Norms of marriage and the prohibition of temporary marital relations

Introduction

The work called Apostolic Constitutions (henceforth: AC) is a late-fourth-cen-tury church order, most probably compiled in Syrian Antioch in the 380s.1 Its eight books deal with a wide variety of subjects: Christian behaviour, ecclesias-tical hierarchy, widows, orphans, martyrs, schisms, the eucharist, prayers, ordi-nations, discipline, etc. It has long been recognized that many of the prayer texts in books 7 and 8 have Jewish precedents and that several of these prayers even have a Jewish Vorlage. There is a consensus nowadays that the six prayers in AC 7.33–38 are christianized versions of the first six of the Seven Berakhot for Shabbat.2 There is no consensus, however, regarding the degree of chris-tianization of these prayers: Some advocate a maximalist position and see the hand of the Christian compiler only in the patently Christian passages (Kohler, Bousset, Goodenough); others advocate a minimalist position and believe that only a few scraps of the Jewish original Grundschrift have been left unaltered (Fiensy); and again others steer a middle course (Van der Horst). But apart from that point of disagreement, all scholars agree about the existence of a Jewish Vorlage for these six prayers and they have good reasons to do so. Every single prayer text in AC 7 has at least one verbal parallel to one of the Hebrew Seven Benedictions for Shabbat. To give just one clear instance: the second prayer, in AC 7.34, ends with a clause in which God is called “the reviver of the dead”

(ho zôopoios tôn nekrôn) just as the corresponding Hebrew berakhah (also the

1 The most recent and best critical edition is the one by M. Metzger, Les Constitutions Apostoliques, 3 vols., Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1985–1987. Vol. 3 contains the text and French translation of book 7 into which the prayer texts under discussion here have been incorporated.

2 K. Kohler, “The Origin and Composition of the Eighteen Benedictions with a Translation of the Corresponding Essene Prayers in the Apostolic Constitutions,” HUCA 1 (1924): 387–

425; W. Bousset, “Eine jüdische Gebetssammlung im siebenten Buch der Apostolischen Konstitutionen,” in his Religionsgeschichtliche Studien, (ed. A.F. Verheule), Leiden: Brill, 1979 (originally 1915), 231–286; E.R. Goodenough, By Light, Light. The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935, 306–358; D.A. Fiensy, Prayers Alleged to Be Jewish. An Examination of the Constitutiones Apostolorum (BJS 65), Chico: Scholars Press, 1985; P.W. van der Horst & J.H. Newman, Early Jewish Prayers in Greek (CEJL), Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008, 1–93.

second, Gevuroth) ends with God as mechayyeh ha-metim. As Fiensy rightly puts it, “These verbal similarities and equivalents would be striking enough if they appeared in isolated prayers. But, coming as they do in a prayer collection, and appearing for the most part in their proper order, they constitute a con-vincing corpus of evidence to suggest that AC 7.33–38 is a Greek version of the Hebrew Seven Benedictions.”3 It is unknown when the Greek translation and reworking of these berakhot was undertaken, but that must have taken place between 150 and 350 ce, most probably in the third century ce.4

The third prayer in this collection (AC 7.35) stresses God’s holiness and his being praised by holy ones in the Trisagion, Israel’s liturgical union with these holy ones, God’s kingship, and it also has the characteristic combination of quotes from Isa. 6:3 and Ezek. 3:12. These elements qualify it as the Greek paral-lel to the third berakhah of the Seven Benedictions, Qedushah. As we shall see, the Greek form displays several elements that occur also in liturgical texts from Qumran and in Hekhalot treatises.

In this contribution, I will first present the entire text of the prayer in AC 7.35 in my own translation. In this translation, the patently Christian elements are italicized, the phrases that arguably belong to the Jewish source are in bold type, and what remains in regular type is the category of dubia.5 In the then following explanatory notes I will refrain from discussing at length the prob-lems of how to disentangle the Jewish Grundschrift from its Christian redac-tion and I will focus mainly on §§3–4 because these paragraphs form the most important section for our purposes. It will be shown that here we have an originally Jewish text in which, even after its Christian reworking, several ideas and elements in the phraseology stand in a tradition that dates back to the Second Temple period and later resurfaces in Jewish mystical treatises from late antiquity.

