Part 1 (1/2)
The Covenanters of Damascus; A Hitherto Unknown Jewish Sect.
by George Foot Moore.
Among the Hebrew ma.n.u.scripts recovered in 1896 from the Genizah of an old synagogue at Fostat, near Cairo, and now in the Cambridge University Library, England, were found eight leaves of a Hebrew ma.n.u.script which proved to be fragments of a book containing the teaching of a peculiar Jewish sect; a single leaf of a second ma.n.u.script, in part parallel to the first, in part supplementing it, was also discovered. These texts Professor Schechter has now published, with a translation and commentary, in the first volume of his _Doc.u.ments of Jewish Sectaries_.(1) The longer and older of the ma.n.u.scripts (A) is, in the opinion of the editor, probably of the tenth century; the other (B), of the eleventh or twelfth.
What remains of the book may be divided into two parts. Pages 1-8 of A, and the single leaf of B, contain exhortations and warnings addressed to members of the sect, for which a ground and motive are often sought in the history of the Jewish people or of the sect itself, together with severe strictures upon such as have lapsed from the sound teaching, and polemics against the doctrine and practice of other bodies of Jews. The second part, pages 9-16, sets forth the const.i.tution and government of the community, and its distinctive interpretation and application of the law,-what may be called sectarian _halakah_.
Neither part is complete; the ma.n.u.script is mutilated and defective at the end, there is apparently a gap between the first and second parts, and it may be questioned whether the original beginning of the work is preserved.
The lack of methodical arrangement in the contents leads Dr. Schechter to surmise that what we have in our hands is only a compilation of extracts from a larger work, put together with little regard for completeness or order. An orderly disposition, according to our notions of order, is not, however, so constant a characteristic of Jewish literature as to make this inference very convincing.
Ma.n.u.script A was evidently written by a negligent scribe, perhaps after a poor or badly preserved copy; B, which represents a somewhat different recension of the work, exhibits, so far as it goes, a superior text. When it is added that both ma.n.u.scripts are in many places defaced or torn, it may be imagined that the decipherment and interpretation present serious difficulties, and that, after all the pains which Dr. Schechter has spent upon the task, many uncertainties remain. Facsimiles of a page of each ma.n.u.script are given; but in view of the condition of the text a photographic reproduction of the whole is indispensable.
The legal part of the book, so far as the text is fairly well preserved, is not exceptionally difficult; the rules are in general clearly defined, and if in the peculiar inst.i.tutions of the sect there are many things we do not fully understand, this is due more to the brevity with which its organization is described and to the mutilation of the text than to lack of clearness in the description itself. The attempt to make out something of the history and relations of the sect from the first part of the book is, on the other hand, beset by many difficulties. What history is found there is not told for the sake of history, but used to point admonitions or emphasize warnings; and, after the manner of the apocalyptic literature, historical persons and events are referred to in roundabout phrases which envelop them in an affected mystery. Even when such references are to chapters of the national history with which we are moderately well acquainted, as in the a.s.sumption of Moses, c. 5, ff., for example, they may be to us baffling enigmas; much more when they have to do, as is in large part the case in our texts, with the wholly unknown internal or external history of a sect. The obscurity is increased by the fact that the allusions are often a tissue of fragmentary quotations or reminiscences out of the Old Testament, chosen and combined, it seems, by purely verbal a.s.sociation, or taken in an occult allegorical sense.(2) The allegories of which an interpretation is given, as when Amos 5 26 f. is applied to the emigration to Damascus and the inst.i.tutions and laws of the sect, and Ezekiel 44 15 to the cla.s.ses of the community, do not encourage us to think that we should be able to divine the meaning by our unaided intelligence. It is a fortunate circ.u.mstance that the writer comes back more than once to the salient events in the sect's history, for these repet.i.tions of the same thing in different forms afford considerable help to the interpreter, so that the main facts may be made out with at least a considerable degree of probability.
