The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (8 page)

The Damascus Document, the hybrid Community Rule-Damascus Document text (
4
Q
265
) and the Temple Scroll, as well as the Messianic Rule and occasionally the War Rule and MMT, are concerned with a style of religious existence quite at variance with that at Qumran. In the ‘towns' or ‘camps', as the Damascus Document terms them (CD XII, 19, 23), adherents of the sect lived an urban or village life side by side with, yet apart from, their fellow Jewish and Gentile neighbours. They had wives and reared children, but clearly their sexual morality followed particularly strict rules. A Cave 4 Damascus Document manuscript lays down that ‘whoever has approached his wife, not according to the rules, (thus) fornicating, he shall leave and will not return again' (4Q
270
fr. 7 i). The married sectaries employed servants, engaged in commerce and trade (even with Gentiles), tended cattle, grew vines and corn in the surrounding fields, and discharged their duties to the Temple by way of offerings, but in doing so they were obliged like their brothers in the desert to show absolute obedience to the Law and to observe the sect's ‘appointed times'. There is no indication, however, that the continual and intensive study of the Torah played any part in their lives. Nor in their regard is there any mention of instruction in the doctrine of the two spirits, as membership of the group was a birthright and not the outcome of a process of selection and training.

How many of these people, if any, lived in Jerusalem is not known, but they must at least have visited the city from time to time, since a statute forbids them to enter the ‘house of worship' (possibly the Temple) in a state of ritual uncleanness, or to ‘lie with a woman in the city of the Sanctuary to defile the city of the Sanctuary with their uncleanness' (CD I, 22; XII, 1; TS XLV, 11-12).

Little is revealed in the Damascus Document of how the life span of the individual progressed in the ‘towns', and for this we have to turn to the Messianic Rule in the hope that it reflects contemporary actuality as well as the ideal life of an age to come.

According to the latter Rule, members of the Covenant were permitted to marry at the age of twenty, when they were estimated to have reached adulthood and to ‘know [good] and evil' (IQSa 1, 9-11). For the subsequent five years they were then allowed to ‘assist' (as opposed to taking an active part) at hearings and judgements. At twenty-five, they advanced one grade further and qualified to ‘work in the service of the Congregation' (IQSa 1, 12-13). At thirty, they were regarded as at last fully mature and could ‘participate' in the affairs of the tribunals and assemblies, taking their place among the higher ranks of the sect, the ‘chiefs of the thousands of Israel, the chiefs of the Hundreds, Fifties and Tens, the Judges and the officers of their tribes, in all their families, [under the authority] of the sons of [Aar]on the Priests' (IQSa 1, 8-16). As office-holders, they were expected to perform their duties to the best of their ability and were accorded more honour or less in conformity with their ‘understanding' and the ‘perfection' of their ‘way'. As they grew older, so their burdens became lighter (IQSa 1, 19).

As at Qumran, supreme authority rested in the hands of the priests, and every group of ten or more was to include a priest ‘learned in the Book of Meditation' and to be ‘ruled by him' (CD XIII, 2-3). His precedence, on the other hand, is not represented as absolute in the ‘towns'. It is explicitly stated that in the absence of a properly qualified priest, he was to be replaced by a Levite who would perform all the functions of a superior except those specially reserved in the Bible to the priesthood such as applying the laws of leprosy (CD XIII, 3-7). The Cave 4 manuscripts of the Damascus Document (4Q
266
,
269
,
272-3
) describe at length the diagnosis of the onset and eventual cure of skin disease. Priests with speech defects, those who had been prisoners of war or had settled and been active among Gentiles were disqualified from performing priestly duties or eating ‘sacred food' (4Q
266
fr. 5). The Cave 4 version of the Damascus Document legislates also on agricultural priestly dues (4Q
266
fr. 6;
271
fr. 2).