Translation of AC 7.35

(1) Great are you, O Lord almighty, and great is your power, and of your understanding there is no measure.6 O Creator (and) Saviour, you who

3 Prayers 134.

4 For details about the dating see van der Horst & Newman, Early Jewish Prayers in Greek 21–27.

5 For the arguments underlying these distinctions the reader is referred to my elaborate com-mentary in Early Jewish Prayers in Greek.

6 Cf. Ps 146[147]:5.

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are rich in favours, patient and bestowing mercy, you do not withhold salvation from your creatures. For you are good by nature,7 yet you spare sinners and call them to repentance. For your warnings are full of com-passion. How could we subsist if you were to demand us to be judged quickly, when after having experienced so much patience on your part we are scarcely able to free ourselves from our weakness?

(2) Your power is proclaimed by the heavens and your steadfastness by the earth, even though it is shaken because it is hanging upon nothing.8 The sea, that in its raging waves shepherds an innumerable company of living beings, is bound by the sandy beach and trembles before your will, and therefore it compels all to cry out: “How great are your works, O Lord!

You have made all things in wisdom. The earth is full of your creation (Ps 103[104]:24).”

(3) A fiery army of angels and intellectual spirits say: “Only One is holy to Phelmouni” [or: ‘. . . say to Phelmouni: “Only one is holy” ’] (Dan 8:13), and the holy seraphim, who together with the six-winged cherubim sing for you the song of victory, cry out with never-silent voices: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Sabaoth, heaven and earth are full of your glory!

(Isa 6:3).” And the multitudes of the other orders – angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, principalities, authorities, and powers – say with a loud voice: “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place (Ezek 3:12).”

(4) Israel, your earthly assembly (that was taken) out of the nations, emulates the powers in heaven day and night when it sings with an overflowing heart and a willing soul: “The chariot of the Lord is ten thousand-fold thousands of thriving ones; the Lord is among them at Sinai, at the holy place (Ps 67[68]:18).”

(5) Heaven knows the one who fixed it upon nothing, in the form of a vault, like a cube of stone,9 the one who united earth and water with one another, the one who poured out the air that nourishes living beings, and conjoined fire with it for warmth and comfort in darkness. One is struck by the choir of stars that points to the one who counted them10 and shows the one who named them, as do the living beings to the one who

7 The inherent goodness of God’s very nature is not a biblical but a Greek philosophical idea (see the chapter “Greek Philosophical Elements in Some Judaeo-Christian Prayers”

elsewhere, in this volume).

8 The idea that the earth is hanging upon nothing has a Greek cosmological background (see the chapter on “Greek Philosophical Elements”).

9 See Isa 40:22 and Job 38:38 LXX.

10 Cf. Ps 146[147]:4.

gave them life and trees to the one who makes them grow. All these things which have been made by your word manifest the strength of your power.

(6) For that reason every human being should send up from the bot-tom of his heart a hymn (of thanks) for all that to you through Christ, since it is thanks to you that he has power over all things.11

(7) For you demonstrate your goodness by your benefactions, and your generosity by your deeds of compassion, you the only almighty one. For when you want to do something, the ability to do it is yours.

For your eternal might cools flames, muzzles lions, tames sea monsters, raises up those who are sick, overturns powers, and overthrows an army of enemies and a people that is counted among the arrogant.12

(8) You are the one who is in heaven, the one who is on the earth, the one who is in the sea, the one who, though being in finite areas, is himself infinite.13 “For there is no limit to your greatness (Ps 144[145]:3).”

For this oracle is not ours, Master, but your servant’s, who says: “And you will know in your heart that the Lord your God is a God in heaven above and upon earth below, and there is no other beside him (Deut 4:39).”

(9) For there is no God except you alone,14 no holy one except you, Lord, the God of knowledge,15 the God of the holy ones, the Holy One above all holy ones. “For the holy ones are under your hands (Deut 33:3).”

