The Resurrection of The Divine Assembly

Jonathan Ben-Dov
The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly

and the Divine Title El in the Dead Sea
Scrolls
The late Luigi Enrico Rossi has taught us the importance of submerged literature.1 His method is an efficient way to bypass the tyranny of Canon and of the
mechanisms that made this canon persist through the ages. By tracing the
threads of the mainstream tradition, one is able to detect fine threads of earlier
traditions, which had once existed in a full-fledged literary and social environment before being stripped of their context and absorbed into a different milieu.
In this work of literary archaeology, a professional excavator can achieve much
by tracing early relics and reconstructing the mythology, theology, or narratives
that had once been woven around them.2 This idea is as relevant to ancient Near
Eastern literature or the Hebrew Bible as to classical literature.
In the present paper I wish to depict the long and elaborate life of the mythological tradition about the divine assembly and its master.3 The basic scene is
that of the master sitting among the multitude of gods, most of them his progeny. There are many possible plots to attach to this basic scene: the gods may
convene for judgment, for feasting, or for declaring war, but the core is always
the assembly. Naturally, such a mythological picture will raise objections
among those who conceive of their god as a single god, as we shall see below.
This tradition, well rooted in West Semitic texts, serves to explain various facets
of politico-theological reality. In the biblical tradition, the members of the divine assembly were conceived quite early on as representing the various nations
of the world, and hence as mirroring political relations on earth. Lay readers of
the Hebrew Bible will be deterred by such an explicitly mythological tradition
and indeed, as we shall see, an objection took shape already within the Hebrew
Bible itself.
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1 Colesanti and Giordano 2014. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the group working
on Submerged Greek Literature, and especially to Manuela Giordano, for inviting me to present this paper in Rome. The sense of cooperation and interdisciplinary thought achieved in
that session is much appreciated.
2 For the metaphor of threads, see Reeves 1994. For the metaphor of literary archaeology see
Zakovitch 1999, 429439 and especially Shinan and Zakovitch 2012.
3 For the basic formulation of this entity see Mullen 1980; Niehr 1990, 7194.
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10 | Jonathan Ben-Dov
The centrality of this scene in the biblical tradition, however, is hard to deny, even as it has been refined or suppressed in it. While the Hebrew Bible alternates between accepting and rejecting the divine assembly, the scene ultimately found much popularity in post-biblical Jewish literature. The
suppression of this tradition in the Hebrew Bible is already a commonplace of
current scholarship, but its post-biblical revival is often overlooked. I will therefore dwell briefly on the biblical life of this tradition, and then expand on its
later life in post-biblical Judaism.
The present article is really about the participation of Hebrew literature in
the culture of the ancient Near East. The prophet Ezekiel is the right person to
assess the measure of indebtedness of Judah and the Judaeans to these neighboring cultures. Born and raised in Jerusalem, this junior priest was exiled to
Babylon in 586 BCE and began his prophetic career in the glorious shadow of
imperial Babylon. Ezekiel, sometimes called an encyclopaedist by modern
scholars, was keen to absorb the rich Babylonian culture surrounding him while
at the same time lending an eager ear to the vibrant cultural amalgam of other
exiled communities Phoenicians, Edomites, Egyptians, Elamites, Aramaeans,
and many others who were living in contemporary Babylonia.4 Ezekiel (chapter 16) casts his version of the biography of Judah and the Judaeans in the form
of a story about a female foundling collected by a senior patron, YHWH. In that
account, the prophet chose to underscore Judahs connection with the Levantine cultures surrounding it (16:3):
Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite5
Although Ezekiel knew the Babylonian culture quite well, he characterized the
Judaeans as descendants of the Levant. Relying on Ezekiels testimony we may
learn, first, that the Judaean culture was part and parcel of the Levant of the
First Millennium BCE, and should be considered as an active agent in that milieu rather than as a secluded cultural island. Second, while mainstream biblical studies would seek parallels for Judaean literature in Mesopotamia as
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4 For the linguistic and cultural amalgam of Babylonia in the early 6th century BCE see Beaulieu 2006. On Ezekiels absorption of Babylonian lore see most recently Vanderhooft 2014;
Ganzel and Holtz 2014 (with earlier bibliography cited there).
5 Translations of biblical texts follow the NJPS version with slight modifications: Tanakh: the
New Jewish Publication Society Bible.