As in the Community Rule, the head of the ‘camp' is designated in the Damascus Document, as well as in 4QD
^a
(4Q
266
fr. 5 i) and in the hybrid 4Q
265
fr. 1 ii, as the
mebaqqer
or Guardian. He appears, however, not to be supported by a council. In fact, the words ‘Council of the Community' are absent from this document apart from the transitional 4Q
265
frs. 1 ii and 7 ii, where the use of the term is more general in the first case and represents the ideal nucleus of the sect in the second. There is reference to the ‘company of Israel', on the advice of which it would be licit to attack Gentiles (CD XII, 8), but this type of war council, mentioned also in the Messianic Rule (IQSa 1, 26), can surely have had nothing to do with the assemblies described in the Community Rule. (The only possible parallel is the ‘council of Holiness' in CD xx, 24, in which a not strictly observant member was to be judged.) The Guardian of the ‘camps', in any case, stands on his own as teacher and helper of his people. He shall love them, writes the author,

The Guardian was to examine newcomers to his congregation, though not, it should be noted, to determine their ‘spirit', and was to serve as the deciding authority on the question of their admission (cf. also 4Q
265
fr. 1 ii). These offices are of course already familiar to us from the Community Rule. But an additional task of the
mebaqqer
in the towns was to ensure that no friendly contact occurred between his congregation and anyone outside the sect. Whatever exchanges took place had to be paid for; and even these transactions were to be subject to his consent (CD XIII, 14-16).

Instead of dealing with offenders in Community courts of inquiry, the towns had their tribunals for hearing cases, equipped moreover with ‘judges'. These were to be ten in number, elected for a specific term and drawn from the tribes of Levi, Aaron and Israel: four priests and Levites, and six laymen (CD x, 4-7). They were to be not younger than twenty-five and not older than sixty - in the Messianic Rule, which also speaks of judges, the age-limits are thirty and sixty years (IQSa 1, 13-15) - and were to be expert in biblical law and the ‘constitutions of the Covenant'. The arrangement would seem, in fact, to be fairly straightforward. Yet it is not entirely so. For example, it is evident that the Guardian was also implicated in legal matters; he had to determine whether a proper case had been made out against a sectary and whether it should be brought before the court (CD ix, 16-20), and in certain cases he appears to have imposed penalties on his own (CD xv, 13-14). The ‘Priest overseeing the Congregation' of one of the Cave 4 fragments of the Damascus Document (4Q
270
fr. 7 i-ii) appears to perform the same single judicial function as the Guardian in the case of an inadvertent sin. We are not told whether the ten judges sat together, whether they were all drawn from the locality in which they lived, or whether they travelled as it were on circuit as nowadays. The code of law they were expected to administer, as laid down in the Damascus Document, differs in content from that of the Community Rule. Furthermore, although, unlike the Qumran code, a sentence is prescribed only rarely, sometimes it is the death penalty. We have here, in addition to matters relating primarily to communal discipline to a large extent identical with the Community Rule, a more detailed sectarian reformulation of scriptural laws regulating Jewish life as such.

The first group of statutes, concerned with vows, opens with the injunction that in order to avoid being put to death for the capital sin of uttering the names of God, the sectary must swear by the Covenant alone. Such an oath would be fully obligatory and might not be cancelled (CD XVI, 7-8). If he subsequently violated his oath, he would then have only to confess to the priest and make restitution (CD xv, 1-5). The sectary is also ordered not to vow to the altar articles acquired unlawfully, or the food of his own house (CD xvi, 13-15), and not to make any vow ‘in the fields' but always before the judges (CD IX, 9-10). He is threatened with death if he ‘vows another to destruction by the laws of the Gentiles' (CD IX, 1). As for the right conferred by the Bible on fathers and husbands to annul vows made by their daughters or wives, the Damascus Document limits it to the cancellation of oaths which should have never been made in the first place (CD XVI, 10-12; for a somewhat different rule, see TS LIII, 16-LIV, 5). It is clearly stated that no accusation is valid without prior warnings before witnesses (CD IX, 2-3). A record of reported moral failings (4Q
477
) has already been quoted (cf. above, pp. 31-2).

