6. Some Observances of the Law (4Q394–99)
Six badly preserved manuscripts from Cave 4, bearing the title of ‘Some Observances of the Law’ (Miqsat Ma‘ase ha-Torah, abbreviated as MMT) reveal elements of a legal controversy. Addressed to the leader of the Jewish nation – no doubt the high priest of the Temple of Jerusalem – it seeks to persuade him to accept the Qumran understanding of some twenty biblically based laws whose mistaken interpretation, championed by a third religious party, has been adopted by the high priest. It is assumed that the recommended explanation of these precepts corresponds to the teaching of the founding fathers of the Qumran sect, and its rejection by the Temple authorities was the reason for their breakaway from the Jerusalem priesthood. If this general exegesis of the document, proposed by its editors, John Strugnell and Elisha Qimron, is correct, MMT would represent the original kernel of distinctive sectarian law. To be precise, the editors think that MMT is a letter sent by the Teacher of Righteousness, founder of the Qumran sect, to the ruling high priest, who later acquired the title of Wicked Priest. However, the epistolary character of the writing is questionable, because it lacks the standard introductory and concluding formulae of a letter. It is safer to call it a polemical legal tractate.
The main points of the controversy relate to the solar calendar, prefixed to one of the manuscripts, and to matters pertaining to ritual purity: prohibition from accepting Temple offerings from non-Jews, rules governing the slaughter of sacrificial animals, performance of the ritual of the ‘red heifer’ (Numbers 19:2–10), exclusion of the physically handicapped (deaf, blind and lepers), purity of liquids, simultaneous slaughtering of a mother animal with her young, a ban on dogs in Jerusalem (to prevent the desecration of remains of sacrificial meat attached to bones), rules governing marriage and intermarriage (e.g. no priest was allowed to marry a woman born in a non-priestly family), etc. Some of the laws recall the practice attributed to Sadducees in rabbinic literature, but since Sadducee means Zadokite, the title given to the sectarian priesthood, this should not be surprising. The original Community was firmly bound to ritual observance and was definitely a non-celibate institution.
If this judgement is correct, MMT reveals the interpretation of parts of the traditional priestly legislation inherited by the sect’s founders rather than a legislation freshly devised for the newly established Community. The document will be significant for the study of the historical origins of the Qumran sect as set out in biblical commentaries (see chapter VIII, p. 209).
To conclude this section, the various Qumran regulations indicate that the Community Rule dealt with a male celibate association that followed a regime of common ownership of goods under the leadership of the Sons of Zadok, the priests. The ‘Damascus’ sectaries, by contrast, were property-owning married Jews, also governed by Zadokite priests. They both expected in the not too distant future the coming of the kingdom of God at the end of an eschatological war, ushered in by two promised Messiahs and, according to the Community Rule, by an eschatological Prophet.
Were the two organizations – the married Community of the Damascus Document and of the Rule of the Congregation and the unmarried male ascetics of the Community Rule – separate institutions or two distinct branches of a single sect?
The strong organizational similarities, the entry of the new members at the Feast of the Renewal of the Covenant and the role of the chief Guardian seem to favour the view that we are facing a sole movement with two divisions whose members jointly celebrated the great Feast of the Renewal of the Covenant. In this case, the most likely hypothesis is that at some stage the married branch of the sect produced and nurtured the ascetics of the Community Rule rather than the converse development which envisages the creation by the more severe group of a looser, married and property-owning sister branch – a ‘third order’ to borrow the terminology of the later Christian religious organizations.
