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The Cave 11 Psalms scroll before unrolling. Courtesy of the Rockefeller Museum.

The Dead Sea Scrolls - A Quarter Century of Study JAMES A. SANDERS Union Theological

Volume36 Volume

Seminary,

No.44 No.

New York

1973

December,1973 December,

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The Biblical Archaeologist is published quarterly (February, May, September, December) by the American Schools of Oriental Research. Its purpose is to provide readable, nontechnical, yet thoroughly reliable accounts of archaeological discoveries as they relate to the Bible. Authors wishing to submit unsolicited articles should write the editors for style and format instructions before submitting manuscripts. Editors: Edward F. Campbell, Jr. and H. Darrell Lance, with the assistance of Floyd V. Filson in New Testament matters. Editorial correspondence should be sent to the editors at 800 West Belden Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Art Editor: Robert H. Johnston, Rochester Institute of Technology. Editorial Board: G. Ernest Wright, Harvard University; Frank M. Cross, Jr., Harvard liniversity; William G. Dever, Jerusalem; John S. Ilolladay, Jr., University of Toronto. $5.00 per year, payable to the American Schools of Oriental Research, Subscriptions: 126 Inman Street, Cambridge. Massachusetts 02139. Associate members of ASOR receive the BA automatically. Ten or more subscriptions for group use. mailed and billed to one address, $3.50 per year apiece. Subscriptions in England are available through B. II. Blackwell, Ltd., Broad Street, Oxford. Back Numbers: $1.50 per issue, 1960 to present: $1.75 per issue, 1950-59; $2.00 per issue before 1950. Please remit with order, to the ASOR office. The journal is indexed in Art Index, Index to Religious Periodical Literature, Christian Periodical Index, and at the end of every fifth volume of the journal itself. Second class postage PAID at Cambridge, Massachusetts and additional offices. Copyright by American Schools of Oriental Research. 1973 PRINTINGCOMPANY PRINTEDIN THE UNITED STATESOF AMERICA,BY TRANSCRIPT N. H. PETERBOROUG(;H,

Few archaeological discoveries of the past century have fired the popular imagination as those of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is over a quarter of a century now since the first finds. During that time an unbelievable amount of literature has been published about them, ranging from the enduring and valuable to the sensational and absurd. Now is a good time to review the field to see where we are. Most readers are at least acquainted with the ancient literature discovered since 1947 in the eleven caves located near the Wadi Qumran along the northwest shorewastes of the Dead Sea. But the manuscripts recovered in the Qumran caves are only a part of what has been brought to light since 1947 and referred to as Dead Sea Scrolls. Ancient literature has been found in the same general area extending from caves in the Wadi ed-Daliyeh eight miles north of Jericho, to the ruins of Masada eighteen miles from the south end of the Dead Sea, and from the Jordan Rift west into desert areas as far as Nissana in the Negev. A list of the ancient Palestinian manuscripts published to date is available in an article by the writer in the Journal of Jewish Studies, 24 (1973) 74-83. The loci of discovery are, from north to soutli, the Wadi ed-Daliyeh, the Qumran area, Khirbet Mird, the Wadi Murabba'at, Nahals Hever, Seelim and Mishmar, and Masada. The Nissana papyri (edited by Kraemer, Casson and Hittich in Excavations at Nissana, ed. by H. Colt et al., Vols. 2 and 3 [1950-62]) are not included in the general designation Dead Sea Scrolls, but must be included in any purview of the extraordinary phenomenon of manuscript discoveries in modern times. In antiquity and until recently the areas of these discoveries were largely the preserve of Bedouin hardy enough to live there, and many of the manuscript discoveries have been made by local tribesmen. The

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o 7

11 *1 14

Jericho Jerusalem o

Bethlehem a

Fig.

1. Sketch map showing locations of recent manuscript finds and sites of related settlements. The numbers point to the Wadi ed-Daliyeh cave (1), Qumran (2), 'Ein Feshkha (3), Ras Feshkha (4), Khirbet Mird (5), the caves in the Wadi Murabba'at (6), the "cave of the letters" in the Nahal Hever (7), and Masada (8). Map prepared by Muriel Baske.

pertinent physical factor in all the discoveries is the aridity of the region. Scholars, accustomed to the greater rainfall and humidity of Palestine in general, doubted that this land could yield manuscript discoveries; just

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here, however, the humidity is constantly low, and the "impossible" happened. The uniqueness of the environment where they were preserved is underscored by the accelerated rate of deterioration of the manuscripts since they have been stored in Jerusalem. Even modern techniques of atmospheric control have not significantly checked the rate of discoloration since displacement from the Dead Sea area. That is why the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem have joined forces to publish the well-preserved colored photographs of three scrolls made by John Trever in early 1948, within a year after their extraction from Qumran Cave 1 (Scrolls from Qumran Cave 1 from Photographs by John C. Trever [1972]) - now the only record of these scrolls in their early freshness and legibility. Adding to the impression that this narrow range of territory is unique in its capacity to preserve manuscripts are records of two, and possibly three or four, discoveries in antiquity in the area of Jericho. 1) The earliest is noted in an early third century A.D. colophon in Origen's Hexapla; it claims that Greek and Hebrew manuscripts were discovered in a jar near Jericho during the reign of Caracalla, perhaps A.D. 217. It is possible that Eusebius refers to the same event. 2) A letter by the Syrian Bishop Timotheus I, about A.D. 800, reports the discovery of biblical and other works in Hebrew in a cave near Jericho about A.D. 790. 3) Jewish and Arab sources of the tenth and eleventh centuries tell of a Jewish group of the eighth century and continuing until their time - the Karaites - who possessed biblical books supposedly found in a cave, the location of which is still unknown. 4) It is not impossible that the Torah textual traditions which the Masoretes call the Jericho Pentateuch may have come from a similar discovery. The historical range of the documents recovered in the twenty-year period from 1947 to the mid-sixties, after Masada had been excavated, is rather extensive. The oldest is apparently Papyrus 21, from Cave 1 of the Wadi ed-Daliyeh lot, which dates from the second quarter of the fourth centry B.C. (375-65 B.C.) The youngest seems to be Arabic material dating from the 8th centry A.D. at Khirbet Mird. This brings us to the ninth century and hence to the realm of medieval material such as manuscripts from Judean Desert monasteries, much of which is preserved in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchal Library in Jerusalem (see, for example, Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark [1973]). The languages represented in the ancient Palestinian literature are Hebrew, Palestinian Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Nabatean, Christian Palestinian Aramaic and Arabic. This wide range of ancient literary remains touches on twelve centuries of Palestinian history from the reign of the Persian emperor Artaxeres II (Mnemon) into the

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second century of the AMuslimconquest and Arabic hegemony in the area. The types of literature are almost as varied as the range of dates and languages. Because of the sheer quantity of manuscripts from Qumran, most are biblical, religious and liturgical in nature. But there are commercial, contractual, financial and military documents as well among the other finds. And it must be pointed out that while there is a wealth of new data provided for reconstructing the history of the region and period, there is no actual non-biblical historiography repiesented, such as we know in I Maccabees, Josephus or Eusebius. What we have is a flood of primary historical sources which will keep several generations busy evaluating it and extracting from it its true significance. The Modern Discoveries

Though there is still some doubt in the minds of some scholars about the date and manner of the discovery of the scrolls out of the first Qumran cave, most scholars have accepted the fact that Bedouin first entered the cave in the spring of 1947; that within a year their importance had been recognized by experts, Jewish and Christian, who then resided in Jerusalem; and that within two years, the cave itself had been located by qualified archaeologists, who were, by careful excavation of fragments left behind by the Bedouin, able to verify it as the provenance. Announcements of the discovery, and the early publication of three of the scrolls by the ASOR in 1950, caused older scholars who had been interested in a cemetery near the caves to call for further inspection of the graves and the barely visible ruins of some architecture the Arabs had always called Khirbet Qumran. Earlier scholarly conjectures concerning the site had ranged from de Saulcy's suggestion that it might somehow be related to biblical Gemorrah, G. Dalman's theory that it had been a Roman fort, to F. M. Abel's hypothesis following ClermontGanneau that the tombs had belonged to an early Moslem sect. The graves had already been subjected to scientific investigation, but only in a single probe in 1873. Paul Kahle, among others, insisted that both ruin and tombs be excavated to see if there was any relation between the manuscript cave and the ruins with their closely allied graves lying to the east. The ruins were more than half a mile south of the cave but indeed close enough to suggest some relation. Actually by the end of 1952 three caves lying within a few hundred yards of the ruins had been discovered, one of which, Cave 4, proved eventually to be the richest in manuscript yield of the eleven in the Qumran area. But even before Caves 4, 5, and 6 came to light others had been discovered which kept the archaeologists scurrying and the scholarly world abuzz with excitement. Indeed while the first spade work was

114

Fig.

