¹ Even when such interpolations were patently ideological, they were rarely merely so. Ancient ideologues bent on imposing their point of view on a biblical text typically went looking for something—something like the unusual word or phrase, apparent contradiction, etc. mentioned earlier-that would seem to justify their interpolations. Thus, in such cases as well, it is important to try to understand the interpolated detail or incident as biblical exegesis before exploring its ideological or historical reflexes.

² In what follows, I have used the text of the Testament of Levi found in Jonge, M. de, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text (Leiden: Brill, 1978) 24–50Google Scholar. For the related Aramaic and Greek Levi fragments, I have also consulted the new translation of Jonas Greenfield and Stone, M. E. in Hollander, H. W. and Jonge, M. de, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary (STVP 8; Leiden: Brill, 1985) 457–69Google Scholar as well as the material cited below, n. 16.

³ A number of studies have examined (inter alia) the Testament of Levi's version of this biblical story from the standpoint of Jewish-Samaritan relations. See in particular Collins, John J., “The Epic of Theodotus and the Hellenism of the Hasmoneans,” HTR 73 (1980) 91–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar; note also Pummer, R., “Genesis 34 in the Jewish Writings of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods,” HTR 75 (1982) 177–88Google Scholar; and Mendels, Doron, The Land of Israel as a Political Concept in Hasmonean Literature (Tubingen: Mohr, 1987) 57–119Google Scholar. On the eventual schism between the Samaritans and the Jews, recent treatments include Dexinger, F., “The Limits of Tolerance in Judaism: The Samaritans,” in Sanders, E. P., ed., Jewish and Christian Self-Definition (3 vols.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) 2. 88–114Google Scholar; Purvis, J. D., “The Samaritans and Judaism,” in Kraft, Robert A. and Nickelsburg, George W. E., eds., Early Judaism and its Modern Interpreters (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986) 81–91Google Scholar; Coggins, R. J., “The Samaritans in Josephus,” in Feldman, Louis H. and Hata, Gohei, eds., Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 1987Google Scholar); and Crown, A. D., “Redating the Schism betwen the Judaeans and the Samaritans,” JQR 82 (1991) 17–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ However one dates Judith vis-a-vis the Vorlage of the Testament of Levi, it hardly need be the case that, because both refer to a heavenly sword, one source therefore must have borrowed directly from the other. As a matter of fact, these two texts seem to disagree on a number of details: the Testament of Levi specifies that it was an angel that supplied Levi with the sword, and makes no mention Simeon, whereas Judith on the contrary speaks of God delivering the sword to Simeon. Moreover, Judith speaks only of a sword, whereas, according t o the Testament of Levi, it was a “shield and a sword.” It may thus well be that both retellings, which in any case seem to share certain other exegetical concerns (see below), drew upon a common stock of earlier interpretive traditions.

⁵ See also Gen. Rab. 80.10 and parallels; this passage explains as , “relying on the power of the old man,” Jacob, whose intervention left them confident of victory.

⁶ This idea may be reflected as well in the version of the Dinah story preserved among the surviving fragments of the Hellenistic poet Theodotus (on whom see below). For in Theodotus's retelling, the biblical “and they came upon the city ” becomes, “Levi and Simeon came fully armed into the city” (cited in Eusebius Praep. ev. 9.22.10). Here and throughout, I have cited the translation of the Theodotus fragments made by F. Fallon in OTP, 2. 785–93.

⁷ Thus Mid. Tanhuma, Vayyehi 9 (end): “ is Greek, for they call their swords .” See also Gen. Rab. MS Vat. 99.5 in J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba (3 vols; Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965) 3. 1255 and notes.

⁸ Intermarriage with the Canaanite tribes is proscribed in Deut 7:3–6. It is clear that, in postexilic times, the issue was viewed in broader terms, and it remained a major concern: see, inter alia, Ezra 9:1; 10:2–5; Tob 4:12; Jub. 20.4; 22.20; 25.4–9; 30.5; Philo Spec. leg. 3.29; Test. Job 45.3; Jos. Asen. 7.6; Bib. Ant. 9.5; 44.7; 45.3.

