Introduction

Almost everyone has heard by now of the ancient Hebrew writings that have been found during recent years in caves near the Dead Sea. Almost everyone has been moved by the assertion of scholars that they come from the very community in which 'John the Baptist taught and Jesus learned'. And almost everyone has been intrigued by the much-publicized claim that they reveal to us a long-lost forerunner of Christianity—a sect which believed in a martyred Teacher of Righteousness' who would eventually reappear to the faithful. It is, however, one thing to read about the Scrolls; quite another to read the texts themselves.

This book offers renderings of all the principal and intelligibly preserved documents thus far published, and of a related text (the so-called 'Zadokite' Document) which was discovered, nearly fifty years ago, in an old synagogue at Cairo and earlier fragmentary copies of which have now turned up hi the Dead Sea caves. Moreover, it does not gear these renderings to any particular theory, but allows the documents to raise their own voice and give their own testimony amid the din and hubbub of current controversy about them.

We do not yet know for certain who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, when and where. Attempts have been made to date them by palaeography—that is, by the form (or forms) of script which they employ—and by detecting in them allusions to known persons or events. Neither method, however, has thus far yielded conclusive result Palaeography could determine, at best, the time when our actual manuscripts were penned, but not when their contents were originally composed.

Moreover, as things are, most of the ancient documents used for purposes of comparison or contrast are themselves of uncertain date, are executed in a wide variety of media (stone, sherds and papyrus) and are the products of widely different environments, so that they scarcely represent a single linear development of Hebrew script. And as to the alleged historical allusions, the difficulty here is that even if the passages in question do indeed possess specific reference most of them are so vague and ambiguous that they can be pegged with equal plausibility to any number of different persons and events all the way from the third to the first century B.C., if not also slightly later. (1)

To be sure, a useful clue might be afforded by matching special expressions and phrases used in the Scrolls with those found in various pseudepigraphical writings, e.g. the Book of Enoch or the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Indeed, in the course of his work the present writer has compiled a virtual concordance of such parallels. Here too, however, great caution must be exercised for the dates of those works (or of their constituent parts) are, as often as not, themselves disputed.

In these circumstances, it seems best at present to leave in abeyance the question of ultimate origin and to start from the situation that existed at the time the documents were cached in the caves. That situation is that, whenever, wherever and by whomever they may have been com-posed, they had come to be accepted as the literature or religious repertoire of an ascetic, 'protestant' and 'puritan' Jewish community that lived in the Desert of Judah-more precisely, on the western shore of the Dead Sea-during the early years of the Common Era; that is, in the very area and at the very time in which John the Baptist 'came for witness, that he might bear witness of the light'.

It is this fact that gives them today their main interest and importance. They recover for us what may best be described as the backdrop of the stage on which the first act of the Christian drama was performed.

The community of which we have been speaking was situated in the forbidding ravine of Qumran, at the northern end of the Dead Sea. It was clustered around a central building located about a kilometer away from the cave in which the principal scrolls were discovered by an Arab boy in 1947. This building has now been excavated, and on the evidence of coins found within it, it has been established that it was occupied continuously (except for a break, due to earthquake, between about 31 B.C. and 5 B.C.) from, approximately, 125 B.C. until 68 A.D. Now this latter date coincides with the entry into the area of the Tenth Roman Legion which had been dispatched thither to suppress the First Jewish Revolt It is therefore a plausible conjecture that the building was abandoned when the troops drew near, and that the manuscripts of its library were then cached for safekeeping in the surrounding caves.

The prevailing view of scholars (though there are some dissident voices) is that the men of Qumran were Essenes —that is, members of a pietistic brotherhood whose tenets and practices, as described by the first-century writers Philo and Josephus, bear a striking resemblance to those outlined in the Scrolls and who are indeed said by Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.) to have lived in the area at the period in question.

Here, however, a word of caution is in order. It by no means follows, because the Scrolls were read and cherished by the Essenes, that they were all necessarily composed by them. While this may well be true of the Hymns of Thanksgiving and other liturgical pieces—expressing as they do the moods and feeling of a living congregation—we should not immediately jump to the conclusion (as most scholars have done) that the community whose constitution and doctrines are portrayed in such works as the Manual of Discipline or the 'Zadokite' Document was necessarily that of the Essenes or the men of Qumran.

In the present writer's opinion, it is just as possible that the community which is there depicted is an ideal one—the ideal regenerated House of Israel which the men of Qumran believed themselves to be or which they at least sought to emulate, these traditional writings serving them at once as authority and model. (References in those works to such characters as the Teacher of Righteousness, the Wicked Priest, and the like would then allude to figures in the history not of the specific Qumran community but of Israel as a whole.) This hypothesis has the added advantage that it enables us to account for the discrepancies as as the similarities between the beliefs and institutions de-scribed in the Scrolls and those associated with the Essenes by Philo and Josephus, for it is not difficult to conceive that the Essenes, constituted under particular conditions and possibly influenced also by other considerations, may some-times have failed to realize, or been constrained to modify, the archetypal pattern.

Ideal or real as the community of the Scrolls may have been, our prime source of information concerning its basic principles, constitution and practices are the so-called Book of the Order (or Manual of Discipline) and the complementary 'Zadokite' Document; while for the beliefs and religious concepts—as evinced by the living congregation at Qumran—we may draw mainly on the more personal and less academic Book of Hymns (or Psalms of Thanks giving).

II

We are introduced by these writings to a community which is conceived as the true and ideal Congregation of Israel, the small remnant that has stayed faithful to the traditional Covenant and that is thereby ensuring the continuance of God's people and the eventual cleansing of His land from the stain of guilt. The Covenant, it is held, has been maintained and preserved throughout history only by a succession of such pious 'remnants'.

The members of the community conceive of themselves as repeating in a later age the experience of their remote forefathers in the days of Moses. When they leave the cities and villages and repair to the desert, they picture themselves as going out into the wilderness to receive a new Covenant. What is envisaged, however, is no 'New Testament' in the Christian sense of the term, no abrogation or substitution of the old Covenant, but simply a new affirmation of it. This is in accordance with the traditional Jewish view that the eternal Covenant is periodically reaffirmed and that the Pact concluded at Sinai was itself but a re-articulation of that which God had previously made, in their several generations, with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

To emphasize this basic idea and to bring out more clearly its sense of continuity with previous 'remnants', the community is designated in the Scrolls by a series of titles, styles and epithets charged with significant historical associations. It is described, for instance, as 'the elect' or 'rightfully chosen', in reference especially to the election of Israel at Mount Sinai. Its priests are called 'the sons of Zadok', in reference to the foremost priestly family in the tune of David (cf. II Sam. 8.17) and to those whom the prophet Ezekiel had designated, in his visions of the future restored Temple, as the only legitimate priests (Ezek. 40.46; 43.19; 44.15; 48.11). Its sojourn in the forbidding desert is portrayed as exile in 'the wilderness of Damascus', thereby dramatizing it as the fulfillment of the prophet Amos' prediction that God would cause His people to 'go into exile beyond Damascus' (Amos 5.27). And it regards itself as the militia of God—a kind of Salvation Army-ready, like its ancestors under Moses and Joshua, to do battle for His name and to drive out the heathen from His land—in this case, from the whole earth. (Indeed, it sometimes calls its adherents 'the volunteers'—a name with distinctly military overtones; and it even drew up an elaborate plan of campaign for 'Armageddon'!)

