Cana Werman

This two-part paper begins with an attempt to reconstruct an apoca-lyptic work from the first century CE. It then compares the nature of the messianic expectations found in this reconstructed text to messianic expectations at Qumran. I hope through this study to identify some features of Jewish messianism common to both, and thereby make a contribution to the larger question of the nature of Jewish messianic hopes from the first century BCE to the first century CE.

The precise nature and date of the practice of bringing wood to the Temple are elusive. 1 First mentioned in Neh 10:35, the practice is attested in Josephus, Qumran, Megillat Taʿanit, and in Tannaitic and Amoraic literature. The present paper reconsiders this ritual, examining its development in two Qumran texts and in rabbinic halakhah, each of which, for reasons of its own, altered what I view as a popular custom. A tripartite discussion is therefore necessary: of Qumran literature, of rabbinic literature, and of the relationship between the testimony found in these corpora and actual practice during the Second Temple period. However, any attempt to establish Second Temple practice must recognize that the almost total absence of direct witnesses to the performance of ritual activity during the Second Temple period fosters reliance on the very literature, which, I seek to argue here, opposed popular custom. I therefore proceed with due caution, hoping to avoid the pitfalls of presupposition and circular reasoning. No references to the bringing of wood to the Temple appear in pre-exilic literature. The first attestation of this custom comes from the early Second Temple period.