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2. Map of the Qumran region, with inset map locating the eleven manuscript-bearing caves. From the book The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies. Copyright (c) 1958, 1961 by Frank Moore Cross, Jr. Published & Company, Inc. by Doubleday

being done on the Qumran ruins, in December 1951, the caves of the Wadi Murabba'at came to their attention. Then in early 1952 what is now called Qumran Cave 2 was found by the Bedouin. This was enough

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to cause the experts to plan a sort of dragnet of all the likely caves in the area, from Ras Feshkha in the south to the Wadi Dabr in the north. In this first reconnaisance, more than forty caves were scientifically investigated, with over twenty yielding pottery fragments of the same type as those found in Cave 1 and the Qumran ruins. Ultimately, some 270 caves were excavated, about forty yielding pottery and objects, twentysix yielding pottery of the Hellenistic-Roman period.

i:ig.

3. The jar at the right with a limestone covering block comes from the Qumran ruin; the one at the left is from Cave 1. A whole range of such similar pottery types shows that the caves and the ruin belong together. From R. de Vaux, L'archeologie et les manuscrits de la Mer Morte, PI. XXIIB.

The upshot is this: the relation between the ruins and the caves excavated, including the eleven manuscript caves, has been established on the basis of the pottery and ostraca found in both. Though no manuscript material

lias been found in the ruins themselves,

and no coins

found in the caves to match those in the ruins, the pottery evidence is sufficient. While pottery in the caves ranges from Chalcolithic down to modern in date, the vast majority dates from the Hellentisic-Roman period and is identical with the pottery excavated in the ruins. Even caves without manuscripts yielded the same crop of sherds, suggesting the caves were used for habitation.

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In the dragnet exercise, tile arcllaeologists in Mar-cl, 1952, discovered Cave 3, containing manuscript fragments of bibllical and sectarian materials of the same sort as those found in Caves 1 andt 2, plus two rolls of copper engraved with square Hebrew claracters, two parts of a single scroll to which I will return below. Thus began a wliole series of manuscript discoveries. These include those already mentioned from Khirbet 5Mirdin tlle Judean Desert on the western edge of the Buqeia; some that found their way over tlle then international border from Israel, south along the Dead Sea, into the Wlest Bank of Jordan; Caves 4, 5 and 6, already mentioned, in 1952; Caves 7 to 10 discovered by the archaeologists in 1955; andt finally Cave 11, discovered by Bedouin in early 1956. The knowledge tlat Bedouin had transported manuscripts from their side of the border into Jordan spurred the Israelis to activity in the area near and south of 'Ein Gedi. In 1959 four teams set out into the area and excavated caves, in the Wadis or Nahalim called Hever, Seelim and Mishmar, whlich yielded manuscript and other materials largely from tile period of the Second Jewish Revolt, or early second century A.D. The caves of the lWadi ed-Daliyeh north of Jericho were then excavated by the American Scliools of Oriental Research in late 1962 and early 1963, and Masada, with its unexpected yield of biblical and sectarian manuscripts, by Professor Yigael Yadin of the Hebrew University in 1963-65. Finally, in Hebron a number of manuscripts came to light in 1966 written in an unknown script, which one scholar believes to be proto-Phoenician but others believe to be forgeries. Archaeology

At present writing the scholars' reference for the archaeological work done on Khirbet Qumran, the ruins at 'Ein Feshkha, andt the caves in the area is Father Roland de Vaux's 1959 Schweich lectures, L'archeologie et les man uscrits de la Mer Morte, published by the Oxford Press in 1961. He was the principal archaeologist working in the area throughout the finds until his lamented death in the late summer of 1971. WVithina short time, and perhaps by the time this article appears, this will be supplemented by two important posthumous publications: a revision of the Schweich lectures and an archaeological report prepared by de Vaux for Volume 6 of the series, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert. The reference for the archaeological work done on the four caves in the WVadiMurabba'at is P. Benoit, J. T. Milik, and R. de Vaux, Discoveries in the JudaeanzDesert, II (1961), 3-63. For the sites in Israel one refers to tle articles by Y. Yadin, Y. Aharoni, B. Lifshitz, P. Bar-Adon and others in the Israel Exploration Journal, 11 and 12 (1961, 1962) and also to

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BA, 24 (1961). There is also the popular but very useful account in Yadin, Bar Kokhba (1971). For Khirbet Mird one still refers to tle articles by G. H. Wright and J. T. Milik in Biblica, 42 (1961), 1-27. Paul Lapp's excavations in the two caves in the Wadi ed-Daliyeh receive preliminary treatment by F. M. Cross, Jr., in BA, 26 (1963), 110-114 and in New Directions in Biblical Archaeology (1969), pp. 41-46. A final report on this work is in the press as I write. Yadin's preliminary report on the massive dig at Masada in 1963-64 appeared in the Israel Exploration Journal, 15 (1965), 1-120, supplemented by Masada (1966). The remarkable observation one must make upon reading all these reports is how well they harmonize to give a rather clear archaeological outline both of the occupation of Qumran from the middle of the second century B.C. to A.D. 73, and of the history of the anti-Roman movement in the last third of the first century A.D. and the first third of the second. The reports on the two sites, Mird and Daliyeh, unrelated to either of these two discrete historical phenomena, are nonetheless consonant with and/or do not contradict the outline. The archaeologists agree that all the manuscripts from the eleven caves of Qumran belonged to a single library, the library of a Jewish sect whicll occupied the buildings excavated at Qumran and 'Ein Feshkha from about the middle of the second century B.C. to A.D. 68. They furthermore agree, with varying degrees of confidence, that the sect in question was the ancient Essenes who were routed from the buildings by Roman soldiers who then occupied them as an outpost until A.D. 73 - with the footnote that they were used for a short time by Jewish rebels about sixty years later in the Bar Kokhba revolt. And they are confident that tlese principal occupants at Qumran, who owned the library, were quite distinct from the Sicarii of the first century who occupied Masada or the rebels of the second century who lived in tlhe caves at Murabba'at and those in the Nahal Hever region. Before turning to questions raised by non-archaeologists about this "archaeologists' consensus", we should note the results of some other excavations, carried out after the work on the Qumran building proper, which raise questions about the relationship between the Qumran ruin and its adjacent cemetery on tlhe one hand, other more distant building complexes on the other hand. In 1958, de Vaux excavated the ruins at 'Ein Feshkha, less than two miles south of Qumran. These he interpreted to be directly related to the Qumran installation, constituting an agricultural and tanning center for the Qumran Essenes. As for the cemetery, he excavated forty-three of the more than 1,100 tombs, in what he saw to be a main cemetery and two secondary cemeteries. His sampling led

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(te Vaux to coIcltI(le that celibacy was practiced at Qumran; )burials of womenl and cliilldrcii were coIfilned to tlh secondary cemeteries or to places (quite a distance away on the eastern slopes of the burial area. De 'Vaux also noted the peculiar south-nortll orientation of tlle graves,

the fact that the lheads were tirniied to face east, and the design of the tonib which kept dilt from touclhinlg the corpse. After the 1967 war, P. Bar-Adon and( otlhers conductcd

excavations

south of Ras Feslkha at somie five sites. One of tliese, lying very close to tlle slore of tile sea some ten miles soutli of Qumran, is a building colmplex withl adjoining cemetery. I'lhe only report available at tile moment is in Revlue Bibliqule, 77 (1970), 390-400. Bar-Adon dated this new site to tle first centur-y B.C. and tie first century A.D., and linked

Fig.

4. The ruins of the agricultural and tanning complex at 'Ein Feshkha. From de Vaux, L'archeologie, PI. XXXIIA.

to the Qumran it to tlie Qumran and Feshkha structures as belonging work is a center for meetings ad thinks it, like like Qumran, and work, hie thinks Esseiines Essenes; lie Qumri,

not for habitation. De Vaux agreed, as a posthumous publication menand found tom..s will slow. Bar-Ado excavated twenty tioned above twelve men, tombs are tlhe are of the skeletonis of twelve and a boy. Tlhe tombs seven women, womien, audii skeletons mencii,seven boy. The same style and orientationl as tliose at QumEran. In one was found a jar with a Hebrew inscription paleographically the same as inscriptions from of Ironl age lcads eviadences Qumran. (Both this a nw site andQumtran and assigns SecacallQuto mran, 'Ir ham-melah to his new site; the latter name had often been suggested for Qumran previously.) Note two things. First, Bar-Adon's finds in his cemetery do not suggest celibacy. This calls to mind one facet of the otherwise rather

