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Books by Nathan Mastnjak

Oxford University Press, 2023

Before the Scrolls traces the media history of the biblical prophetic corpus to propose a materia... more Before the Scrolls traces the media history of the biblical prophetic corpus to propose a material approach to biblical literature. Although scholars understand that the material of composition was the scroll rather than the codex, they persist in imagining the form as a single textual object. This assumption pervades centuries of scholarship and drives many of the questions asked about biblical composition. Nathan Mastnjak raises the question of the original physical format of biblical texts and argues that many of the literary works that would eventually become the Bible's prophetic books were not written initially as books. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were originally composed on loosely organized collections of multiple short papyrus scrolls and sheets. Though rarely considered in scholarship, the realia of a text's form, format, production, and material substance have a profound influence on the meaning of the text. Unlike works committed to single book-scrolls, these collections did not have predetermined orders of reading and were susceptible to multiple arrangements. Only in the Hellenistic era were these compositions edited, organized, and copied into single volume book-scrolls such as those known from the Dead Sea.

By investigating the relationship between form and meaning and the transition from the collection to the book, Mastnjak suggests novel solutions to classic problems in biblical scholarship, such as the relationships between the MT and LXX of Jeremiah and that between First and Second Isaiah. The failure to account for the materiality of the prophetic corpus has led scholarship to occasionally ask the wrong questions of these compositions and has blinded it to the vital role that Hellenistic bookmakers played in the creation of the Bible as we know it. Reconceiving much Judean literature on a collection-model rather than book-model has significant implications for our understanding of how the Bible itself was composed and read.

The close relationship between Jeremiah and Deuteronomy has stood near the center of Jeremiah sch... more The close relationship between Jeremiah and Deuteronomy has stood near the center of Jeremiah scholarship for over a century. Nathan Mastnjak brings new light to this phenomenon by subjecting every credible allusion to Deuteronomy in Jeremiah to detailed analysis with particular attention to interpretative processes and the dynamics of authority. By locating each allusion in the history of the composition of the book, the author traces a discernible shift in the perspective on Deuteronomy's authority. While early texts in Jeremiah allude to Deuteronomy as merely one prestigious literary work among others, it emerges as a religious textual authority in the later layers. These later layers construct and deploy Deuteronomy as an authority but are simultaneously constrained to transform it in the interest of religious innovation.

Papers by Nathan Mastnjak

Church Life Journal, 2023

Church Life Journal, 2024

https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/against-harmonization-in-biblical-interpretation/

JSOT, 2023

In his laments, the prophet Jeremiah moves beyond the typical prophetic role of spokesperson. Rat... more In his laments, the prophet Jeremiah moves beyond the typical prophetic role of spokesperson. Rather than mediating a divine message, the prophet speaks to the deity from his own suffering. Scholars tend to see Jeremiah's laments as presenting either a radically interior form of religion or a kind of community protest in which the "I" of the lament is a metonymy for the "we" of the nation. This paper will instead locate Jeremiah's laments within a discourse on the effective nature of prophetic utterance. Understood in this manner, these laments portray the prophet as praying effectively for the destruction of Judah.

The Oxford Handbook of Jeremiah, 2021

In turning prophecy into a form of literature, the authors of ancient Israelite prophetic books r... more In turning prophecy into a form of literature, the authors of ancient Israelite prophetic books repeatedly addressed the nature of prophecy itself. This preoccupation suggests that the phenomenon of prophecy was by no means a simple and known concept to the authors of this literature, but rather one in need of discursive construction. The authors of Jeremiah explored theories of prophecy from a variety of perspectives. While all the Jeremiah traditions assume a basic definition of prophecy as the mediation of a divine message through an intermediary, they also move beyond this conception in a number of ways. Though prophetic literature ostensibly presents disembodied prophecy, the authors of Jeremiah frequently direct their attention to the essentially embodied nature of prophecy. The prophet’s bodily experience, for these authors, cannot be separated from his capacity to transmit the divine message. Other parts of the Jeremiah tradition negotiate a history of prophecy in relation t...

“Like ʾIlu Are You Wise”: Studies in Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures in Honor of Dennis G. Pardee, 2022

Hebrew Studies, 2020

Books are often associated with a single authorial figure. Though ancient notions of authorship a... more Books are often associated with a single authorial figure. Though ancient notions of authorship are significantly different from our own, this idea can also be observed in certain ancient reading practices that associate the entire book of Isaiah with an eighth-century figure of that name. Modern scholars concur by viewing the additions of Second and Third Isaiah to the book of Isaiah as acts of pseudonymous ascription. This paper argues instead that the Second Temple book of Isaiah was formed and understood as an anthology of oracles associated with different prophetic figures, similar to the more transparently anthological book of the Twelve. Support for this understanding of the nature of the book of Isaiah will be found in the material history of the text and in unique paratextual features of the Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran (1QIsa a).

