The council in the messianic age was to be led by the Priest Messiah, followed by his brethren, the priests. Next proceeded in a parallel procession the Messiah of Israel with his lay officials, each in the order of his rank. The council meeting is associated with a messianic meal which was to be blessed by the Priest Messiah. According to the Rule of the Congregation, the daily meal of the sect, depicted in the Community Rule (see p. 148), was an anticipation of the messianic ritual at the end of time.
3. The Community Rule or Serekh ha-Yahad (1QS, 4Q255–64, 280, 286–7, 502, 5Q11, 13)
The Community Rule, originally called the Manual of Discipline, is arguably the most important and interesting source of legislation concerning the organization of the sect. It is dated by its script and its content to circa 100 BCE. Its vantage point is pre-messianic as its Community, like the ‘Damascus’ sect, was still awaiting the arrival of an ultimate prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel (1QS 9:11). It has reached us in a complete scroll whose final column is left half empty, indicating the end of the document. Moreover, fragments, some of them substantial, of fourteen further manuscripts were yielded by Caves 4, 5 and 6, several of them representing a somewhat different version of the rule.
The complete scroll consists of three parts. The first section (columns 1–4) describes the ceremony of the entry into the Covenant, entailing a communal baptism ritual and an instruction on the two spirits of light and darkness whose impact on individuals determined the spiritual history of humanity. The second part (columns 5–9) includes the statutes relating to the life and governance of the Community and directives addressed to the Master or maskil, and the third (columns 9–11) consists of the hymn sung by the Master.
The Community Rule lays down a stricter and more detailed set of regulations than either the Damascus Document or the Rule of the Congregation. Compared to them, its principal peculiarity is the total absence of reference to women. From this is deduced that the members of the group were male celibates. In a mixed-gender association characterized by normal and lasting husband–wife relations, legislation relating to female uncleanness resulting from menstruation or childbirth, as well as to marriage, the education of children, and divorce, would have been a necessity. Silence here speaks loud and clear and indicates that these matters were not applicable to the Community described in this particular rule book which legislated for unmarried male members, pointing to the Essenes (see chapter VIII, pp. 191–202) and anticipated Christian monasticism launched a few hundred years later.
Just like the ‘Damascus’ sect (see p. 122), that of the Community Rule is envisaged as a miniature Israel, divided into priests, Levites and laity, and the latter subdivided into twelve tribes, and smaller units down to tens, but no proselytes are mentioned. The supreme council is made up of three priests and twelve men, referred to also as ‘fifteen men’ (4Q265, fr. 7 ii), no doubt corresponding to the leaders of the three Levitical clans and the twelve tribal chiefs of Israel. The representatives of the priestly directorate are designated either as Sons of Aaron or, more restrictively, as Sons of Zadok (see pp. 122–3). In one of the Cave 4 manuscripts (4Q258), which may reflect the original form of the Community Rule, we encounter a democratic social structure with the congregation, literally ‘the many’, being the supreme authority in matters of doctrine, justice and property. The complete final document (1QS) identifies the main governing body with the high-priestly Sons of Zadok, suggesting an oligarchic Zadokite takeover of the original body at an early stage of the history of the sect.
On the individual level, as in the Damascus Document (see p. 122), the government of the whole congregation and its constitutive parts was in the hands of a priest, called the Guardian, who was assisted by a Bursar. The former presided over the meetings, instructed the members and accepted, rejected and trained new candidates. The Bursar administered the funds and the property of the sect and provided for the needs of the individual members, who lived in religious communism.