B. PRAYER, WORSHIP AND BELIEF
The second category of manuscripts, disclosing essential aspects of sectarian religious life, deal with the formal and personal piety and belief of the members. The official liturgical worship entails ceremonies and the recitation of prescribed blessings at fixed dates and times for the understanding of which the compulsory calendar, recorded in various manuscripts (4Q317–30, 334, 337, 394), plays an important part. Most of the psalms and hymns of the sect are formulated in the first person singular; hence they are meant for individual use and express personal beliefs and piety. Whereas the rules have been preserved in easily distinguishable legal documents, the evidence relating to sectarian liturgy and prayers may be found either in distinct scrolls like the Hodayot or Thanksgiving hymns (1QH, 4Q427–32), the Songs of the Holocaust of the Sabbath (4Q400–407, etc.), the Blessings (1QSb=1Q28b), the Benedictions (4Q280, 286–90) and other fragmentary manuscripts such as the Lamentations (4Q179, 501), the Words of the Heavenly Lights (4Q504–6), Daily Prayers (4Q503), and Prayers for festivals (4Q507–9) etc., or incorporated into various parts – particularly in the concluding hymn – of the Community Rule. Therefore it will be simpler and clearer to deal with the issues according to their subject matter rather than through discussing the individual literary sources.
Since worship and prayer are strictly arranged in a temporal framework, we must first learn something about the sect’s calendar. The Community Rule emphasizes the necessity that the sectaries must abide strictly by their God-given religious timetable:
They shall not depart from any command of God concerning their times; they shall be neither early nor late from any of their appointed times.
(1QS 1:14–15)
This calendar essentially differed from that of the priests of the Jerusalem Temple and played a significant role in creating the rift between the latter and the members of the Qumran Community. The peculiar sectarian definition of the year constitutes the foundation of the Qumran liturgy. Contrary to the generally adopted time reckoning system of biblical and post-biblical Judaism, with a lunar year of 354 days approximately reconciled with the solar year by means of adding an extra month (called the second Adar) in every third year, the Dead Sea Community opted for a solar calendar of twelve months, each comprising thirty days. They then prefixed an extra day to each of the four seasons. In counting 364 days in a year, they followed the Book of Jubilees, as is implied in the Damascus Document:
As for the exact determination of their times to which Israel turns a blind eye, behold it is strictly defined in the Book of the Division of the Times into their Jubilees and Weeks.
(CD 16:2–4)
This computation, which is still short of one and a quarter days of the astronomical year, had in the eyes of the sectaries the advantage of absolute regularity. Not only did their year consist precisely of fifty-two weeks, but also each of the four seasons – of thirteen weeks’ duration – started on the same day of the week. This day was Wednesday according to the sectarian calendar since the time of the creation. Genesis tells us that the sun and the moon, the two great heavenly bodies ruling over the day and the night, were set on their course by God on the fourth day (Wednesday) of the first week (Genesis 1:14–19). To put it bluntly, in conformity with the divine law, time began on a Wednesday. As a consequence, the vernal or spring New Year (1 Nisan), the first day of the first month in the religious calendar of Israel, was always a Wednesday, and so was Passover, two weeks later, on the fifteenth day of the first month. In this system of perfect regularity, the Feast of Weeks (15 Sivan in the third month), coinciding with the renewal of the Covenant, always fell on a Sunday and the day of Atonement (10 Tishri, in the seventh month) on a Friday. This absolute uniformity, so different from the continuously changing mobile feasts of the calendar used in the Temple, was the proof in the eyes of the sectaries of the heavenly nature of their way of reckoning, mirroring ‘the certain law from the mouth of God’ (1QH 20:9). The Temple Scroll mentions further festivals of agricultural character at seven weeks’ intervals: the Feast of the First Wheat on
Sunday, the fifteenth day of the third month, the Feast of the First Wine on Sunday, the third day of the fifth month, and the Feast of the First Oil on Sunday, the twenty-second day of the sixth month. On the following day began the Feast of Wood Offering, supplying fuel to the Sanctuary for burnt sacrifices. The appended table will allow a quick grasp of this chronological harmony.