Biblical Interpretation, 2019

The image of Rachel's inconsolable weeping for her lost children in Jer. 31:15 presents a specifi... more The image of Rachel's inconsolable weeping for her lost children in Jer. 31:15 presents a specific kind of response to a cultural trauma. As this paper argues, understanding this response is enriched both by analyzing the extra-textual literary strategy of the passage itself and by engaging in an intertextual reading of the ancient text with a contemporary artistic response to trauma. By means of an allusion to Genesis 37, Jer. 31:15 makes a case both for the continued existence of the people of Israel and for the legitimacy of experiencing the exile as a metaphorical death. What Jer. 31:15 accomplishes textually for a sixth century BCE Judean audience, the Witness Blanket accomplishes in a visual medium for threatened Canadian native cultures. Both texts stage a protest against the threat to the continued existence of culture by asserting the persistent potency of its cultural symbols.

The Journal of Religion, 2018

This paper addresses the pervasiveness of the concept of authority in scholarship on biblical tex... more This paper addresses the pervasiveness of the concept of authority in scholarship on biblical texts. As important as this concept is, its naturalization as the de facto natural mode for reading religious texts that makes authoritative claims has resulted in obscuring the varied ways that texts like the Pentateuch were received by their earliest available readers. Allusions to Deuteronomy in the early poetry of Jeremiah demonstrate a mode of reading that bypassing the authoritative claims of a sources and treats it instead as prestigious literary classic. Highlighting this distinction brings to light the possibilities of religious textual culture beyond authority.

The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 2018

The variations in the textual history of Jeremiah’s Oracles against the Nations have presented sc... more The variations in the textual history of Jeremiah’s Oracles against the Nations have presented scholarship with a perennial puzzle. In addressing these variants, modern scholarship has consistently assumed that one of the versions must be original and the other a revision. This study suggests an alternate explanation. Drawing on considerations of material culture, comparative evidence, and insights from the field of book history, this study will suggest that the Jeremiah traditions existed in the early Persian period as an only partially ordered collection rather than a linear book. Rather than one version being original and the other an editorial rearrangement, both the LXX and MT represent independent organizations of this collection.

Vetus Testamentum , 2017

The Hebrew lexeme taḥaš, which designates one of the materials of the outer layer of the priestly... more The Hebrew lexeme taḥaš, which designates one of the materials of the outer layer of the priestly tent sanctuary, has puzzled interpreters for hundreds of years. This article surveys the recent discussion of the term and provides evidence in favor of a parallel to the Akkadian duḫšum/tuḫšum. So far overlooked in this discussion is the functional parallel between the use of Hebrew taḥaš for the covering of the tent sanctuary and the use of tuḫšum at Mari for the covering of a large, royal tent structure (ḫurpatum). Buttressing the phonological and functional parallel between Hebrew taḥaš and Mari duḫšum/tuḫšum are a series of other terminological connections between Mari’s ḫurpatum, the tent-dwelling of Ugaritic ʾIlu, and the Israelite priestly tent sanctuary.

Vetus Testamentum, 2014

This paper argues that the "covenant with death" in Isa 28:15, 18 refers to Judah's covenant with... more This paper argues that the "covenant with death" in Isa 28:15, 18 refers to Judah's covenant with Assyria. While scholars usually take this to refer to Egypt at the end of the 8th c., a reference to Assyria makes better sense of the resonances of the metaphor of personified "death." This oracle is contemporary with vv. 1-4 and functions together with those verses as a single prophetic discourse that predates the fall of the northern kingdom and prophesies destruction for both kingdoms at the hands of the Assyrians.

Book Reviews by Nathan Mastnjak

Dead Sea Discoveries, 2019

s The Prophets of Israel is a translation and expansion of Die Propheten Israels (Munich: Beck, 2... more s The Prophets of Israel is a translation and expansion of Die Propheten Israels (Munich: Beck, 2003). The preface presents the methodological and perspectival framework of the book. Distinguishing sharply between the historical prophets of ancient Israelite and Judahite religion and the literary prophets created by the biblical books, Kratz identifies the literary tradition as the book's primary focus. This perspective marks a clearly articulated departure from a previous generation of scholarship's preoccupation with recovering the authentic words of historical prophets. Kratz also acknowledges that, due to the brief and introductory nature of the book, he presents only the results of critical reconstruction rather than detailed documented analysis.