(You are) glorious and highly exalted, invisible by nature, and inscrutable in judgements. Your life is in want of nothing; your continuity is unchange-able and unfailing; your activity is untiring; your greatness is unlimited;

your beauty is everlasting; your habitation is inaccessible; your dwelling place is immovable; your knowledge is without beginning; your truth is unchangeable; your work is unmediated; your power is unassailable; your monarchy is not in need of a successor; your kingdom is without end;

your strength is irresistible; your army is great in numbers.

(10) For you are the Father of Wisdom, the one who as a cause founded the creation through a mediator, the supplier of providence, the giver of laws, the fulfiller of needs, the avenger of the ungodly and the rewarder of the righteous, the God and Father of Christ and the Lord of those who are pious towards him, whose promise is reliable, who is incorruptible in his judgement, whose opinion is immutable, whose loyalty is unceasing, whose

11 Cf. Gen 1:28.

12 For the various motifs in this line cf. Dan 3 and 6; Jon 2; 2 Kings 5 and 19.

13 Again a typically Greek concept.

14 Echoes of Isa 45 etc.

15 1 Sam 2:3 LXX.

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gratitude is eternal, through whom every rational and holy creature owes you worship worthy of you.

Comments on §3

In this paragraph God’s holiness is emphasized as in the Qedushah. ‘The fiery army of angels and the intellectual spirits say: “Only One is holy for Phelmouni” ’ (καὶ στρατὸς ἀγγέλων φλεγόμενος καὶ πνεύματα νοερὰ λέγουσιν·

Εἷς ἅγιος τῷ Φελμουνι). Other translations have: ‘(. . .) the intellectual spir-its say to Phelmouni: Only one is holy.’ The Greek is a quote from Dan 8:13, where the visionary sees angels (‘holy ones’) and hears “a holy one speaking and another holy one answering a certain one,” where the Theodotion ver-sion has the words quoted here, εἷς ἅγιος τῷ Φελμουνι = ‘one holy one (said) to Phelmouni.’ The Greek translators (both Theodotion, Aquila and LXX)16 seem not to have understood the Hebrew palmoni, ‘a certain one’ and hence trans-literated it. Be that as it may, both in the Hebrew and in the Greek biblical text palmoni/Phelmouni is the one addressed, but in the context of our prayer that is probably no longer the case, since the word order seems to militate against it: λέγουσιν “εἷς ἅγιος” τῷ Φελμουνι would be very odd Greek. However, the alternative is also problematic for it is hard to discover what the composer of the prayer could have meant by “Only One is holy to Phelmouni.” The whole phrase is probably to be attributed to the compiler, since in other passages where he inserts quotes from Daniel, he uses the Theodotion version as well.17 The angels are here called a ‘fiery army’ (στρατὸς . . . φλεγόμενος) because angels were often thought to have a body of fire (on the basis of Ps 103[104]:4 ὁ ποιῶν τοὺς ἀγγέλους αὐτοῦ πνεύματα καὶ τοὺς λειτουργοὺς αὐτοῦ̈ πῦρ φλέγον).18

‘The holy seraphim, who together with the six-winged cherubim sing for you the song of victory, cry out with never-silent voices: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Sabaoth, heaven and earth are full of your glory!” ’ (ἅγιος, ἅγιος, ἅγιος Κύριος Σαβαώθ, πλήρης ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ τῆς δόξης σου). Apart from some minor elements, the passage does not show traces of the compiler’s vocabulary and hence most probably was in the source. The words ‘the song of victory’ (τὴν ἐπινίκιον ᾠδήν) do appear in other early Christian liturgies as well and may

16 See J. Reider & N. Turner, An Index to Aquila, Leiden: Brill, 1966, 249.

17 Fiensy, Prayers 177, gives references.

18 For a discussion of this motif see S.M. Olyan, A Thousand Thousands Served Him: Exegesis and the Naming of Angels in Ancient Judaism (TSAJ 36), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993, 29, 71–73.

