your holiness, for he established Your praise up to the ends of the earth. 17 You established his name as a pillar of the world, and as a repairer of a breach and as a re-builder of ruins. 18 The rejected cornerstone, which the builders rejected, rose to be the head of all nations. 19 You made him inherit turban and crown with joy and You called out his name to be praised among all nations. 20 Righteousness and justice You have multiplied in his days and well-being and blessings without number. 21 All the righteous chosen ones shout for joy before Your face, for they rejoice in the <de>sirable la<nd>. 22 By his mouth You sanctified the great Name, and all day long he recites Your powerful songs I 23 You made his greatness (as) the great number of all angels’ and You appointed him king of all nations for ever.

David is called “your servant” and the Root of Jesse, both are messianic titles, Isaiah 11:1 combines a root from the stump of Jesse and the Spirit of the Lord. In I.17 the Davidic figure repairs the ruins, a likely allusion to Isaiah 58:12. In I.18 there is a clear allusion to Psalm 118:22: “the rejected cornerstone, which the builders rejected, rose to be the head of all nations.”  In Isaiah 28:6 the Lord himself is a crown of glory for his people, in I.19 the Davidic figure inherits a crown with joy which causes the nations to praise him. Likewise, Isaiah 62:2 the messianic figure will be a “crown of beauty” and royal diadem in the hand of God. In the second psalm, the Davidic figure is a “light for the nations” (2:8) Isa 42:6, Luke 2:31-32, Acts 13:47).

In the third song, the Davidic figure “heals the brokenhearted and binds up the bones of the oppressed, he turns mourning into gladness trembling and fear into great forms of trust.” (IV.1-2). Healing the brokenhearted appears in Psalm 34:18 and 147:3, but also in the good shepherd passage in Ezekiel 34:16 where the Lord himself will shepherd his people and will “bind up the injured.” Turning “mourning to joy” is language drawn from Jeremiah 31:13, a text Johan alludes to in John 16:20.

These examples serve to show the writers of these liturgical psalms used the expectation of an idealized Davidic king who would in some way restore God’s rule to Israel. The nations will acknowledge this Davidic ruler and it will be a time when God’s people will magnify the glory of the Lord in their camps and all idolatry will disappear from the people of the Lord (II.16-19). If it is the case these psalms pre-date the first century, they are more evidence the early Christian movement resonated with Second Temple Judaism as the described Jesus as the son of David and the good shepherd who turned mourning into joy (Matthew 5:4; 9:15; 11:17-18).

 

Bibliography:

Flusser, David, “The Apocryphal Psalms of David,” pages 258-82 in Judaism and the Second Temple Period I: Qumran and Apocalypticism. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2007.

Lorein, Geert Wouter; Staalduine-Sulman, Eveline van, “A song of David for each day: the provenance of the Songs of David” Revue de Qumran 22 (2005): 33-59.

 

The Sentences of the Syriac Menander

The Sentences of Menander (or Syriac Menander) is a collection of proverbs claiming to come from Menander, the famous Greek poet of the fourth century B.C. Since the work is extant only in Syriac, it seems unlikely to be the work of Menander. More likely the proverbs come from a writer collecting various proverbs into a short collection and attributing them to the great poet. It is possible some proverbs came to the writer in other languages and were translated into Syriac or that the book was originally in Greek and translated into Syriac. (Baarda’s translation of the Sentences appears here.)

It is difficult to date the book, although a date in the fourth century A.D. is a reasonable guess (OTP 2:585). Jones suggests the third century A.D. following the more recent work of Baarda and de Vos. It is possible the suggestion in line 37 to teach your brutish son to become a gladiator and hope he dies young implies a pre-Constantine date (Baarda, 2:585) since “schools for gladiators” began to disappear in the late fourth century. But even this evidence is weak since the metaphor of a brutish gladiator would have continued to be effective for some time after the heyday of the gladiatorial games.

The earliest witness to the text is a seventh-century Syriac manuscript. Equally difficult is the location of the writing: there is simply no clues in the text to make any definitive statement of provenance. The text in Charlesworth is divided into a thirty-nine line Epitome and a 474 line collection beginning with the line “Menander the Sage said.”

Baarda suggested the author of this text may have been a “cultured pagan writer who, drawing up this collection of wisdom sayings, incorporated additional material in it from oriental wisdom traditions, including Jewish ones” (Baarda, “Syriac Menander,” 588-589). It is true lines 76-93 refer to Homer, but some of the sayings seem to rely on Jewish wisdom literature more than would be expected from a “cultured pagan.” For example, line 394 resonates with Proverbs 1:7, “The main source of all good things is the fear of God.” Line 470 calls Sheol a “place of rest,” which sounds more Jewish than not, but it is far from decisive. Even a line life “Fear God, and honor (your) father and mother” may be based on Jewish wisdom, but it is not so distinctive as to demand the conclusion. Although there are no obvious Christian intrusions into the text, the text was preserved by Christians (the seventh century manuscript Or.Add 14.658 comes from the Deir-al Suriani monastery in Egypt).