⁹ This is found in Tgs. Onq., Neof., Ps.-J. Gen 34:13. Note also that Isaac's words to Esau in Gen 27:35, “Your brother came in guile” underwent a similar transformation to “wisdom” in the Targums.

¹⁰ H. C. Kee, “Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,” in OTP, 1. 790.

¹¹ See Hollander and De Jonge, Commentary, 11–12.

¹² A later form of this text, represented by numerous LXX manuscripts, sought to solve this inconsistency by substituting the words “Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, the sons of Leah,” for the unspecified “they” of Gen 34:14 in the MT. (That this is a later addition in the LXX text is apparent from Gen 34:25, where, in the LXX as in the MT, Simeon and Levi are presented as iffor the first time: “Then two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords.”) While the story in this form doubtless circulated widely, the exegesis underlying the version of the Dinah story found in the Testament of Levi can, for reasons that will be apparent, only presume a text form like that of the MT.

¹³ That is, he cursed instead of blessed: Gen 49:7.

¹⁴ The motif of Jacob's illness may be an attempt to account for the somewhat unusual syntax of Gen 34:30, “you have brought trouble upon me () to make me odious (“)” If Jacob says he was “troubled,” interpreters may have chosen to understand this action (precisely because of the unusual syntax) as quite distinct from that of Jacob's being “made odious” to his neighbors. But if so, then what was this other “trouble”? The Testament of Levi explains that Jacob also became ill. Such an explanation, of course, well suits the overall presentation of the events in the Testament of Levi, where Jacob must have some reason for being angry with Simeon and Levi other than the killing of the Shechemites, for there was nothing wrong with that (see below).

¹⁵ This reading thus follows the MT of Gen 34:14; see above, n. 12. But then why, according to such a reading, should the Bible say that they did so “with guile”? It seems possible that this line of interpretation could adopt the targumic strategy of understanding the phrase as meaning “with wisdom.” That is, the brothers were quite right to say what they said, namely, “We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a disgrace to us.” This is precisely the interpretive line adopted by Jub. 30.11–14.

¹⁶ Here mention should be made of a tantalizing section of the Aramaic Levi document preserved in Cambridge Geniza Fragment col. a (this fragment was translated by R. H. Charles in idem, ed., The Greek Versions ofthe Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs [Oxford: Clarendon, 1908] 245–56 and recently reexamined under ultraviolet light and republished by J. C. Greenfield and M. E. Stone, “Remarks on the Aramaic Testament of Levi from the Geniza,” RB 88 [1979] 214–30.) The relevant section reads as follows: “[… ] to do according to the law of bk[…] Jacob my father and Reu[ben my brother… ] and we said to them [… ] they desire our daughter and we will all be b[rothers… ] and friends, circumcise the foreskin of your flesh, and you shall look l[ike us] and you will be sealed like us with the circumcision of [ … ].” It is impossible to be sure here who is telling what to whom. If the “we” of “we said t o them” includes Levi, then Levi, Jacob, and Reuben together are apparently counseling the Shechemites to be circumcised. On the other hand, our text of the Testament of Levi has no such threesome as a delegation. On the contrary, Levi tells Jacob and Reuben to tell the Shechemites something, so the “we” here ought probably to be understood as referring to Jacob and Reuben alone. Perhaps what they are doing is reporting to Levi on their conversation with the Shechemites: “[Then said to me] Jacob my father and Reu[ben my brother: we went to Shechem] and we said to them [since it had been made known to us that] they desire our daughter and that we all be b[rothers] and friends, 'Circumcise the foreskin of your flesh… ' [etc.].” It would be after just such a report that Levi could introduce the sort of objection to circumcision contained in the Testament of Levi.

