, for SIs, ical tem, "the iS 18 it 1s that style have
own contemporary situation prefigured in the writings of such
| prophets as Habakkuk and Nahum . Basing a claim of authority on the | written word of a commonly accepted canon is of course a continuing | wctivity even in our own day, as anyone knows who has listened to the
Religious Right.
The use of the form of an ethical will thus seems at first an
odd choice. It does not seem to have become a mainstream and
accepted Jewish genre by the Middle Ages, when this literature appears. Yet, on closer examination, it does seem that the idea of last wills and testaments does have deep roots in the Jewish tradition. After all, the Book of Deuteronomy can in a sense be said to be a long ethical will, Moses ’ last testament to the Children of Israel. We even find this form in the Dead Sea Scrolls , in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, for example. In both these cases, the document is clearly pseudepigraphic. It draws authority not because it is revelation
|(whether written or oral) nor because it is the result of an authoritative
chain of tradition, but because of the wisdom acquired by the person
who presumably utters it. It is this accumulation of a lifetime of
experience and insight that makes an ethical, didactic will demand our
| respect. It is a wisdom based neither on revelation nor on logic, but on
the practical experience of living in this world.
It is on the basis of this particular claim to authority that I think we can understand the choice of genre for medieval Hebrew ethical wills, The authors are not claiming to present an exegesis of Scripture, although they do cite a proof text now and then; nor are
they claiming to be passing on knowledge from a line of teachers, although in many cases the authors are in fact the students of famous
rabbis and teachers. For that matter, they are not claiming to be giving
| the reader the results of philosophical inquiry, although in many cases | What ethical wills say are rehearsals of standard philosophical works.
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