There is, however, one crucial difference between this community and its remote prototype: it is not waiting to receive the Law; it already possesses it. Its aim is simply to assert that Law, to deliver it from the realm of darkness in which it had become engulfed. The Torah-that is, the Divine Teaching (or Guidance) as revealed to Moses-has, it is held, been successively garbled and perverted by, 'false expositors'. The community's main purpose is to exemplify and promulgate the true interpretation. It bases that interpretation on a kind of 'apostolic succession', begun by the prophets and continued by a series of inspired leaders each of whom is known as 'the correct expositor' or 'right-teacher' (not 'Teacher of Righteousness', as ma scholars have rendered it)—that is, the orthodox expound of the Word. (2) The 'right-teacher' was probably in ever case a priest (3) his title being derived from Moses' farewell blessing upon the priestly tribe of Levi: They have ob-served Thy word and kept Thy covenant. They shall teach Jacob Thine ordinances, and Israel Thy Law' (Deut. 33.9-10).

Just as Israel has been led of old by these prophets teachers, so, it is held, a new Prophet and a new Teacher (perhaps, indeed, one and the same person) will arise the end of the present era to usher in the Golden Age, when the scattered hosts of Israel will be gathered in, duly anointed high priest and a duly anointed king (the Messiahs [anointed] of Aaron and Israel') installed, and 'the earth filled with the knowledge of the Lord like the waters which cover the sea'. The concept is derived directly from the words of Moses in Deuteronomy 18.15-18: 'The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken. ... The Lord hath said unto me ...I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren like unto thee; and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him" Indeed, it is significant that on a small fragment found in one of the caves, that very passage heads a list of Scriptural quotations justifying the Messianic ideas of the community and that it is there associated with the words of Moses' final Blessing which we have just seen to be the source the technical term, 'teacher'!

III

But even if the Torah be correctly expounded by prophet and teacher, men, it is held, can and will receive it only if they be correctly attuned. And that attunement comes— if we may mix the metaphor—through inner 'enlightenment'. The community considers itself, therefore, not only the remnant of Israel but also the specially 'enlightened'. Over and over again in the Book of Hymns thanks are rendered to God for 'illumining the face' of His servant or for shining His light in His servant's heart. The acquisition of that light, however, is not attributed to any sudden, spontaneous act of grace. Rather is it the result of man's own voluntary exercise of that power of discernment which God placed in every creature at the moment of its creation.

All things, it is affirmed—even the sun and moon and stars —have been endowed by God with sensate knowledge, though the choice of using it or ignoring it has been left, in the case of man, to his individual will. If he heeds the gift, he achieves harmony with the eternal cosmic scheme and breaks the trammels of his mortality. Automatically, he is embraced in the communion of eternal things; he becomes one with the non-mortal beings of the celestial realm—the 'holy ones' who stand for ever in direct converse with God.

It is this state that the members of the Qumran community claim for themselves. This is the ultimate goal of their entire spiritual adventure; the aim and raison d'etre of the Torah and of the disciplined life which it enjoins. They hold that by virtue of their 'enlightenment' they are members not only of the consecrated earthly brotherhood but eo ipso also of the Eternal Communion. As one of their psalmists puts it, they walk for ever 'in uplands unbounded' and know that 'there is hope for that which is molded of clay to have converse with things everlasting'. This is not, as all too many scholars have supposed, a mere belief in bodily resurrection or a mere hope for the survival of the soul in some cloudland of bliss. Rather is it the sound mystic sense that, given the right spiritual posture, given the victory over that darkness which is set before him along with the light, man may live even on earth in a dimension of eternity.

IV

It would be a mistake to suppose that the writers of the Scrolls and the men of Qumran were inspired only by recollection of things past or that they chose their way of I life simply because they were unsettled by political turbulence or disgusted by the venality of the Jerusalemitan priests. They were swept also by other winds. One of these was a widespread and well-attested contemporary belief that the great cycle of the ages was about to complete its revolution.

This belief was based on a conception, which can in fact be traced to remote Indian antiquity, that existence consists not in linear progressive development—that is, in 'history'—but in a constant cyclic repetition of primordial and archetypal events. When major upheavals occurred, it was promptly supposed that the cycle was near-ing its end, that the Great Year was at hand, and that] cosmos was about to revert to chaos. The primal elements, restrained and regulated at the beginning of the world, would again be unleashed; all things would dissolve in an overwhelming deluge or be burned in that everlasting fire which rages in the depths of the earth. Then the cycle would begin again; a new world would be brought to birth.

For men, this theory posed the immediate problem of escape, and Religion answered that problem by the postulate that 'righteousness delivereth from death' and that 'the just shall live by his faith'. There was a sense in which, if he could not be delivered from the body of this death, man could at least be released from the trammels of this life. He could immerse himself in eternal things, divorce himself from the temporal and the mundane and, reversing the old adage, find that in the midst of death he was fact in life.

The authors of the Scrolls and the men of Qumran lived at a time of such 'cyclic crisis'. It is writ large in the pseudepigraphic literature of the two centuries immediately preceding the Common Era, and its fading echo may be heard in John the Baptist's cry that 'the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand'. It was escape from the inexorable cycle, release not from sin but from mortality, that these men were seeking. The desert to which the Dead Sea brotherhood repaired was not simply the Desert of Judah; it was also the mystic's Desert of Quietude—what John Tauler called 'the Wilderness of Godhead, into which He leads all who are to receive this inspiration of God, now or in eternity'. In that wilderness, they would not merely receive a renewal of the Covenant; they would also have the vision of the Burning Bush. Removed from men, they would acquire an unobstructed view of the divine.

Thirsting in an inhospitable wild, they would drink the unfailing waters of God's grace. Shorn of earthly possessions, theirs would be the poverty of the mystics—that poverty which Evelyn Underhill has described as 'complete detachment from all finite things'. Burned by the scorching sun, they would see the semplice lume of Dante, the 'infused brightness' of Saint Teresa, and by that light they would not be dazzled. They would achieve an intimacy, a communion with the eternal, unchanging things, such as one can achieve only in a desert or on a sea. And in this experience they would reproduce and concentrate within themselves the drama of the cosmic cycle, the dissolving of the old order and the birth of the new.

It is impossible for anyone who reads the Book of Hymns sensitively and sympathetically not to apprehend, behind the cliche-ridden language, the tortuous and barely grammatical sentences, the incessant filching of Scriptural 'tags', the movement of these deep mystic currents; and they too must be taken into account.

In strange juxtaposition with such rarefied speculations, however, these men also take a severely practical view of what is going to happen when the time for the world's renewal falls due. Even if individual men escape the impending doom, general doom there still will be, and a good deal of evil will still remain to be destroyed. The destruction will come by means of a forty years' war waged by 'the sons of light', (4) aided by the celestial hosts, (5) against the sons of darkness'. In three campaigns they will win; in three, lose. At last, at the seventh encounter, God will triumph over Belial. This will be the Day of Vengeance. Thereafter all tilings will be renewed. (6) The Era of Divine Favor (7) (in contrast to the Era of Wrath) (8) will be ushered in. God's light will shine sevenfold strong. (9) He will reaffirm the Covenant with the faithful, and engrave His Law on their hearts.

