by Geza Vermes
The time is coming ... when I will make a new Covenant with Israel... This is the new Covenant which I will make with Israel in those days ... I will set my law within them and write it on their hearts...
(Jer. xxxi, 31-3; Isa. liv, 13)
It was this same Covenant ideology that served as the foundation of the Qumran Community’s basic beliefs. The Essenes not only considered themselves to be the ‘remnant’ of their time, but the ‘remnant’ of all time, the final ‘remnant’. In the ‘age of wrath’, while God was making ready to annihilate the wicked, their founders had repented. They had become the ‘Converts of Israel’ (cf. CD IV, 2; 4Q266 fr. 5 i). As a reward for their conversion, the Teacher of Righteousness had been sent to establish for them a ‘new Covenant’, which was to be the sole valid form of the eternal alliance between God and Israel. Consequently, their paramount aim was to pledge themselves to observe its precepts with absolute faithfulness. Convinced that they belonged to a Community which alone interpreted the Holy Scriptures correctly, theirs was ‘the last interpretation of the Law’ (4Q266 fr. 11; 270 fr. 7 ii), and they devoted their exile in the wilderness to the study of the Bible. Their intention was to do according to all that had been ‘revealed from age to age, and as the Prophets had revealed by His Holy Spirit’ (1QS VIII, 14-16; cf. 4Q265 fr. 7 ii).
Without an authentic interpretation it was not possible properly to understand the Torah. All the Jews of the inter-Testamental era, the Essenes as well as their rivals, agreed that true piety entails obedience to the Law, but although its guidance reaches into so many corners of life - into business and prayer, law court and kitchen, marriage-bed and Temple - the 613 positive and negative commandments of which it consists still do not provide for all the problems encountered, especially those which arose in the centuries following the formulation of biblical legislation. To give but one example, the diaspora situation was not envisaged by the jurists of an autonomous Jewish society.
Torah interpretation was entrusted to the priests and Levites during the first two or three centuries following the Babylonian exile. Ezra and his colleagues, the ancient scribes of Israel, ‘read from the book of the Law... made its sense plain and gave instruction in what was read’. In this passage from the Book of Nehemiah viii, 8, Jewish tradition acknowledges the institution of a regular paraphrase of Scripture known as Targum, or translation into the vernacular of the members of the congregation. When the parties of the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, etc., came into being with their different convictions, they justified them by interpretations suited to their needs.
A classic example of idiosyncratic Bible interpretation in the Scrolls concerns a law on marriage. Since no directly relevant ruling is given in the Pentateuch on whether a niece may marry her uncle, Pharisaic and rabbinic Judaism understands this scriptural silence to mean that such a union is licit. When the Bible wishes to declare a degree of kinship unlawful, it does so: thus we read apropos of marriage between nephew and aunt, ‘You shall not approach your mother’s sister’ (Lev. xviii, 13). Thus a tradition surviving in the Babylonian Talmud is able to go so far as even to praise marriage with a ‘sister’s daughter’ and to proclaim it as a particularly saintly and generous act comparable to the loving-kindness shown to the poor and needy (Yebamoth 62b). The Qumran Essenes did not adopt this attitude at all. On the contrary, they regarded an uncle-niece union as straightforward ‘fornication’. Interpreted correctly, they maintained, the Leviticus precept signifies the very opposite of the meaning accepted by their opponents; the truth is that whatever applies to men in this respect applies also to women.
Moses said, You shall not approach your mother’s sister (i.e. your aunt); she is your mother’s near kin (Lev. xviii, 13). But although the laws against incest are written for men, they also apply to women. When, therefore, a brother’s daughter uncovers the nakedness of her father’s brother, she is (also his) near kin.
(CD v, 8-11)
The Temple Scroll proclaims clearly this prohibition in proper legal terms:
A man shall not take the daughter of his brother or the daughter of his sister for this is abominable.
(11QT LXVI, 16-17)
Again, according to the strict views of the sectaries, fidelity to the Covenant demanded not only obedience to the Law, to all that God has ‘commanded by the hand of Moses’, but also adherence to the teaching of ‘all His servants, the Prophets’ (1QS 1, 2-3). Although not expressly stated, this special attention to the Prophets implies, firstly, that the Essenes subscribed to the principle incorporated into the opening paragraph of the Sayings of the Fathers in the Mishnah that the Prophets served as an essential link in the transmission of the Law from Moses to the rabbis.
Moses received the Torah from (God on) Sinai and passed it on to Joshua; Joshua to the Elders (= Judges); the Elders to the Prophets; and the Prophets passed it on to the members of the Great Assembly (= the leaders of Israel in the post-exilic age).