Like the book of Proverbs, the collected lines appear to have no logical flow. Perhaps they were added as they were discovered without any interest in themes. Some of the sayings sound like canonical wisdom:

“Intemperance provokes conflict” (line 416); One given to anger stirs up strife, and the hothead causes much transgression. (Prov 29:22, NRSV)

“Pleasant are life, goods, and buildings, but more pleasant than these is a good name” (lines 402-403); A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold (Prov 22:1, NRSV).

Others sayings are wise sayings without canonical parallel:

“Insipidity leads the mind astray” (line 419)

“Agitation makes one lose his senses” (line 420)

“Old age is the frontier of death” (line 434)

Lines 367-376 resonate with the book of Ecclesiastes:

“If you have goods, if you have possessions, live on your possessions as long as you are alive and your eye (can) see and your foot (can) walk. For remember and see: one (can)not use (his) goods in Sheol, and riches do not accompany one into the grave. Therefore, you shall not deny yourself the good things, for better is one day under the sun than a hundred years in Sheol.”

Some lines are quite brutal: “Every bad son should die and not live on” (line 44), but compare this to Deuteronomy 21:18-21. If you have a son who is “brutish, crude, and insolent, (one who is) thievish, deceitful, and provocative, then the writer suggests the parents “teach him the profession of gladiator and put into his hand a sword and a dagger.” Perhaps he will die young, saving the parents from growing old on his “frauds and expenses.”

As with the Sayings of Pseudo-Phocylides, most of the Sentences of Menander are very generic proverbial wisdom which could come from any number of sources, including the Hebrew Bible. Given this uncertainty, the use of this text for New Testament context is difficult at best. We are at the far end of the trajectory and might be able to detect how the early Church used wisdom literature (or whoever produced these sayings, since they are not clearly Christian).

 

Bibliography:

Baarda, T. “The Sentences of the Syriac Menander (Third Century AD)”, OTP 2:583-606.

de Vos, J. Cornelis. “The Decalogue in Pseudo-Phocylides and Syriac Menander: ‘Unwritten Laws’ or Decalogue Reception.” Pages 41–56 in The Decalogue and Its Cultural Influence. Hebrew Bible Monographs 58. Edited by Dominik Markl. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2013.

Jones, Robert, “Syriac Menander,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

Kirk, Alan. “The Composed Life of the Syriac Menander.” Studies in Religion Sciences Religieuses 26, no. 2 (1997): 169–83.

Pseudo-Phocylides on Hard Work

Pseudo-Phocylides resonates with New Testaments ethics with respect to the value of hard work. In 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 Paul tells his readers to “work with your hands” (Be diligent!)  This command to work hard to provide for your needs is what Paul himself did; he worked as a tent maker in order to support himself while doing ministry. In 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12 Paul urges his readers to avoid any brother who is idle by following Paul’s own example of working hard to day and night so as not to be a burden to anyone. He claims in verse 8 to “we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it.” In fact, Paul commanded the Thessalonians “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (3:10).

This “working with your hands” stands in contrast to the traveling “teachers” of the ancient world that lived off of a few rich patrons and produced nothing of value. In the Greco-Roman world those who needed to do manual labor to survive were at the bottom of society. A person of substance had a slaves who did hard labor and create wealth for their owners. Cicero gave a list of work which was “vulgar” and “unbecoming to a gentleman”:

Cicero, De Officiis 1.153. Now in regard to trades and other means of livelihood, which ones are to be considered becoming to a gentleman and which ones are vulgar, we have been taught, in general, as follows. First, those means of livelihood are rejected as undesirable which incur people’s ill-will, as those of tax-gatherers and usurers. Unbecoming to a gentleman, too, and vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery. Vulgar we must consider those also who buy from wholesale merchants to retail immediately; for they would get no profits without a great deal of downright lying; and verily, there is no action that is meaner than misrepresentation. And all mechanics are engaged in vulgar trades; for no workshop can have anything liberal about it. Least respectable of all are those trades which cater for sensual pleasures, “Fishmongers, butchers, cooks, and poulterers, and fishermen,” as Terence says. Add to these, if you please, the perfumers, dancers, and the whole corps de ballet (translator Walter Miller adds a note: the ludus talarius was a kind of low variety show, with loose songs and dances and bad music).