V

Concerning the practical organization of the community, we are particularly well-informed both by the Manual of Discipline and by the so-called 'Zadokite' Document.

Children are to undergo a ten-year period of study in the provisions and institutions of the Covenant and in a manual known as the Book of Study. At twenty years of age, they become eligible for membership. Every candidate ' is to be examined publicly regarding his intellectual capacity and his moral character. If he passes the test, he undergoes a year's probation, but is permitted no share in the community's resources nor is he admitted to the common table. At the end of the probationary year, he comes up again for review.

If his conduct be deemed satisfactory, he then serves a further probation of one year within the community itself. He has to place all his property in trust with an 'overseer', but he himself is not yet permitted to enjoy the resources of the group or to dine with them. Only after this second year can he become fully enrolled, and then only by general vote, and after swearing an oath of allegiance.

No one under twenty-five may occupy a communal office, and no one under thirty can be reckoned as head of a family or hold rank in the community's military establishment

The supreme authority in all doctrinal and economic matters is vested in the priests, assisted by the levites. In any group of ten men, if one of them happens to be a priest, he is not to move to another place, and every such group is to have an 'expounder of the law' to whom reference can be made at any time of day or night

There is a general 'council' to which any member of the community may be elected. This serves as a kind of parliament for purposes of deliberation, but it does not determine matters of doctrine, which are left to the priests.

For administrative purposes, there is also a kind of presbytery, consisting of three priests and twelve especially qualified laymen—an imitation, no doubt, of the priestly triumvirate of Aaron, Eleazar and Ithamar (Num. 3.4) and of the twelve leaders of the tribes associated with Moses (Num. 1.4-16; Deut. 1.13-15). These 'presbyters' are known as 'the men of (special) holiness', and they have to undergo a two-year period of training before appointment.

Every member of the community is assigned a special rank, which is reviewed from year to year, promotions or demotions being determined by general vote. It may be questioned, however, whether such rank is really a matter of individual status rather than of class. At all events, we hear in the documents of clear distinctions between priests, 'men of (special) holiness', 'dignitaries' (literally, 'men of repute'), 'men eligible for summons to the assembly', and 'heads of families'. Moreover, there is frequent reference to admission to, or rejection from, 'the purity', and this would seem, in the various contexts, to refer most naturally to the different degrees or levels of purity credited to various strata within the total group. Josephus, it may be observed, speaks of four such degrees as having been recognized among the Essenes.

All goods and wages are placed in a common pool, administered by an 'overseer' or 'superintendent'. A similar officer presides over the allocation of communal tasks and duties.

Members of the community dine together, the food being first blessed by the priest. Everyone sits in order of rank deal of evil will still remain to be destroyed. The destruction will come by means of a forty years' war waged by 'the sons of light', (4) aided by the celestial hosts, (5) against the sons of darkness'. In three campaigns they will win; in three, lose. At last, at the seventh encounter, God will triumph over Belial. This will be the Day of Vengeance. Thereafter all tilings will be renewed. (6) The Era of Divine Favor (7) (in contrast to the Era of Wrath) (8) will be ushered in. God's light will shine sevenfold strong. (9) He will reaffirm the Covenant with the faithful, and engrave His Law on their hearts.

Concerning the practical organization of the community, we are particularly well-informed both by the Manual of Discipline and by the so-called 'Zadokite' Document.

Children are to undergo a ten-year period of study in the provisions and institutions of the Covenant and in a manual known as the Book of Study. At twenty years of age, they become eligible for membership. Every candidate ' is to be examined publicly regarding his intellectual capacity and his moral character. If he passes the test, he undergoes a year's probation, but is permitted no share in the community's resources nor is he admitted to the common table. At the end of the probationary year, he comes up again for review.

If his conduct be deemed satisfactory, he then serves a further probation of one year within the community itself. He has to place all his property in trust with an 'overseer', but he himself is not yet permitted to enjoy the resources of the group or to dine with them. Only after this second year can he become fully enrolled, and then only by general vote, and after swearing an oath of allegiance.

No one under twenty-five may occupy a communal of-fice, and no one under thirty can be reckoned as head of a family or hold rank in the community's military establishment.

The supreme authority in all doctrinal and economic matters is vested in the priests, assisted by the levites. In any group of ten men, if one of them happens to be a priest, he is not to move to another place, and every such group is to have an 'expounder of the law' to whom reference can be made at any time of day or night

There is a general 'council' to which any member of the community may be elected. This serves as a kind of parliament for purposes of deliberation, but it does not determine matters of doctrine, which are left to the priests.

For administrative purposes, there is also a kind of presbytery, consisting of three priests and twelve especially qualified laymen—an imitation, no doubt, of the priestly triumvirate of Aaron, Eleazar and Ithamar (Num. 3.4) and of the twelve leaders of the tribes associated with Moses (Num. 1.4-16; Deut. 1.13-15). These 'presbyters' are known as 'the men of (special) holiness', and they have to undergo a two-year period of training before appointment.

Every member of the community is assigned a special rank, which is reviewed from year to year, promotions or demotions being determined by general vote. It may be questioned, however, whether such rank is really a matter of individual status rather than of class. At all events, we hear in the documents of clear distinctions between priests, 'men of (special) holiness', 'dignitaries' (literally, 'men of repute'), 'men eligible for summons to the assembly', and 'heads of families'. Moreover, there is frequent reference to admission to, or rejection from, 'the purity', and this would seem, in the various contexts, to refer most naturally to the different degrees or levels of purity credited to various strata within the total group. Josephus, it may be observed, speaks of four such degrees as having been recognized among the Essenes.

All goods and wages are placed in a common pool, administered by an 'overseer' or 'superintendent'. A similar officer presides over the allocation of communal tasks and duties.

Members of the community dine together, the food being first blessed by the priest. Everyone sits in order of rank or class, the priest occupying first place. They also meet together regularly for prayer and study, and are obliged to spend one third of all the nights of the year in such) spiritual exercise.

Breaches of the rules are punished by temporary ostracism and exclusion from normal rations of food. Repeated offenses, or acts amounting to repudiation of the basic Covenant, entail irrevocable expulsion.

A quorum of ten appears to be required, in accordance with normal Jewish practice, in order to constitute a 'congregation' or conventicle. Members of the community are encouraged to discuss matters of law and doctrine for their, mutual instruction and edification, but they are forbidden, to indulge in theological disputation with 'disreputable per-sons' (literally, 'men of corruption')—that is, to all intents and purposes, with outsiders.

To form an idea of the temper and complexion of this strange community, as it was evidently exemplified at Qumran, one could scarcely do better than to compare it with the Waldensian Brotherhood as described (albeit with an overtone of polemic) by Bernard Gui in the early fourteenth century. From the viewpoint of religious psychology, the comparison is, indeed, both arresting and illuminating.

In both cases we have a group in revolt against the doctrinal degeneration and material venality of the established 'church', and in both cases the dissent takes the form not of innovation or reformulation but of a return to the true but corrupted 'apostolic' tradition.

In both cases, the dissenters constitute not merely a spiritual fellowship of faith, but a concrete social organism. The Waldenses, like the Dead Sea Covenanters, 'eat and drink at common meals'. They do not own private property, but, on admission to the sect, 'sell all they possess ana give the price to the common fund'.