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bizarre proposals of S. H. Steckoll, who excavated ten more tombs at Qumran in 1966'and early 1967, and published his results in Revue de Qumran, 23 (February, 1968), 335, and 25 (December, 1969), 37. He feels that de Vaux is wrong about his "secondary cemeteries"; it is reasonably doubtful now tlat the graves of women and children were segregated, and the impression that they were may simply be due to the tortured topography of the plateau at the site of the cemetery. That is, the cemeteries do not necessarily support the ancient secondary sources which suggest that the Essenes were entirely celibate. Secondly, note that we now liave a hypothesis of three Essene sites, 'Ein Fesliklia only one and a half miles from Qumran, Qumran itself, and now the new site ten miles away. We cannot yet fully test Bar-Adon's thesis, accepted by de Vaux, that all were related; after all, it was already something of a conjecture to relate the 'Ein Feshkha ruins to those at Qumran. And so, a word of caution: as one reviews the literature of the past twenty-five years, one notices that when scholars argue that the sect at Qumran was Essene, the uniqueness of Qumran is invoked in support. The argument almost always closes this way: if the sect using Qumran's buildings and caves wasn't Essene, they must have been very much like Essenes, living in the same place where Essenes lived at the same time Essenes flourished. Why? Because Qumran was the only HellenisticRoman site of its kind in the whole area, especially if one links 'Ein Feshkha to it. Bar-Adon's find weakens this line of argument. And the evidence suggesting that the Qumran cemetery was not segregated weakens another argument for placing Essenes at Qumran. To me the Essene hypothesis is still the best one; no acceptable alternative identification has come forward. The digs on the Qumran building complex provide architectural and artifactual suggestions of the daily life of the sect. The early settlers of the sect, in the second quarter of the second century B.C., apparently used the remains of an old Iron Age fort built on the site either by King Hezekiah in the eighth century B.C. or Josiah in the seventh. The original building was expanded and others built south along the marl terrace toward the wadi, until it accommodated some 200 members of the sect in its period of greatest expansion in the third quarter of the first century B.C. While they apparently slept in the nearby caves, in one of which a hand hatchet was found, as well as in tents, the ruins of the buildings show that they probably ate, prayed, studied, copied their precious scrolls and did much of their work in the common buildings and grounds. Some rooms have been identified as a refectory or large meeting hall, a synagogue-like smaller room with typical wall benches,

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a kitchen with floor ovens, storage rooms where hundreds of specimens of ceramic ware were found, a pottery kiln, and a scriptorium. Ceramic and metal ink wells as well as large pieces of plaster coverings of wliat appear to have been desks and benches, or scribal benches and stools, were also unearthed. One of the most interesting archaeological revelations was an elaborate water system. Up the wadi to the west, in the high cliffs overlooking the settlement, is a large basin where water is still trapped today in the rainy season. From this basin leads a water conduit which gently descends the cliffs down the terrace into the complex where thirteen cisterns were excavated among the buildings. The technological skill of the system is still impressive. It rains very little at the level of the Dead Sea, but some of the winter rain water flowing through the wadi comes from as far away as the watershed highlands of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The water system supplied the sect with the abundance of water needed not only for normal purposes but also for their daily ritual ablutions. The Qumran Sect

It was Andre Dupont-Sommer, before the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, on May 26, 1950, who first proposed identifying the Qumran sect with the ancient Essenes. He did so within weeks of ASOR's publication of the very first documents from Cave 1 - the large Isaiah scroll (IQIsa), the Habakkuk commentary (lQpHab) and the so-called Manual of Discipline (IQS); short weeks later, the publication of the Academie's proceedings brought out the proposal for all to see. DupontSommer, one of the world's leading students of Hebrew and Aramaic and of the whole period in question, was soon followed in his identification by W. F. Albright and many others; meanwhile, E. L. Sukenik had independently suggested the same indentification. So rapid was the acceptance of this proposal that much of the ensuing debate was over wlien in the life of the Essenes the historical references in the Habakkuk commentary belonged. If I may telescope the subsequent two-plus decades of study, we can say that there have emerged three positions which accept Essene identification; we will then try to nail down the history. One, first advanced by G. Vermes (after he abandoned an earlier probe which would have placed the sect in the general neighborhood of A.D. 100), sees the central drama of crisis for the sect as taking place in Maccabean times, about 150 to 135 B.C. With Vermes belong F. M. Cross, J. T. Milik and de Vaux. A second group, including I. Seeligmann (who has since changed his mind), the late H. H. Rowley, H. Bardtke, M. Black and I. Rabinowitz, places the crisis earlier, in pre- or very

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early Maccabean times. They all begin from the Damascus Document (CD) 1:5-7, the one passage in all the sect's literature which seems to give a definite date; it cites Ezekiel and suggests the period 196-176 B.C. Members of this group tend to rather extreme views of how much Tendenz there was in the sect against Hellenistic influence; these views tend to build a theoretical protective wall around Palestine and especially around the Qumran sect, seeing it as insulated. The third group, led by such scholars as Dupont-Sommer, M. H. Segal, K. Elliger, M. Delcor, J. M. Allegro, W. H. Brownlee and F. F. Bruce, places the crisis in the Hasmonean period. Now while much of the debate has focused on spelling out the Essene hypothesis, those who disagreed about the identification from the start were so determined in their opposition that much of the 1950's was given over to what came to be called the Battle of the Scrolls. The discoveries and the debate were popularized by Edmund Wilson in his famous New Yorker essay of 1955. For example, J. L. Teicher and H. E. del Medico suggested that the sect were early Christians, and with G. Margolioth thought of the Ebionites. H. Rabin stressed the similarities between the thought of the Pharisees and what was emerging as the thinking of the Qumran sect. P. R. Weis for a time seemed to want to place the sect in the Crusader period. In general, these alternatives have attracted few adherents. Two otlier challenges to the Essene hypothesis have showed more staying power and call for a few words of description and evaluation. S. Zeitlin and S. Hoenig, early on, suggested that the scrolls came from the Middle Ages and belonged to the Karaites of the ninth century. Joined since by a sizeable number of rabbis and students of Karaism, they continue to deride the Essene identification. Zeitlin's method is to work exclusively with text and documents. No non-literary evidence is admissable, especially none derived from archaeology. It is regrettable that students of Judaism in antiquity and in the Middle Ages have been so reluctant to use archaeological data in historical reconstruction, let alone to make themselves expert in archaeology. Now all scholars are subject to the bias of competence, but if Zeitlin and his followers were to recognize this inevitable state of affairs and cease, given their narrow bias, to discredit those who disagree with them, scholarship might well find itself considerably in debt for what is durable in Zeitlin's work. There are very interesting affinities between what we know of the Qumran sect and tle Karaites. For example, their very unusual burial practices were very similar. It is Karaitic custom to mention the "Teacher of Righteousness" in their prayers. In this connection, see the excellent,

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balanced study of the similarities and differences between the Qumran sect and Karaism by N. Wieder, The Judaean Scrolls and Karaism (1962). A second challenge to the growing consensus came in 1965 with the publication of two books by two British scholars who not only disagreed with the Essene identification but also agreed in large measure with one another on an entirely different identification. Apparently they were to have collaborated on a single volume, but finally published separately, C. Roth under the title The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Historical Approach, and G. R. Driver, a considerably fuller treatment, The Judaean Scrolls: The Problem and a Solution. In their earlier writings each had made clear the direction of his thinking; neither man's thesis was a

Fig.

5. Aerial view of the Qumran ruin on the plateau above the Wadi Qumran. Several of the caves are in the marl "turrets" along the wadi flank in the foreground. Courtesy of the Rockefeller MIuseum.

surprise. They agreed in dating the scrolls to the period of the two Jewish uprisings against Rome, that is, from about A.D. 60 to 135, and in seeing the sect as Zealots and their heirs the Bar Kochba rebels. What apparently caused Roth and Driver to press the case at the time they did was the discovery in the first season of digging at Masada in 1963 of a portion of a scroll called "Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifices" or "Angelic Liturgy", a copy of which had earlier been found in Cave 4 at Qumran. In the same casemate rooms at \Iasada were found fragmentary copies of biblical scrolls. This link between Qumran and Masada would be encouraging to a view that the Qumran sect were Zealots, or at least militant nationalists who had participated in the wars against Rome. But Yigael Yadin, Masada's excavator, who had always followed his

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father E. L. Sukenik's theory that tile sect were Essenes, counters with an equally viable view: tile Essenes were not absolutely pacifist, as Philo mislead(s one to think, but were qulite prepared to engage in Holy War, that is, one they considered divinely ordained. They might understandably, then, go to lfasada after the destruction of Qumrlan. Here, once again, there are problems of method. The archaeologists lhave (lecried the selective use of archaeological data on the part of Driver and Roth. Driver, who seeks to cast doul)t on the relation between the Qumran buildings and the caves, is the more disturbing alnd unsatisfactory

- see de Vaux's detailed reviews of his book in Revuie Bibliqlte,

73

(1966), 212-35 anld New Testamelnt Studies, 13 (1966-67), 89-104; and the reactions of Cross in McCormnick Qllartercly (March 1968), republished

in D. N. Freedman and J. C. Greenfield, eds., NewzDirections in Biblical Archaeology (1969), 63-79. Furtheirmore,Driver's landling of the literary evidence in the scrolls as it pertains to tlhe ancient Holy \Var theme and the historical roots of Zealotry is in my judgment rather reductionist. Recent stud(ies have shown tlat tle ancient Holy War theme of the Old Testament took two quite separate and diverging routes, one resulting in the perspective of tile militant nationalists - the Zealots - of the period, the other in the sort of fanatic faitli in the sufficiency of Yahweh as Holy Warrior with his appointed angels as actual combatants, needing only a few pure and undefiled Ihuman warriors - the latter being the view in the scrolls, especially in the War Scroll from Caves 1 and 4. Thle sectarian documents from tle caves do, however, suggest changes in the thinking of tlhe sect. Taking account of what evidence there is for ranging

them in relative chronological

sequence,

one is then attracted

to a scheme proposed by J. T. MIilik: there was a gradual change in the complexion of the Qumran sect from the early days around 150 B.C. to the end around A.D. 70. At first they were much like the Hasi(lim, becoming in the Hasmonean period quite similar to the Pharisees, and finally quite "zealous" in their own wvay, especially in tleir own understanding of the Holy War tradition. All this leaves us in the hands of the majority. Their constellation of evidence is impressive. I, for one, am very impressed by the argument from paleography. Cross' work in this regard lias simply been overwhelming. Comparisons of the script of materials from Mu-rabba'at and Hever, some of wlhich is absolutely dated to specific years in the time bracket of the two revolts (A.D. 67 to 135), with the scripts of the manuscripts from Qumran gives us very tight relative datings for the latter and a high percentage of probability that they are earlier by the number of decades and centuries proposed. Cross' charts of the development of scripts,