¹⁷ Indeed, there is one particular in T. Levi 6.3 that further ties these two versions together: “I advised my father and Reuben my brother that he should tell the sons of Hamor to be circumcised.” It is not immediately clearly who this “he” is, whether Jacob or Reuben, but i t is most surprising that it is he at all. For, from the standpoint of both grammar and the biblical text, one would expect “they” (such a variant is in fact found in the Armenian text tradition; see de Jonge, Edition, 195). And why have “my father and Reuben” in any case? My hunch is that the Testament of Levi's ultimate source simply said “my father,” in keeping with the tradition preserved by Theodotus, but that, precisely because the biblical text says that the sons of Jacob had proposed the circumcision, this author also mentioned Reuben who, as firstborn, would speak for the brothers. But in so doing, the author of the Testament of Levi inadvertantly left the verb in the singular, “he would tell.”

¹⁸ Again, this is apparently the view of Theodotus, Fragment 4 (Eusebius Praep. ev. 9.22.5–6), “Jacob said that he would not give her until all the inhabitants of Shechem were circumcised and became as Jews.”

¹⁹ These may simply be the women, who were not slain according to the biblical account; see Jdt 9:4.

²⁰ Such discomfort is reflected as well in rabbinic exegesis: “For in their anger they killed a man: Did they kill only one man? And does it not say ‘and they came upon the city in certainty and killed all the males’ [Gen 34:25]? But it means that they [the Shechemites] were accounted by God and by them [Simeon and Levi] as if they were only one man” (Midr. Tanhuma, Vayyehi, 10). See Gen. Rab. MS Vat. 99.5 (Theodor and Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba, 3. 1256).

²¹ Compare the well-known rabbinic interpretive rule that, when a general assertion is followed by a specification, “you must interpret in keeping with the specification.” Note that Theodotus, on the contrary, apparently seeks to reconcile Gen 34:25 with Gen 34:26 by suggesting that Simeon and Levi slew all the males whom they encountered on their way to their only real objective, Shechem and Hamor. If so, it would still be the case that ‘in their wrath, they [each] killed a man,” the rest being merely incidental victims sacrificed in the attainment of this goal. Note further that T. Levi 5.4 in most manuscripts seems to contradict the account of T. Levi 6.4–5, but this is doubtless because the text has been corrupted; the correct reading is perhaps preserved in the Armenian MSS, “in the midst of the sons of Hamor.” See Michael E. Stone, The Testament of Levi; A First Study of the Armenian MSS of the Testaments of the XII Patriarchs in the Convent of St. James, Jerusalem (Jerusalem: St. James Press, 1969) 73.

²² If, of course, such a marriage is lawful and acceptable to the woman's family (as later interpreters make plain). For this point in the Temple Scroll and in rabbinic texts, see David Weiss Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986) 30–34. Note that, for later interpreters, this law of rape likewise applied to cases that we would describe as “statutory rape” and seduction.

²³ One might argue, of course, that the Torah had not yet been given to Israel, and that this law of leniency was thus not known to Jacob and his sons. But the notion that a preliminary revelation of scriptural law had been given to Israel's ancestors long before Sinai is well attested in many ancient texts, including the Testaments (see Kugel, James, In Potiphar's House [San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990] 99–101Google Scholar). Besides, why should God have allowed Simeon and Levi to act as they did if what they did was wrong? He ought to have punished them, or at the very least the biblical account ought to have condemned their action. That such was not the case-indeed, that Levi's descendants later received the great gift of the hereditary priesthood-certainly implied that God approved of their action, and that, as a result, there was some crucial difference between Shechem and the rapist described in Deuteronomy.

