We never expected to be able to identify the scribe responsible for The Hidden Bones Apocalypse. It has come as a surprise that there is a very logical answer to the question of his identity. That answer is driven by: 1) our conclusion regarding timing, 2) the content of the Hidden Bones message, and 3) the relationship of the Hidden Bones message to the other writings of the period, both apocalyptic and sectarian.
Our conclusion regarding timing is that the marker phrases were inserted into the biblical text shortly after the edicts of Antiochus IV were rescinded in 164 BCE. During the time the edicts were in force, texts of the law[1] were destroyed and anyone found to be in possession of those texts was liable to execution. We can conclude from that that the senior literary scribes of the temple community were not spending their time on those texts during the period 167-164 BCE. It is reasonable to assume that some would have made use of their literary skills in other ways during that period.
We know that after the edicts were rescinded Judah Maccabee gathered up what texts survived and let others know that he had them, offering their use if needed.[2] This is assumed to be for the purpose of assisting in the reconstruction and replacement of destroyed and damaged texts. We can reasonably assume that the temple scribes who had been unable to work on biblical materials during the time of the edict would have become a part of the reconstruction project and that the most senior of them would have led it. That project of replacement and repair of damaged and destroyed texts provided the most likely opportunity for our scribe to insert the marker phrase into the newly created replacement.
Only a very senior scribe, and perhaps only the most senior of them, could hope to amend the texts in a way that would survive to be accepted by those who came after him. From the time Jonathan became high priest in 152 BCE, through the Hasmonean dynasty, through the period dominated by Pharisaic influence and then to the earliest authorities of the rabbinic period, the text remained essentially constant. And that is the text that became the Masoretic Text that we have today. There were scribes at all periods during that time who would have known every word of those texts by heart. Amendments that survived were amendments that were accepted. But acceptance did not necessarily mean agreement.
How is it that inserted phrases, that were recognized as new, might be accepted even if not agreed; accepted even if not acknowledged? The Pharisaic and rabbinic embrace of the idea of the Oral Law allowed many uncomfortable textual issues to be ‘explained’. And the idea of the Oral Law enabled the acceptance of midrash as authoritative. The earliest rabbinic midrashim explain the existence of the marker phrases as adding information to the specific incident or ‘day’ that is marked. Never are all ten addressed as conveying a single message. Concentration on a part allowed the whole to be ignored.
If we can accept the idea that responsibility for the Hidden Bones lies with a very senior temple scribe who was idled during the edicts and then became engaged in the textual reconstruction project, we can begin to explore his identity in a more focused way. We have analyzed the message of the Hidden Bones and compared it to the other works of Jewish Apocalypse literature from the earliest elements of 1 Enoch to the latest writings dated within our time window. That is, until the fall of the Samaritan temple in 111 BCE.[3] That comparison allows us to draw a number of key inferences. The following is neither a complete list nor a complete elucidation of the analysis. It just points the way.
Our scribe was almost certainly a priest.
He shared the general worldview of the apocalyptic writers. In this he would have opposed the Hasmoneans but would have also found fault with the pre-Antiochus IV high priesthood.
He was firmly Mosaic in outlook, and devoted to the law, which would put him at odds with the authors of the early Enoch writings but in alignment with the authors of Daniel and Jubilees.
He was particularly attached to the observance of Yom Kippur, which is of specific priestly interest, but which also suggests a belief that personal outcomes can be altered. This, along with the important Deuteronomic concept of reward and punishment, pits him against the sectarian determinists of the Qumran faction. In our interpretation of the book of Daniel – not shared by all – we find reference to the efficacy of prayer, which also argues for the ability to change outcomes and against determinism.
Our scribe was also especially attached to the holiday of Shavuot. Not only is the observance required in Leviticus 23 marked, but we believe he was also responsible for the unusual editing of Ezekiel 45 that has the effect of adding Shavuot to Ezekiel’s list of the festivals. This interest in Shavuot, at the apparent expense of Sukkot, for example, which was more important but is not marked, is telling in several respects. Shavuot was of special importance to the author of Jubilees. In that text we read that it was observed in heaven from the time of creation. And it is in Jubilees that the connection between Shavuot and the Sinai event is made. The sectarian community marked Shavuot as the anniversary of the Sinai theophany, also, and it was on that day that important membership decisions were made.
The associations of Shavuot and revelation, and of revelation and covenant, are also key. For the author of Jubilees, Sinai is crucial but neither revelation nor covenant is limited to Sinai. The covenant of Sinai, for Jubilees, is the same covenant as that made with Noah and Abraham. Only its terms are amended. But revelation is a progressive activity for Jubilees. VanderKam writes: “In line with his justice, God progressively reveals his will to people and holds them responsible only for commandments that he had disclosed by their time.”[4] This position accords with the sectarians as expressed in a commentary on Habakkuk found in Qumran in which the sectarians’ leader, the Teacher of Righteousness, is said to have received information directly from the divine. But it is also the key presupposition of the entire apocalyptic literature.
An apocalypse is, by definition, a revelation. That is the Greek meaning of the root term. Enochian texts are revealed by angels or in visions. Jubilees is ‘re-written bible’. The term assumes the same revelatory character as the Books of Genesis and Exodus that it recasts. Daniel receives divine information in dream visions. The Temple Scroll re-writes Exodus through Deuteronomy as a first-person communication from God.
Revelation, to the writers of apocalypse, is an ongoing reality, always building on and increasing the store of previously received information. But that idea would not be accepted by the Pharisaic and rabbinic authorities that rose to dominate Jewish thought. For them, new information was discovered, not revealed. Through the interpretive structures of the Oral Law they would discover information that had already been revealed but had not been previously understood. Interpretations of previous revelation served to make new revelation unnecessary.
