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Translator’s Note

As is well known from the detailed account in Drawing in the Dust (Simon and Schuster, 2009), the items excavated at the ancient site of Anatot, a suburb of Jerusalem, by team ANAT XIIV, led by respected archaeologist Page Brookstone of Columbia University, were extraordinary and explosive. It matched, some say, the historic and literary significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947, but if one were to measure the finds based on condition of scrolls as well as content, the discovery of the complete Scroll of Anatiya might fairly be considered unrivaled.

In what seemed to be a small shrine carved out of the eastern wall of a deep cistern, Brookstone discovered a cache of three scrolls. The scrolls included Jeremiah, Lamentations, and a hitherto unknown scroll now referred to as Anatiya. Among the three scrolls are three distinct handwriting styles, and it is already consensus opinion to refer to these scribes as Anatiya, Baruch, and Ben Sira.

Attributed to Anatiya are chapters 1 through 51 of the Scroll of Anatiya, excluding the last paragraph of chapter 51. Attributed to Baruch are the scrolls of Jeremiah, Lamentations, and the last paragraph of chapter 51 of Anatiya. Attributed to Ben Sira is chapter 52 of Anatiya, which is written in Hebrew with a number of Greek loan-words.

Also found in the shrine were the skeletal remains of two people, one male and the other female, with their arms around each other and their ribs overlapping, as cards being shuffled. These remains have been dated to the mid-to-late sixth century BC.

The author of the Scroll of Anatiya, a passionate follower of the prophet Jeremiah, was born ca. 620 BC. She witnessed the capture and destruction of Jerusalem in 587, was released by the Babylonians from the Israelite exiles to return to Israel, witnessed the murder of Gedaliah, the appointed governor of Jerusalem, in 586, and survived the ensuing Chaldean attack. She joined the small number of Israelite exiles to Egypt and lived there from 586–585, after which she returned to Anatot, where her life ended ca. 583.

Those readers familiar with Jeremiah will note the obvious similarities between the text of his prophecies and this text. There is a striking symmetry of structure in the outline of the chapters. The two authors frequently discuss the same historic events. Often phrases and entire verses are shared by both texts, and it is unclear whether certain phrases originate with Anatiya or with Jeremiah. Similarly, our text weaves phrases from Torah (the Five Books of Moses), the two Books of Samuel, the two Books of Kings, Proverbs, Psalms, The Song of Songs, Job, and selections from the prophets. Excepting where texts obviously predate 629 (readers beware: literary chronology rarely predicts date of authorship!) it requires serious consideration to discern the author’s intentional allusions, text that is original to her, and wording that may have been idiom of the time.

While another translator might have chosen to publish the text side by side with Jeremiah in order to facilitate comparisons, I prefer to let Anatiya’s voice remain autonomous. I have also chosen not to burden this initial version of the text with extensive annotation and footnotes. The text itself does demand scholarly study, and there is no doubt that supplemented editions will soon follow. The point of this edition is merely to recover an extraordinary ancient voice and to render it accessible to the modern reader.

Before turning to the text I must remind readers that all efforts to make unfamiliar worlds and characters speak to a modern reader, whether in translation or in fiction, require simultaneously a commitment to fidelity and a burst of imagination. Having said this, let me acknowledge that in a number of cases, where Hebraicisms were unmatched in other known texts and simpler renderings seemed to miss the leaps the author intended to make, I chose to use a more modern translation to indicate the urgency of context. Examples include: metaphor (ot-hashpa’a), which may have more literally translated as “sign of influence”; potentiality and actuality (sh’yecholet, sh’ma-kayam), “what could be and what matter exists”; ego (ha’ani), “the I”; paranoia, simply yira, is the common word for fear, but I based my choice on the qualifiers einai-chetz, which I rendered darting-eye, literally “arrow-eyes”; chant (hazara-hazara), “repeat-repeat”; and infinity (blisof), “without end.”

Many of the difficulties I encountered have been met by biblical translators countless times before. For example, there is an old controversy over the translation “dolphin skin,” which appears in the book of Leviticus describing the material used to construct the Tabernacle. Some say a better translation would simply be “tarp”; after all, what did these desert nomads know of dolphins? Rather than risk my translation being used as a commentary in an outdated debate, I opted for “dolphin skin” here as well. As another example, the word hashmal is left untranslated in many renditions of Ezekiel. In modern Hebrew it means “electricity,” but seemed to refer to some sort of glowing amber rock.