The earliest Jesus followers were drawn from this Roman “basket of deplorables”: tax collectors, hired workers, fishermen, prostitutes and other sinners. Paul himself engaged in hard labor which had no artistic value in exchange for a wage (for Paul as a lower class laborer, see Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society, 139; Ronald Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry, 20-27).

Pseudo-PhocylidesUnlike this Roman attitude toward manual labor, the Second Temple wisdom literature represented by Pseudo-Phocylides valued hard work. Paul reflects this Jewish wisdom worldview and it eventually it becomes the Judaeo-Christian work ethic. For example, “You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you” (Psalm 128:2, ESV).  “Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep” (Eccl  5:12). This view is also reflected in later Jewish literature as well: “Do not hate hard labor or farm work, which was created by the Most High” (Sirach 7:15).  In the Talmud, “He who does not teach his son a craft teaches him brigandage” (Kiddushin 29a).

Like Paul, Pseudo-Phocylides admonishes his readers to “work hard so that you can live from your own means; for every idle man lives from what his hands can steal (153-154). The verb μοχθέω has the sense of being worn out from hard work and the related adjective could be used to refer to “of a person, lack of skill, incapacity” and occasionally as a metaphor for moral depravity (LSJ). Yet Pseudo-Phocylides says “labor (πόνος) gives great increase to virtue” (163). Again, the noun πόνος is the kind of labor which requires exertion and toil. Paul used the word in Colossians 4:13 to describe Epaphras’s hard labor in Colossae. Pseudo-Phocylides urges everyone to find some way to earn their living: “if someone has not learned a craft, he must dig with a hoe” (158).

In 1 Thessalonians 4:11 Paul also said the Christian ought to “be dependent on no one.”  In the context of 1 Thessalonians, self-sufficiency guarded the young Christian church against the charge of “impure motives.” Pseudo-Phocylides has a similar view: “Eat not the leavings of another man’s meal, but eat without shame what you have earned yourself” (156-157). Sirach 40:28-29 also warns against “looking to the table of another”:

Sirach 40:28–29 (NRSV) My child, do not lead the life of a beggar; it is better to die than to beg. When one looks to the table of another, one’s way of life cannot be considered a life. One loses self-respect with another person’s food, but one who is intelligent and well instructed guards against that.

The view of work in Pseudo-Phocylides therefore reflects a Jewish wisdom literature tradition which values hard work and manual labor to meet one’s physical needs.

Doing Justice in Pseudo-Phocylides

Pseudo-Phocylides was a sixth century B.C. poet who was well known in the ancient world as an author of maxims and proverbs applicable to daily life. In the first century B.C. a diaspora Jewish writer created 230 lines of poetry in the name of Phocylides in order to demonstrate to the gentiles that Judaism was a rational religion. The point was probably not to convert the pagans but to create “sympathizers” among the gentiles (OTP 2:566).

Who was Pseudo-Phocylides?Their value to New Testament backgrounds is to show what sort of “wisdom” was current in the first century. Nearly every line has some sort of parallel in the Old Testament and other apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, so any New Testament parallels are only similar in that they share this same foundation. For example, line 42, “the love of money is the mother of all evil” is a common bit of wisdom found also in 1 Timothy 6:10 and in another form in Hebrews 13:5. According to the author, Gold is the “originator of evil, destroyer of life, crushing all things.” It is unlikely the New Testament writer knew the saying from the document we now call Pseudo-Phocylides. A saying like “the love of money is the mother of all evil” was simply a part of the wisdom tradition among the Jews as well as Greco-Roman ethical teaching.

The first two lines of the book introduce Phocylides as “the Wisest of men” who sets forth these counsels of God by his holy judgments, gifts of blessing.” This is followed by several commands which recall the Torah. For example, line 3, “Neither commit adultery nor rouse homosexual passion” combines Exodus 20:14 (Deut 5:18) with Leviticus 18:22 or 20:13. The editor of this section of OTP labels these verses as a summary of the Decalogue, but the lines are not strictly from the Ten Commandments.  “Do not become rich,” for example, may be based on the command not to covet, but the connection is not direct.

In Second Temple Jewish wisdom literature, a wise person does not simply exist in a state of wisdom. Their wisdom is demonstrated by doing acts of justice and mercy. In lines 9-21, the author commands his readers to “always dispense justice” and then describes several concrete examples of what dispensing justice looks like. For example, “Flee false witness; award what is just” (12) and “Give the laborer his pay, do not afflict the poor” (19).

In lines 22-24 the write admonishes the reader to be diligent in doing mercy. Once again, the wise person “does mercy” by treating the poor and needy with respect. Pseudo-Phocylides is consistent with the treatment of the poor in the Torah and other wisdom literature.