They hold annual conventions for the transaction of communal affairs, just as the Manual of Discipline pre-scribes annual 'reviews'. The more advanced members of the sect are called 'the perfect'—exactly like 'the men of

perfect conduct' of the Manual, and, like them, they serve as guides, preachers and 'apostles' of the sect.

Members of the brotherhood are forbidden to lie or to swear oaths. They call themselves 'the poor', a name which recalls the fact that in the Aramaic dialect of the early Palestinian Christians—that is, the same dialect as would have been spoken at Qumran—the word for 'poor' also bore the specific sense of 'ascetic'.

Finally, the Waldenses claimed to be the most ancient of all Christian sects, 'going back to the time of the early Fathers'; and to this we may find a telling parallel in Philo's statement that 'our lawgiver Moses formed countless disciples into a fellowship called Essenes'.

VI

Having now reviewed the basic ideas of the Scrolls, and the beliefs and institutions of the Qumran brotherhood, we are ready to answer the burning question: Do these documents restore to us a long-lost forerunner of Christianity?

The answer is, Yes and No.

Yes, in the sense that they furnish a picture of the religious and cultural climate in which John the Baptist conducted his mission and in which Jesus was initially reared. They portray for us, in vivid but authentic colors, the environment whose spiritual idiom John and Jesus spoke, whose concepts they developed and transmuted and whose religious ideas served largely as the seedbed of the New Testament. They also mirror a form of religious organization many elements of which were adopted by the primitive Church.

No, in the sense that what we have in these documents and in the Qumran community is, as it were, but the rude clay as yet unmolded by Christian hands. The Scrolls contain no trace of any of the cardinal theological concepts-the incarnate Godhead, Original Sin, redemption through the Cross, and the like—which make Christianity a distinctive faith.

The affinities between the thought and language of these writings and that of the New Testament may best be gauged by a representative list of examples:

1. The members of the community style themselves 'the elect' or 'the elect of God'. Compare Titus 1.1: 'Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect'; or I Peter 1.1: 'Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the elect who are sojourners of the Dispersion'.

2. The truth of God, as revealed in His law, is constantly called the Light. Compare John 1.7-9: '[John] came for witness, that he might bear witness of the light ... There was the true light, which lighteth every man, coming into the world'; John 8.12: 'I am the light of the world'.

3. The 'enlightened' members of the community describe themselves as 'Sons of Light'. Compare John 12.36: 'While ye have the light, believe on the light, that ye may become sons of light'; Ephesians 5.8: 'Walk as children of light'.

4. In the Book of Hymns, the faithful frequently declare that they stand in the eternal congregation of God, hold direct converse with Him, and 'share the lot of the holy beings'. Compare Ephesians 2.19: 'Ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the holy ones (E.V. saints), and of the household of God'.

5. A basic tenet is the doctrine of the 'remnant'—the belief that the community constitutes the true 'relic' of Israel, faithful to the Covenant. Compare Romans 11.3-5: 'Lord, they have killed Thy prophets, they have digged down thine altars: and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God ...? Once I left for myself seven thousand men that bowed not the knee to Baal. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant by the election of grace'.

6. The spiritual leader of the community is called teacher' or 'right-teacher'. In John 3.2, Jesus is hailed the teacher sent by God-that is, as the teacher who, it was held, would arise in the last days. So, too, in John 16.13, the incarnate Spirit of Truth is described as "who shall guide you unto all the truth', and these words are an almost perfect translation of the term rendered 'right-teacher', for Hebrew has only one expression for 'teacher' and 'guide'.

7. In the Manual of Discipline, it is said that, if the community abide by the prescribed rules, it will be a veritable 'temple of God, a true holy of holies'. Compare I Corinthians 3.16-17: 'Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man destroy the temple of God, him shall God destroy, for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are'. (A similar sentiment may be found also in Eph. 2.20-22.)

8. In the same Manual of Discipline there is a long passage describing the Two Ways, viz. of good and evil, light and darkness, which God sets before every man. The idea is indeed a commonplace of ancient Iranian and later Jewish thought, but it is interesting to note the development of the same basic imagery in the familiar picture of the wide and straight gates in Matthew 7.13f. and Luke 13.23f.

9. The Prophet that is to arise at the end of days, in accordance with the promise in Deuteronomy 18.18, was, as we have seen, a key figure in the religious doctrine of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Compare, then, Matthew 17.1 Of. and Mark 9.1 1f., where Jesus is asked whether Elijah should not have preceded his coming. Compare also John 6.14: Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world'. And note that Stephen, when arraigned before the council, quotes the very passage of Deuteronomy in evidence of the true character of Jesus (Acts 7.37).

10. The Manual of Discipline quotes the famous words of Isaiah (40,3), 'Prepare in the desert a highway', in token of the fact that the final apocalyptic age is at hand. In John 1.23, the Baptist quotes exactly the same passage in exactly the same context.

11. The community is often styled 'God's plantation' (after Isa. 60.21). So, in I Timothy 3.6, a novice is called a 'neophyte'—literally, one 'newly planted'.

12. The river (or lake) of fire graphically portrayed in one of the Hymns as destined to burn up the wicked (cf. Dan. 7.10f.), finds its counterpart in Revelation 19.20; 20.10, 14f.; 21.8, suggesting that this was a standard element of the current eschatological 'nightmare'.

These, it must be emphasized, are but a few of the many parallels that could be quoted. One might refer also to the use of the same literary devices both in the Scrolls and in the New Testament, e.g., the stereotyped catalog of vices in the Manual of Discipline (col. iv) on the one hand and in such passages as Galatians 5.19f.; Romans 1.29f.; 13.13; Colossians 3.5, 8 on the other.

Or one might adduce some striking verbal analogues, as when the Fourth Gospel speaks of 'men from beneath' (8.23) or of a 'son of perdition' (17.12), both of which curious expressions occur in the Hymns; or when John 1.3 is found in virtually the same words at the end of one of those same compositions! Similarly too, when the Epistle of James speaks (1.14) of men 'hooked and trapped by their lusts' (for that is what the Greek words really mean), we cannot but recall the passages in the Hymns (iii, 26; v, 8) where exactly the same metaphor is used to describe the enticement of the unwary.

And when James declares (1.17) that 'every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights', his words find a striking counterpart in that curious compound expression 'Light-Perfection' which the Qumran documents employ (e.g., Hymns iv, 6; xviii, 29) to describe the special endowment of the faithful. Nor, further, can we fail to recall that, ac-cording to the Manual of Discipline (iii, 20), control over the 'sons of righteousness' is 'in the hand of the Prince of Lights'.

Indeed, we may perhaps not unreasonably con-elude that the Dead Sea Scrolls actually open a window upon the little community of Jewish Christians clustered around James in Jerusalem. These men may have been originally the urban brethren of the hardier souls that betook themselves to Qumran and to other camp-settlements in the Desert of Judah. For the 'Zadokite' Document provides expressly for urban as well as camp communities; while of the Essenes, with whom they may be identical, Josephus states (War, II, viii, 4) that they also lived in the cities.

The possibility is increased by a number of significant statements made about James by Hegesippus, an early Christian writer who wrote during the latter half of the second century C.E. 'Because of his exceeding righteousness', we are informed, 'James was named the Righteous'; and once, when the scribes urged him to preach against Jesus, they addressed him pointedly as 'Thou Righteous One, to whom we are all bound to listen'.