Another challenge occurred when Jeremiah is imprisoned, in my translation, by “a man named Fear.” I debated whether to translate the jailer’s name, Iriya, which literally means fear. I worry I may have overstepped my bounds here, rendering this segment more symbolic and less historic. Finally, I can’t resist pointing out that Milushari, the name Anatiya gives her place of dream and fantasy, in Hebrew letters is Jerusalem written backwards.

I am well aware of the trend in translation to render ancient text in gender-neutral language, but I concluded, quite confidently, that the ingenuity and uniqueness of Anatiya’s voice is only enhanced when we honestly understand the dominant male God-concept to which her culture adhered. I also chose to capitalize all nouns, pronouns, and epithets referring to God so as to maintain the integrity of belief at that time.

The original scroll moves back and forth from a poetical to a narrative style. For the most part, I followed the familiar JPS version of Jeremiah in moving between styles of presentation. The only time I broke with JPL was in chapter 13, where the lyrics describing Jeremiah’s body were so poetical they seemed best rendered in verse.

The least poetical verses posed the most difficulty in translation, namely Baruch’s speech, which was characterized in the original as halting in a way that reads haltingly. The author used unusual techniques when recording conversations with Baruch, including stand-alone alefs, which have been rendered as “um,” and words that seem to stutter, such as ani-ni. In Anatiya we also find the last letters of Baruch’s words smeared into the first letters of the words that follow, suggesting a slurred sort of speech. The translation tries to capture the characterization the author made every effort to depict. A note about the handwriting: Anatiya’s handwriting is not nearly as consistent or as artful as that of Baruch or Ben Sira. Over the course of her scroll it changes from tightly wound, small letters to a looser, more languidly flowing, downward sloping script. Throughout, however, is her signature letter yud, which has three little sweeps at the top.

The historical value of this piece is indisputable. A passage describing King Josiah provides exciting proof text that the scroll mentioned in the Book of Kings II long suspected to be Deuteronomy, the fifth of the five books of Moses, actually is Deuteronomy. The small group of scholars that have long held that Deuteronomy was in fact composed by Jeremiah and Baruch here find powerful textual basis for these claims. Anatiya lends tremendous historicity to such figures as Ezekiel, lesser known prophets as Hanamel and Uriah, priestly figures such as Pashhur and Zephania. Past archeological discoveries, including the “Seal of Baruch” found in 1975, and the soldered “I love you” amulets and bracelets discovered throughout the Jezreel valley, here find resource as well. The scroll contributes to the completion of the picture we have of this region and era, with its mention of hitherto unreferenced sites such as Coffee Alley and Baker’s Street, its brief tour of the palace and Temple, as well as its references to unknown texts such as the hidden books of Anatot and letters written by Anatiya to her son. It goes without saying that Anatiya makes an immeasurable contribution to filling out the historic landscape. How could we have ever read Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles, portions of Ezekiel, or for that matter, the entire Books of Lamentations and Jeremiah, without this clarifying, captivating, and complicated voice? Simultaneously, of course, the Scroll of Anatiya raises as many, if not more, questions than it answers.

As valuable as Anatiya is historically, the literary value of the scroll can never be dismissed. It maps an internal landscape of emotion and desire with as much, if not more, precision than it details historic events. It cannot fairly be compared to any other known text of its time. The romantic and erotic Song of Songs is clearly a compilation of sonnets, although there are those who would argue it is the story of two lovers over a period of time. The Book of Ruth and the Book of Judith are both character- and plot-driven, but never escape the agenda of their redactors. Anatiya is a first person, honest, and vulnerable account of an orphaned, passion-driven disciple of Jeremiah, perhaps a prophetess in her own right, composed as an epic love poem in which an immensely personal philosophy is expressed and nurtured, and in which a political agenda is subtle and noncompetitive with the overarching themes. It remains the most character-driven and thematic of any known Hebraic text, more comparable to certain Greek epics of a later date. Anatiya is a rare window into an incredible world and a beautiful mind, and what emerges, out of this century of war, wrath, starvation, and exile is a timeless theology of love that is sure to redefine trends in the history of mankind and thought.

I present to you the first complete English translation of the Scroll of Anatiya.

Jordanna Lamm

The Missing Page, Inc.

An Intuitive Translation Service