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The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly and the Divine Title El | 11
best preserved in cuneiform tablets we should take Ezekiels word and seek
these shared regional patterns rather in the Levant.6
Religions in the Levant, as far back as we can trace their origins, conceived
of a pantheon of gods headed by a revered, aged god, who sits surrounded by a
company of minor gods. While there is little agreement about the constitution of
the pantheon, the image of the divine council is widely accepted. In the words
of Herbert Niehr:7
Fr die syrisch-kanaanische Religion ist grundstzlich horvorzuheben, da es ein gemeinsames semitisches Pantheon nicht gibt. Vom Pantheon zu unterscheiden ist der
himmlische Thronrat. Das motiv der himmlischen Thronrats kann als eines der
spezifischen Elemente des Kultes der syrisch-kanaanischen Stadtstaaten betrachtet
werden.
In Ugaritic sources of the 2nd millennium BCE, the head of the pantheon is called
by the personal name Ilu. His other name, or perhaps, rather, a frequent epithet, is lyn, (Hebrew elyon, the elevated one usually translated into Greek as
). The mythical past knew glorious struggles among Ilus progeny for
primacy in the pantheon, but regardless of the identity of the winner the assembly still retains its name and character as the circle of Ilu, leaving the old god as
the professed head of the family.
Thus, while Ugaritic myths depict a competition for the position of the
One, the standard epithets commemorate the Many and their leader. 8 Ilu is
called ab bn il, father of gods (lit. father of the sons of Ilu);9 and both warrior
gods ym sea and mt death, the opponents of Baal, retain the epithet mdd il
the beloved of Ilu.
Epithets which include Ilus name often refer to the totality of the gods,
thus dr bn il, the circle of the gods. Other titles referring to the assembly are:
ilm, gods, bn ilm, sons of gods (i.e. junior gods with respect to the senior
head of the assembly), dr il, the circle of Ilu, dt / pr ilm, the congregation/
assembly of gods, pr kbkbm, the assembly of stars (equating stars with
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6 For the Levantine environment rather than an Assyrian imperial one of the Book of
Deuteronomy see Cogan 1974, and more recently Crouch 2014. For a reconfiguration of earlier
Syro-Canaanite traditions and their relations with biblical myths see Ayali-Darshan 2012; AyaliDarshan 2014.
7 Niehr 1990, 7194. Further literature on this motif is vast and I will only name some notable
studies: LHeureux 1979; Mullen 1980, 111284; Smith 2002, 3243; Parker 1999, 204208.
8 For divine epithets in Ugaritic literature see recently Rahmouni 2007.
9 Idem, 1213.

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gods).10 In several places one encounters the parallelism gods / sons of qd

(lm / bn qd), the latter word meaning holy in Semitic languages, being most
probably an epithet for Ilu.11
This picture is by no means characteristic of the 2nd millennium only. It is
prevalent also in Phoenician and Aramaean sources throughout the 1st millennium BCE and through the domination of the Achaemenid empire.12 In Phoenician, members of the assembly are often referred to as qd, holy one or more
freely god, or in the plural qdm. Thus we encounter: lnm qdm, holy gods
(KAI5 14:9); dr kl qdm, circle of all holy ones (KAI5 27:12); and mprt il gbl
qdm, assembly of the gods of Byblos, the holy ones (KAI5 4:45); dr kl qdn,
the circle of all the gods (KAI5 27:12).13 Similarly, a god is often designated qd
(later with the vowel indicated qdy) also in Aramaic, with this title usually
appearing in the plural: qdn. Thus for example in the Proverbs of Ahikar, probably from the Achaemenid period, (parag. 95): bl qdn, Lord of the holy ones.
Generally in Aramaic, however, the god El (corresponding to 2nd millennium
Ilu) functions as the head of the divine council.14
The god Ilu, together with the family descended from the primordial god
( )appears as late as the account of Philo of Byblos in the 1st century
BCE, where his name is transcribed as , equated with Kronos.15 The picture
in West Semitic is thus rather stable.
Hebrew sources of roughly the first half of the 1st millennium BCE share the
same picture of the Levantine pantheon while maintaining their own religious
uniqueness. We thus find in the Hebrew Bible similar titles for the divine assembly to those found in Ugaritic or Phoenician: , sons of
gods, sons of god (Ps 29:1, Job 38:7);16 , Holy Ones, community of Holy ones (Ps 89:68); Congregation of El (Ps 82:1);
assembly of morning stars17 (Job 38:7, cf Ugaritic pr kbkbm).
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10 For an elucidation of these designations see Mullen 1980.
11 See Van Koppen and Van der Toorn 1999, 417; previously Xella 1982.
12 Niehr 1990, 7194; see Xella 2014, 525535.
13 For an analysis of the term qd in Phoenician see the dictionary entry in Hoftijzer and
Jongeling 1995, 996 as well as Van Koppen and Van der Toorn 1999, 417.
14 See Kottsieper 1997, 4042. The title bn lm appears also in Ammonite, in the Amman citadel inscription (KAI5 307:6).
15 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 1. 10. 116 (Baumgarten 1981, 180192). On Philos treatment of his sources see for example Baumgarten 1981, 6393; Ribichini 1986, 4152.
16 For the reading in Deut 32:8, 43 see below. Greenstein 2013, 7071 claims that Job 38:7 is an
allusion to the earlier version of Deut 32:43, as preserved in Qumran.
17 For this meaning of yd as a noun see Talmon 1953.

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Most notable for the present purposes are the following sources which depict the divine assembly in its capacity as a choir singing the praise of its chief.
The first, Ps 89: 68, comprises a relic from an ancient hymn which was merged
into a classical Hebrew poem:18
Your wonders, O YHWH, are praised by the heavenly beings (),
Your faithfulness, too, in the assembly of holy beings () .
For who in the skies can equal YHWH,
can compare with YHWH among the divine beings () ,
a God greatly dreaded in the council of holy beings () ,
held in awe by all around Him?
The second, post-classical Hebrew source is in the book of Job 38:7. The book
was written during the Achaemenid period and reflects a religious identity
which is not particularly Judaean, but is rather attuned to the Aramaic-Edomite
background of Job and his friends:19
When the assembly of morning stars sang,
and all the divine beings shouted for joy.
According to the parallelism in this poetic line, the assembly of stars (corresponding to Ugaritic and Phoenician dr or pr) corresponds to all the sons of
gods ( ) as they praise their master.
Another non-Judaean speaker with a similar background to that of Job is
Agur bin Yakeh, possibly of Edomite origin, who reports (Prov 30:23):
I am brutish, less than a man;
I lack common sense.
I have not learned wisdom,
Nor do I possess knowledge of the Holy Ones.
The speaker contrasts his ignorance with the wisdom of the Holy Ones ().
The latter beings bear outstanding wisdom, due to their proximity to God.
Many biblical authors, especially those of the Psalms, view YHWH, the god
of Israel, as a master of the assembly of minor gods. An example is Psalm 82,
where his ascent to power is recounted.20 In addition, several formulaic hymnic
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18 For ancient hymns embedded in biblical communal laments as in Psalms 74 and 89 see
Avishur 1994, 234206.
19 For the date of Job and the Aramaic-Edomite affinity see in general Greenstein 2003, 651
666.
20 Goldstein 2010; Parker 1995.