The days and months of the year
I, IV, VII, X II, V, VIII, XI III, VI, IX, XII
Wed 1 8 15 22 29 6 13 20 27 4 11 18 25
Thu 2 9 16 23 30 7 14 21 28 5 12 19 26
Fri 3 10 17 24 1 8 15 22 29 6 13 20 27
Sab 4 11 18 25 2 9 16 23 30 7 14 21 28
Sun 5 12 19 26 3 10 17 24 1 8 15 22 29
Mon 6 13 20 27 4 11 18 25 2 9 16 23 30
Tue 7 14 21 28 5 12 19 26 3 10 17 24 31
Anyone familiar with the mentality of closed religious groups will realize that a clash on the calendar, resulting in a feast day for one group being an ordinary day for another, can deeply affect the relationship between opposing factions. At the end of the first century CE, the Jewish Patriarch Rabban Gamaliel II, disagreeing with the renowned Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah on the date of the day of Atonement, publicly humiliated his opponent by ordering him to perform various acts (such as carrying a staff or a purse) forbidden on that day:
I charge you that you come to me with your staff and your money on the Day of Atonement according to your reckoning.
(Mishnah Rosh ha-Shanah 2:9)
Moving to the Qumran domain, the Wicked Priest, the Jewish high priest hostile to the founder of the Community, visited with his followers the Teacher of Righteousness and his company on their day of Atonement, which differed from his, to surprise and confuse them and put pressure on them (1QHabakkuk Commentary 11:4–8). In a Christian context, Pope Victor (189–198 CE) threatened to excommunicate the whole eastern half of the Church for celebrating Easter on the day of the Jewish Passover (15 Nisan) rather than on the following Sunday as the western Church did. Closer to our time, the calendar reform introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 was resisted by the English Church until 1752 and by the Eastern Orthodox Churches until as late as 1924.
The daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal and annual prayer times of the Community as well as the celebration of the seven-year (sabbatical cycle) and fifty-year (jubilee cycle) periods had to be observed with the greatest accuracy because if earthly worship did not coincide exactly with the heavenly cult of the angels, cacophony was expected to ensue in celestial-terrestrial liturgy. These prayer times are specified in a hymn attached to the Community Rule:
He shall bless Him [with the offering] of the lips
At the times ordained by Him.
At the beginning of the dominion of light,
And at its end when it retires to its appointed place;
At the beginning of the watches of darkness,
When He unlocks their storehouse and spreads them out
And also at their end, when they retire before the light…
At the beginning of the months of the (yearly) seasons
And on the holy day appointed for remembrance…
At the beginning of the years and at the end of their seasons,
When their appointed time is fulfilled, on the day decreed by Him
That they should pass from one to the other:
The season of early harvest to summer time,
The season of sowing to the season of grass,
The seasons of years to their weeks (of years)
And at the beginning of their weeks for the season of Jubilee.
(1QS 9:26–10:8)
A large number of individual and communal prayers and priestly blessings, listed at the beginning of this section, have survived more or less well preserved. Before turning to two ritual ceremonies, one performed daily and the other annually, an extract from the heavenly liturgy of the Songs of the Holocaust of the Sabbath, inspired by the vision of the heavenly chariot or Merkabah (Ezekiel chapter 1), deserves to be cited as an example of high-quality cultic poetry. (The ‘gods’ mentioned are heavenly beings attached to the throne-chariot.)
[Song of the holocaust of ] the twelfth [S]abbath [on the twenty-first day of the third month]….
The [cheru]bim prostrate themselves before Him and bless. As they rise, a whispered divine voice [is heard], and there is a roar of praise. When they drop their wings there is a [whispere]d divine voice. The cherubim bless the image of the divine throne-chariot above the firmament, [and] they praise the [majes]ty of the luminous firmament beneath His seat of glory. When the wheels advance, angels of holiness come and go. From between his glorious wheels, there is as it were a fiery vision of most holy spirits. About them, the appearance of rivulets of fire in the likeness of gleaming brass, and a work of… radiance in many-coloured glory, marvellous pigments, clearly mingled. The spirits of the living ‘gods’ move perpetually with the glory of the marvellous chariot. The whispered voice of blessing accompanies the roar of their advance, And they praise the Holy One on their way of return. When they ascend, they ascend marvellously and when they settle, they stand still. The sound of joyful praise is silenced and there is a whispered praise of the ‘gods’ in all the camps of God.
