Texts in conversation

Compare 4Q504 8 recto 4 and Leviticus Rabbah 20:2

Dead Sea Scrolls, Prayers, Hymns, and Liturgy · Rabbinic

Summary

The Dead Sea Scroll known as Words of the Luminaries describes Adam created with shining glory and set to rule in Eden. A Rabbinic midrash in Leviticus Rabbah describes the same tradition of Adam created with a physical, shining brightness.

Passages

4Q504 8 recto 4

Dead Sea Scrolls, Prayers, Hymns, and Liturgy · Words of the Luminaries

1 [… Remember,] O Lord, that from … […] 2 […] … us, and you live [forever …] 3 […] … wonders of old and fearsome deeds [from years long past …] 4 [… Adam] our [father] you fashioned in the likeness of [your] glory […] 5 [… the breath of life] you breathed into his nostrils, and with understanding and knowledge [you filled him …] 6 [… in the] garden of Eden, which you planted, you made [him] ruler […] 7 […] … and to walk about in a land of glory … […] 8 […] … he kept. And you laid on him a charge not to turn [aside …] 9 […] he is flesh, and to dust … […] 10 […] … And you know … […] 11 […] for eternal generations […] 12 […] a living God, and your hand […] 13 […] humankind in the ways of […] 14 [… to fill the] earth with violence and to shed [innocent blood …]

160–100 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in 4Q504

Leviticus Rabbah 20:2

Rabbinic · Aggadah

Another matter, “after the death [of the two sons of Aaron]” (Leviticus 16:1). Rabbi Levi began: “I said to the revelers [laholelim]: Do not revel” (Psalms 75:5); laholelim, to the confused, those whose hearts are filled with wicked thoughts. Rabbi Levi would call them woe-generators, because they bring woe to the world. “And to the wicked, do not raise your horn” (Psalms 75:5). The Holy One blessed be He said to the wicked: ‘The righteous did not rejoice in My world, and you seek to rejoice?’ Reish Lakish said in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya: The ball of the heel of Adam the first man would outshine the sun, all the more so the radiance of his face. Do not wonder, as the way of the world is that if a person crafts bowls, one for himself and one for a member of his household, whose does he craft more beautifully?

500 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Leviticus Rabbah

References

"... In the group of the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments known under the title Words of the Luminaries (4Q504), the following passage about the glory of Adam in the Garden can be found ... Later in 4Q504, this tradition about Adam's former glory follow with a reference to the luminosity bestowed upon another human body - the glorious face of Moses at his encounter with the Lord at Sinai ... it is also remarkable that later Rabbinic materials often speak of the luminosity of Adam's face, the feature that might point to the influence of the Adam-Moses connection. Thus, as an example, In Leviticus Rabbah 20.2, the following passage can be found ..."

Andrei A. Orlov, “Vested with Adam’s Glory: Moses as the Luminous Counterpart of Adam in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Macarian Homilies,” Xristianskij Vostok 4.10 (2002): 498–513.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

Fragment 8 recto

4Q50457 chapters

Compare 4Q504 8 recto 4 and Leviticus Rabbah 20:2

Summary

Passages

4Q504 8 recto 4

Leviticus Rabbah 20:2

References

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