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statements summon the divine beings to praise their lord. However, while the
classical summons formula is quite clear, as in Ps 29:1 and 47:7, biblical literature sometimes reveals a certain amount of objection to it, submerging it under
more refined monotheistic reasoning. Compare Ps 29:12 with Ps 96:78.21
29:12
96:78
Ascribe to YHWH, O divine beings,

ascribe to YHWH glory and strength.
Ascribe to YHWH the glory of His name;
bow down to YHWH, majestic in holiness.
Ascribe to YHWH, O families of the nations,

ascribe to YHWH glory and strength.
Ascribe to YHWH the glory of His name,
bring tribute and enter His courts.
Both psalms share essentially the same hymnic formula, but the divine beings
in the original formula (Psalm 29) are replaced by the families of nations in
Psalm 96 as the object of the call for praise. The replacement is based on the
notion that while each of the gods has responsibility for one of the nations,
YHWH alone is responsible for Israel. Calling upon the nations to praise, rather
than upon the Sons of gods, is intended to avoid the mythological scene of the
divine family. The verse thus maintains its universalistic connotation but with a
less offensive tone. Indeed, the prophet known as Second Isaiah (40:1315)
expresses dissatisfaction with the association of YHWH with the divine council
and with the gods of foreign nations, underscoring him alone as the potent
agent.22
The animosity towards traditions of the divine assembly continues in a wellknown passage of Deuteronomy, this time not in the formation stage of biblical
literature but rather in its transmission. A clear-headed reading of the song of
Moses in Deuteronomy 32 reveals how much it depends on the scene of the divine assembly. After a short proem, the poem records the way YHWH won the
people of Israel as his share, at the stage when he had been a junior part of the
divine assembly and when the nations of the world were divided among the
members of the assembly (32:89). The division is carried out by lywn, a conspicuous epithet of the chief of the assembly, who assigns to each minor god a
share in the world.23 Once YHWH gains hold of his inheritance, a long drama of
loyalty and betrayal unfolds, through which the Lord expresses love to his people, is then enraged by them, and ultimately is reconciled with them, slaughters
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21 See Ginsberg 1969; Rof 2012, 86.
22 For the objection of Second Isaiah to the divine council see Weinfeld 2004.
23 For the basic mythological significance of this scene see Loewenstamm 1986, and more
recently Goldstein 2010; Smith 2008, 139143.

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their enemies, and returns victorious. The poem then ends (32:43) with a call to
the members of the divine assembly to sing the praise of YHWH. The poem thus
begins and ends (32:8, 43) with explicit mythological scenes. The original text of
these two scenes is reflected (with minor variations) in the Septuagint of Deuteronomy, as well as in ancient Hebrew scrolls from Qumran (4QDeuteronomyj.q). In contrast, the Masoretic text (= MT), later to become the textus receptus among Jews, reflects a corrected reading of these two verses. This is not the
place to recount the intricacies of the various versions, which have been extensively discussed in scholarship.24 Suffice it to note that in the MT of verse 8 the
name of the assembly was transformed: from the polytheistic designation
the Sons of god(s) to the less blatant phrase sons of Israel.
This latter reading obfuscates the original connotation of the verse and renders
the poetic line less effective. Similarly, in verse 43 the call for praise has been
extensively modified too. The original reading, preserved in the Qumran scroll
4QDeuteronomyq and to some extent also in the Septuagint, reads:
Praise, O heavens (), with him, worship him, all you gods (!)
In contrast, the Masoretic text gives the shortened and thus enigmatic reading:
Praise, O nations, (for?) His people. The transformation is readily understood if
we take into account that the word Heavens ( )stands here for the heavenly beings, as noted by Rof,25 and hence it was necessary to replace it with a
more moderate term. While the corrected reading retains the universal tone of
the original, its poetic sting has been withheld.
Deuteronomy 32:8 continued to live in the Israelite literary reservoir and
gained much popularity through the ages. Interestingly, the version which is
often quoted and interpreted is the original version, not the corrected one of the
MT. In these later quotations, however, a considerable change occurred in the
understanding of the myth. While the original statement in Deut 32:8 viewed the
divine name elyon, the High one as superior to YHWH and hence as assigning
the portions to all heavenly beings including YHWH, this kind of reading could
not have been acceptable among later biblical writers. Among these writers, the
epithet the High one was understood as referring to YHWH, he himself being
superior over the other heavenly beings. It is thus a monotheistic transformation of the original myth. This transformation is attested in the paraphrases
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24 For a detailed analysis see Loewenstamm 1986; Goldstein 2010; Rof 2012, 6273; Joosten
2007, 548555.
25 Cf Jeremiah 14:22; Rof 2002, 50.