have replaced another expression in the source. That seraphim and cherubim are mentioned here in combination has to do with the fact that seraphim are mentioned in Isaiah 6 as the six-winged angels who sing the Trisagion that is quoted here and that the angels who are mentioned in the context of Ezek 3:12, quoted immediately hereafter, are identified as cherubim in Ezekiel 10 (the same combination occurs in 2Enoch 21.1). The quote of Isa 6:3 is not exact, for the Hebrew and also the Greek versions of the biblical text have only ‘the earth is full of your glory’ (not: heaven and earth), but most early Christian liturgies have the formula with ‘heaven and earth are full of your glory.’19 So

‘heaven and’ may also be an addition by the compiler.20 The various versions of the Qedushah (known as the Qedushah de-Amidah, the Qedushah de-Yotser, and the Qedushah de-Sidra)21 always follow the biblical text, so the probability

19 See on this change E. Werner, The Sacred Bridge: The Interdependence of Liturgy and Music in Synagogue and Church during the First Millennium, London: Dennis Dobson – New York: Columbia University Press, 1959, 282–287. At p. 285 Werner asserts that the Targum on Isaiah demonstrates that the reading ‘heaven and earth’ has a Jewish origin, but this reading is not found in any edition of Targ. Isa. What he probably means is that the Thrice Holy is diversified in the Targum as holy in heaven, holy on earth, and holy in eternity (‘And one would receive from the other, saying “Holy in the high heavens, the place of his residence, holy on earth, the work of His might, holy in eternity! The Lord of Hosts! The splendor of His glory fills all the earth!” ’), but that is not the same as the formula “heaven and earth are full of his glory.” On the many variant forms in which Isa. 6:3 is quoted see also J.H. Newman, “ ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’: The Use of Isaiah 6.3 in Apostolic Constitutions 7.35.1–10 and 8.12.6–27,” in C. A. Evans (ed.), Of Scribes and Sages: Early Jewish Interpretation and Transmission of Scripture, vol. 2 (LSTS 51), London – New York: T. & T. Clark International, 2004, 123–134; A. Baumstark, “Trishagion und Qeduscha,” Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft 3 (1923): 18–32; I. Gruenwald, “Angelic Songs, the Qedushah and the Problem of the Origins of the Hekhalot Literature,” in his From Apocalypticism to Gnosticism, Frankfurt:

Peter Lang, 1988, 145–173. Note that Isa 6:3 is also quoted partially in the angelic song in Rev 4:8.

20 In the formulation in 1 Clem. 34:6 πλήρης πᾶσα ἡ κτίσις τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ the words ‘the entire creation’ could be taken to be the equivalent of ‘heaven and earth.’ For further discussion see A. Baumstark, “Trishagion und Qeduscha”; Newman, “Holy, Holy, Holy”; also D. Flusser,

“Sanktus und Gloria,” in O. Betz a.o. (eds.), Abraham unser Vater: Juden und Christen im Gespräch über die Bibel. Festschrift für Otto Michel, Leiden: Brill, 1963, 129–152. esp. 131–132.

See also W.C. van Unnik, “1 Clement 34 and the ‘Sanctus,’ ” in his Sparsa Collecta, vol. 3, Leiden: Brill, 1983, 326–361; B.D. Spinks, The Sanctus in the Eucharistic Prayer, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1991, 25–54; L.I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue. The First Thousand Years, New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 2000, 540–544.

21 On these three forms of the Qedushah see Spinks, Sanctus 39–45; I. Elbogen, Der jüdische Gottesdienst in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Hildesheim: Olms, 1967 (= 1931, 3. Aufl.), 61–67; E. Werner, “The Doxology in Synagogue and Church,” in J.J. Petuchowski (ed.),