(Aboth 1, 1)
The second inference to be drawn is that the sect believed the Prophets to be not only teachers of morality, but also guides in the domain of the final eschatological realities. But as in the case of the Law, their writings were considered to contain pitfalls for the ignorant and the misinformed, and only the Community’s sages knew how to expound them correctly. Properly understood, the Books of Isaiah, Hosea and the rest indicate the right path to be followed in the terrible cataclysms of the last days. A simple reading can convey only their superficial meaning, but not their profounder significance. The Book of Daniel sets the biblical example here when it announces that Jeremiah’s prediction that the Babylonian domination would last for seventy years is not to be taken literally; the real and final message is that seventy times seven years would separate Nebuchadnezzar from the coming of the Messiah (Dan. ix, 21-4). But the Qumran sectaries went even further than Daniel. They argued that it is quite impossible to discover the meaning without an inspired interpreter because the Prophets themselves were ignorant of the full import of what they wrote. Habakkuk, for instance, was commanded to recount the history of the ‘final generation’, but he did so without having any clear idea of how far ahead the eschatological age lay. God ‘did not make known to him when time would come to an end’. Knowledge of the authentic teaching of the Prophets was the supreme talent of the Teacher of Righteousness. The surviving Bible commentaries are almost all concerned with predictions concerning the ultimate destiny of the righteous and the wicked, the tribulations and final triumph of the ‘House of Judah’ and the concomitant annihilation of those who had rebelled against God. But in addition to this general evidence of the subject-matter, the Scrolls directly impute to the Teacher a particular God-given insight into the hidden significance of prophecy. He was ‘the Teacher of Righteousness to whom God made known all the mysteries... of His servants the Prophets’ (1QpHab VII, 1-5). He was ‘the Priest [in whose heart] God set [understanding] that he might interpret all the words of His servants the Prophets, through whom He foretold all that would happen to His people’ (1QpHab 11, 8-10). He was the Teacher who ‘made known to the latter generations that which God had done to the latter generation, the congregation of traitors, to those who departed from the way’ (CD 1, 12-13). The Teacher’s interpretation alone, propagated by his disciples, offered true enlightenment and guidance.
Supported in this way by the infallible teaching of the Community, the sectary believed himself to be living in the true city of God, the city of the Covenant built on the Law and the Prophets (cf. CD VII, 13-18). Again and again, the architectural metaphors used in the Scrolls suggest security and protection. The sect is a ‘House of Holiness’, a ‘House of Perfection and Truth’ (IQS VIII, 5, 9), a ‘House of the Law’ (CD XIX (B2), 10, 13); it is a ‘sure House’ (CD III, 19) constructed on solid foundations. Indeed the language used is reminiscent of Isaiah xxviii, 16, and of Jesus’ simile about the Church built not on sand but on rock (Matth. vii, 24-7; xvi, 18):
But I shall be as one
who enters a fortified city,
as one who seeks refuge behind a high wall ...
I will [lean on] Thy truth, O my God.
For Thou wilt set the foundation on rock
and the framework by the measuring-cord of justice;
and the tried stones [Thou wilt lay]
by the plumb-line [of truth],
to [build] a mighty [wall] which shall not sway;
and no man entering there shall stagger.
(1QH XIV [formerly VI], 24-7)
Fortified by his membership of the brotherhood, the sectary could even carry his notions of solidity and firmness over into his own self so that he too became a ‘strong tower’:
Thou hast strengthened me
before the battles of wickedness...
Thou hast made me like a strong tower, a high wall,
and hast established my edifice upon rock;
eternal foundations
serve for my ground,
and all my ramparts are a tried wall
which shall not sway.
(1QH xv [formerly VII], 7-9)
2 ELECTION AND HOLY LIFE IN THE COMMUNITY OF THE COVENANT
In the ideology of the Old Testament, to be a member of the chosen people is synonymous with being party to the Covenant. Israel willingly accepts the yoke of the Law given on Sinai, and God in his turn acknowledges her as His ‘special possession’ (Exod. xix, 5):
For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth ... You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment, and the statutes, and the ordinances which I command you this day.
(Deut. vii, 6, 11)
Theoretically, there is no distinction between election de jure and election de facto: every Jew is chosen. But already in biblical times a deep gulf is in fact seen to divide righteous observers of the Covenant from the wicked of Israel. Though not deprived of their birthright, the unfaithful are viewed as burdened with guilt and as such excluded, provisionally at least, from the congregation of the children of God. The fully developed concept of election is summarized in the Palestinian Talmud by the third-century CE Galilean Rabbi Lazar. Expounding the words of Deuteronomy quoted above, he comments:
When the Israelites do the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, they are called sons; but when they do not do His will, they are not called sons.
(Kiddushin 61c)
Inevitably, for the Qumran Essenes such a notion of Covenant membership was far too elastic. Consistent with their approach to legal matters, their attitude in regard to the Covenant was that only the initiates of their own ‘new Covenant’ were to be reckoned among God’s elect and, as such, united already on earth with the angels of heaven.