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of 32:8 in Deuteronomy 4:19 and 29:25, as well as in later, post-biblical paraphrases.26

My study has thus far shown how there was an ambiguous attitude towards
the scene of the divine assembly in the literature of the Hebrew Bible: it was not
utterly rejected, but rather corrected, interpreted, or accommodated in various
ways. As we shall presently see, this scene experienced a surprising renaissance
in the post-classical period of Israel and in other Jewish literature written in the
Hellenistic period.
It has long been acknowledged that the biblical Book of Daniel contains a
West Semitic throne scene of the divine assembly. The first half of this apocalyptic book, written in Aramaic, dates somewhere between the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE, i.e. between the Achaemenid and Seleucid rule over Judah, and most
probably contains layers from both of these periods.27 The book recounts a series
of magnificent symbolic dreams, by the Babylonian and Persian kings as well as
by Daniel himself.
As part of Daniels dream in chapter 7 we read how the master of the assembly descends from heaven to resume his throne in a judgment scene among the
host of heaven (Daniel 7: 910, NRSV)
As I watched, thrones were set in place,
and the Ancient of Days took his throne;
his clothing was white as snow,
and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames,
and its wheels were burning fire.
A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence.
A thousand thousand served him,
and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.
The scene clearly develops the contrast between the mighty seated lord and the
infinite standing multitude of his servants. It has been noted long ago that the
epithet used here for the chief of the assembly: , the Ancient of Days
is a reflection of an accepted Canaanite epithet for Ilu, the lord of the assembly,
common already in the 2nd millennium BCE and into the 1st millennium.28 It is
often identified with the Ugaritic epithet ab nm, Father of Years.29 In addi-
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26 See Smith 2008, 202212.
27 For the date and authorship of Daniel see Collins 1993, 2438. Chapter 7, standing in between the narratives and the visions, might be later than chpters 16.
28 See Emerton 1958 with earlier bibliography; Collins 1993, 286291; Becking 1999.
29 For this epithet see Rahmouni 2007, 1821.

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tion, the identity of one like the Son of Man in Daniel 7:13 brings to mind other
Canaanite divine imagery.30 While the main sources of Canaanite religion attesting to these epithets date back to the 2nd millennium BCE, there is no reason to
assume that Daniel 7 refers back to those archaic religious manifestations,
which would have become entirely obsolete by the 2nd century BCE. Rather, such
an epithet was part of the Levantine culture of the late 1st millennium, and the
author of Daniel participated in that regional aggregate.31 Thus, after a period in
which the divine assembly had been controlled and moderated, this material
reentered biblical literature in the framework of apocalyptic visions, demonstrating the liveliness of Levantine mythology in Second Temple Judaism.32
The main part of this article will now focus on apocalyptic Jewish groups of
the Hellenistic and early Roman period, and especially on the community
whose writings were discovered at Qumran, on the northern shore of the Dead
Sea. There are many reasons to tie this community specifically to the religiouscultural milieu of the Levant, particularly Syria, first and foremost the fact that
the community itself makes that connection explicitly. Thus, in the text known
today as the Damascus Document, the community is called The New Covenanters in the Land of Damascus, recounting the establishment of a renewed
covenant and a new community in the land of Damascus (CD VI 45, cf 4QDa 3
ii): The Well is the Law, and its diggers are the captives of Israel who went
out of the land of Judah and dwelt in the land of Damascus.33
While some scholars take the reference to Damascus as a metaphor for an
exile in the spirit, I see no reason to doubt the reliability of the geographical
report.34 One must then ask how this Syrian affiliation was manifested in the
writings of the group. In my earlier work I have explored the ways in which the
Aramaic-speaking Syrian milieu mediated the transfer of Mesopotamian lore
both scientific and mythological to Judaea and to Jewish scholars at the time.35
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30 Collins 1993, 304310 with extensive bibliography.
31 Collins 1993, 291294. Another hint of the cultural background of Daniel 7 is the depiction
of YHWHs throne in 7:9, which is often compared to the scene on a coin from Yehud, showing
a deity sitting on a wheeled throne. See Shenkar 20072008.
32 For the Chaoskampf motif in Second Temple literature, see Yarbro Collins 1976; Angel 2006.
33 For text and translation of this scroll see Charlesworth and Baumgarten et al. 1993.
34 For the metaphorical interpretation see Dimant 2014, 455464. For the literal interpretation
see Campbell 1995.
35 Ben-Dov 2008; for a wider discussion of this cultural contact beyond the scientific material
see Sanders, forthcoming.