The princ.i.p.al seat of the sect was in the region of Damascus, where its adherents formed numerous communities. It was composed of Israelites who had migrated thither from Judaea; thither also had come ”the interpreter of the law,” the founder of the sect; there it had been organized by a covenant repeatedly referred to as ”the new covenant in the land of Damascus.” Many who entered into this new covenant at the beginning did not long remain true to it; the writer inveighs vehemently against those who fell away, accusing them not only of grave error, but of gross violations of the law; but this crisis had been pa.s.sed, and when the book was written the community was apparently flouris.h.i.+ng.
The most coherent account of the origin of the sect is found on pages 5-6:(3)
At the end of the devastation of the land arose men who removed the boundary and led Israel astray; and the land was laid waste because they spoke rebelliously against the commandments of G.o.d by Moses and also against his holy Anointed,(4) and prophesied falsehood to turn Israel back from following G.o.d. But G.o.d remembered the covenant with the forefathers, and he raised up from Aaron discerning men and from Israel wise men, and he heard them, and they dug the well. ”The well, princes dug it, n.o.bles of the people delved it, with the legislator” (Numbers 21 18). The well is the law, and they who dug it are the captivity of Israel(5) who went forth from the land of Judah and sojourned in the land of Damascus, all of whom G.o.d called princes because they sought him.(6)... The legislator is the interpreter of the law, as Isaiah said, ”Bringing forth a tool for his work” (Isa. 54 16), and the n.o.bles of the people are those who came to delve the well with the statutes which the legislator decreed that men should walk in them in the complete end of wickedness; and besides these they shall not obtain any (statutes) until the teacher of righteousness shall arise in the last times.
The migration is referred to in several other places: ”The captivity of Israel, who migrated from the land of Judah” (4 2 f.);(7) ”those who held firm made their escape to the northern land,” by which the region of Damascus is meant (7 13 f.; cf. 7 15, 18 f.). The time of the migration is plainly indicated in the pa.s.sage quoted above (5 20 ff.). The men who, after the end of the devastation of the land, ”removed the boundary,” and led Israel astray, speaking rebelliously against the commandments of G.o.d by Moses and against his holy Anointed, prophesying falsely to turn Israel away from following G.o.d, in consequence of which the land was laid waste, are most naturally taken for the h.e.l.lenizing leaders of the Seleucid time.
In this period, it seems that a number of Jews, including priests and levites, withdrew to the region of Damascus,(8) and there they subsequently bound themselves by covenant to live strictly in accordance with the law as defined by their legislator.
With this the other allusions agree. Thus in A, p. 8 (= B, p. 19), at the end of a violent invective against the sinners, of whom it is said, ”The princes of Judah are like those who remove the boundary,” we read that ”they separated not from the people [and their sins, B], but presumptuously broke through all restraints, walking in the way of the wicked (heathen), of whom G.o.d said, 'The venom of dragons is their wine, and the head of asps is cruel'(9) (Deut. 32 33). The dragons are the kings of the nations, and their wine means their ways, and the head of asps is the head of the Greek kings who came to inflict vengeance upon them.” This again is most naturally understood of Antiochus Epiphanes; the calamities he brought on the Jews were a direct consequence of the course of the h.e.l.lenizing party.(10)
A definite date for these occurrences is given in 1 5 ff.: ”When G.o.d's wrath was over, three hundred and ninety years after he gave them into the power of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, he visited them, and caused to spring up from Israel and Aaron a root of his planting to inherit his land and to thrive on the good things of his earth. And they recognized their wickedness and knew that they were guilty men, and they were like blind men and like men groping their way for twenty years. And G.o.d took note of their deeds, that with perfect heart they sought him, and he raised up for them a teacher of righteousness to guide them in the way of his heart.”
The ”root” which G.o.d, mindful of his covenant, caused to spring up from Aaron and Israel is the men with whom the religious revival, or reformation, began, the forefathers of the sect (see 6 2 f., and below, p.