The initiation of newcomers was much more complex than in the married ‘Damascus’ sect. The Jewish male volunteers (‘every man, born of Israel, who freely pledges himself’) were scrutinized by the Guardian and were made to swear, in the course of a ceremony, to return to the Law of Moses and observe every single precept of it according to the interpretation of the Sons of Zadok, the priestly leaders of the sect. An indeterminate period of instruction ensued, followed by a public examination in the presence of the whole Community. The successful candidates underwent further training during which they were forbidden to touch the pure (solid) food of the community for one year. They had to hand over their property to the Bursar, who administered it without, however, merging it with communal property for another twelve months. In the course of this second year of training, the ‘novices’, a convenient term borrowed from Christian monastic terminology, could come into contact with the pure food, but were still kept away from the pure drink of the Community as liquids were considered more susceptible to ritual impurity than solid food. After the third and final examination at the end of the second year of the ‘noviciate’, those who successfully passed the test became full members and renounced all right to control their belongings, agreeing to their absorption into communal property. Moreover, the freshly initiated were ranked according to their spiritual achievement, a ranking reviewed annually during the Feast of the Renewal of the Covenant, no doubt identical with the ceremony occurring ‘in the third month’ (the Feast of Weeks) mentioned in a Cave 4 manuscript of the Damascus Document.
The new members embraced the Community’s strict discipline regarding the Mosaic Law and the sectarian regulations. Apart from celibacy and obedience to superiors, they had to keep away from the outside world, both Jewish and Gentile, as it was considered irreligious and unclean. They were in particular forbidden to mix the pure property of the community with the ‘wealth of wickedness’. To prove that they were separated from outsiders, the members had to abstain from making donations to them. Any exchange of goods had to be accompanied by payment of money. They were also forbidden to communicate the secret teachings of the sect to non-members.
A severe penal code controlled the conduct of the sectaries. In addition to the deliberate breach of any precept of the biblical law, four specific transgressions carried the penalty of permanent expulsion from the community: the utterance, even an inadvertent utterance, of the divine name (the tetragram YHWH); the slandering of the Community; the murmuring against communal authority (this is identical with the murmuring against ‘the Fathers’ in the Damascus Document, see p. 125); and deserting the community after ten years of membership. The latter misconduct carried with it a prohibition for members to maintain any contact with the traitor on pain of expulsion. Other serious transgressions included withdrawal from the sect due to discouragement over the severity of the rules (a repentant member was punished by exclusion for two years during which he had to undergo a complete retraining), lying about property (punished by exclusion from touching the pure meal for one year and by the reduction of his food to one quarter of the full ration), angry words addressed to a priest or disrespect towards a senior member (exclusion for one year) and slandering a companion (prohibition for one year of touching the pure meal). Other offences were punished for six months, three months, two months, one month, down to the minimum penalty of ten days (for interrupting a senior colleague during a meeting or gesticulating with the left hand).
The Rule of the Community contains no precise directives concerning the members’ work. All we know is that they had to hand over their salaries to the Bursar, who would spend the money on the Community. As for their occupations, the sectaries may have been employed by outsiders and from the archaeological data we may surmise that at Qumran they practised agriculture and various industries (pottery, tannery) and some of them were also professional scribes manufacturing books, not only for the Community, but also possibly in part for sale.
The daily routine included at least one
communal meal, presided over and blessed by the leading priest. There was also a vigil of prayer, study and discussion occupying one third (four hours) of each night. One member, no doubt the priestly leader, was to be continuously engaged in the study of the Torah. Moreover, the Community imagined itself in the pre-messianic age as the spiritual replacement of the Jewish Temple. Qumran was their sanctuary and prayer and holy life were the substitutes for the sacrifices and free-will offerings performed by the priests in Jerusalem.
Three further documents have a less direct significance for the description of the Qumran sect or sects: the War Scroll is an eschatological legislation for the final battle between good and evil; the Temple Scroll is a rewritten Torah, apparently addressed to all Israel, but appropriated and revised by the Qumranites; and Some Observances of the Law (MMT) conveys an appeal of the early leaders of the Qumran sect to the priestly head of the Jerusalem Temple to adopt the Community’s interpretation of a selection of biblical laws. They will all be presented in turn.