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The library of Qumran, altogether about 900 different scrolls, is rather heterogeneous.36 Among the various classes in this collection, I will deal with and
try to interconnect the biblical scrolls, the Aramaic scrolls which bear close
affinities with ancient Near Eastern material, and some of the core sectarian
scrolls regulating the communitys structure and practice. Let us begin with the
Qumranic attestations of Deuteronomy 32 noted above.
As noted above, the MT preserves a corrected version of verses 8 and 43,
which replaces the divine assembly scene with less mythological-sounding
expressions of the distribution of nations in the world among the divine assembly. Now, one may well understand why a transmitter of the Masoretic text corrected the offending polytheistic lines; conversely one may also understand
how the scribe who transmitted the Hebrew Vorlage of the Septuagint was wary
of changing the ancient text despite its awkwardness.37 More should be said,
however, about the transmission of this passage in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The
poem of Deuteronomy 32 seems to have been a central one for the community,
since no less than six different scrolls contain parts of the chapter.38 Moreover,
some of them were not copies of the book of Deuteronomy, but rather contained
only selected excerpts, probably for liturgical purposes, with chapter 32 included. In fact both 4QDeutj and 4QDeutq contain only excerpts from Deuteronomy,
with the former presenting Deut 32:19 alongside selections from chapters 56,
8, 11, 21, as well as Exodus 1213,39 while 4QDeutq was probably a single sheet
containing only chapter 32.40
The older, original reading of the problematic verses is attested in two
scrolls (4QDeuteronomyj,q), both of them containing excerpts of Deuteronomy.
The corrected reading of MT is not preserved in any Qumran scroll known to
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36 For a general survey of the Qumran finds and the Dead Sea Scrolls see VanderKam and
Flint 2005.
37 In fact, the translation of this Hebrew Vorlage into Greek attests unease with the title sons
of god. Most text witnesses of the Septuagint do not preserve this title in a straightforward
way, but rather give a duplicate translation: , placing the more orthodox
term next to the problematic sons of god. See Smith 2008, 201202. Only two
miniscule manuscripts of the Septuagint preserve the reading sons of God as in
4QDeuteronomy j.
38 Copies c, r, j, q, b, and k1 of the 4QDeuteronomy scrolls.
39 Most of these scrolls probably served as parchment slips inserted into phylacteries. See
White Crawford 2005, 127140, esp. 128130. Deuteronomy 32 is preserved on the Phylacteries
scroll 4QPhylN.
40 Likewise, 4QDeuteronomyk1 contains excerpts from Deut 5, 11, and 32. See Doering 2005,
2627; Tov 1995.

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us. This may be a matter of chance, since additional copies of Deuteronomy 32

may have perished in the course of two thousand years of lying in the caves.
However, further evidence prompts the thought that there was some value imputed to the polytheistic reading of Deut 32 with reference to the divine assembly. Thus, an allusion to 32:8 appears in a poetic sectarian text, which reflects
quite clearly the older reading of that verse.41
[
[
[
]
]
]
]

You are more honoured than the sons of El[ you fixed] the boundaries of the nations to
strengthen them [ ] in order that iniquity will [not?] abound in His inheritance [ ]
You have [not?] abandoned them in the hands of those who see[k their lives]
The poem addresses God in the second person, praising his dignity beyond that
of other sons of El and the way He has established the lands of nations, with a
clear reference to 32:8b. The word inheritance corresponds to 32:9: Israel is the
Lords inheritance, and he acts to maintain it properly by not letting evil and
guilt dwell in it and preventing the other divine beings from interfering with his
private inheritance.42 With the caution due to the fragmentary context of this
statement, one may note that these literary lines allude to Deuteronomy 32:8 in
the older, Qumranic version. This is made clear by the term , sons of El,
which corresponds to the reading in 4QDeutj and disagrees with
Sons of Israel of the MT.
I suggest that the polytheistic reading of Deut 32 raised interest in the
community of the Yahad because the scene of the divine assembly was entirely
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41 1QHa XXIV 3337, following Qimron 2010, 99. For the relation of this passage to Deut 32 see
Kister 2012, 7677. Smith 2008, 209 mentions two other allusions to Deut 32:8 in Qumran literature (1QM X 9 and 4Q418 fr. 81+81a line 3; Smith did not note the Hodayot passage mentioned
here). In his examples, however, the allusion to Deut 32:8 is not as clear as in the Hodayot.
42 The term you have not abandoned them recalls other formulations in the DSS when the
Israelites are given away or are saved from being given away into the hands of evil angels
representing the nations. The angels of the nations are often contained under the authority of
the evil lord Belial. The relationship between the angels of the nations and the (positive) lord of
the assembly is best reflected in the Animal Apocalypse, where the angels are represented as
seventy shepherds (1Enoch 89:5977). For a wide discussion of this motif and several new
occurrences of it see Dimant 2006, 373388.

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active, sacred, and revered in that community. In such a community, the old
message of Deuteronomy 32 was not conceived as offending, but rather as always relevant. My opinion about the use of Deuteronomy 32 at Qumran thus
differs from that of Smith.43 Smith takes it as an axiom that all allusions to Deuteronomy 32:8 both biblical and post-biblical are strictly monotheistic. Even
the author of Deut 32, according to Smith, did not really mean what he wrote
but rather understood El Elyon as a title of Yahweh. Despite drawing on the old
polytheistic type-element, the author intended no polytheism and perhaps
knew none in this case.44 In my opinion, however, readers of this verse in the
Yahad community were especially fond of it precisely because it embodied the
notion of multiple divine beings, which was especially suitable for their demonology and for their theology in general. Let us adduce some examples to that
end.
The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness depicts
the ultimate cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil at the end of
days.45 Column XII of the largest copy (1QM) recounts the collaboration of human beings with angels throughout the battle (1QM XII 15):46
For [th]ere is a multitude of holy ones in the heavens, and the hosts of angels (are) in
your holy habitation to pr[aise] your [truth]. The elect ones of the holy people, you have
set for yourself [ ]. The names of all their hosts (are) with you in your holy dwelling;[ ]
In your glorious habitation. . and to muster [] according to their thousands and their
myriads, together with your holy ones [ ] your angels, so that they have a mighty hand in
the battle [] the rebels of the earth in the strife of your judgments, and the people of the
elect ones of the heavens shall be victo[rious..]
Lines 45 depict a recurring scene in Qumran literature: the chosen ones among
mankind stand shoulder to shoulder with the heavenly beings. They will fight
together with the angels and ultimately win with them. The heavenly beings are
called here not only , the usual word for angel, but also , holy ones
the normal word in other West Semitic languages for denoting a heavenly being, the same as the holy ones of Byblos encountered above.
Coexistence with heavenly beings is practised in another fundamental role
of the community. A passage from the poetic-liturgical Hodayot recounts the
foundation of the sectarian identity: membership in the sect elevates the indi-
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43 Smith 2008, 208242.
44 Quotation from p. 203.
45 For the War Scroll see Duhaime 2004.
46 English translation follows J. Duhaime, in Charlesworth and Baumgarten et al. 1993.