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published in The Bible and the Ancient Near East (1961) and augmented since, are very persuasive. Other "internal" evidence comes from the historical personages mentioned in two of the scrolls, the Nahum Commentary (4QpNah) and a so-far unpublislied calendar. These are an Antiochus (probably IV Epiphanes, 175-163 B.C., but possibly VII Sidetes, 138-129); a Demetrius (either I Soter, 162-150 B.C. or III Eukairos, 95-78); Alexandria, surely the Jewish queen of 76-67 B.C.; Hyrcanus (either I of 134-104 B.C. or II of 67 B.C.); and Aemilius, surely Scaurus, Pompey's general, active in Syria in 62 B.C. These names are of considerably more weight than the pseudonym Kittim, a designation used in the scrolls for enemies of the sect and of the Jews, and also than the place name Damascus, which is still debated. The time period demanded by the names precedes the First Jewish Revolt and covers more than two hundred years of Palestinian and Jewish history prior to the revolt. Finally, the points of similarity between what we know of Essenes and what we know of the sect of the scrolls are very impressive. No one has shown these more convincingly than Dupont-Sommer in his Essene Writings from Qutnran (1961, just reissued in 1973 by Peter Smith, pubblisher), pp. 21-67. They include many aspects of the community life; the religious rites, especially water ablutions and the common meal; the high angelology; the regard for the sun in prayer life; the deep sense of determinative Providence; the essentially dualistic mode of thought on evil and sin; and other points of minor import. But at this point, let me enter several reasons for just a bit of caution, especially about the identification as Essenes. First, there are a number of discrepancies between what we know from "outsiders" such as Philo, Josephus, and Pliny about the Essenes, and what the sectarian documents tell us about the Qumran sect. One striking example: the classic sources never mention the Teacher of Righteousness, whose title or something very like it occurs as many as twenty times in the scrolls. While it is true, as O. Cullmann pointed out early on, that such a person could not possibly have played at Qumran the kind of role Jesus played in the early church and in the New Testament, total omission of reference to him in the classic sources is striking. Can this be accounted for by these sources being composed by "outsiders", when Josephus and especially Philo write so sympathetically about Essenes? Likewise, neither Philo nor Joseplhus mentions the religious calendar followed by the Qutmran sect - so different from the calendar of most other Jews of the period; the doctrine of the two spirits; the two Messiahs; or the anticipation of the Holy War at the end of days.

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Recall also the evidence from the cemeteries at Qumran and at BarAdon's site and from Masada, suggesting greater distance than we thought between the scrolls and Philo's account: as Yadin puts it, the Qumran sect were neither as pacifist nor as celibate as Philo leads us to believe Essenes were. B. J. Roberts, another expert especially in the field of Old Testament text-criticism and of the scrolls themselves, has suggested that we no longer need judge the scrolls in the light of the classic sources but should now judge the latter in the light of the former. I am not so sure. The term Essene will continue to be used; tlat is clear. But let us be equally clear that it is a convention more than an absolute conviction when we use it. Let us perhaps say "Qumran-Essenes", or "Essene-like". And let us spike the rhetorical argument about Qumran being the only place along the Dead Sea's western shore where Essenes might have lived. The Ancient Secondary

Sources

Since I have referred often to the classic sources, let's review them. Philo. The oldest stem from Philo of Alexandria, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Egypt from 30 B.C. to A.D. 40. The most important source here is a tractate entitled QJuod omnis probus liber sit, available with Greek text andt Englisli translation in the Loeb Classical Library series, Vol. IX, pp. 75-91. (Note that all of the critical editions cited in what follows are in the same series unless otherwise specified.) Philo has to be read critically, for he wanted desperately to show how Judaism met and surpassed all the best tests of goodness and virtue of his own day. WVemust especially be cautious about his words on the Essenes simply because they must have come closer than any other sect to his own highly spiritualized ideal of the Jewish life. Another Philonic source is his De Vita Coltemplativa (IX, 1-74), written about the Therapeutac of his own country who, according to him, were very like tile Essenes, and also are idealized. A third writing by Philo is his Apologia pro Judaeis which can be found in the church hIistorian Eusebius' Praeparatio Evangelica (VIII, 11-12). It is here that we learn a good bit about the Essene life-style that seems so close indeed to what the scrolls themselves seem to say; and yet, it is here also that the diatribe against women appears and the assertion that the Essenes never married! Josephus. Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote in exile in Rome, provides us with one very important description of the Essenes and then a number of shorter references to them scattered throughout his two major works. Josephus' writings are parallel in time and intent (though not in form or substance) to the New Testament gospels. Both Josephus and the evangelists wrote right on top of the Jewish War which was

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concluded in A.D. 69-70, both being spurred by that disaster to write down what they considered vital and important from the years leading up to that watershed event; and both wrote in exile. There, however, the similarities cease. Josephus chose as his model for history-writing the earlier work of the Greek historians, especially Herodotus; in this regard his form differs greatly from the form of the Gospels. As to purpose, tle evangelists, to some extent at any rate, argued that the newly formed church of Christ was the true heir of ancient Israel, and so they tried to take advantage of the anti-Jewish feelings throughout the empire consequent upon the Jewish defeat of A.D. 70. Josephus, by contrast, argued

Fig.

6. The cave of the Wadi ed-Daliyeh papyri, discovered in 1962. From it came texts of the 4th century B.C., rare glimpses of the life of that period. Photograph by F. M. Cross.

that though the Jews had made a grievous error in even trying to fight Rome (Josephus himself had been general of Galilean troops fighting Roman troops), they really were a good sort and should be forgiven and accepted in the empire on the best possible footing, to the lasting credit both of Rome and themselves. Josephus must be read with this Tendenz

in mind. But most students of these sources rightly argue for the general reliability

ofJosephus

even judged

by

the canons of modern texistorio-

credibility rating by showing graphy; forJosephus tried to build up hioops and side issuesnwee people. one t ore heyaofreally Tlie long and important section by Josephus on the Essenes is in Bellurn Judaicum II, 119-161. This is the most important ancient sec-

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ondary source on the Essenes we have. It is introduced by a sentence aboult three schools of philosophy among the Jews: Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. The similarities here to what we have in the scrolls is very impressive, especially to the Mtanual of Discipline (1QS). Josepllus has a nmuchsllorter, and far less valuable statement on the Essenes in his Antiquitates Judaecae XVIII: 18-22. It is contained in a section in wliicli Josephus speaks of four Jewish philosophies, for here he adds the Sicarii, or wliat he calls the Fourth Philosophy, a militant, nationalistic group. It is considerably closer in tone to Philo's tractate cited above, and like it (in contrast to Bellum II: 160-61) does not admit of marriage among Essenes. Thlere are also ten minor passages in Josephus which speak of the Essenes as a group, or of individuals among them. Antiq. XIII: 171-73 contains a bare mention of the tliree schools of Jewish thought. Bellum II: 159 and( Antiq. XVII: 346-48 refer to the Essene gift of divination. Judas tlhe Esseiie is cited in Belllum I: 78-80 and Antiq. XIII: 311-13; Simon in Belluir II: 111-13 as having powers of divination; Menahem in Antiq. XV: 373-79 as a memnberof Herod's entourage; and John the Essiien in Bellumr II: 567 and III: 11 and 19. The first of these about John is contaiined in a section listing tlle Jewish generals (including Josel)hus - Belluml II: 566-68); and John's prowess is stressed in Bellum III: 11. But, and this is quite interesting, according to Bellumr 111:19 John was killed in the ill-fated Jewisll attack on tlhe Roman bastion at Ascalon defended by Antonius. lliis account of John the Essene gives the clear impression not of Zealots )repared for real battle, but of fanatic rabble l)erhal)s expecting God and hlis lioly angels to figlit for them. Here would have been precisely tlhe lifference between tle Zealot's view of Holy War and that of the Qumlran sect spoken of above. Pliny. The tliird ancient secondlary source is Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis V:xv: 73. Pliny, wllo died in A.D. 79 but may have visited Palestine at the close of the First Revolt, ca. A.D. 70, writes eloquently of the ascetic life-style of the Essenes (including their renunciation of marriage and women generally). Tle most interesting phrase in Pliny, however, immediately follows his short notice on the Essenes as he, in memory or imagination, goes on to describe sites other than that of the Essenes along the western shore of the Dead Sea. Here he says, "Infra hos . . ." to introduce mention of the town of 'Ein Gedi. Much debate has centered on this phrase. Those who have sought to identify Qumran with the Essene settlement have argued strongly, and for tle most part quite convincingly, that infra hos meant "below them" in the sense of further south along the shore.