Pseudo-Phocylides 22-24 Give to the poor man at once, and do not tell him to come tomorrow. You must fill your hand. Give alms to the needy. Receive the homeless in (your) house, and lead the blind man.

Proverbs 3:27 (ESV) Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.

Sirach 4:3–6 (NRSV) Do not add to the troubles of the desperate, or delay giving to the needy. 4 Do not reject a suppliant in distress, or turn your face away from the poor. 5 Do not avert your eye from the needy, and give no one reason to curse you; 6 for if in bitterness of soul some should curse you, their Creator will hear their prayer.

Like Micah 6:8 or the book of James, the author of this collection expects the wise person to work out their faith in God through concrete actions towards the poor and need. There are several examples of this in the book of Acts. In Acts 9:36 Tabitha “was full of good works and acts of charity” because she made garments for the poor. In the next paragraph of Acts, the Roman centurion Cornelius was considered to be a righteous man because he “gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God” (Acts 10:2).

Pseudo-Phocylides therefore is additional evidence that first century Jewish practice considered care for the poor and underclass to be a natural response to God. See also Pseudo-Phocylides on Hard Work.

The Words of Ahikar

Ahikar (also spelled Ahiqar) is “one of the best-known and most widely disseminated tales in the ancient modern world” (Lindenberger, OTP 2:480). The text is quite old, probably dating from the fifth or sixth century B.C. The book likely had an influence on several Apocryphal books, such as Tobit 1:41 (Charles APOT 1:296 lists parallels between Ahikar and Sirach) and was popular well into the Christian Era. The book is considerably different than any surveyed thus far because it is a part of the context of Mesopotamia rather than the Old Testament. While this is certainly wisdom literature, it may not be Hebrew wisdom literature, at least in its most basic form. OTP 2:483-484 discusses the possibility of an historical Ahiqar based on cuneiform tablets discovered at Uruk.

Words of AhikarThe name of the book appears and there are several other superficial parallels. The genre of Ahikar is a “court tale,” so often a parallel is made to Daniel (Goldingay, Daniel, 6), although it is possible also to see an affinity to Esther as well in that Ahikar saved a man’s life, then later that man has power over him. The value of the book for New Testament studies is primarily in the “sayings” section. There are many sayings which have parallels to Old Testament wisdom and therefore may be present in the New Testament as well. Likely as not the New Testament stands on the foundation of the Old rather than on a book like Ahikar. The book does serve to show the sort of proverbial wisdom which was current in the centuries before Christ and an interesting study could be done tracing the trajectory from Old Testament wisdom to Ahiqar then to Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon, then into Christian wisdom like material.

The “plot” of the book concerns the retirement of Ahikar after the death of Sennacherib. Ahikar requests that his adopted son Nadin take his role as advisor and scribe for the new king, Esarhaddon. Nadin spreads a rumor that Ahikar has devised a “wicked plot” against Esarhaddon, so the king orders him killed. The guard sent to capture and execute Ahikar was once involved in a court intrigue himself and Ahikar spared his life. This guard proposes to kill a eunuch slave and tell people it was Ahikar in order to spare his life. They do this, and Ahikar hides himself while everyone thinks he is dead.

The story breaks off at that point, but Lindenberger summarizes the rest of the story as reconstructed from later versions: The king of Egypt contacts Esarhaddon and asks for the wisest man in Assyria to come and supervise the building of a temple between heaven and earth. No one can meet the challenge of the king’s riddles and Esarhaddon rues killing Ahikar. The guard realizes the time is right, so he brings Ahikar out of hiding and the king rejoices. After the king apologizes, Ahiqar asks to punish Nadin (which involves being chained up and beaten while Ahikar lectures him).

The Sayings of Ahikar amount to several pages of proverbial wisdom. Many are nearly identical to Proverbs (line 82, for example, “spare the rod and spoil the child” cf. Prov. 23:13). Some are obscure and difficult to understand the point. For example, line 117 says “there is no lion in the sea, therefore the sea-snake is called labbu.” Other proverbs invoke the name of various gods (Shamash the Sun-God, Baal Shamayn, “The Merciful” in line 107).

There are a few lines which are reminiscent of New Testament verses. Line 100, for example, describes the king’s word as sharper than a double-edged sword (cf., Heb. 4:12, the word of the Lord is sharper than a double-edged sword). The parallel is superficial, but may indicate the figure of speech was part of common speech in the first century. Other parallels are thematic, such as line 137 which condemns amassing great wealth, a common theme in both the Old and New Testament (1 Tim. 6:10, for example).