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vidual from poverty and selflessness to the position where they can participate
with the angels in their duty of praising God (1QHa XI 1923).47
I give thanks to You, O Lord, for You have redeemed my soul from the pit. From Sheol and
Abaddon You have raised me up to an eternal height, so that I might walk about on a limitless plain, and know that there is hope for him whom You created from the dust for the
eternal council. The perverse spirit You have cleansed from great transgression, that he
might take his stand with the host of the holy ones, and enter together (or in the Yahad) with
the congregation of the sons of heaven. And for man, You have allotted an eternal destiny
with the spirits of knowledge, to praise Your name together with a community (Yahad) of
praise, and to recount Your wonders before all Your creatures.
Of special importance is the phrase , entering together / in communion / in Yahad with the congregation of the sons of heaven. The
word yahad appears here not only as an adverb connoting communion, but
serves also as the most common self-designation of the community, denoting
the coexistence of the community with the heavenly beings. The poetic sentence
from the Hodayot alludes directly to the biblical verse from Job 38:7 quoted
above, which has, it seems, affected quite significantly the religious world-view
of the Yahad.
Of all the texts at Qumran, the scene of the assembly is most prominent in
the collection known as Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, attested in over ten copies from Qumran and Masada.48 Here, the people of the Yahad community recite
weekly prayers in which they (re-)enact a human performance of the liturgy of
the heavenly temple. The priests of that temple are the heavenly beings, so that
the human recitation of these prayers creates a mystical-mythical setting for
human communion with the divine.49 I quote here a typical example (Songs of
the Sabbath Sacrifice 1 I 16):50
[For the instructor. Song of the whole-offering of the] first [Sabba]th on the fourth of the
first month. Praise [the God of
]h, O god-like ones of all the holiest of the holy ones
( ;) and in His divinity [
]among the eternally holy, the holiest of the holy
ones () , and they have become for Him priests of [ ], ministers of
the Presence in His glorious shrine. In the assembly of all the gods of [
]god-like ones
||
47 Translation follows Stegemann and Schuller 2009 (DJD 40). Italics added. On the communion with the angels in prayer among the Yahad community see Chazon 2000.
48 See Newsom 1998.
49 For the sort of encounter practised in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice see Schfer 2006,
3766.
50 Translation follows Newsom 1998.

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(). He inscribed His statutes concerning all spiritual matters and precepts of [
knowledge, people of discernment, honoured by God.
The heavenly beings which constantly praise the Lord are called here by the old
West Semitic title , often with a typical syntactic duplication and intensification: , holiest of the holy ones. Moreover, they are straightforwardly called , gods (in various construct combinations as for example
gods of wisdom), a highly surprising appellation in a Jewish environment
which is supposed to have shunned polytheism already centuries before.51
Not dissimilar from the usage noted above is the conspicuous biblical interpretation in the so-called Pesher of Melchiedek (11Q13). In that scroll, the title
, god, of Psalm 82:1 is interpreted to refer to none other than Melchisedek, a semi-divine semi-human primordial figure acting here as a leader of the
assembly (11Q13 II 910).52
The use of such divine appellations as and may not be so surprising
if one takes into account that there is considerable continuity, even affinity,
between Qumranic thought (presented in Hebrew) and a variety of literature,
both earlier and contemporary, written primarily in Aramaic. In that literature,
such as Book of Giants, Book of Watchers, Genesis Apocryphon etc. epithets such
as , lofty, , Great Holy one, , Holy one, are frequent. For
example, the throne scene, noted above, of Daniel 7:910 is paralleled in both 1
Enoch 14 and in the Book of Giants (4Q530).53 The title , the Great
Holy One, is quite common in Qumran Aramaic to denote the chief of the divine
assembly (e.g. 1Qapocryphon Genesis II 14, XI 15, XII 17). The Book of Enoch, an
important predecessor of the Yahad, expands on the myth of the fallen angels,
using that mythological kernel to construct a wide-ranging worldview with
recourse to many religious and even political issues.54 The myth of fallen angels
relates in many ways to the scene of the divine assembly. Especially noteworthy
is a passage in 1 Enoch 1:3 (= 4Q201 i 56), which recounts how the Great Holy
One will rise ( )with his multitude of hosts. Similar wording to that particular phrase appears in 1QM I 16, where God appears ( )with holy ones
||
51 For an analysis of the divine epithets in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice which stresses
their un-conservative orientation see Mizrahi, forthcoming.
52 The restoration and overall interpretation of this theme in the Pesher of Melchisedek remain debated. A short discussion may be found in Collins 2000, 1819.
53 See Trotter 2012, 451466. In fact in the Book of Giants (4Q530) the lord of the assembly is
called Great holy one rather than Ancient of Days as in Daniel e. For the continuity between
Yahad theology and apocalyptic literature see Hempel 2013, 231252; Collins 2010.
54 See Reed 2005; Stuckenbruck 2014.