Does not this sound uncommonly like a reflection of the title Teacher of Righteousness' (or, True Expounder of the Law) which occurs so frequently in the Scrolls and in the 'Zadokite' Document as that of the spiritual instructor of the Brotherhood? And is it not equally significant that, according to this same Hegesippus, James habitually eschewed the use of oil and wore linen garments only—two of the characteristic traits which Josephus (War, II, viii, 3, 5) attributes to the Essenes?

Nor is it only in the realm of ideas and doctrines that the Dead Sea Scrolls present affinities to early Christianity. No less arresting are certain parallels between the organization of the community and that of the primitive Church. It is significant, for instance, that some of the terms used to define its several constituent elements, though themselves derived ultimately from the Old Testament, possess in the Palestinian Aramaic dialect of the early Christians exactly the same quasi-technical sense as denoting parts of the ecclesiastical organization.

A case in point is the term employed to denote the deliberative assembly (viz. 'esah); in Palestinian Aramaic (where, significantly, it is a loanword) this means specifically the council of the church or synagogue: it is used in the Scriptures as the rendering of the Greek synhedrion, more familiar to us in the Hebraized form, Sanhedrin. Similarly, the word used to denote the total congregation (viz. 'edah), though borrowed from the Old Testament, was likewise adopted in Syriac as the regular term for 'church'. In other words, the technical vocabulary of the early Palestinian Church seems to reproduce that used by the Dead Sea Covenanters to describe their own organization.

Again, the Dead Sea Scrolls might at last clear up the vexed problem of the distinction between bishops and presbyters in the primitive Church, for in these documents the administrative officers of the community consist not only of mebaqqerim, or 'overseers'—the exact equivalent of the Greek episkopos, whence our 'bishop'—but also of the twelve good laymen and true who assisted the three priests and in whom we may very well see the counterpart of the Christian 'presbyters'.

Then, too, it is worth pointing out that the rule requiring all 'who perform communal service' to be at least twenty-five years old, and all 'heads of families' and military officers to be at least thirty survived in the Church in the statement of the Council of Hippo (393 A.D.) that no one is to be ordained under twenty-five, and in the Neo-Caesarean and Maronite rules that no presbyter may be under thirty.

VII

On the other hand, it must be stated emphatically—particularly in view of recent exaggerated claims—that the community envisaged by the Dead Sea Scrolls and translated into reality at Qumran is in no sense Christian and holds none of the fundamental theological doctrines of the Christian faith.

It has been asserted, for instance, that the several references in the Scrolls to the 'right-teacher' all refer to a single historical Teacher of Righteousness—a prototype of Jesus— and that a passage in one of them which speaks of his having been 'persecuted' but having subsequently 'appeared' to the community on the Day of Atonement foreshadows the Christian doctrine of the suffering and resurrected Saviour.

Even, however, if the interpretation were correct (which is very doubtful), this would still be poles apart from the Christian belief that the crucified Master was God incarnate Who by His passion removed a sinfulness inherent in man through a pristine fall from grace. Of this basic doctrine of Christianity there is not a shred or trace in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Other essential doctrines also are missing. There is, here, for instance, no vestige of the idea of Original Sin. On the contrary, the idea is affirmed constantly in the Book of Hymns that every man is endowed at birth with the charisma of knowledge and discernment and that any sinfulness which he incurs is due only to his individual neglect of these gifts and to his individual submission to, or entrapment by, the domination of the evil impulse (Belial).

Moreover, because sin is individual and not the inherited lot of man, and because it is incurred by his own personal disposition, it can be removed also by his own individual experience. Once he 'sees the light' by the exercise of his own God-given powers, he is out of darkness. In such a system, since there is no concept of original, universal sin, there is obviously no place for universal vicarious atonement Men suffer their individual crucifixions and resurrections; there is no Calvary.

Again, there is no Communion. Certain scholars, to be sure, have tried to find a prototype of the Eucharist in the description given, in a fragment of the Manual of Discipline (or an analogous document), of a banquet attended by 'the Messiah'. But this interpretation is untenable for several reasons. First, the 'Messiah' in question is no divine eschatological figure. He is simply the duly anointed king of Israel at any future epoch.

The aim of the passage— which the reader can examine for himself on p. 441—is simply to indicate that, as in normative Jewish law, the sacred seed of Aaron has precedence over all laymen. Accordingly, it is affirmed, even if the anointed king—what we should call 'a crowned head'—should happen to be present at a meal, he and his retinue are not to take their seats until the high priest and his priestly retinue have done so, and it is still to be left to the priest to pronounce the customary benediction over the food.

Second, it is to be observed that the rule in question forms part of a code promulgated for 'the whole Congregation of Israel in future times'. Accordingly, on any showing, it affords no testimony to the current beliefs or practices of the men of Qumran.

Third, this document does not refer to any banquet 'at the end of days', as some scholars have supposed, the Hebrew words so rendered being a common idiom for 'the future, hereafter'.

Fourth—and, perhaps, most important—even if, for argument's sake, this document did refer to a divine eschatological Messiah attending a banquet with his disciples, it would still not be a eucharist in the Christian sense, for there is not the slightest suggestion that the bread and wine were regarded as his flesh and blood or that consumption of them had any redemptive power. At most, it would be an agape, or 'love-feast'. (10)

VIII

In order to get this whole question into the right perspective, it should be observed that just as many ideas and phrases in the Dead Sea Scrolls as can be paralleled from the New Testament can be paralleled equally well from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament —that is, from the non-canonical Jewish 'scriptures' that were circulating between 200 B.C. and 100 A.D.—and from the earlier strata of the Talmud.

Moreover, many of them find place also in the ancient doctrines of such sects as the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran and the Samaritans, so that even if they have not come down to us through Jewish channels, we can still recognize in them part of the common Palestinian thought and folklore of the time. Accordingly, to draw from the New Testament parallels any inference of special relationship is misleading.

The point can best be illustrated by a few pertinent examples.

1. The Brethren called themselves 'the sons of light'. The title is familiar from the New Testament (Luke 16.8; John 12.36; I Thess. 5.5). But it is common also among the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran as a name for those celestial beings with whom, indeed, the men of the Brotherhood claimed to stand in a single communion.

2. The Brethren also affected the name of 'the Elect'. This, too, is especially familiar to us from the New Testament. But it is also a common style among the Mandaeans; while the Manichaeans (who share many of their ideas) likewise call themselves 'the chosen' (vicidagan).

3. Another common title of the Brethren was 'God's plantation' (cf. Hymns vi, 15; viii, 6.10). This, of course, was derived from the Bible (Isa. 60.21). But it is likewise a common image in pseudepigraphic literature (e.g., Psalms of Solomon 14.3-4; Odes of Solomon 38.18-21), and it is also very frequent among the Mandaeans (e.g., Lidzbarski, Mandaische Liturgien, 149, 190, 194ff.; Right Ginza II, iv, Mt.).

4. The Brethren claimed that they were especially 'enlightened' or 'endowed with insight'. Exactly the same claim—expressed by exactly the same Semitic word—is made by the Mandaeans; while among the Manichaeans, the lay member of the community (nigosag) was known as 'the man with insight'. Moreover, the Brethren sometimes described this special illumination by the strange compound word Or-Tom—literally, 'Light-Perfection', and this was simply a play on the Biblical Urim and Thummim of the high priest. The light in question, it may be added, seems often to be identified with the Law (Torah), and this idea, too, is found in pseudepigraphic literature (e.g., in the Testament of Levi, written between 109 and 106 B.C.) and in the Talmud (e.g., Berachoth 17a).