4. The War Scroll (1QM, 1Q33, 4Q471, 491–7)
The rules of the War Scroll concern not the present but the future age, laying down in advance the scenario and the imaginary regulations concerning eschatological behaviour for the members of the community during the final stages of the conflict between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. The War Scroll has been preserved in a large, but damaged manuscript of nineteen columns from Cave 1, and in further fragmentary manuscripts from Cave 4. On the basis of palaeography and contents the writing is dated to the last decades of the first century BCE or the beginning of the Christian era. Since the Kittim, the final enemy, are led by a king, they must apply to the Romans after 27 BCE when Augustus became Princeps or Emperor.
The War Scroll is a composite work. Columns 1 and 15 to 19 offer an imaginary historical sketch of the reconquest of Jerusalem and the Holy Land by the host of the Sons of Light from the Sons of Darkness (Jewish and Gentile), and the defeat of the armies of the ultimate foe, the Kittim. Between columns 1 and 15 is inserted a series of equally fictive regulations relating to the reorganization of the worship in the Temple of Jerusalem by the priests of the Community, the schedule of the forty-year-long war against the non-Jewish world, the sequence and precise length of the battle against each nation being determined in advance. This single feature suffices to prove that we are faced with an imaginary warfare. There also follow regulations concerning the trumpets, standards, weapons, and the strategy and tactics of the infantry and cavalry. The details of the descriptions remind the reader of the Roman army and its style of strategy and tactics. The age of the combatants and the duties of the priests and Levites, who were to direct the battle with their trumpet signals, the addresses delivered by the chief priest to the soldiers, the battle liturgy and the ceremony of thanksgiving after the final victory over the Kittim complete the document. While some of the accounts and prayers are outstandingly beautiful, the composition as such reflects only the ideas of the sect about the end of time and cannot be used for the reconstruction of the organization and way of life of the Community. To consider the document as a handbook for actual warfare is childishly naive.
Akin to the War Scroll is the set of fragments known as The Book of War (4Q285) which, without setting out battle rules, foresees the fight culminating in the defeat of the king of the Kittim by the sea. It was wrongly made notorious by Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise for its supposed reference to a murdered Jesus-like messianic figure. Accurately understood and translated, the text speaks of a ‘slaying’ or bellicose, and not a ‘slain’, Messiah.
5. The Temple Scroll (11Q 19–21, 4Q365a, 4Q524)
The Temple Scroll is the longest of all the Qumran manuscripts. It stretches to over twenty-eight feet when unrolled and contains sixty-seven columns of text. Beginning with the Covenant between God and Israel, it is presented as a record of divine legislation relative to the Temple and its sacrifices, together with the purity requirements for Jerusalem and the cities of Israel (columns 2–51). The last quarter of the manuscript is made up of miscellaneous laws concerning judges, idolatry, oaths, apostasy, priests, Levites, the Jewish king who must have only one wife, witnesses, war, crimes against the state punishable by crucifixion, and incest (columns 51–66). The top few lines of column 67 are missing but the rest of the column is blank, indicating that the document ended there.
While the Bible formulates the Torah as a revelation given by God, which the mediator Moses was to receive and transmit to the Jews, the Temple Scroll appears as a direct divine communication to Israel. Consequently it is believed to possess greater holiness and authority because of its direct divine origin, as can be seen in the following parallel quotations in the first of which the speaker is Moses and in the second, God himself.
And the priests, the sons of Levi shall come forward, for YHWH your God has chosen them to minister to Him and to bless Him in the name of YHWH.
(Deut. 21:5)
And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for I have chosen them to minister to Me and to bless My name.