375);(11) the ”teacher of righteousness” is the ”interpreter of the law who came to Damascus” (6 7 f., 7 18 f.). The dates refer therefore to the origin of the sect. Three hundred and ninety years from the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (597 or 586 B.C.) would bring us, by our chronology, to 207 or 196 B.C. The Jewish chronology of the Persian period is, however, always too long by from forty to seventy years,(12) and a.s.suming, as it is fair to do, that our author made the same error, the three hundred ninety years would run out in the middle of the third century. Dr. Schechter suspects, with much probability, that the original reading was ”_four_ hundred and ninety years,” the common apocalyptic cycle (Dan. 9 2, 24; Enoch 89-90; 93, etc.). Making the same allowance for error, we should be brought again to a time not far removed from the punishment inflicted on the people by Antiochus Epiphanes (see above, p.
333 f.).(13)
There is nothing in the texts which demands a later date for the origin of the sect. The last event in the national history to which reference is made is the vengeance inflicted on the heathenizing rulers of the people by ”the head of the Greek kings.” To the misfortunes of the people in the following centuries, such as the taking of Jerusalem by Pompey or its destruction by t.i.tus, there is no allusion. It may perhaps be inferred not only that the schism antedated these calamities, but that the book was written before them. In the author's frame of mind toward the religious leaders of Palestinian Jewry, he would have been likely to record such conspicuous judgments upon them. A comparison with the a.s.sumption of Moses is instructive on this point. There the sweeping denunciation of the priesthood and the scribes, ”their teachers in those times,” and of the G.o.dless Asmonaean priest-kings, is followed by the well-deserved judgment inflicted on them by Herod, and after him comes Varus, burning part of the temple, crucifying, and carrying off into slavery. The second of the Psalms of Solomon may also be compared.
The schismatic character of the sect would also be explained if it arose in an age when the character of the political and religious heads of the Jewish people was such as to move G.o.d-fearing and law-abiding men to repudiate them with all their ways and works. For it is not merely with a sect, differing from the ma.s.s of their fellows in certain opinions and practices, that we have to do, but with a schism. The Covenanters of Damascus are radical come-outers, seceders not only from the land of Judaea, but from established Judaism, on which they look much as the Puritan Separatists in the seventeenth century looked on the English Church; they might have taken to themselves the prophetic word so often in the mouth of the Puritan, ”Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord” (Isa. 52 11), as they do apply to the religious teachers of the Jewish church the most violent invectives of the same prophet (50 11, 59 4 ff.; see below, p. 344 f.). They will not even call themselves Jews, they are Israelites who went forth from the land of Judaea; their Messiah is to spring from Aaron and Israel, not from Judah; when the final judgment comes in its appointed time, it will no longer be permitted to make compact with the house of Judah, but every man must stand in his own stronghold;(14) when the glory of G.o.d s.h.i.+nes out on Israel, all the wicked of Judah shall be cut off, in the day of its trial by fire. They reject the temple in Jerusalem, and will not offer on its altar. If we consider that the Essenes, notwithstanding their wider divergence from the common type of Judaism, seem to have regarded themselves as within the pale of the church, and to have been so regarded by others-enjoying, indeed, with the people the reputation of peculiar sanct.i.ty-the schismatic character of our sect appears in a still stronger light.
The language of the book is not inconsistent with the age to which the contents would seem to a.s.sign it. The vocabulary is in the main Biblical, but there are a number of words which otherwise occur only in the writings of the Mishnic age or later. Some of these belong to the technical terminology of the law schools, some of them appear to be peculiar to the sect. A few of the Biblical words also are used in later senses and applications. It is proper to bear in mind, however, that the Hebrew originals of the works with which it would be most natural to compare our text, such as Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Gospel, are not preserved; in fact, between the last books of the Old Testament and the rabbinical literature of the second Christian century there is a hiatus in the history of the Hebrew language, so that words which appear for the first time in the Mishna and kindred works may have been, and in many cases probably were, in use much earlier. It is unnecessary therefore to suppose that such words were introduced into our texts by later scribes, though the possibility of such changes must of course be admitted. The particular instances in which Dr. Schechter thinks that late and foreign influences are most clearly to be recognized-the t.i.tle of the ”censor” and the peculiar name for a house of wors.h.i.+p-are discussed elsewhere.(15) More remarkable than the vocabulary of the book is its syntax. The consecutive constructions of the perfect and the imperfect are regularly employed, not only in imitation of Biblical models in narrative and prophetic pa.s.sages, but in the legal part of the book; and in spite of some irregularities, which may in part at least be laid to the charge of scribes, the use of these tenses is generally correct. In this respect the Hebrew of the book differs entirely from that of the Mishna and the contemporary and later Midras.h.i.+m, in which the characteristic features of cla.s.sical tense-syntax have entirely disappeared, under the influence, it is generally supposed, of the Aramaic vernacular. In comparison with these writings the vocabulary also is notably free from foreign admixture. There are no words borrowed from Greek and Latin, and only one or two instances where an Aramaic term seems to have been adopted. The orthography also, in its more sparing use of the semivowels to indicate the vowels _u_ and _i_, resembles that of the Bible.