5. The Brethren held that the deeds of men are divided between the dominion of God, which is light, and that of Belial, which is darkness (Manual, iv). Here again we have a concept familiar enough from the New Testament and one which, at a far earlier date, dominated Iranian religion. But the fact is that by the second century B.C. it had already percolated into Jewish thought. The Testament of Levi says explicitly (19.1): 'Choose either the light or the darkness, either the Law of the Lord or the works of Beliar (i.e., Belial)'; while in the Testament of Joseph, Belial is called 'the spirit of darkness'.

6. The Manual of Discipline says that the faithful will receive a crown of glory (kelil kabod; iv, 7). Peter and James, it is true, use a similar image; but in Mandaean thought the 'lustrous crown' plays an extremely important role and is frequently mentioned in the hymns of the sect (e.g., Lidzbarski, Mandaische Liturgien, 4f., 29, 108, 177, 243); and in the pseudepigraphic Odes of Solomon, there is a reference (9.11) to the 'crown of truth'.

The correspondence between the ideas of the Brotherhood and those that obtained generally in Palestine during the Graeco-Roman age and that survive sporadically among the more 'exotic' sects is especially striking in the field of eschatology—that is, the lore about the Last Things.

1. The concept of a 'final conflagration', to which we have already alluded (above, p. 8), occurs frequently in the Third Book of the Sibylline Oracles, a basically Jewish compilation dating about 140 B.C. The Jews appear to have adopted it from Gentile sources (although there is a foregleam of it in Isa. 34.9-10), for it was held by Zeno and the Stoics and dominated the Roman-Oriental world from the first century B.C. until the third century C.E.

2. The idea, articulated especially in the Qumran text called The War of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, that the world is at present in the clutches of Belial, but that he will ultimately be defeated, occurs again, not only in the New Testament (Mat. 24.5-12), but even more explicitly in the Testament of Levi (5.27) and in the Sibylline Oracles (ii, 165f.). The apocalyptic war (mentioned also in Hymns iii.29ff.; 35-36; 34-35)-an idea derived ultimately from the Biblical prophets (Isa. 13.9; Zech. 14.3)—is likewise commonplace in pseudepigraphic writings (e.g., Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, 70.7-10) and in the Talmud; while the notion that angels too will fight finds an echo in the Slavonic Book of Enoch 17.1, where they are described as 'the armed troops of heaven'—a play, of course, on the expression 'heavenly host'.

3. The picture which is painted in Hymn No. 5 of the world travailing in the throes of new birth is admirably illustrated by the fact that the Messianic turmoil preceding the final Golden Age is called in the Talmud (Shab. 118a; Sanh. 98b) 'the birth-pangs of the Messiah' (cp. Mat 24.8; Mark 13.8-9; I Thess. 5.3).

4. The doctrine that all things will be renewed (Hymns xi.l3f-; xiii.11-12) is again part and parcel of Oriental thought at the time, and cannot be compared exclusively with Matthew's well-known reference (19.28) to the eventual 'regeneration'. The pseudepigraphic Testament of Abraham, and likewise The Book of Jubilees (1.29) speak of a renewal of the world after seven millennia; while the concept of a periodic renewal was also a favorite doctrine of Neo-Pythagoreanism, which enjoyed a great vogue in Roman society in the second and first centuries B C. An allusion to this idea, it may be added, occurs in the very ancient form of the Jewish doxology (Kaddish) which is recited after a funeral, for God is there extolled as 'He who will hereafter renew the world and quicken the dead'.

5. One of the Hymns states (vii.24) that God's light will eventually shine sevenfold strong. The basic idea has, of course, good Old Testament authority (Isa. 60.19), but it is interesting to observe that, according to the Talmud (Sanh. 91b), the light of the Messianic sun will be seven times as powerful as usual.

6. Finally, the important concept of the New Covenant to be concluded with the faithful at the end of the present era is admirably illustrated by the standard Samaritan tenet that God's bond with Israel has already been concluded on no less than seven occasions, viz. with Noah in the rainbow; with Abraham in circumcision; with Moses in the Sabbath; with the Two Tablets of the Ten Commandments; with the Passover; with the Covenant of Salt (Num. 18.19); and with the Covenant of Priesthood with Phinehas (Num. 25.12f.).

IX

Significant also in this connection are the parallels which exist between the doctrines and concepts of the Scrolls and those which appear in Iranian lore. To be sure, these affinities present a thorny problem, because, while some of them indeed occur in the really ancient portion of the Iranian scriptures—the Gathas—others are to be found only in writings of relatively late date, and these may themselves be derived (directly or indirectly) from Jewish sources. Either way, however, the parallels are worthy of attention.

If, on the one hand, they are all genuinely ancient (even though some may be attested only in late sources), they will lend added support to the view which is still maintained by a respectable body of scholarship (or a body of respectable scholarship) that the elaborate angelology, demonology, and eschatology which developed in Judaism during the intertestamental period owed much to earlier contacts with Iranian thought. Indeed, it is not difficult to conceive how, in the dark days of national eclipse, some at least of the Jews may have sought in Iranian dualism a more comforting explanation of the fate which had befallen them than that afforded by their own traditional doctrines.

For, instead of having to believe that an outraged God had revoked His covenant with them, they could thus find hope and solace in the notion that what they were suffering was, after all, no more than a momentary triumph of Evil in its continuous struggle with Good—a purely temporary setback which would be followed inevitably by the final discomfiture of Falsehood (Druj), the condign punishment of all who had espoused it, the reward of the partisans of Truth or Right (Asha), the dissolution of a corrupt world in fire and brimstone (ayah khshusta), and the eventual emergence of that new world which is continually a-borning (frashokereti).

If, on the other hand, many of the Iranian parallels are themselves derived from Jewish lore, they will nevertheless provide valuable testimony, from an independent source, of the new direction which Jewish thought was taking—especially in 'non-normative' circles—and which leaves its traces also in pseudepigraphic and rabbinic literature and in the doctrines of such 'off-beat' sects as the Mandaeans.

The principal parallels which come into question are the following:

If the Scrolls say that the God of Knowledge has appointed for man the two equal but rival spirits of Truth and Perverseness, (11) the Avesta says that Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom, has set in the world the twin but rival powers of Truth, or Right (Asha) and of Perverseness, or Falsehood (Druj). (12) If the Scrolls say that the one comes from the source of light, and the other from that of darkness, (13) Plutarch records the same belief among the Iranians. (14) If the Scrolls call the human partisans of the one 'sons of righteousness', and of the other, 'sons of perverseness', precisely the same designations (ashovano and dregvato) are given to them in the Avesta.