(11QTemple 63:3)
Some of the laws of the Temple Scroll differ from their biblical sources by combining two or more scriptural precepts and generally rendering the rules more severe. Take the case of the seducer of a non-engaged virgin. Exodus 22:16 obliges him to marry her after paying her father an unspecified sum of bride money. On the other hand, the rapist of a non-engaged virgin must give her father fifty shekels of silver, marry her without retaining the right to any subsequent divorce according to the biblical law of Deuteronomy 22:28–9. In the Temple Scroll, where the two scriptural commandments are conflated, the seducer’s treatment is made more severe, but applies only if no legal impediment prevents him from marrying the girl:
When a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed, but is suitable for him according to the rule, and lies with her, he who has lain with her shall give the girl’s father fifty pieces of silver and she shall be his wife. Because he has dishonoured her, he may not divorce her all his days.
(11QTemple 66:8–11)
Similarly, Deuteronomy 21:10–14, the case of a woman captured in war, is given a facelift in the Temple Scroll. According to the Bible, her captor must grant the woman a month’s respite before getting her into his bed and thus making her his wife. He is forbidden thereafter to sell her as a slave. The Qumran document adds a ritual proviso, however: the woman continues to be held ritually unclean for a long period (seven years) and is not permitted to cook for her husband or partake in sacrificial meals.
When you go to war against your enemies… and you capture some of them, if you see among the captives a pretty woman and desire her, you may take her to be your wife. You shall bring her to your house, you shall shave her head, and cut her nails. You shall discard the clothes of her captivity and she shall dwell in your house, and bewail her father and mother for a full month. Afterwards you may go to her, consummate the marriage with her and she will be your wife. But she shall not touch whatever is pure for you for seven years, neither shall she eat of the sacrifice of peace offering until seven years have elapsed.
(11QTemple 63:10–15)
As has been remarked, several laws of the Temple Scroll are paralleled in other Qumran writings. The liturgical calendar of feasts, dealt with in columns 43–4, is based on the solar year of 364 days adopted by the Dead Sea sect, as well as the Book of Jubilees and the first Book of Enoch. More specifically, the feast of oil mentioned in the Temple Scroll (21:12) also figures in the sectarian liturgical calendar prefixed to Some Observances of the Law or MMT (4Q394 5:5).
The law which, contrary to the Bible, forbids the Israelite king to have several wives simultaneously (Temple Scroll 57:16–18), is used in the Damascus Document (CD 5:1–2) as an argument for the monogamous marriage of any Jew. Deuteronomy 18:18 is understood by the compiler of the Temple Scroll to declare that not even the king is permitted to ‘multiply wives to himself’. The Damascus Document’s descr
iptive condemnation of marriage between an uncle and his niece (CD 5:7–11) is given in a legal formulation in the Temple Scroll:
A man shall not take the daughter of his brother or the daughter of his sister for this is abominable.
(11QTemple 66:15–17)
Furthermore, the ruling of the Temple Scroll (45:11– 12), which prohibits a man to enter any part of the city of the Sanctuary for three days after he has had sexual intercourse with his wife, underlies a statute set out in the Damascus Document:
No man shall lie with a woman in the city of the Sanctuary to defile the city of the Sanctuary with their uncleanness.
(CD 12:1–2)
Finally the crucifixion by a Jewish ruler of his captured Jewish opponents, guilty of allying themselves to an invading Greek king, referred to in the Nahum Commentary (4Q169; see pp. 163–4), seems to be in line with the law recorded in the Temple Scroll:
If a man slanders his people and delivers his people to a foreign nation and does evil to his people, you shall hang him on a tree and he shall die.
(11QTemple 64:7–8)
If the Temple Scroll predates the sect, these correspondences indicate that the Qumran community was influenced by it. If, on the other hand, the Temple Scroll is a Qumran composition, the quoted sectarian practices may be understood as directly dictated by the Temple Scroll. In the latter hypothesis, the Temple Scroll partly reflects sectarian legal practice, but as far as the Temple and the cult performed in it are concerned, the legislation is for future use when the Sanctuary will be administered by the Qumran priests, as appears in column 2 of the Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness.
The Story of the Scrolls Page 12