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1973, 4)

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and modern confusions between the Essenes and the Zealots. The most interesting point derived from the Philosophumena is its insistence that the Essenes believed in the resurrection of the body, while Josephus is equally clear that they believed only in immortality of the soul. Considring Josephus' Tendenz toward Hellenistic piety, it would appear that Josephus should be doubted on this score. Incidentally, while some scholars are certain that the scrolls themselves show belief in the resurrection of the body, others are quite dubious about it. One could easily wish the scrolls were clearer on this as on many other points. Other ancient Christian sources, such as Porphyry, Origen and Epiphanius are either repetitious of those we have noted, or extremely vague and uninformative. Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Other ancient Jewish sources, however, must be taken into account. These are the so-called pseudepigrapha. At Qumran, especially in Cave 4, fragments of Jubilees, an Aramaic Testament of Levi, a Hebrew Testament of Naphtali, and numerous fragments of sections of Enoch have been identified. Incidentally, none of the famous Siniilitudes of Enoch (chs. 37-71) has been recovered, but parts of heretofore unknown portions of an Enoch literature have been identified by J. T. Milik. Very little of the material has thus far been published; Aramaic Books of Enoch has, at this writing, still not appeared. Until the text appear, comment on Milik's advance theses already published has to be reserved. Can we assume that any of these writings were composed by the Qumran sect? And to what extent can long-known pseudepigraphic literature be used to understand the Qumran-Essenes? A. Dupont-Sommer and his student, M. Philoneko, have long assumed that everything found at Qumnranwas Essenian, and that some of the pseudepigrapha, even those unrepresented among the cave fragments, must be studied to reconstruct the theology and religious thinking of the Essenes. This debate is by no means settled, though most scholars prefer to exercise caution. Titles,

Epithets

and People

One of the debates engendered by the scrolls has been that about the personages mentioned by title or pseudonym in the texts. The scrolls include a number of favorable epithets, and these are easily identified as used by the members of the group of themselves. These include the righteous, the pure, the good, the saints or pious ones, and so on. They also gave themselves other titles such as "men of his council", "men of the community", and "the many". Unfavorable epithets, such as "the evil", "the wicked", "seekers after smooth things", "men of Belial", and so on, are not so clearly identifiable since, though they always refer to

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enemies, they sometimes refer to fellow Jews, certainly the Hasmoneans and perhaps the Pharisees, and sometimes to Gentiles. Gentiles, certainly, and some Jews are considered adversaries and enemies of God as well, such as the Hasmoneans and Pharisees. A middle group of epithets, such as fools, simple ones and the senseless, seem to refer to fellow Jews who, though not members of the in-group, were available for conversion. One pseudonym, derived from tle Bible, which caused considerable debate in the early years after the discovery of the scrolls, was Kittim. Those scholars who date the history of the sect to pre-Maccabean times insist that this means Greeks, especially the Seleucids. Most scholars have long since determined that it refers to tle Romans. The main reason for this is the statement in the commentary on Habakkuk, from Cave 1, that the Kittim sacrificed to their "standards", a practice verifiable from numerous sources among the Roman legions of the Empire. There are also references to the Kittim coming from afar, which would fit Rome better than Syria, the seat of the Seleucid empire. But the most enticing titles and epithets relate apparently to individuals, the most important being the Teacher of Righteousness and the Wicked Priest. Others foundl in the texts includ(e Man of Falselood, Man of Scorn, Furious Lion, Interpreter of the Law, and Prince of the Congregation. These have been open to speculation for specific identification. Other titles, sucli as Bishop (ltebaqqer) , and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel, clearly referred either to offices in the table of organization of the sect, or to esclatalogical figures. Ther-e lhave been no fewer than nine candidates for the role of Teacher of Righteousness and ten for tlat of the Wicked Priest. Those mentione(l so far we slall simply list; tley are offered by scholars consonant with their plosition otherwise on the identity and date of the sect: Onias III, murdered in 171 B.C. at D)aphne; Jose ben Joezer, probably second century B.C.; Eleazar the Pharisee in the time of John Hyrcanus; Judas the Essene in the time of Aristobulus I; Onias the Just, stoned in 62 B.C.; Jesus of Nazareth; Menahem ben Jehudah, executed in A.D. 66;

Abu 'Isa of the seventh century; and 5Menahemben Saruq, also of the seventh century. None of the scholars who have forwarded these suggestions has been adamant about pressing the identification. Not so, however, in the case of the WVicked Priest. Even though this

gentleman is named only in the commentary on Habakkuk (and just possibly in the Cave 4 commentary on Ps 37) and possibly referred to in the Psalms of Joshua appended to the Cave 4 Testimonia document, hlis importance in the debate on identification has been large, and, some say, far greater than he deserves. The crucial passages are in lQpHab

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THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST

8:8-13, 9:9-12, and 4QTest 21-30. In addition, those who see the Furious Lion as the same man as the Wicked Priest cite the commentary on Nahum (4QpNah), column 1.

d ?? 'o

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8. The terrain on the north side of the Nahal the letters." From BA, 24 (1961), p. 39.

.