If the Scrolls declare that at the end of the present era, God, with his human and celestial partisans, will do battle against the forces of Belial, (15) the Iranian scriptures aver in the same way that Ahura Mazda with his earthly and heavenly supporters will ultimately engage the forces of evil (Angra Mainyu, Druj). (16) If the Scrolls say that God will be victorious only after six previous campaigns, (17) exactly the same belief is attributed to the Iranians by the Greek writer Theopompus, and is repeated by the church father Lactantius. (18) If the Scrolls speak of the eventual dissolution of this world in fire and brimstone, when even granite rocks will be turned to streams of pitch, (19) the Iranian scriptures likewise foretell a final 'ordeal of molten metal' when even the metals in the mountains will melt. (20)

If the Scrolls foretell for the wicked an endless torment in fire and darkness, (21) the Avesta dooms them to the unquenchable flame and the eternal agony of gloom (anaghra temah). (22) And if, conversely, the Scrolls hold out to the faithful the promise of a 'crown of glory' and a 'robe of honor', (23) and the prospect of joining the celestial choir after death, (24) the Iranian doctrine envisages the bestowal of a similar crown and robe, (25) the enjoyment of celestial radiance (khvarenah), and a similar translation to the heavenly 'mansion of song' (garo demand). (26)

If, in the teaching of the Scrolls, God will test mankind in fire and spirit, (27) the Avesta says precisely the same of Ahura Mazda. (28) And if the Scrolls affirm that at the end of the present 'Era of Wrath', there will eventually arise a new Teacher to usher in that Golden Age when God's truth will be made manifest (29) and all things be renewed, (30) so, in Iranian doctrine, after the ravages of Aeshma, the demon of wrath and fury, (31) a new teacher will appear, (32) Asha (Truth, Right) will emerge triumphant, (33) and the world will achieve the culmination of the constant process of renewal (frashokereti). (34)

Indeed, in one of our texts (below, pp. 390ff.) the future Messianic king is identified with Melchizedek, king of Shalem, mentioned in Genesis 14.18-20, simply because the name of that monarch lends itself readily to the interpretation, 'king of righteousness' (melech zedek) and that of his city suggests the Hebrew words, shalom, 'peace', and shallem, 'requite', thus identifying him as a prefiguration of the future king who will bring both peace to the faithful and requital to the wicked.

It is not to be supposed, of course, that the writers of the Scrolls had any direct knowledge of the Iranian scriptures. These ideas came to them only, at one or more removes, as part of an inherited folklore or of the general ideological climate of the day; as we have seen, they are writ large both in contemporary pseudepigraphic literature and in the New Testament, and they are present also in the Talmud and in later rabbinic writings.

Moreover, wherever possible, they were deftly Judaized—'made kosher', as it were-by being coated with the veneer of Biblical language. Thus, Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom, is cleverly translated into the 'God of Knowledge' of Hannah's prayer (I Sam. 2.3); Angra Mainyu, the incarnation of evil, becomes Belial; Druj, the female personification of perverseness, becomes 'avlah, 'crookedness', or even Mastemah, a feminine cognate of the word Satan.

The fravashis who aid Ahura Mazda in the final combat become the 'holy ones' associated in Zechariah 14.5 with God's own eventual battle. The final conflagration is portrayed in terms borrowed directly from the farewell song of Moses (Deut. 32.22) and from Isaiah (34.9), and the Restorer (Saoshyant) is identified with the Star foretold in the prophecies of Balaam (Num. 24.17). Indeed, not the least fascinating feature of the Scrolls is precisely this blend of the Iranian with the Hebraic.

X

Just as unfortunate as the attempts to 'Christianize' the Scrolls are the attempts unduly to 'historicize' them—that is, to detect in them precise and specific historical allusions.

In order to emphasize that what was happening or about to happen both to Israel and to the world at large was but the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, the Scrolls make use of a kind of figurative geography, based on the Scriptures. Thus, they speak of the voluntary withdrawal of the elect from the normative forms of Jewish life as 'exile in the desert of Damascus', in allusion to the words of God in the Book of Amos (5.27): 'I will cause you to go into exile beyond Damascus'. Conversely, the future regeneration of Israel is depicted as a return from 'the wilderness of the peoples' (cp. Ezek. 20.35) to the 'Desert of Judah'.

The prime enemy—the representative of Belial or the Evil One—is styled Gog, originally the name of a northern power whose doom had been foretold by the prophet Ezekiel (chaps. 38-39). Alternatively, and more often, the hostile forces are described as Kittians (or Kit-taeans), a term which originally denoted the inhabitants of Kition, in Cyprus (cp. Gen. 10.4), but which came later to be used in an extended sense—rather like 'Huns' or Tartars'—of 'barbarians' in general and was applied in the Hellenistic age to the 'Macedonians' of the Alexandrian Empire, and in the Roman age to the Romans themselves. The War of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, a text which describes the final apocalyptic conflict, refers to 'Kittians of Assyria' and 'Kittians of Egypt', where nothing more is meant than the heathen population of either land, the doom of which had long since been foretold (cp. Zech. 10.10-11, etc.).

There is no need to take such references literally and consequently to set off on a wild-goose chase after historical identifications. The figurative use of names, always designed to evoke traditional associations, is commonplace in most cultures; we need think only of such terms as 'Parnassus', 'Mecca', 'Babylon', or 'Waterloo' in current English parlance.

There is likewise a figurative use of personal names. Wicked priests who once opposed the 'teacher of righteousness'—himself a priest—are described as a 'house of Absalom', in reference to the Biblical Absalom's treason against his own father, David. Schismatics are referred to fancifully as 'the house of Peleg' (cp. Gen. 10.25), simply because the Hebrew word p-l-g means 'divide'. Such designations should deceive no one; it is quite futile to go casting around among the records of the Hellenistic or Roman periods of Jewish history for a particular villain called Absalom. The name must be treated simply like 'Attila', 'Machiavelli', 'Benedict Arnold', or 'Quisling' in modern speech.

Unfortunately, however, the true understanding of the Scrolls has been compromised (or, at least, embarrassed) by the understandable eagerness of scholars to peg them to a definite date, and under this impulse there has arisen an almost frenetic tendency to read specific historical reference into these purely figurative names. Consequently, the literature on the subject is cluttered up with all kinds of ingenious, but usually very forced, attempts to give them specific setting in the Hellenistic or Roman periods.

It has been assumed, for instance, that the 'Kittians of Assyria' and the 'Kittians of Egypt' are necessarily the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires; that the sect really migrated, allegedly in the face of the Roman troops, from the western shores of the Dead Sea to the region of Damascus; and that 'the house of Absalom' may have been that of an Absalom mentioned casually in the First Book of the Maccabees (11.70; 13.11) or of the son of John Hyrcanus I who bore that name (Josephus, Ant., XIV, 4.4)!

Nowhere has this 'historicizing' tendency (or aberration) played more havoc than in the attempts which have been made to weld the several references to 'the teacher of righteousness' into a single consistent biography, and to reconstruct from the collateral allusions to a 'wicked priest' and a 'man of lies' who persecuted him a specific historical

situation. All sorts of characters (Onias, Menelaus, Antiochus Epiphanes, Alexander Jannaeus, John Hyrcanus, Mattathias, the father of Judas Maccabaeus—even Jesus, John the Baptist, and Paul) have been proposed to fill these several roles. If, however, we look at the data without prejudice or preconception, it is pretty apparent that the 'teacher of righteousness' denotes a continuing office rather than a particular individual, and that the various allusions to him are not in fact to one and the same person.

In the 'Zadokite1 Document, for example, we are told that God raised up a 'teacher of righteousness' some twenty years after the beginning of a 390-year period of His displeasure, calculated from the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. This evidently refers to Nehemiah or— perhaps more probably, seeing that he was a priest—to Ezra. On the other hand, we are told in the same document (ix.29ff.) that 'about forty years will elapse from the death of the teacher of righteousness until all who have taken up arms and relapsed in the company of the Man of Falsehood are finally destroyed'.