The founder of the sect is called the ”teacher of righteousness” (1 11),(16) ”the only, or beloved, teacher” (20 14);(17) ”the only one” (20 32); he is ”the legislator,” that is, ”the interpreter of the law” (6 7); and this interpreter of the law, who came to Damascus, is the star who, according to Balaam's prophecy, was to issue from Jacob (7 18 f.).(18) He showed them how to walk in the way of G.o.d's heart (1 11); as interpreter of the law he ordained them statutes to walk in till the end of wickedness-statutes which shall not be superseded by any others ”until there arise the teacher of righteousness in the last days” (6 11 f.). To him, therefore, are attributed the distinctive principles and observances of the sect as they are set forth in this book. ”His anointed,” through whom G.o.d made known to men his holy spirit, and who is true (2 12 f.), is in all probability the same person with the teacher, the star, just as the anointed from Aaron and Israel who is to arise in the future (20 1) is the same as the teacher of righteousness to whose voice they will then listen (20 32; see below, p. 343).
Those of the emigrants who accepted the guidance of the teacher of righteousness, the interpreter of the law, entered into the ”new covenant in the land of Damascus” (6 19, 8 21, 19 33 f., 20 12). The idea of the ”new covenant” was doubtless suggested by Jer. 31 31 ff. (cf. 32 36 ff.; Ezek. 37 26, etc.), where the establishment of the new covenant, in the stead of the old covenant which their fathers broke, marks the restoration of G.o.d's favor, the beginning of a new and better time. The same use of the pa.s.sage in Jeremiah is made at length by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (8 6 ff.), The substance of the covenant may be gathered from 6 11-7 5:
All who were brought into the covenant are not to enter into the sanctuary to light its altar, but became closers of the door, as G.o.d said, ”Who among you will close its door?” and ”Thou shalt not light my altar in vain” (Mal. 1 10);(19) but shall observe to do according to the interpretation of the law for the end of wickedness, and to separate from the children of perdition, and to keep aloof from unrighteous gain, which is unclean by vow and ban,(20) and from the property of the sanctuary, and from robbing the poor of the people and making widows their spoil and murdering orphans; and to separate between the unclean and the clean, and to show the difference between the holy and the common; and to observe the Sabbath day as it is defined, and the season feasts, and the fast-day, in accordance with the commandments of those who entered into the new covenant in the land of Damascus; to set apart the sacred dues as they are defined; and that a man should love his neighbor as himself, and sustain the poor and needy and the proselyte, and to seek each the welfare of the other; and that no man transgress the prohibited degrees, but guard against fornication according to the rule; and that a man should reprove his brother according to the commandment, and not bear a grudge from day to day; and to separate from all forms of uncleanness according to their several prescriptions; and that a man should not defile his holy spirit, even as G.o.d separated for them (sc.
unclean from clean). All who walk in these precepts in perfection of holiness, according to all the foundations of the covenant of G.o.d,(21) have the a.s.surance that they shall live a thousand generations.
Early in the history of the sect a serious defection occurred. Men who entered among the first into the covenant incurred guilt, like their forefathers, by following their sinful inclinations; they forsook the covenant of G.o.d and preferred their own will, and went about after the stubbornness of their heart, every man doing as he pleased (3 10 ff.); the men who entered into the new covenant in the land of Damascus went back and proved false, and turned aside from the well of living waters (19 33 f.). Their names were struck out of the registers of the sect, as were those of such as fell away in later times.