Reconciling Jubilees, 4QFlorilegium, the Temple Scroll, and Herod, the Half-Jew

Ezekiel 44:9 excludes foreigners, circumcised or not, from the Jerusalem temple. Verse 47:22, however, allows particular foreigners, gērim, to join all Israelite men in the land-allotment, apparently held in the temple. Today, under U.S. naturalization law, permanent residence, a civics test, or proficiency in English may serve to substantiate sincerity of intentions. Ezekiel’s equivalent, whether viewed as naturalization or conversion, is the demand for the birth of sons “among Israel”, based on Deuteronomy 23:9 (MT), stipulating, for an Edomite or an Egyptian, the birth of three generations of sons in order to gain access to the Assembly of God.

Does the first Edomite/Egyptian in that genealogical line count toward the first of those three generations? Equally – does Ezekiel 47:22 grant the status of an Israelite to the gēr who begot a son among Israel or only to that son? Two Qumran scrolls, the Temple Scroll and 4QFlorilegium, opted for the stricter reading. This, however, is not simply a question of calculation. Jubilees 15:14, 26 and other Second Temple Jewish texts decree that anyone not circumcised on the eighth day of life is not a Jew. 4QFlorilegium therefore excludes from the temple the gēr, because even if he undergoes circumcision, he naturally does so after the eighth day. Furthermore, according to Deuteronomy 23:9 and contrary to Ezekiel 47:22, that person`s son, even if circumcised on the eighth day, is still somewhere in transition from gentile to Jew. Thus, according to the Temple Scroll 39:4-6, 40:5-7, the three intervening generations between the gēr and his fully Jewish great grandson may enter the temple, but not the temple court of all Israelite men. That may explain why Mattathias Antigonus terms Herod (Josephus, Ant. 14:403) a “half-Jew,” and one Simon of Jerusalem (Ant. 19:332) calls Agrippa I, Herod`s grandson, "not purely (Jewish)."