Here, obviously, the reference is to a future teacher, one who will arise to occupy the traditional office in advance of that forty-year period of 'Messianic woes' of which we indeed read in Talmudic and later rabbinic literature. This figure is, in fact, a prototype of the Arabic Mandi.

Similarly, if we go soberly through the several references to the 'teacher of righteousness' in the Commentary on Habakkuk, it soon becomes apparent that the author is simply citing a number of historical incidents which might illustrate the prophet's words. There is no compelling reason why they should be taken to constitute a connected biographical narrative.

Thus, when he interprets the verse (1.13), 'Why do ye look on, ye traitors, and keep silent when the wicked confounds one more righteous than he?' as referring to 'the "house of Absalom" and the men of their company who kept silent when charges were brought against the teacher of righteousness, and who did not come to his aid against the man of lies', he may be referring to an historical incident which involved one particular teacher of righteousness'; while when he speaks (in the comment on 2.15) of such a teacher's having once been vexed by a wicked priest who attempted (apparently) to usurp his office, he may be referring to quite a different person living at quite a different period. Indeed, it is significant in this respect that the fragmentary Commentary on Micah (1.5) actually speaks of 'teachers of righteousness', and that this is not simply a scribal error (as some scholars have all too rashly supposed) is shown by the fact that the expression serves to explain a word in the Scriptural text which is itself in the plural.

Similarly, too, the allusion (in The Manual of Discipline for the Future Congregation of Israel) to the presence of a 'messiah' at a communal banquet is no evidence, as has been somewhat sensationally supposed, that the Brotherhood believed in a single Christlike Teacher of Righteousness who had suffered martyrdom but whose Second Coming was expected. For the plain fact is that the term 'messiah' there means simply 'anointed king'. The text in question gives the protocol which is to be observed in the future dispensation, and its whole point is to emphasize that even an anointed king will then have to yield place to an anointed priest at public gatherings!

This is not to say, of course, that specific and identifiable allusions are not of crucial importance in determining upward and downward limits for the dates to which our texts are to be assigned. It is simply to warn against the tendency to string such allusions together into a consistent narrative and then to draw from that synthetic narrative far-reaching historical and doctrinal conclusions.

What we have to realize is that the commentators are merely fitting a stock set of masks ('the righteous man', 'the wicked man', 'the foreign invader') upon a stock set of characters ('the teacher of righteousness', 'the wicked priest', 'the Kittians'), differently identified at different epochs. We should be alive also to the danger that the frenzied scramble for historical identification may trample the flowerbeds.

An obsessive preoccupation with the historical context of a piece of literature can all too easily obscure its wider significance; for real understanding it is necessary not only to know 'all about it', but also to be sensitive to what it is all about

* * *

The archaeologists tell us that the Dead Sea caves are hot and dark. The same might be said of the controversy which has raged around their contents. At this point, however, it might be healthy to stand back a little from the din and furor and clouds of dust and try to appreciate the scriptures and the life of the Qumran Brotherhood simply from the point of view of what they offer to religious thought and insight.

They bespeak an experience which has been repeated often enough in history—the experience of the typical nonconformist who combines, by a strange and wonderful alchemy, an inner quietude with an outer fanaticism, and whose sense of God is a sense of burning fire as well as of radiant light It may be true that the documents which have come down to us are not great literary masterpieces. Nevertheless they are the testimonies of men who, like their greater forebear, stood in the cleft of a rock and saw the glory of God passing by.

Notes - Introduction

1. These efforts turn mainly on two assumptions, viz. (a) that various characters described respectively as 'the Teacher of Righteousness', the Wicked Priest', and 'the Man of Lies' are particular individuals that can be identified; and (b) that a people called the Kittians may be identified as either the Macedonian Greeks of the Alexandrian Empire or as the Romans. Details of the various theories are set forth in Millar Burrows' two useful volumes: The Dead Sea Scrolls (1956) and More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls (1958), and in A. Dupont-Sommer's exciting work, The Essene Writings from Qumran (1962); while a useful survey of more recent studies is provided by James A. Sanders in The Biblical Archaeologist 36 (1973), 110-48. At the moment, it may be said, the darkness of the Dead Sea caves has not yet been dissipated, and scholars are really in the position of eager readers guessing the solution of a serialized 'whodunit' before the final installment has been published!

2. It may be observed that the Hebrew word for 'teacher' derives from the same verbal root as the word 'Torah'. The 'right-teacher' is therefore, in this context, 'the man who expounds the Torah aright'.

3. First: only a priest would have had uncontested authority so to lay down the law. Second, our documents say specifically, over and over again, that the rules and standards of the community were determined of old by 'the sons of Zadok, the priests'. Third: the Manual of Discipline affirms expressly that 'the priests alone are to have authority in all judicial and economic matters'. Fourth: the Prophetic Teacher who will arise at the end of the present era and usher in the Messianic Age is invariably associated in Jewish tradition with either Elijah or Phinehas or even Melchizedek, all of whom were priests.

4. See pp. 14, 20f.

5. Hymns iii.35-36; vi.29; x.34-35.

6. Lymns xi.13f.; xiii.11-12.

7. Hymns xv.15; frag. 9.8.

8. 'Zadokite1 Document, i.5.

9. Hymns vii.24.

10. We may safely leave out of serious consideration the alleged occurrence in this text of a phrase reading, 'If [God] begets the Messiah'. This bizarre statement rests on nothing more substantial than an arbitrary reading of a faded word and an even more capricious restoration of a lacuna. Such a statement, it need scarcely be observed, would be utterly preposterous to a community of Jews committed to belief in the Torah and in the traditional doctrines of their faith. This whole document, in fact, has been egregiously misunderstood; see below, pp. 392ff.

11. Manual, iii.15-25; iv.16.

12. Yasna 30.2-4; 45.2.

13. Manual, iii.19.

14. De Iside et Osiride, 46-47.

15. War, xiv.14; xix.l; Hymns xii.36.

16. Yasht 30.3; Yasna 44.15; 19.11, 45.

17. War, i.14-15.

18. Quoted by Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 47. Re Lactantius, see F. Cumont, in Revue de l'histoire des religions, 1931. 88f.

19. Manual, ii.8; Hymns iii.28-29; War, xiv.7.

20. Yasna 31.3; 43.4; 47.6; 51.9; Bundahesh 30.19ff.

21. Manual, iv.13.

22. Yasht 22.33.

23. Manual, iv.7-8; Hymns ix.24.

24. Hymns iii.23; xi.14, 22.

25. Yasna 55.22; Bundahesh 30.28.

26. Yasna 22.15; 24.6; 45.8; 50.4; cp. Bundahesh 31.

27. Manual, iv.20-21.

28. Yasna 31.3; cp. also 51.9.

29. Manual, iv.19-20; Hymns iii.34.

30. Manual, iv.25; Hymns xi.13-14; xii.11-13.

31. Cp. Yasna 29.1; 30.6; 48.12.

32. Bundahesh 30.17; 32.8.

33. Yasna 43.10; cp. also 29.10; 31.8.

34. Yasht 19.11ff.; Yasna 30.9; 44.2. Cp. also Diogenes Laertius, Proaem. 9; Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 47.

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