²⁴ The three things mentioned here may be an attempt to elaborate on Shechem's actions as described in the biblical text: he “saw her… and seized her and lay with her and raped her” (Gen 34:2). Why, an interpreter might ask, would scripture have mentioned all these graphic details instead of just stating—indeed, in more modest language—that Dinah had been raped? The answer apparently being put forward in Judith is that each of the actions mentioned was in itself worthy of condemnation. Thus, this retelling expands scripture's mentioning that Shechem “saw her” into an indication that he saw what he should not have seen, that is, he “loosed the adornment of a virgin,” perhaps an allusion to the hair-covering (on μιτρα as a translation of Hebrew , see Grintz, J. M., The Book of Judith [Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1986] 140–41Google Scholar [Hebrew]). When the text says that Shechem next “uncovered her thigh,” it may similarly be expanding upon the phrases “he seized her” and/or “he lay with her” in Genesis (the last especially would seem superfluous in view of the fact that it s i followed by “he raped her”—superfluous unless “he lay with her” is understood to refer t o something other than rape itself). All this would seem designed to build up the enormity of Shechem's offense and so justify the punishment meted out to him and his countrymen. At the same time, one ought to note a similarity between the sequence of three stages of sin detailed here and the three found in m. Sota 1.7, as well as the “three things” (unspecified) by which Rahab is said to have sinned during her life as a prostitute (Mek. R. Ish., Yitro 1).

²⁵ See, e.g., the rabbinic tradition represented by Gen. Rab. 40.5 (Theodor and Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba, 1. 392).

²⁶ In translating T. Levi 6.9, I have retained the common understanding of ὀγκούμενα as referring to the flocks being “big with young.” Still, this is a strange notion. Did the Canaanites and Perizzites devise a method for causing Abraham's flocks to miscarry? I suspect that, in the Urtext, Abraham's flocks simply “become great,” that is, numerous, and that “big with young” is a misunderstanding, perhaps a confusion of ntrbw and nt’brw (or their Aramaic equivalents). Note also that the root (‘be full”) was sometimes used of pregnancy; see Elisha Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls (HSS 29, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986) 92.

²⁷ Note that Ebed itself is a proper name, Judg 9:26, Ezra 5:6.

²⁸ See Ginzberg, Louis, The Legends of the Jews (7 vols.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1909–1938Google Scholar) 5. 314 n. 290. Note also the transformation of the biblical “Ebed Melek the Ethiopian” (Jer 38:7) into “Abimelekh” (4 Bar. 3.12).

²⁹ These same crimes were also imputed to the Sodomites (in part on the basis of Ezek 16:49–50) and were thought to have been the reason for their destruction; see, e.g., Wis 19:14; Jub. 16.5–7; T. Naph. 3.4; T. Ben. 9.1; Josephus Ant. 1.194–95; Tg. Onq. Gen 13:13; 2 Pet 2:6–7.

³⁰ For the historical background of this passage in Ben Sira, see Purvis, J. D., “Ben Sira and the Foolish People of Shechem,” JNES 24 (1965) 89–94Google Scholar. The same thinking reflected in Ben Sira no doubt underlies two other early references to the same exegetical tradition, that found n i 4Q372 as well as that reflected in Midrash Tanna'im, both of which identify this foolish people with the Samaritans. See Schuller, Elaine, “4Q 372: A Text About Joseph,” RevQ 14 (1989–1990) 349–76Google Scholar; Hoffmann, David H., Midrash Tanna'im Lesepher Debarim (Jerusalem: Book Exports, 1977) 196Google Scholar. Note also the discussion of Samaritan origins in Josephus Ant. 12.257–64, and compare 9.288–91.

³¹ Sovereignty (riyejiovia) here probably embraces both the priesthood and kingship; indeed, this is explicitly so elsewhere. Thus lQTLevi 1 speaks of the “kingship of the priesthood,” and the Testament of Reuben elsewhere says “For to Levi did the Lord give sovereignty” (T. Reub. 6.7). See also Greenfield, Jonas C. and Stone, Michael E., “Remarks on the Aramaic Testament of Levi from the Geniza,” RB 86 (1979) 218Google Scholar; and Jonge, M. de. “The Testament of Levi and ‘Aramaic Levi,’” RevQ 13 (1988) 379–80Google Scholar.

³² Perhaps he had in mind the Levites’ slaughter of their (unidentified) fellow Israelites after the Golden Calf incident (Exod 32:25–28).