., ~

~~~"~"Ll"r"~l~~

Hever;

the

arrow

points

to the

"cave

of

In the historian's desire to locate historical references these pitiful scraps have burgeoned into fantastic importance. And here are the principal candidates for the position of the Wicked Priest: Menelaus, who had Onias III murdered in 171 B.C. (H. H. Rowley, et al. ); Jonathan, son of Judas Maccabeus, who governed from 160 to 142 B.C. (J. T. Milik, P. Winter, E. F. Sutcliffe); Simon, also a son of Judas, 143-134 (F. M. Cross, R. de Vaux, G. Vermes); Alexander Janneus, Hasmonean high priest and king from 103 to 76 B.C. (MI.H. Segal, J. Allegro, M. Delcor); Hyrcanus II, king in 67 B.C. (A. Dupont-Sommer, K. Elliger), or possibly Aristobulus II, 67-63 B.C. (Dupont-Sommer); the Apostle Paul (J. L. Teicher); Hanaiah, high priest in 66 A.D. (Del Medico); Eleazar, his son (G. R. Driver and C. Roth); the Caliph Abdul Malik ibn Marwan of the seventh century A.D. (d. 705, P. R. Weis); and finally, Hasdai ibn Shafrut who died about A.D. 770 (S. Zeitlin). Only Teicher's, del

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Medico's and Weis' positions seem to have been abandoned. The others still have strong adherents, although Zeitlin's is not taken seriously. All of this testifies to the fact that there are no really undisputed historical "facts" in the scrolls on which to base such identifications. Other roles emerge from the ancient texts, such as the Star, the House of Absalom and Judah, and as noted, the Man of Falsehood and the Furious Lion; but they emerge only when there is some possibility in the external history to identify them as supporting cast for the major characters (otherwise they are simply not mentioned), or when it seems prudent to refute something another scholar has advanced.

Fig.

9. A packet of correspondence Nahal I-ever. From BA, 24

of Simeon Bar Kochba, p. 33. (1961),

on papyri

from

the

cave in

the

One familiar place name emerges from the scrolls as a possible pseudonym, though there is by no means any agreement that it is. Most scholars, by simple headcount, have taken Damascus, of the Damascus Document, literally to refer to southern Syria, even scholars as far apart in their views as Milik and Driver. De Vaux has waivered on this point, but F. MI. Cross, Jr., with a few others, has been very clear in his opinion that it should be taken figuratively to refer to the place of exile itself, Qumran (cf. Amos 5:25-27). N. Wieder sees it as the locale of the prelude to the MIessianicdrama. The

Qumran

Collection

Most scholars understand the scrolls of the eleven Qumran caves to have formed, in antiquity, a single library belonging to a single sect with the exception, perhaps, of the manuscripts from Caves 3 and 7, especially the Copper Scroll of Cave 3. Cross, for instance, speaks of "the main library", or the scrolls found especially in Cave 4, and then "private collections", those of the minor caves, for instance, Cave 6. It is often

4) 1973, 4)

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133

9,4 4etb,

7.'

Fig. 10. The curious Copper Scroll, in two rolls, as found in Cave 3 Qumran sect's collection? Photograph by W. L. Reed.

is it really part of the

suggested that the copper Scroll, 3Q15, might have belonged to another group altogether, or at least not to the Qumran sect. There are two main views about this remarkable document, which claims to list an immense hoard of wealth hidden in numerous loci, cisterns, pools, graves, monuments, palace or temple courts, moats, etc. (none identifiable): the one is that it represents, even if devalued to reasonable proportions, an actual cache of treasure, perhaps that of the temple, hidden before or during the early siege of Jerusalem by the Romans; and the other is that it represents no such thing but should be taken, form-critically, as a type of fabulous literature, similar to others known from antiquity. Two early

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attempts to read the scroll (whiclh was found in two parts in tlhe ca-ve), by J. M. Allegro and J. T. Milik llave resulted in two significantly different transcriptions and translations (The Treas-ce of the Copper Scroll [1960], andt Discoveries in the Judacan Desert, III [1962], 211-302). Cave 7 yielded only Greek papyri, very fragmentary and very few in number. Tlle original editors of Discoveries in the Jldaean )csert, III, specifically iM. Baillet, identified tile largest pieces as copies of tihe Septuagint and suggested that thle rest miglit be as well. Recently, lhowever, J. O'Callaghan of tlle Pontifical Biblical Illstitute lias advanced tilc thesis that Cave 7 contains very early, pre-A.I). 70 colies, in (;reek, of the Gospel of Mark, as well as of other New Testament literature. Iie was supported in tis by C. Mlartini il tile same issue of Biblica, 53 (1972), 91-104. A number of first-rank scholars have responded very negatively to Fr. O'Callaghlan's tliesis. I'lhere is no one, so far, whlo lias come to lis side in print. Nonetleless, apart fiom tlis recent dlebate, it has been suggested that tlese materials fr-om Cave 7 miglt possibly not have belonged in tlle Qumnran lilrary. It is also (luite possible tllat tle one fragmenlltry papyrus) froin (ave 9 and tile one ostracon from C:ave 10 fall outside the basic collection. A minority of sclolars, taking a different position, view tlhe caves as genizot (burial lots), miost recently G. R. Driver. Allowing for tlhe specific dates I)river assigns to tlhe scrolls and their deposit in the caves, hlis position is representative of tilis view. He understands tlhe Copper Scroll to record temple treasure wliici was hidden in A.D. 66 and tlle scroll itself to have been (leposited in tile cave in A.D. 68, q(iite llnrelated to all tile otlier scrolls. In fact, lie ldenies tlhe idea of sIucl a ftill library at all, and tlinlks that thli various scrolls were buried or l)laced in tlle several caves at intervals, certainly by A.). 132-135; lie furthlermiore thinks that tliose who placed tliemi there were rabbinic Jews of the period wlio were becoming strong enoughi to exert tleir point of view on standardization of tle biblical canon and 1 bibllical text and tlhus to rid tlhe synaof heterodox literature. gogue The Qumrani literattire of tlhe eleven caves is, witli the exception of the Copper Scroll, religious in natture. Even the astrological and calendaric materials must be classified as religiouls. The VWarScroll, though higlily militant in contenit, is especially religious, whether one views it, with tlhe majority, as eschatalogical, or as anticipating actual battles; it is as "religious" as biblical Holy War traditions. The Canon at Qumran

Writhin thlis overall designation "religious", there are two basic types of writing, biblical and sectarian. A third term, apocryphal, can be useful

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also, but not without comment. A rabbinic Jew, for instance, knows precisely where his Bible ends and the "outside books" begin. A modern Protestant is pretty clear on the matter also; the Bible doesn't include the "Apocrypha", which for him is a Roman Catholic notion which he must watch closely lest it get out of hand. For the Jew, the New Testament is "sectarian", much farther out than the "outside books", whereas for the early church much of it became "canonical" by the early second century. For the Roman Catholic, the Apocrypha is clearly a proper part of the Bible, even if termed "deutero-canonical." If we are going to speak at all sensibly about what was canonical at Qumran, we need to grasp what the-concept of canon is; that is what my 1972 book, Torah and Canon has sought to define. For most of us, the terms "canonical" and "Bible" are equivalent, and in effect they mean authoritative; they are the traditions and literature upon which Jewish sects around the turn of the era, such as the early church and the Qumran sect, based their claim to be the chosen denomination and the true New Israel of God. If the early churches were treating some of Paul's letters and the gospels as authoritative - in effect canonical within decades of their being composed, we ought not to be surprisecdif we find the Qumran sect had clone the same thing with some virtually contemporary literature in a slightly earlier setting. In short, we must be careful with the terms biblical and sectarian if they imply canonicity and non-canonicity. When people speak of the period of Qumran, they usually use "Bible" to mean the Masoretic Bible - the Rabbinic Bible, which equals the modern Jewish Bible which equals the Protestant Old( Testament. But that is to puslh a particular canonical principle back too early, and to imply tliat all sects aind groups within Judaism at that time would have had the same Bible. G. F. Moore and others spoke of Pharisaic Judaism of the period before A.D. 70 as norimative Jiudaism. However one persuasive result of Mlorton Smith's work on late Second Temple Judaism is to show that PllarisaismI in tile period before 70 was a far less important sect than would be suggeste(d by calling it normative. Rabbinic Judaism, Pharisaism's heir, preserved only such literature composed before A.D. 70 as fit its ways of thinking after A.D. 70 - wlhich would have included of course what was recognized as canonical at the council of Jamnia around A.D. 80-90. Only the church, in the so-called Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and( then these caves andt casemate chambers excavated by Bedouin and archaeologists, have preserved for us at least a portion of the vast literature of sects other than the Pharisees.

In this connection, J. Neusner's The Rabbinic Traditions about the

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P/arisees before 70 (tllree vols., 1971) is helpful indeed and may challenge tlhe reluctance of scholars to open upi their un(lerstanding of what was "canonical" for Essenes. First of all, tlcet what biblical manuscripts, according to our usual undlerstanding, are attested at Qumran? Here is the roster of different - of each book: Psalter 30, Deumanuscripts - many very fragmentary Isaiah Genesis Exodus 15, 15, Leviticus 8, Minor Proph19, teronomy 25, ets (tlle Twelve) 8, Daniel 8, Numbers 6, Ezekiel 6, Job 5, Samuels 4, Jeremiah 4, Ruthl 4, Song of Songs 4, Lamentations 4, Judges 3, Kings 3, Josllua 2, Proverbs 2, Ecclesiastes 2, Ezra-Nehemiah 1, Chronicles 1. Esb1 y now, is absent, even though one scholar tlher, as most people know thiniks lie lias foundt an allusion to an Esther passage in a sectarian writing. Tllis absence says notling about tlle date of Esther, for there are strong inlications tliat it must )e ldated before the founding of the Qlum1ran commnilluitt; it simp)ly is ilOt atteste(l at Qumran so far. What is more, thirty--five of the 150 psalnms in the Masoretic canon are lacking among those tlirty Psalter manuscripts. Now no one lias argued that the Qunranl psalter lacked these, but the gaps (o stir the imagination. One absent psalim is particularly interesting, Psalm 110. This is sig110:1 mentions Mhelchizedcq, lwhom we now know to nificanit becase have beeni an important and very active heavenly being in Qumran thouglht. Of course Genesis 1-1 also presents MXelchizedeq, and from the Epistle to the Hebrews 6-7 we know lie enjoyed considerable prominence in tlhe first ccntury. Still, it seeIns quite likely that Qumran knew Psalm 110, since at least one p)lrase fromi 110: is quiite obviously paraphrased in 11Q Melchizedeq, line 5. How (loes one look at sucll gaps? Since Mlelchizedeq was so important ill QlIumran eschatological thiniking, one would think there should have been several copies of Psalm 110. It lias long been maintained that this Psalm was composecl by and for tle Hasmoneans. If, as the majority consensus maintains, the Qumran sect regarded the usurping Hasmoneans as enemies within Judaism, perllaps they knew Psalm 110 very well, but rejected it from their Psalter. Possessing Genesis 14 and other oral traditions about Melchidezeq, they liad no need for it. Perhaps Qumran also disdained Esther, because it ran counter to the sect's tlieology and ascetic piety. Esther does not mention the name of God. Its reticence about dlivine providence (cf. Esther 4:14) might have seemed offensive to the sect's almost total reliance on God's anticipated and far-from-subtle interventions in history. Esther suggests that extremely important matters, such as the survival of the Jews, depend on historical accidents and on human whims, especially personal

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jealousy and hate. This aspect of Esther would have been more offensive at Qumran than the book's non-ascetic tone. Canonical

Criticism