Oxford University Press, 2023

Before the Scrolls traces the media history of the biblical prophetic corpus to propose a materia... more Before the Scrolls traces the media history of the biblical prophetic corpus to propose a material approach to biblical literature. Although scholars understand that the material of composition was the scroll rather than the codex, they persist in imagining the form as a single textual object. This assumption pervades centuries of scholarship and drives many of the questions asked about biblical composition. Nathan Mastnjak raises the question of the original physical format of biblical texts and argues that many of the literary works that would eventually become the Bible's prophetic books were not written initially as books. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were originally composed on loosely organized collections of multiple short papyrus scrolls and sheets. Though rarely considered in scholarship, the realia of a text's form, format, production, and material substance have a profound influence on the meaning of the text. Unlike works committed to single book-scrolls, these collections did not have predetermined orders of reading and were susceptible to multiple arrangements. Only in the Hellenistic era were these compositions edited, organized, and copied into single volume book-scrolls such as those known from the Dead Sea.

By investigating the relationship between form and meaning and the transition from the collection to the book, Mastnjak suggests novel solutions to classic problems in biblical scholarship, such as the relationships between the MT and LXX of Jeremiah and that between First and Second Isaiah. The failure to account for the materiality of the prophetic corpus has led scholarship to occasionally ask the wrong questions of these compositions and has blinded it to the vital role that Hellenistic bookmakers played in the creation of the Bible as we know it. Reconceiving much Judean literature on a collection-model rather than book-model has significant implications for our understanding of how the Bible itself was composed and read.

The close relationship between Jeremiah and Deuteronomy has stood near the center of Jeremiah sch... more The close relationship between Jeremiah and Deuteronomy has stood near the center of Jeremiah scholarship for over a century. Nathan Mastnjak brings new light to this phenomenon by subjecting every credible allusion to Deuteronomy in Jeremiah to detailed analysis with particular attention to interpretative processes and the dynamics of authority. By locating each allusion in the history of the composition of the book, the author traces a discernible shift in the perspective on Deuteronomy's authority. While early texts in Jeremiah allude to Deuteronomy as merely one prestigious literary work among others, it emerges as a religious textual authority in the later layers. These later layers construct and deploy Deuteronomy as an authority but are simultaneously constrained to transform it in the interest of religious innovation.

Church Life Journal, 2023

Church Life Journal, 2024

https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/against-harmonization-in-biblical-interpretation/

JSOT, 2023

In his laments, the prophet Jeremiah moves beyond the typical prophetic role of spokesperson. Rat... more In his laments, the prophet Jeremiah moves beyond the typical prophetic role of spokesperson. Rather than mediating a divine message, the prophet speaks to the deity from his own suffering. Scholars tend to see Jeremiah's laments as presenting either a radically interior form of religion or a kind of community protest in which the "I" of the lament is a metonymy for the "we" of the nation. This paper will instead locate Jeremiah's laments within a discourse on the effective nature of prophetic utterance. Understood in this manner, these laments portray the prophet as praying effectively for the destruction of Judah.

The Oxford Handbook of Jeremiah, 2021

In turning prophecy into a form of literature, the authors of ancient Israelite prophetic books r... more In turning prophecy into a form of literature, the authors of ancient Israelite prophetic books repeatedly addressed the nature of prophecy itself. This preoccupation suggests that the phenomenon of prophecy was by no means a simple and known concept to the authors of this literature, but rather one in need of discursive construction. The authors of Jeremiah explored theories of prophecy from a variety of perspectives. While all the Jeremiah traditions assume a basic definition of prophecy as the mediation of a divine message through an intermediary, they also move beyond this conception in a number of ways. Though prophetic literature ostensibly presents disembodied prophecy, the authors of Jeremiah frequently direct their attention to the essentially embodied nature of prophecy. The prophet’s bodily experience, for these authors, cannot be separated from his capacity to transmit the divine message. Other parts of the Jeremiah tradition negotiate a history of prophecy in relation t...

“Like ʾIlu Are You Wise”: Studies in Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures in Honor of Dennis G. Pardee, 2022

Hebrew Studies, 2020

Books are often associated with a single authorial figure. Though ancient notions of authorship a... more Books are often associated with a single authorial figure. Though ancient notions of authorship are significantly different from our own, this idea can also be observed in certain ancient reading practices that associate the entire book of Isaiah with an eighth-century figure of that name. Modern scholars concur by viewing the additions of Second and Third Isaiah to the book of Isaiah as acts of pseudonymous ascription. This paper argues instead that the Second Temple book of Isaiah was formed and understood as an anthology of oracles associated with different prophetic figures, similar to the more transparently anthological book of the Twelve. Support for this understanding of the nature of the book of Isaiah will be found in the material history of the text and in unique paratextual features of the Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran (1QIsa a).

