Part 1 (2/2)

We can readily imagine that many found the rule of the sect too strict and the discipline by which it was enforced too severe. Our texts, however, speak not of such occasional and individual lapses, but of the repudiation of the covenant by numbers at one time. It seems that another leader had arisen, of very different temper from the founder, who drew away many after him. In the eyes of those who remained steadfast in the faith, the new teacher was naturally a false prophet, a kind of antichrist. He is called the liar (”the man of lies,” 20 15), the scoffer (1 14); his adherents are scoffers,(22) who uttered error about the righteous statutes, and spurned the covenant and plighted faith which they established in the land of Damascus, that is to say, the new covenant.

They and their families shall have no portion in the house of the law (20 10 ff.). For their unfaithfulness they were delivered to the sword (3 10 ff.), until of all the men of war who went with the liar none was left (20 14 ff.).(23) This came to pa.s.s about forty years after the death of the unique teacher (_l.c._). If the emigration to Damascus occurred under Antiochus Epiphanes,(24) the end of the episode of the false prophet would fall about the beginning of the first century B.C., and we should have at least an upper limit for the writing of the book. The pa.s.sion which every mention of this defection arouses suggests that it was fresh in memory, and would incline us to date the writing not very long after the time indicated. It should be observed, however, that the sentence which counts forty years from the death of the unrivalled teacher to the end of the liar's army sits loose in the context, and may be a gloss, in which case the book might be some decades older.

With the remnant who remained faithful through the great defection ”G.o.d confirmed his covenant with Israel forever, revealing to them the secret of things in which all Israel was in error, his holy Sabbaths and his glorious festivals and his righteous testimonies and his true ways and the pleasure of his will, things which if a man do he shall live by them. He opened a way before them, and they dug a well for copious waters.” ”In the abundance of his wonderful grace he atoned for their guilt and forgave their transgression, and built for them a sure house in Israel, the like of which did not arise in times past nor until now” (3 12-20). The prediction of the sure house (1 Sam. 2 35) seems to be fulfilled in the stability of the sect itself, or perhaps, with closer adherence to the prophecy, in that of its faithful priesthood.

So much may be gathered from the book about the origin and history of the sect. We turn now to its expectation. As a teacher of righteousness, an anointed one (priest), was the founder of the sect, so in the last times a teacher of righteousness, an anointed one, shall appear (6 10 f.). Those who proved faithless to the covenant are cut off from the community, ”from the time when the unique teacher was taken away until the anointed one from Aaron and Israel shall arise” (19 35-20 1), that is, during the whole of the present dispensation. Dr. Schechter regards the anointed one who is to appear in the future as the founder of the sect _redivivus:_ the present dispensation ”seems to be the period intervening between the _first_ appearance of the Teacher of Righteousness (p. 1, l. 11) (the founder of the Sect), who was gathered in or died,(25) and the second appearance of the Teacher of Righteousness who is to rise in 'the end of the days' (p. 6, l. 11). Moreover, the Only Teacher, or Teacher of Righteousness, is identical with the Messiah, or the Anointed one from Aaron and Israel, whose advent is expected by the Sect.”(26) The texts, however, say nothing of the disappearance, or a second appearance, or reappearance, or return of the founder; nor do the words ”until the teacher of righteousness shall arise in the last days,” ”until the anointed shall arise from Aaron and Israel,” mean that he shall rise from the dead, as Dr. Schechter interprets them.(27) The Messiah whose advent the sect expects at the end of the present period of history is, as in the older parts of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, a priest; and the function of the priest-messiah is not, as in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to mediate between man and G.o.d, but to instruct men in righteousness, to guide them in the way of G.o.d's heart. That the founder of the sect also was both priest and teacher is by no means sufficient to establish the ident.i.ty of the two figures. It was the office of the priest to teach Israel the law, ”all the statutes which the Lord hath spoken unto them through Moses” (Lev. 10 11; cf. Deut. 33 10); ”the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts” (Mal. 2 7). Ezra is the type of a priest who had not only prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, but to teach in Israel statutes and judgments (Ezra 7 10); he was, according to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the restorer of Judaism. It was a departure from the ideal of the law itself that, when the priesthood showed itself unworthy of its calling, the teaching function was a.s.sumed by lay scribes, and even in later times there were many priestly teachers among the Scribes and among the Doctors. That our sect looks back to one such as its founder, and forward to another as the great teacher of the Messianic age, is in no way surprising. If the author had meant what Dr.