It is the other end of the range of the Qumran canon which demands careful attention. Recall that for all Judaism the Bible was in effect open-ended until a time a decade or two after the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 69, when some rabbis gathered at Yavneh, or Jamnia, to decide what among the literature which had grown to have meaning for them through the period before the Jewish War should be viewed as especially authoritative for the new diaspora existence thrust upon them when Rome dismantled their holy symbols. Josephus indicates that the criteria for "canonization" were wide-spread acquaintance (i.e. not esoteric), antiquity, and "inspiration." Even though J. Lewis has recently shown that we have far less documentation for a council of Jamnia in the last decades of the first century A.D. than we thought we had, it is clear that the first century A.D., and especially the "period of Jamnia" was a time of intensification of the process of selectivity. In this regard, these years were similar to the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., the time of the fall of Jerusalem down to Ezra's visit. Much can be said about the process of selectivity, and I will have more to say about it elsewhere. Succinctly: It is the phenomenon of repetition which outweighs any first burst of popularity of written work. A writing with depth enough to spring across a generation gap may be on its way to canonical status. The acid test seems to have been whether it spanned the especially yawning gaps of the sixth century B.C. and the first century A.D., those which separated the generations settled "in the land" and secure in certain tangible symbols of their faith from the generations violently torn from these symbols which dug deeply into their traditions for symbols more indestructible and incorruptible. The remarkable thing about Israel is that, in contrast to all her neighbors, she found in the old traditions the means to bridge the chasms. This was the canonical process. We can be sure that much literature fell by the way in the sxith century B.C., probably most of what was available. Consider the Book of the Wars of Yahweh, the Book of Yashar, and many others, of which we have not a scrap aside from Old Testament citations. As for the first century A.D., we know that what ended up in the Masoretic Bible was far less than what had been available - precisely the apocryphal and sectarian literature of the intertestamental period, only a portion of which we have even with the Dead Sea Scrolls. The period just after A.D. 70 was similarly crucial for the formation of the New Testament. The loss of the land as the place of

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expectancy of the second coming of Christ and the loss of the (Petrine) mother church in Jerusalem, though not as traumatic, were certainly significant canonically for the church. It was hard upon the heels of the sack of Jerusalem that the gospels were composed, the Epistle to the Hebrews written in first draft, the letters of Paul pulled out of drawers all over the Mediterranean area and shared anew - precisely because now they spoke in some ways more significantly, and perhaps even differently, than they had before the rupture. Text and Canon

Correlated with canonical criticism is text criticism, a distinctly different field of study which must nonetheless be studied in close conjunction with the question of canon. The fascinating work of Cross and S. Talmon, who are currently composing a volume on Qumran and text criticism, has consistently shown that the first century A.D. was a period of intense textual activity in Judaism - and here the names of M. Goshen-Gottstein and D. Barthelemy are also important. Just as in the case of canon, this activity intensified in anticipation of the catastrophe of A.D. 70. The differences between biblical texts from Qumran, which date as far back as the third century B.C., and those from MIurabba'at,the Hever caves, and Masada, all dating between A.D. 70 and 135, is striking. The latter are rigidly Mlasoretic in text type, standardized in every detail. The Qumran materials exhibit either different text types (more on this later) or at least very significant variants - clearly they stem from a pre-standardization period. If Qumran catapults us back into a pre-standardization period, a word is in order about the large Psalm scroll from Cave 11 - a scroll containing "canonical" psalms (in an order different from the Masoretic order we know) interspersed with other compositions. I have recently been maintaining that this scroll may represent a pre-standardization phase of the history of the Psalter, an "open-ended" Psalter, rather than an aberration from an already standardized Psalter. Disagreement with this proposal has come from P. Skehan, in Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 35 (1973), 195-205. Skehan presents a fine redaction-critical study of the Qumran Psalter - there are from Caves 4 and 11 copies of a Psalter with what appears to be the same order of Masoretic and non-Masoretic psalms - and sees it as a "library edition of a Davidic Psalter." His argument that the liturgical aspects of the scroll presuppose the Masoretic 150-Psalm collection is not completely convincing. In any event, his work does bring forth the observation that the MT-150 Psalter is itself a rather lean "library edition", chosen as the standard sometime in the first century A.D.

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Prayerbook.Talmon, however, in a recent public conerence in Jerusa-

lem, stated that he had moved very close to my position that the Psalter

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attested in the Cave 11 scroll was viewed at Qumran as canonical. He went on to suggest that analogous to an open-ended Psalter at Qumran is the "open-ended Hagiographa." The analogy is excellent. The Bible, or at least the Writings = Hagiographa, was at Qumran open-ended. Yadin is convinced that the large Temple Scroll - see BA, 30 (1967), 135-139 - from Cave 11, which he promises will be published in 1974, was viewed at Qumran as canonical, even, he seems to suggest, as authoritative as the Torah itself. By the way, the suggestion once made that any scroll which had the proper name YHWH in Paleo-Hebrew script, as the Cave 11 Psalm scroll does, is not "in canonical dress" has been proved wrong; see my article in New Directions

in Biblical Archae-

ology, pp. 101-116, and J. P. Siegal, Hebrew Union College Annual, 42 (1971), 159-172.

And so we have come back around to our question of canon. The roster of manuscripts representative of biblical books given above is limited to the Masoretic Bible in its hagiographic portion. The Qumran Bible was not tlhus limited. Just one more example: at Qumran the calendar used was ra(lically different from that used at Jerusalem at tlle same time. The terms "conservative" and "radical" are relative. The different calendar at Qumran does not mean that those who used it were "radlicals", innovating religious calendars. To their mind, the calendar they used was "conservative", the one really ancient and authoritative one. Nor did they innovate categories of literature such as Jewish Prayerbooks or Library Editions of Davidic Psalters. Far from limiting David to a paltry 150 psalms (a radic-lib suggestion, surely, in the minds of the Qumran Essenes), the sect, viewing itself as "conservative" in the most authoritative sense, did not dare exclude from its Psalter psalms which David might have written. If there liad been any authoritative move toward a leaner Psalter, in such a forni as to command assent at Qumran, we would see it reflected in their scrolls in clearer fashion tlian has yet come to attention. From what I have seen of the unpublished Cave 4 Psalter fragments (seventeen different manuscripts are attested), I would say these observations will be sustained. Torah, Prophets,

Writings

What we have been saying lias applied to the third portion of the Old Testament, the Hagiograpla, or Writings. What about the Pentateuch = Torah and the Prophets= the Histories and the Prophets? Simply stated, there were grades of canonical authority. At Qumran, one is struck by the observation that the Pentateuch there was Masoretic. Both the canonical anlt the textual processes of standardization in the case of the Torah were already somewhat advanced by Hellenistic times. Text

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criticism even before Qumran knew this, from comparing the Masoretic Torah with the Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch. When one moves into the Prophets, he gets quite a different sense of things. There are Hebrew manuscripts, especially of Samuels and Jeremiah, which appear to reflect the Septuagint recensions of these books, precisely the two books where the Septuagint most differs from

Fig. 12. Fragments of a Samuel manuscript from Cave 4, which reflects a Hebrew text apparently lying behind the Greek translation (the Septuagint). From BA, 17 (1954), p. 19.

the Masoretic text. This is where Cross has built his theory that there were three families of Old Testament texts in the Second Temple period: the Babylonian (which became the Masoretic standard), the Palestinian, and the Egyptian. In some cases, he claims that a non-Masoretic texttype is superior. There is not space here to go into Cross' theory - see lis article in Israel Exploration

Journal,

16 (1966),

81-95. My own

studies in text criticism lead me to feel that in the books of the Old

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Testament all the way through Samuel the Masoretic text (not the Septuagint and not certain Qumran texts) must remain the touch-stone against which discrete variants are gauged. The final publication of Skehan's and Cross' Cave 4 biblical materials will provide an exciting opportunity to test all this anew. If the scene sliifts from Torah to Prophets, it shifts even more from Prophets to Writings. Here both canonical and text criticism clearly indicate the standardization process was more short-ranged and perhaps more intense in the first century than we had thought. From either canonical critical or text critical perspective, the Qumran sect had an open-ended Bible; it behooves us today to be very careful in distinguishing between this third level of canonical status, the Hagiographa, and any fourth or fifth level - such as the writings we call apocryphal or exven conjectulrel sectarian prayer books and library editions of the Psalter. Sectarian

and Apocryphal

Literature

Of tlose intertestamental writings we call apocryphal or pseudepigraphic we so far have at least fragments of all portions of Enoch with

the exception of the Similitudes but also with the inclusion, according to J.T. IMilik,of portions we liad not known heretofore (except perhaps by vague allusion in church fathers). These latter include a Vision of Amram, and sizable portions of literature we sometimes call Noachite, on tlhe ancient Giants and Watchers and Fallen Angels. Milik also has consideralle manuscript material from Jubilees, the Testament of Levi, the Testament of Naplitali, the Prayer of Nabonidus, Tobit, the Psalms of Joshua and others. This category, alpocrypha, slips over into the other category very quickly, the purely and peculiarly sectarian. For instance, we did not know of a really independent Prayer of Nabonidus before Qumran, nor certainly of the Psalms of Joshua. Yet the first is referred to in Daniel 4, while the second appears in a testimonia list from Cave 4 along with otherwise exclusively Torah quotations - from Deuteronomy and N umbers. One of the interesting observations one makes on the basis of paleography is that while some biblical ("in our Bible") manuscripts date from as early as the first decades of the third century B.C. (others range down into the first century A.D.), one usually must date the clearly sectarian documents (the MIanual of Discipline, the Temple Scroll, the Hymns, the War Scroll perhaps, and others) to the first century B.C., and the pesharim or biblical commentaries to the late first century B.C. and the first century A.D.