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().55 This is further demonstration of the continuity between Yahad traditions and earlier Aramaic angelology.
In the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, the Qumranic polytheism is carried to
the extreme. The angels of heaven are simply called gods and function as an
essential part of the communitys conceptual universe, plain and simple. The
multiplicity of agents in heaven is not a mere ornament in the poetic atmosphere of the Songs; rather, this multiplicity constitutes the very essence of the
entire composition, since the effect can only be achieved with a multi-vocal
heavenly choir singing Gods praise.
While what we call monotheistic religions made it their mission to eradicate the dimension of multiplicity from the heavenly realm and assign agency to
a single god, many followers of these religions could not have functioned with
such a bereft divine realm. A single god was simply not enough to fulfill the
religious imagination of worshippers. The divine realm required the supplementation of multiple other figures, which in monotheistic religions are called angels to conceal the polytheistic point.56 While some religious currents would
seek to play down the role of angels in the divine realms, others would seek to
underscore it.57 The community of the Yahad, as we saw, belongs to the latter
current. Members of the community felt the multiplicity of heavenly beings on a
daily basis and could not have run their spiritual life without recourse to them.
In that sense, the theology of the community is similar to the religion of the
surrounding Levant. In other words, the Yahad was not influenced by the Levantine culture, but rather took part in the formation of Levantine religion as an
active agent, although with a unique and particular hue.
Was the community at Qumran polytheistic? The terms monotheism and
polytheism are misleading. We as modern readers, after millennia of Abrahamic religions, may expect more of these terms that the ancients would. Members
of the Yahad would certainly succumb to the statement of Deuteronomy 6:4
Hear O Israel, YHWH our Lord, YHWH is one, a verse often quoted in Qumran
and copied in numerous phylacteries.58 Yet they would qualify it with a very
active host surrounding the one single god.
At this point we may conceive of a connection between the Yahads belief in
multiple heavenly beings and the popularity at Qumran of Deuteronomy 32,
||
55 Curiously this verse from 1 Enoch is also quoted in verse 7 of the Epistle of Jude from the
New Testament.
56 For this move see Koch 1994.
57 See especially Rof 2012, 8197.
58 See Lange and Weigold 2012, 147177.

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particularly with the original, polytheistic-like reading of 32:8, 43. I believe it is

no coincidence that these two phenomena appear within the same community.
They seem to be two sides of the same coin: the continuing significance of the
divine assembly as a religious category in the Yahad. In contrast, other Jewish
streams of the Second Temple period, which may have been less well-attuned to
the multiplicity of angels, introduced corrections in these two verses which
ultimately found their way into the Masoretic text.59
My argument connects with the well-known and much discussed habits for
representing the divine name in the Dead Sea Scrolls.60 The scribes of these
scrolls do not write the Tetragrammaton in free Hebrew composition and usually use the title , El, as the standard divine name. In addition, the same title is
quite often used when quoting biblical texts within non-biblical compositions.
The choice of this title is intriguing, given that earlier Hebrew scribes, represented already within the Hebrew Bible, chose the more common title . In
fact, the divine title El was not only used as a substitute to the Tetragrammaton,
but rather functioned in sectarian literature as the standard divine name. Thus
to take a single example from the Damascus Covenant (CD II 3): El, who loves
true knowledge, has positioned Wisdom and Cleverness in front of him. The
Dead Sea Scrolls also use the divine name El to build chains of constructs for
designating the deity and the nation of Israel: , , ,
El of the gods, El of Israel, the Yahad of El, the lot of El etc.
Why is it that the members of the Yahad avoided the designation Elohim,
already attested in numerous biblical writings before them, and chose instead
the designation El? It may be noted that El is rather infrequent in other Jewish
literature of the corresponding period. It may not be too far-fetched to claim that
the mythical scene of the divine assembly, which was so powerful for the selfconstruction of the community, is what prompted the choice of El as the main
divine title within the Yahad. In the special worldview of the Yahad, the main
characteristic of the supreme God was His position as the chief of the assembly,
i.e. the special dynamic that was achieved within the realm of the divine between the One and the Many. There is of course only one supreme god, but his
greatness and power can only be manifested by way of interacting with the
other divine beings surrounding Him. The title El is most suitable to convey this
||
59 Based on various circumstantial evidence, Van der Kooij 2005, dated this correction to
sometime during the 2nd century BCE.
60 I have addressed this topic myself in an earlier study (Ben-Dov 2010) but did not include
the main point suggested here. For earlier studies see mainly Stegemann 1978.