God has given them to His chosen ones
and has caused them to inherit
the lot of the Holy Ones.
He has joined their assembly
to the Sons of Heaven,
to be a Council of the Community,
a foundation of the Building of Holiness,
an eternal Plantation throughout all ages to come.
(1QS XI, 7-9)
They insisted, moreover, on the individual election of each sectary. The ordinary Jew envisaged entry into the congregation of the chosen primarily through birth, and secondly through the symbolical initiation of an eight-day-old male infant submitted to circumcision. An Essene became a member of either branch of his sect by virtue of the deliberate and personal adult commitment of himself. For this reason, as will be remembered, even children born to married members and brought up in their schools had to wait until their twentieth birthday before they were allowed to make their solemn vows of entry into the Covenant. Also, believing in divine foreknowledge, they considered their adherence to the ‘lot of God’ as the effect of grace, as having been planned for each of them in heaven from all eternity. They, the elect, were guided by the spirit of truth in the ways of light, while the unprivileged, Jew and Gentile alike, were doomed to wander along paths of darkness. The section of the Community Rule known as the Instruction on the Two Spirits gives a fascinating description of these two human groups, the chosen and the unchosen.
The Master shall instruct all the sons of light and shall teach them the nature of all the children of men according to the kind of spirit which they possess ...
From the God of Knowledge comes all that is and shall be. Before ever they existed He established their whole design, and when, as ordained for them, they come into being, it is in accord with His glorious design that they accomplish their task without change ...
He has created man to govern the world, and has appointed for him two spirits in which to walk until the time of His visitation: the spirits of truth and injustice. Those born of truth spring from a fountain of light, but those born of injustice spring from a source of darkness. All the children of righteousness are ruled by the Prince of Light and walk in the ways of light, but all the children of injustice are ruled by the Angel of Darkness and walk in the ways of darkness. The Angel of Darkness leads all the children of righteousness astray, and until his end, all their sins, iniquities, wickedness, and all their unlawful deeds are caused by his dominion in accordance with the mysteries of God...
But the God of Israel and His Angel of Truth will succour all the sons of light. For it is He who created the spirits of Light and Darkness and founded every action upon them and established every deed [upon] their [ways]. And He loves the one everlastingly and delights in its works for ever; but the counsel of the other He loathes and for ever hates its ways.
(IQS III, 13-IV I)
Convictions of this kind, with their theories of individual election and predestination, coupled with a precise knowledge of the boundary dividing right from wrong, can lead to self-righteousness and arrogant intolerance of the masses thought to be rejected by God. The Essenes, however, appear to have concentrated more on the blessedness of the chosen than on the damnation of the unpredestined. Besides, they could always argue that Jews who refused to repent and remained outside the new Covenant were responsible for their own doom.
But the spiritual masters of the Community were doubtless aware of the danger of the sin of pride to which their less enlightened brothers were exposed and attacked it on three fronts. The Qumran Hymns, unlike certain biblical Psalms (e.g. Psalm xxvi) which testify to an acute form of sanctimoniousness, never cease to emphasize the sectary’s frailty, unworthiness and total dependence on God.
Clay and dust that I am,
what can I devise unless Thou wish it,
and what contrive unless Thou desire it?
What strength shall I have
unless Thou keep me upright
and how shall I understand
unless by (the spirit) which Thou hast shaped for me?
(IQH XVIII [formerly x], 5-7)
Not only is election itself owed to God’s grace, but perseverance in the way of holiness cannot be counted on unless he offers his continuous help and support.
When the wicked rose against Thy Covenant
and the damned against Thy word,
I said in my sinfulness,
‘I am forsaken by Thy Covenant.’
But calling to mind the might of Thy hand
and the greatness of Thy compassion,
I rose and stood ...
I lean on Thy grace
and on the multitude of Thy mercies.
(IQH XII [formerly IV], 34-7)
Another theme constantly stressed in Essene teaching is that not only is God’s assistance necessary in order to remain faithful to his Law; the very knowledge of that Law is a gift from heaven. All their special understanding and wisdom comes from God.
From the source of His righteousness
is my justification,
and from His marvellous mysteries
is the light in my heart.
My eyes have gazed
on
that which is eternal,
on wisdom concealed from men,
on knowledge and wise design
(hidden) from the sons of men;
on a fountain of righteousness
and on a storehouse of power,
on a spring of glory
(hidden) from the assembly of flesh.
God has given them to His chosen ones
as an everlasting possession,
and has caused them to inherit
the lot of the Holy Ones.
(IQS XI, 5-8)
The sentiments expressed in the Hymns, of love and gratitude and awareness of God’s presence, represent a true religiousness and must have helped the sectary not to allow his life - governed as it was by laws and precepts-to slide into one of mere religious formalism.