Our scribe chose to embed his message in the biblical accounts of ten highly consequential ‘days’. That was not an accident. Choices were made. Days and events of great consequence, Sukkot, Rosh Hashanah, and the Akedah, for example were not marked. Shavuot, which was not of great liturgical consequence, was marked. No educated and engaged Jew living in the mid-second century BCE would have hesitated in response to the question: “What issue involves ten highly consequential days?” They would know that the only possible answer involved ‘the calendar controversy’.
The authors of the apocalypses of 1 Enoch, the author of Jubilees, the author of Daniel, the author of the Halachic Letter, the sectarians as a group, all held to the calendar of 364 days. The Seleucid calendar of 354 days, which is still the basis for the calendar used by Jews today, had been imposed on the community by the Greeks. It was a matter of critical importance and critical distinction. The wrong calendar meant the marking of critical required observances on the wrong dates. The Hasmoneans were willing to continue using the 354 day ‘defective’ calendar. The apocalyptic writers and the sectarians were not.
In the 364-day calendar there are 52 weeks of seven days. There are four quarters, each having two months of 30 days and one of 31 days. In that calendar, each holiday falls on the same day of the week each year. The apocalyptic accounts of the calendar, beginning with the Enochian Book of Luminaries, which is the oldest apocalyptic text, understand this cosmic regularity as a reflective of a never changing quality of creation. And that idea of the fixity of the material universe underlies the determinism implied by Jubilees and expressed in the sectarian writings. On that issue, our scribe disagrees.
The ability to alter personal outcomes via prayer, repentance, and atonement; the progressivism of revelation; and the eternal nature of covenant; all argue against determinism at the level of the individual. Our scribe would affirm a determinism only at the level of the people as a whole and on a timeframe that extends to that of Ezekiel’s eschatological vision. And that brand of determinism has only a positive outcome.
Nor would our scribe affirm the dualism of the sectarians, and for the same reasons. If there are Sons of Light and Sons of Darkness, as we find in the War Scroll, those are groups whose boundaries are porous. Man is granted free will and an individual caught up in the ‘darkness’ can escape that darkness and find his way to the light. Both dualism and determinism would insult the Mosaic sensibility of our scribe.
Our scribe was certainly familiar with the apocalyptic literature that preceded him. He would have understood that its positions were not acceptable to the temple authorities of the day and that it would likely remain unacceptable in the future. In order to be assured that his message would survive it would have to be made part of texts that would survive, and there was no assurance that any new text would be accepted. He, therefore, chose to encode his message in the books of the Torah and Prophets that had already been accepted. In this respect he chose a path that was on the continuum from the angelic revelation of Enoch to the ‘Cryptic A’ texts of Qumran, which were written in an actual replacement code.
Our scribe was not an Enochian. He was not a sectarian. He would not be willing to serve the Hasmoneans. He was a senior figure, an influential one, who followed only his conscience and his understanding of the law, the tradition, and the demands of the covenant. He had been prevented from work on the temple texts for the three years the edicts were in place. What did a man like that do with his time? He wrote. He could not write what would cause his own execution and he could not hide; he was too prominent. So, what did he write?
He edited and polished a collection of Babylonian court tales and he composed an allegorical work detailing four dream visions attributed to the central character of those ancient court tales. He packaged the old with the new in a way that conveyed the message of apocalypse so subtly and adeptly that the work would ultimately be accepted as the only fully developed apocalypse in the Hebrew bible. He created a historical apocalypse whose message was not dissimilar to that of its contemporary – Enoch’s Animal Apocalypse – but was just subtle enough to allow its survival. He was even able to hide a reference to the 364-day calendar in that text.
When the edicts were rescinded and the textual restoration project began, our scribe could not be sure that the work that had occupied him during the three dark years of Antiochus would survive. He was not a part of any of the power groups that would vie for influence in the decades to follow. He still had authority in the scribal community and in the holdover Zadokite administrative structure of the temple, but he could not know how long that authority would last.
And so the scribe who created the Book of Daniel, determined that his message would not be swept aside, used his position and his possibly waning authority to insert a seemingly innocuous phrase in the text of ten consequential ‘days’ in the books of the Law and the Prophets in order to ensure its survival. He could not know that both Daniel and the Hidden Bones Apocalypse would survive. He could not know that Daniel would become a part of the Hebrew bible and be loved by millions over the millennia. He could not have known that the Hidden Bones would be preserved in the text but remain unrecognized until now.
The author of the Book of Daniel is the scribe of the Hidden Bones.
A detailed analysis of the two shows that, among all of the Jewish apocalyptic writings in the relevant period, only Daniel expresses the same message as the Hidden Bones Apocalypse, avoids the clear differences between its message and those of both the Enochians and the sectarians, and can be reasonably dated to the period just after the acknowledged completion date of Daniel.
We conclude that the author of Daniel, having completed his work on that text before 164 BCE, then was able to assure the survival of his essential message via creation of the Hidden Bones Apocalypse shortly after 164 BCE.
© Charles R Lightner
[1] To term anything at that time as a ‘biblical text’ is not strictly correct, of course. The biblical canon was not yet established as such. We do know, though, from the book of Ben Sira and the writings of Josephus, that the texts of the Torah and the Prophets and ‘other writings’ were generally considered established and authoritative by that time.
[2] 2 Macc 2:14
[3] Our most likely latest date is 152 BCE, but our estimate of the latest possible date is 111 BCE.
[4] VanderKam, J. Jubilees 1: A Commentary on the Book of Jubilees Chapters 1-21. Fortress. Minneapolis. 2018. p42