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Just as one cannot willy-nilly attribute aprocryphal literature not found at Qumran to the Essenes, so one must be careful in claiming that everything at Qumran was sectarian, in the sense that it belonged to an official library of approved thought. Cross speaks of some of the small caves as containing private collections. It is very difficult to know. The proper way of looking at the twenty-five years of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship which this issue of BA celebrates is to see that quarter century as only a beginning of labor on these and many other problems raised by this remarkable collection. Consider these recently published or about to be published items. There is the Aramaic version of the Book of Job from Cave 1 (11QtgJob) edited by A. S. van der Woude and J. van der Ploeg published in 1971 - very important for our knowledge of the Aramaic language. I have already mentioned Milik's forthcoming Aramaic Books of Enoch. Very soon we should have Volume 6 of Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, containing all the Cave 4 phylacteries, edited by Milik, as well as de Vaux' archaeological report on Cave 4. As indicated, Yadin plans to have the Temple Scroll out in 1974. Cross and Skehan plan publication of the rest of the biblical manuscripts from Cave 4 soon. Cross' Wadi ed-Daliyeh papyri are in the press. J. Strugnell is reported to be well along in preparing hymnic and other documents of Cave 4 entrusted to him. Baillet will also edit some Cave 4 hymnic materials as well as tlhe Cave 4 fragments of the War Scroll. Tlen there will be Starkey's Aramaic manuscripts of non-biblical and heretofore unknown literature. There is much yet to learn! Judaism

and the Early Church

There are three areas of Palestinian Iiistory which have been particularly illumined by the recovery of the Qumran scrolls: Old Testamient canon and text criticism, the history and literature of Second Temple Judaism, and the origins of Christianity and New Testament interpretation. Their value for the first two we have indicated; what about the third? Shemaryahu Talmon, in a very exciting article in Frankfurter Universitatsredcn, 42 (1972), 84-100, has advanced the thesis that the Qumran sect, in its conviction that it was God's true Israel, the elect within the elect, patterned its self-understanding on that of the early post-exilic Jewisli community of the late sixth and fifth centuries B.C. It consciously wanted, according to Talmon, to shape itself so as to recapitulate tle New Israel born out of the ashes of the Old. It is in this way, he rightly claims, tlat we should understand Qumran's anticipation of two Messiahs, one of Israel, after Zerubbabel, and the other of Aaron, after

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Jeshua, of the books of Haggai and Zechariah. They viewed tleir existence not so much as that of being in Exile as that of being the Return from Exile, of being in preparation for Return from the Exile. This may seem paradoxical but is not finally, says Talmon, since the sect felt that they had to live at Qumran in such a way as to rehearse the life they were to live when the New Age began. In his study Talmon attempts to distinguish sharply between two types of eschatalogical groups, that represented by the church, on the one hand, and that represented by Qumran. In so doing Talmon would like to link the Qumran sect more with the Old Testament than with the New. Qumran and the New Testament

While Talmon's main thesis is brilliant, Iiis effort to distinguish the types of self-understanding of the early church and Qumran is not convincing. Both groups were precisely alike in insisting that they were the Old Testament (meaning the Torah, Prophets and certain Writings) come alive, that they were the true continuity of the chosen people; and they argued this in similar ways but always basing their claims on the

then authoritative portions of the Old Testament only. The early church also turned back to the exilic period and the emerging New Israel there as the "type" of which it was the fulfillment. Where they differed was in

details and in passages of the exilic period to which they looked as the rock from which they were hewn. If one looks once more at the list, above, of the biblical books at Qumran of the Old Testament and compares it with tlle scripture index at the back of a good Greek New Testament he discovers that both sects in the first century found their

own "canon within the canon" in much the same Old Testament literature: the Psalter, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Genesis, Exodus and the Prophets generally. Each was convinced that it was God's New Israel in the End Time of hlistory and that the proper mode of interpreting scripture was first to show that it spoke directly and only to their day, and second to attempt to prove that it spoke directly to them. I. Rabinowitz in a recent study (Revue de Qumran, 30 [1973] 219-32) is riglit to say that tle

word pesher at Qumran, whlich has often been translated by the word commentary, really meant something like presaging. At Qumran they felt that they had been given, througli the Teacher of Righteousness, the key to understand the scriptures aright; the early Christians felt that they

had been given, through Jesus Christ, the key to understand the scriptures aright. Eacli was convinced that its key provided the means wliereby

to see clearly, througli scripture, what God was doing in its day. The similarities between the two groups in regard to tlieir views andi uses of tle Old Testament are very impressive.

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(In Part II of the writer's JJS, 24 article, already cited, are titles of reference works useful to the student of the scrolls. To those mentioned, by H. Braun, on Qumran and the New Testament, one should add now William LaSor's The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament (1972). While written in a very popular vein, and from a rather extreme leftwing Reformation point of view [called conservative or evangelical today], it is nonetheless a valuable contribution by a very knowledgeable, serious scholar of the scrolls.) It has long been said that the Qumran literature provides us with a tremendous glossary of theological terms in Hebrew and Aramaic of the pre-Christian and early Christian eras. Our knowledge, for instance, of the Aramaic which Jesus and his colleagues might have spoken has grown from induction to near certainty by the recovery of these documents. The whole field of discovery, as Joseph Fitzmyer has recently shown, has indicated that Palestine in Jesus' day was considerably more polyglot than we had thought. It is extremely difficult now to deny that Jesus could have used Hebrew and Greek as well as Aramaic in his ministry, or that traditions stemming from that ministry include that use. The New Testament never mentions the Essenes, which is a most fascinating observation in itself. This has led some scholars, like C. Daniel, to claim that certain enigmatic groups mentioned in the New Testament, like the Herodians, or the "false prophets", are pseudonyms for the Essenes. Such claims are very difficult to establish. Yigael Yadin, out of his work in preparing the Temple Scroll for publication, makes the points that the sorts of strictures one finds in the New Testament against highly legalistic and very stringent interpretations of the Law fit the Qumran Essenes far better than the Pharisees. Anyone who has studied both Pharisaic traditions and the Qumran literature is constrained to agree. Hermeneutics

Therefore, some of the basic views of the Qumran sect and of early Christianity are quite similar. Each thought of itself as the New Israel; each based that claim on (what up to the first century A.D. was in) the "Old Testament"; and each exploited the scriptures in similar ways in order to stake the claim. Both employed a constitutive mode of hermeneutics: that is, both interpreted the old scriptures to their advantage in order to meet the in-group need to believe that they were God's true Israel. Other sects used the scriptures in a similar manner: in fact, it might be called a normal, denominational use of scripture to exploit it to advantage.

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Over against the constitutive mode of hermeneutics is the prophetic. If one reads the scriptures in the prophetic mode he reads them primarily as a judgment upon and challenge to his group's views of their identity and consequently of their views of divine election and providence. This was the mode by which the Old Testament prophets like Amos and Jeremiah, for example, made the ancient authoritative Torah traditions speak to the people of their day. They, in effect, said that God was bigger than the people thought and that the people, and their government and cult, should not presume they were elect.

Fig. 13. The Qumran ruins, looking southwest. From de Vaux, L'archeologie,

P1. XVIII.

In another study the writer lias demonstrated that much of Luke's gospel indicates Jesus himself used the old scriptures in the prophetic mode. One can perceive this same use of scripture by the historical Jesus in other gospels as well, not primarily by trying to peel away from the gospels what the early church added to what Jesus said and did, but by assuming that the early church also employed the constitutive mode of hermeneutics in their reading not only of the Old Testament but also of what Jesus was reported to have said as a Jew among Jews. Let us take only a few examples from Luke's gospel. Applying the scriptures to his fellow Jews in a prophetic-hermeneutic mode, Jesus read

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Isaiah 61 and I Kings 17 to say that in the eschaton the Herald of salvation would bless people outside Israel (Luke 4); he read Deuteronomy 20 with other scriptures to say that in the eschaton none of those who thought themselves elect would taste the Great Banquet (Luke 14); and he told stories which said that those who assumed they were elect would not be the ones for whom the fatted calf would be prepared (Luke 15) or finally join Father Abraham in the after-life (Luke 16). At a later date the church, reading such Jesus traditions in a constitutive mode, understood them to say something Jesus himself never intended: that Jews had been rejected and Gentiles elected in their place. And this the church would have done without altering much of the essence of what Jesus actually said in them. To turn the matter round the other way: we have a new tool, if these observations are correct, for recovering the words of Jesus. The most anti-Jewish looking words and parables of Jesus in the New Testament may actually be the most authentic Jesus traditions for the simple reason that what Jesus said prophetically as a Jew among Jews the early church, in the canonical process of selection, misunderstood as their best argument that the church was the true Israel and not, as Krister Stendahl has put it, the synagogue down the street. In fact, we have in Jesus for the first time in all Jewish literature, to my knowledge, the prophetic-critique hermeneutic mode employed to apply to the eschaton. This means Jesus was himself an eschatalogical prophet in the specific sense that he applied the authoritative traditions of the scriptures to his own people in his day prophetically and ultimately: that is, the End Time was arriving and in it the people would "ultimately" see that God was not bound by their views of election. Whereas Jesus was historically a prophetic Jew among Jews in the sense that we have described, to the early church he was protagonist and savior. This means, in canonical criticism, that the early church retained some of the teachings of Jesus more or less accurately for quite the wrong reasons. And this means, in Jewish-Christian relations today, that we have a new perspective on the anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic character of much of the New Testament. As Oscar Cullman said twenty years ago, the real difference between the scrolls and the New Testament was Jesus himself. Once Jesus was viewed by the church through the prism of the resurrection experience, and his transformation from eschatalogical prophet into divine savior and heavenly Lord was complete, then it would have been unthinkable for any New Testament writer, any early Christian writer outside the New Testament, or any non-Christian or even anti-Christian writer, to attempt to deal with Christianity without reference to Jesus Christ.

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Everything relating to Christianity centers in and devolves out of his person. It was the constitutive task of the New Testament writers to attempt to demonstrate that the new and mightiest act of God in Christ was precisely to be seen in the line of all God's previous righteousnesses recited in the old scriptures, and those righteousnesses themselves found their completion and goal and true significance in him (Romans 10:4). There is nothing in the scrolls even remotely like such an outrageous claim. The early church, like Qumran, claimed to be the New Israel; but prior to that claim and basic to it was the scandalous claim that Christ was the True Israel. This aspect of what the New Testament is all about is emphasized in bold relief by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.