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that the compiler added the words familiar to him from his own Christian liturgical tradition seems to be great.22 Some scholars, however, argue that the formula ‘heaven and earth’ in quotations of Isa 6:3 occurs in early Jewish sources as well, e.g., Test. Isaac 6:5, 24; 2Enoch 21:1.23 These documents were preserved in Christian circles, however, and may thus have been altered so as to make them conform to Christian liturgical usage. Yet it can certainly not be excluded that the formula ‘heaven and earth’ does derive from a Jewish source since one of the Hodayot from Qumran clearly alludes to Isa 6:3 with the words, ‘Your holy spirit (. . .) the fullness of heaven and earth (. . .) your glory, the fullness of . . .’ (1QH VIII 12 [formerly XVI 3]). Moreover, both the (admit-tedly later) Old-Slavonic and the Hebrew versions of the Prayer of Jacob have

‘heaven and earth’ in their quote of the Trisagion as does the longer recension of 2Enoch 21:1.24 On balance the overall situation remains too uncertain, how-ever, to justify printing the words ‘heaven and’ in bold type as having belonged

Contributions to the Scientific Study of Jewish Liturgy, New York: Ktav, 1970, 318–370, esp.

334–349; M. Nulman, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Prayer, North Vale: Jason Aronson, 1996, 188–191; R. Elior, “From Earthly Temple to Heavenly Shrine: Prayer and Sacred Song in the Hekhalot Literature and its Relation to Temple Traditions,” JSQ 4 (1997): 217–267, here esp.

233–234 n. 36, 255 n. 73.

22 Contra Fiensy, Prayers 178, who appeals to Flusser for his position, but Flusser, “Sanktus und Gloria” 132 n. 2, says about AC 7.35: “[D]a das ganze Gebet christlich überarbeitet ist, könnte natürlich das Trishagion an den christlichen Ritus angeglichen sein.” In the same note Flusser tentatively suggests that perhaps originally ‘heaven and’ figured in the Qedushah but that the text was later corrected towards the biblical wording. That must remain speculation. See also H. Lietzmann, Mass and the Lord’s Supper: A Study in the History of Liturgy, Leiden: Brill, 1979, 674.

23 See Chr. Böttrich, “Das ‘Sanctus’ in der Liturgie der hellenistischen Synagoge,” Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie 35 (1994/95): 10–36 (with the criticism by H. Löhr, Studien zum frühchristlichen und frühjüdischen Gebet: Untersuchungen zu 1 Clem59 bis 61 in seinem literarischen, historischen und theologischen Kontext (WUNT 160), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003, 383 n. 96).

24 See R. Leicht, “Qedushah and Prayer to Helios: A New Hebrew Version of an Apocryphal Prayer of Jacob,” JSQ 6 (1999): 140–176, esp. 151 and 175. The Slavonic Text is to be found in the second chapter of the Ladder of Jacob; see H.G. Lunt, “Ladder of Jacob,” OTP 2:401–411, here 408; the Hebrew version was first published in P. Schäfer & Sh. Shaked, Magische Texte aus der Kairoer Geniza, vol. 2 (TSAJ 64), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997, 27–78. It is also to be kept in mind that the expression ‘God of heaven and earth’ occurs already in Gen 24:3 and Ezra 5:11, and that the designation “God who created heaven and earth”

occurs passim; see N.C. Habel, “Yahweh, Maker of Heaven and Earth,” JBL 91 (1972): 321–

337. Note also Jer 23:24 “Do I not fill heaven and earth?, says the Lord.” For other ways of quoting Isa 6:3 in free and inexact forms in ancient Jewish documents see Böttrich,

“Sanctus” 29–32.

to the Jewish source. Another difference with Isa 6:3 is that the biblical text describes the praise of God by angels in the third person (‘his glory’),25 whereas here it has become a direct address of God in the second person (‘your glory’), a trait more often seen in Christian versions of the Trisagion.26

‘And the multitudes of the other orders – angels, archangels, thrones, domin-ions, principalities, authorities, and powers – say with a loud voice: “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place” (Ezek 3:12 εὐλογημένη ἡ δόξα Κυρίου ἐκ τοῦ

‘And the multitudes of the other orders – angels, archangels, thrones, domin-ions, principalities, authorities, and powers – say with a loud voice: “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place” (Ezek 3:12 εὐλογημένη ἡ δόξα Κυρίου ἐκ τοῦ