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particular sense, because it had been used for at least a millennium throughout
the Levant as an indication for the head of the divine assembly.
Take for example the designation , the god of gods which appears
in the War Scroll (e.g. 1QM XVIII 6). In turn, this title is similarly used in Daniel
11:36, in a chapter which probably served as the backdrop to the war accounts
in the War Scroll.61 Both literary contexts make much of the conflict between the
angels of the nations and the chief divinity, the God of Israel. The construction
god of gods is a partitive genitive connecting the singular and plural of the
word El. It is an intriguing play between monotheism and polytheism: the
phrase is meant to convey the greatness of the One, but this cannot be expressed without recourse to the way He stands out among the Many. The more
common biblical name does not lend itself to such a construct, since it is
grammatically plural even in designating the one and only God.62 A scribal culture like that of the Yahad which wished to make constant references to various
powers in heaven cannot use the standard Hebrew titles for God; the old West
Semitic title El would be a perfect choice for that purpose.
I therefore suggest that a deeper understanding of the Yahads fascination
with multiple divine beings in the assembly may explain not only various literary expressions throughout its literature, but also the fundamental choice of
divine epithets used in constructing that literature. The very same El who functions in the West Semitic culture as the head of the assembly is called into duty
in a most unexpected literary milieu in early Roman Judaea.
Conclusion
The task of this article was to trace submerged lines of thought behind the front
row of canonical literature. This task was carried out with regard to the West
Semitic motif of the divine assembly. This motif was shown to be stable
throughout the religion of the Levant, from 2nd millennium BCE Ugarit, through
the 1st millennium in Phoenician and Aramaean religion, and even later to the
Syrian culture of the early 1st millennium CE. This motif and the literary tradition
which arose out of it rely on the frequent religious need to contrast the One and
the Many in the realm of the Divine. This juxtaposition was required also in the
more monotheistic world of Hebrew biblical literature. While the motif is readily
||
61 See Flusser 2007.
62 Why this is so, is an interesting question which cannot be answered here.

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apparent in Hebrew literature of the Iron Age, in that age of bellicose monotheism there is a degree of resistance to it, and authors use various techniques to
play down the polytheistic undertones of the motif. In the words of Mark Smith,
biblical writers sought to reduce the translatability of the tradition.
The main appearance of this motif, in Deuteronomy 32:8 and 43, acquired a
central place in the Hebrew biblical tradition, but it was transmitted in an
oblique way: it was either reinterpreted to place YHWH as the chief of the assembly, or, more boldly, corrected by means of the replacement of words in
order to obfuscate the divine identity of the members of the assembly.
Despite the biblical ambiguity towards the scene of the Divine assembly,
this scene experienced a radical revival in Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, especially in Aramaic and in apocalyptic texts such as Enoch, Daniel, the Genesis Apocryphon, and the Book of Giants, and later in the sectarian
literature of the Yahad. This revival reintegrated the Jewish literary tradition
into the wider religious tradition of the Levant. The revival has been traced here
in the variety of divine appellations and titles used in Jewish Aramaic, which
correspond to the same or similar titles in contemporary non-Jewish texts.
On the same continuum, these traditions can also be seen in Hebrew, mainly in the writings of the Yahad community. The indebtedness of the Yahad to its
apocalyptic predecessors mainly the circles that produced the Aramaic apocalypses is quite clear. In addition the Yahad declares its origins to be located in
the Land of Damascus, where the renewed covenant took place and the community was established. Within the Yahad there is a significant revival of the
divine assembly, which played a central part in almost every field of the sectarian religion. It was suggested here that due to the Yahads commitment to the
divine assembly, its scribes chose to use the divine epithet El, one which was
not very popular among contemporary Jews, but which was most efficient for a
religion based so strongly on the divine assembly. Thus, either deliberately or
not, the community of the Yahad joined forces again with the Levantine religion
of its times, at least in some aspects of describing the godhead.
How does the mechanism of absorbing and reviving mythological elements
work? Is it fair to say that the absorbed mythological elements remained within
the confines of apocalyptic literature while leaving the mainstream Jewish writings pure of foreign mythology? As the historian of ideas Amos Funkenstein
taught, such an expectation would be nave. The ideas of apocalyptic literature
existed side by side with more formal shapes of religion, and the two forms

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could not have avoided mutually influencing each other.63 Thus, the submerged
will necessarily sooner or later find its way also from the back alley to the
main road.
The present article suggested a further way of benefiting from the mechanism of submerged literature. The Israeli scholar Frank Polak proved that the
Aramaic stories in the Book of Daniel are based on a previous, oral tradition,
based on their formulation and on epic formulas preserved in them.64 This earlier oral tradition is the tip of the iceberg of the lost Aramaic oral tradition, which
contained all sorts of religious and narrative literature. While most of that Aramaic literature perished through history, significant parts of it survived because
they were submerged in Jewish apocalyptic literature. Of course, this is not to
say that the apocalyptic Jewish literature is a polytheistic Levantine product. It
was based on components of the regional Aramaic tradition, but it did its best to
tame its most offensive parts, and to acclimatize it within a normative Jewish
tradition. Some circles in Jerusalem saw it as their duty to oppose even the faint
traces of the divine assembly tradition, and so they refashioned the text of Deuteronomy 32, the main proof text for that tradition in the Hebrew Bible.
The Qumran Yahad is thus not only a radical Jewish sect, but also a thriving
locus of Levantine religion. A careful study will allow that both aspects of this
vista could live side by side.
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The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly

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Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS

The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly and the Divine Title El | 11

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gods).10 In several places one encounters the parallelism gods / sons of qd

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The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly and the Divine Title El | 13

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Ascribe to YHWH, O divine beings,

Ascribe to YHWH, O families of the nations,

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The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly and the Divine Title El | 15

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of 32:8 in Deuteronomy 4:19 and 29:25, as well as in later, post-biblical paraphrases.26

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us. This may be a matter of chance, since additional copies of Deuteronomy 32

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Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS

The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly and the Divine Title El | 21

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Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS

The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly and the Divine Title El | 23

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particularly with the original, polytheistic-like reading of 32:8, 43. I believe it is

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The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly and the Divine Title El | 25

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Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS

The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly and the Divine Title El | 27

Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS

Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS

The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly and the Divine Title El | 29

Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS

Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS

The Resurrection of the Divine Assembly and the Divine Title El | 31

Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS

Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS

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