A few ordinances are concerned with witnesses. No one under the age of twenty was to testify before the judges in a capital charge (CD ix, 23-X, 2). Also, whereas the normal biblical custom is that two or three witnesses are needed before any sentence can be pronounced (Deut. xix, 15; cf. also IIQTS LXI, 6-12), a single witness being quite unacceptable,
unustestis nullus testis
, sectarian law allowed the indictment of a man guilty of repeating the same capital offence on the testimony of single witnesses to the separate occasions on which it was committed, providing they reported it to the Guardian at once and that the Guardian recorded it at once in writing (CD IX, 17-20). With regard to capital cases, to which should be added apostasy in a state of demonic possession (CD XII, 2-3), the adultery of a betrothed girl (4Q
159
, fr. 224, 10-11), slandering the people of Israel and treason (TS LXIV, 6-13), it is highly unlikely that either the Jewish or the Roman authorities would have granted any rights of execution to the sect. So this is probably part of the sect's vision of the future age, when it as Israel
de jure
would constitute
de facto
the government of the chosen people.

The penal code of the Damascus Document (4Q
270
) stipulates irrevocable expulsion in the case of a man ‘fornicating' with his wife. This may refer to illicit sexual relations with a menstruating woman or, perhaps more likely, with a pregnant or post-menopausal woman since, as Josephus clearly states in connection with married Essenes, sex between spouses was licit only if it could result in conception (
War
11, 161).

A section devoted to Sabbath laws displays a marked bias towards severity. In time, rabbinic law developed the Sabbath rules in still greater detail than appears here, but the tendency is already manifest.

The sectary was not only to abstain from labour ‘on the sixth day from the moment when the sun's orb is distant by its own fullness from the gate (wherein it sinks)' (CD x, 15-16), he was not even to speak about work. Nothing associated with money or gain was to interrupt his Sabbath of rest (CD x, 18-19). No member of the Covenant of God was to go out of his house on business on the Sabbath. In fact, he was not to go out, for any reason, further than 1,000 cubits (about 500 yards), though he could pasture his beast at a distance of 2,000 cubits from his town (CD x, 21; XI, 5-6). He could not cook. He could not pick and eat fruit and other edible things ‘lying in the fields'. He could not draw water and carry it away, but must drink where he found it (CD X, 22-3). He could not strike his beast or reprimand his servant (CD XI, 6, 12). He could not carry a child, wear perfume or sweep up the dust in his house (CD XI, 10-11). He could not assist his animals to give birth or help them if they fell into a pit; he could, however, pull a man out of water or fire without the help of a ladder or rope (CD xi, 13-14, 16-17). Interpreting the Bible restrictively (Lev. xxiii, 38), the sect's lawmaker (or makers) commanded him to offer no sacrifice on the Sabbath save the Sabbath burnt-offering, and never to send a gift to the Temple by the hand of one ‘smitten with any uncleanness permitting him thus to defile the altar' (CD xi, 19-20). He was also never to have intercourse while in the ‘city of the Sanctuary' (CD XII, 1-2; 11QTS XLV, 1-12).

The punishment imposed for profaning the Sabbath and the feasts in any of these ways was not death as in the Bible (Num. XV, 35), nor even expulsion as in the Community Rule. It was seven years' imprisonment.

In the last group, the ordinances appear to be only loosely connected, though some of them involve relations with the larger Jewish-Gentile world. One such forbids killing or stealing from a non-Jew, ‘unless so advised by the company of Israel' (CD XII, 6-8). Another proscribes the sale to Gentiles of ritually pure beasts and birds, as well as the produce of granary and wine-press, in case they should blaspheme by offering them in heathen sacrifice. MMT further prohibits acceptance of offerings (wheat or meat) by Gentiles (4Q
394
frs. 3-7). A ban is similarly laid on selling to Gentiles foreign servants converted to the Jewish faith (CD XII, 11). But in addition to these regulations affecting contacts with non-Jews, a few are concerned with dietary restrictions. Thus:

Others deal with the laws of purity (CD XII, 16-18) and purification (CD x, 10-13) and with uncleanness resulting from various sexual discharges and childbirth (4Q
266
fr. 6 i-ii). Outside the Damascus Document, the B section of MMT (4Q
394-5
), 4QPurities (4Q274, 276-7, 284) and the Temple Scroll (11QTS XLV-LI) provide ample information on purity matters, including the law relative to the burning of the ‘red heifer' whose ashes were a necessary ingredient for the making of the ‘water for (removing) uncleanness' (MMT 4Q394 3-7 i,
395
; 4Q
276-7
).