Schechter thinks, it is fair to a.s.sume that he would have said it unmistakably; for the ident.i.ty of the expected Messiah with the dead founder, if it was part of the belief of the sect, would of necessity be a singular and significant part of it.(28)

The coming judgment of G.o.d is represented rather as a judgment on the faithless members of the sect, including those who have seceded from it or been expelled, than in its more general aspects. The long eschatological pa.s.sage in B (20 15 to the end) is illegible in spots near the beginning, but the general tenor is clear:

In that consummation the anger of G.o.d will be inflamed against Israel, as he said, ”There is no king and no prince, and no judge and none that reproves in righteousness” (cf. Hos. 3 4). Those who turn from the transgression [of Jacob](29) and keep the covenant of G.o.d will then confer with one another; their footsteps will be firm in the way of G.o.d (and the prophecy will be fulfilled which says), ”And G.o.d hearkened to their words and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him for those that fear G.o.d and think on his name” (Mal. 3 16), until deliverance and righteousness emerge for those that fear G.o.d, ”and ye shall return and see the difference between righteous and wicked, and between a servant of G.o.d and one who serves him not” (Mal. 3 18). And he shows favor to those that love him and keep his commandments, for a thousand generations....(30)

Each man according to his spirit, shall they be judged by his holy counsel, and all who have broken through the bounds of the law, of those who entered into the covenant, when the glory of G.o.d s.h.i.+nes out on Israel, shall be cut off from the midst of the camp, and with them all the evil-doers of Judah, in the days when it is tried in the fire. But all who held firmly by these precepts, going out and coming in in conformity with the law, and listened to the voice of the teacher, will confess(31) before G.o.d.... ”We have done evil, we, and our fathers also, when they went contrary to the statutes of the covenant, and faithful are thy judgments upon us.” And they will not act presumptuously against his holy statutes and his righteous judgment and his faithful testimonies.

They will be instructed in the ancient judgments by which the followers of the unique one were judged, and will hearken to the words of the teacher of righteousness. And they will not controvert the righteous statutes when they hear them; they will rejoice and be glad, and their heart will be strong, and they will show themselves mighty against all the people of the world.(32) And G.o.d will atone for them, and they will see his salvation with joy, because they trusted in his holy name.

Here the fragment ends. The destruction of those who fall away from the sect is threatened in other places; it will suffice to quote the most important (19 5 ff.):

Upon all those who reject the commandments and the statutes, the deserts of the wicked shall be requited when G.o.d visits the earth, when the word comes to pa.s.s which was written by Zechariah the prophet, ”Sword, awake against my shepherd and against the man that is my fellow, saith G.o.d; smite the shepherd, and let the sheep be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones” (Zech. 13 7). But those who observe it (sc. the obligations of the covenant) are ”the poor of the flock” (Zech. 11 7). These shall escape at the end of the visitation, but the former (sc.

those who reject the commandments) shall be given over to the sword when the Anointed of Aaron and Israel comes, as it was at the end of the first visitation, of which G.o.d said by Ezekiel that a mark should be made on the foreheads of them that sigh and cry, and the rest were delivered to the sword that executes the judgment of the covenant. And so shall the judgment be of all who enter into his covenant and do not hold firmly by these statutes, they shall be visited even with extermination by the hand of Belial. This is the day in which G.o.d will visit, as he spoke, ”The princes of Judah are become like men who remove the boundary; on them will I pour out my fury like water” (Hos. 5 10). For they entered into the covenant of repentance, but did not turn aside from the way of faithless men, and wallowed in ways of fornication and in unrighteous gain, and avenging themselves and bearing a grudge against one another.