Biblical Interpretation, 2019

The image of Rachel's inconsolable weeping for her lost children in Jer. 31:15 presents a specifi... more The image of Rachel's inconsolable weeping for her lost children in Jer. 31:15 presents a specific kind of response to a cultural trauma. As this paper argues, understanding this response is enriched both by analyzing the extra-textual literary strategy of the passage itself and by engaging in an intertextual reading of the ancient text with a contemporary artistic response to trauma. By means of an allusion to Genesis 37, Jer. 31:15 makes a case both for the continued existence of the people of Israel and for the legitimacy of experiencing the exile as a metaphorical death. What Jer. 31:15 accomplishes textually for a sixth century BCE Judean audience, the Witness Blanket accomplishes in a visual medium for threatened Canadian native cultures. Both texts stage a protest against the threat to the continued existence of culture by asserting the persistent potency of its cultural symbols.

The Journal of Religion, 2018

This paper addresses the pervasiveness of the concept of authority in scholarship on biblical tex... more This paper addresses the pervasiveness of the concept of authority in scholarship on biblical texts. As important as this concept is, its naturalization as the de facto natural mode for reading religious texts that makes authoritative claims has resulted in obscuring the varied ways that texts like the Pentateuch were received by their earliest available readers. Allusions to Deuteronomy in the early poetry of Jeremiah demonstrate a mode of reading that bypassing the authoritative claims of a sources and treats it instead as prestigious literary classic. Highlighting this distinction brings to light the possibilities of religious textual culture beyond authority.

The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 2018

The variations in the textual history of Jeremiah’s Oracles against the Nations have presented sc... more The variations in the textual history of Jeremiah’s Oracles against the Nations have presented scholarship with a perennial puzzle. In addressing these variants, modern scholarship has consistently assumed that one of the versions must be original and the other a revision. This study suggests an alternate explanation. Drawing on considerations of material culture, comparative evidence, and insights from the field of book history, this study will suggest that the Jeremiah traditions existed in the early Persian period as an only partially ordered collection rather than a linear book. Rather than one version being original and the other an editorial rearrangement, both the LXX and MT represent independent organizations of this collection.

Vetus Testamentum , 2017

The Hebrew lexeme taḥaš, which designates one of the materials of the outer layer of the priestly... more The Hebrew lexeme taḥaš, which designates one of the materials of the outer layer of the priestly tent sanctuary, has puzzled interpreters for hundreds of years. This article surveys the recent discussion of the term and provides evidence in favor of a parallel to the Akkadian duḫšum/tuḫšum. So far overlooked in this discussion is the functional parallel between the use of Hebrew taḥaš for the covering of the tent sanctuary and the use of tuḫšum at Mari for the covering of a large, royal tent structure (ḫurpatum). Buttressing the phonological and functional parallel between Hebrew taḥaš and Mari duḫšum/tuḫšum are a series of other terminological connections between Mari’s ḫurpatum, the tent-dwelling of Ugaritic ʾIlu, and the Israelite priestly tent sanctuary.

Vetus Testamentum, 2014

This paper argues that the "covenant with death" in Isa 28:15, 18 refers to Judah's covenant with... more This paper argues that the "covenant with death" in Isa 28:15, 18 refers to Judah's covenant with Assyria. While scholars usually take this to refer to Egypt at the end of the 8th c., a reference to Assyria makes better sense of the resonances of the metaphor of personified "death." This oracle is contemporary with vv. 1-4 and functions together with those verses as a single prophetic discourse that predates the fall of the northern kingdom and prophesies destruction for both kingdoms at the hands of the Assyrians.

Dead Sea Discoveries, 2019

s The Prophets of Israel is a translation and expansion of Die Propheten Israels (Munich: Beck, 2... more s The Prophets of Israel is a translation and expansion of Die Propheten Israels (Munich: Beck, 2003). The preface presents the methodological and perspectival framework of the book. Distinguishing sharply between the historical prophets of ancient Israelite and Judahite religion and the literary prophets created by the biblical books, Kratz identifies the literary tradition as the book's primary focus. This perspective marks a clearly articulated departure from a previous generation of scholarship's preoccupation with recovering the authentic words of historical prophets. Kratz also acknowledges that, due to the brief and introductory nature of the book, he presents only the results of critical reconstruction rather than detailed documented analysis.

Jewish History Matters, 2019

A roundtable discussion on the materiality of Jewish culture with Aleksandra Buncic, David Sclar,... more A roundtable discussion on the materiality of Jewish culture with Aleksandra Buncic, David Sclar, Nathan Mastnjack, and Jason Lustig, who in 2018-19 were Harry Starr Fellows in Judaica at Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies. The theme this year has been the history of the Jewish book, and we come together to discuss why books matter in Jewish culture and why we should look at the material objects, writing platforms, and physical form in addition to the contents that they contain.