(4Q405 20–22)
Two particular ceremonies remain to be described to complete the sketch of the liturgical life of the Qumran sect. The daily common meal was probably taken in the evening, and the yearly ceremony of entry into, and renewal of, the Covenant was celebrated in the third month on the Feast of Weeks (Sunday, 15 Sivan), when all the Jews remembered God’s granting of the Law (the mattan Torah) through Moses on Mount Sinai.
In regard to the meals, whether members of the married sect regularly ate in common is nowhere attested and is a priori doubtful, but they probably did so on solemn occasions such as the Renewal of the Covenant. By contrast, the units of the celibate groups of the sect, portrayed in the Community Rule, regularly shared a common table. The meal itself is outlined in 1QS and 1QSa and in both it follows a council meeting. In the council and at the meal everything is formal and organized hierarchically. The Community Rule first deals with the assembly of ten.
Wherever there are ten men of the council of the community, there shall not lack a priest among them. And they shall all sit before him according to their rank and shall be asked their counsel in all things in that order.
(1QS 6:3–4)
Next comes the rubric relative to the common table:
And when the table has been prepared for eating and the wine (tirosh) for drinking, the priest shall be the first to stretch out his hand to bless the firstfruits of the bread and wine.
(1QS 6:4–6)
Jewish custom conferred on the priests the privilege to recite grace before a meal. The mention of bread and wine does not necessarily mean that nothing else was served: bread can stand for solid food and wine for drink. The word used for the latter is not the ordinary term for wine (yayin), but a less common one (tirosh), which in rabbinic Hebrew also designates any kind of unfermented fruit juice, including grape juice. It is conceivable therefore, though by no means certain, that the sectaries abstained from alcoholic drink. From the regulation dealing with the training of candidates, we know that ‘novices’ were not allowed to partake in the solemn sectarian meals. These were reserved only for the fully initiated members who had not been temporarily excluded from the common table.
The Rule of the Congregation sets out a similar directive for the council meeting and the formal supper in the messianic age, foreseeing the participation of ‘the Priest’ (Messiah) and the royal Messiah of Israel.
[This shall be the ass]embly of the men of renown [called] to the meeting of the council of the community.
When God engenders (the Priest) Messiah, he shall come with them at the head of the whole congregation of Israel with all [his brethren, the sons of ] Aaron the priests, [those called] to the assembly, the men of renown; and they shall sit [before him, each man] in the order of his
dignity. And then [the Messiah of Israel] shall [come], and the chiefs of the [clans of Israel] shall sit before him, [each] in the order of his dignity, according to [his place] in their camps and marches. And before them shall sit the heads of [family of the congreg]ation, and the wise men of [the holy congregation,] each in the order of his dignity.
And when they shall gather for the common table to eat and [to drink] wine, and when the common table shall be set for eating and the wine [poured] for drinking, let no man extend his hand over the firstfruits of the bread and wine before the Priest, for [it is he] who shall bless the firstfruits of bread and wine, and shall be the first [to extend] his hand over the bread. Thereafter the Messiah of Israel shall extend his hand over the bread, and all the congregation of the community [shall utter a] blessing, [each man in order] of his dignity.
It is according to this statute that they shall proceed at every meal at which at least ten men are gathered together.
(1QSa 2:11–22)
The precedence of the Priest Messiah is asserted at the messianic gathering and meal, too. He is to pronounce the blessing and help himself first, before the King Messiah. The mention of a series of blessings pronounced by each participant is missing from the ritual of the ordinary common meal given in the Community Rule. This absence contradicts to some extent the rule at the end of 1QSa, according to which the daily meal should follow the directives regulating the messianic banquet. The ordinary daily meal is conceived as inversely parallel to the Christian Eucharist. The Eucharist is believed to commemorate Jesus’ Last Supper, whereas the Qumran community meal prefigures the common table rite of the messianic age.
In parenthesis, it is worth noting that the Rule of the Congregation is also attested by hundreds of tiny scraps of papyrus from Cave 4, written in a cryptic script. As the Cave 1 copy is not treated as especially secret, the production of this encrypted specimen in an arcane code has no rational justification. Was it the work of a mentally disturbed scribe?
The Story of the Scrolls Page 13