It is possible, of course, that the judgment of the heathen world, which looms so large in most of the apocalypses, may have had a place in parts of the book now lost, but if it had been a very important feature in the expectation of the sect we should hardly fail to find at least allusions to it in the pages in our hands. The author is almost exclusively interested in the sect itself, in the division which had rent it, and in polemics against laxer interpretations of the law. This limitation of the horizon is characteristically sectarian, and may suggest, moreover, as has been said above, that the writer is not far removed in time from the split in the new organization.

The polemic is especially pointed against certain opponents who are described as ”those who build a wall and plaster it with stucco” (4 19; 8 12).(33) They follow a commandment (_?au_); probably connoting, as in Hosea 5 11, from which the phrase is taken, an arbitrary rule of their own, a commandment of men.(34) G.o.d hates them, his anger is kindled against them (8 18). These ”builders” are false teachers; Biblical denunciations of the false prophets are applied to them. (See especially 8 12 f.) Points in which their teaching is particularly a.s.sailed are that they allow polygamy and the remarriage of divorced persons during the life of the other party, and hold it lawful for a man to marry his niece; that they defile the sanctuary by the laxity of some of their rules and practice about s.e.xual uncleanness; they presume blasphemously to impugn the ”statutes of the covenant of G.o.d” (the legislation of the sect), declaring that they are not right, and saying abominable things about them (4 20-5 14). The positions so hotly denounced, especially in the matter of marriage and divorce, are those of the Palestinian rabbis as we know them in the Mishna and kindred works, and in so far as the Pharisees had a dominating influence in the schools of the law they may be regarded as in a peculiar sense the object of this invective, which is, however, sweeping enough to include all rabbinical Judaism. Such verses as Isaiah 50 11 and 59 4 ff. are hurled at them; they are compared to Johanneh and his brother, whom Belial raised up against Moses (5 17 ff.).(35)

The sect prohibited polygamy, which they stigmatized as fornication, arguing from the creation-”a male and a female created he them” (cf. Matt.

19 4), and from the story of the flood-”by pairs they went into the ark,”

and from the law which forbade the prince to multiply wives unto himself (Deut. 17 17), that is, as they understood it, to take more than one wife.

To forestall an objection, it is added: ”But David had not read in the sealed book of the law which was in the ark, for it was not opened in Israel from the time of the death of Eleazar and Joshua and the elders who wors.h.i.+pped the Astartes, but was hidden and not brought to light until Zadok arose” (5 2-5; see below, p. 359).

Marriage with another woman while a man had a divorced wife living was apparently put in the same category with having two wives at the same time (4 20 f.; cf. Matt. 5 31 f.). Marriage with a niece (brother's or sister's daughter) they treated as incest, reasoning that marriage between a woman and her uncle stood on all fours with marriage between a man and his aunt, which was expressly forbidden as within the prohibited degrees of kins.h.i.+p.(36) The three snares of Belial by which he ensnared Israel are fornication (that is, plural or incestuous unions), wealth (that is, unrighteous gain), and the pollution of the sanctuary (4 15 f.; cf. 5 6 f.).(37)

The same rigorous tendency which appears in the att.i.tude of the sect in regard to marriage pervades the whole legal part of the work before us.

The rules for the observance of the Sabbath (10 14-11 21) will make this clear.

Concerning the Sabbath, to keep it as it is prescribed.

1. On the sixth day no man shall do any work from the time when the disk of the sun is distant from the western portal(38) by its diameter (?); for this is what he said: Observe the Sabbath day to hallow it.

2. On the Sabbath a man shall not engage in any foolish conversation; and he shall not exact repayment from his neighbor; nor shall he give judgment in matters of property; he shall not talk about matters of work and labor to be done on the next day.

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