Judaism in Late Antiquity 5: A Systematic Reading of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Judaism of Qumran. theory of Israel [1] 9004120017, 9789004120013

Citation preview

JUDAISM IN LATE ANTIQUITY PART FIVE

THE JUDAISM OF QUMRAN: A SYSTEMIC READING OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS VOLUME ONE

HANDBOOK OF ORIENTAL STUDIES HANDBUCH DER ORIENTALISTIK SECTION ONE

THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST EDITED BY

H. ALTENMULLER · B. HROUDA · B.A. LEVINE · R.S. O'FAHEY K.R. VEENHOF · C.H.M. VERSTEEGH

VOLUME FIFTY-SIX

JUDAISM IN LATE ANTIQUITY PART FIVE

THE JUDAISM OF QUMRAN: A SYSTEMIC READING OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS VOLUME ONE

JUDAISM IN LATE ANTIQUITY EDITED BY

ALAN]. AVERY-PECK, JACOB NEUSNER AND

BRUCE D. CHILTON PART FIVE

THE JUDAISM OF QUMRAN: A SYSTEMIC READING OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS VOLUME ONE

Theory qf Israel

.;;:,~~~~£GJ[)~ ....,

.

7

.c

r-

'r"

?

.D

..c: (J)

0

~

bO

... .:: a.,

P-. ~

...

ro

8 :s ;:l a :rl='

• >--

...: ;;::

0

0::

0 01 0

~

~ ~

"§ c ~

~ ~

::

~

"' ~

La pt>l il e n1a1son

(~[)

- -

0

30m

Quinran Period II Ruilrlings Showmg Hoofs

Figure 3: 7he Settlement

if Qymran with doorways and Degree if Privacy marked.

4. JEWISH LAW AT QUMRAN Lawrence H. Schiffman New York University The Qumran collection yielded several major scrolls with halakhic content. 1 The Rule of the Community provides, among its initiation rites, information on the purity system of the sectarians as well as about their understanding of the theology ofJewish law. 2 The Rule of the Congregation, a messianic document, sets out a kind of eschatological halakhah. 3 The War Scroll contains an entire version of the Deuteronomic laws of war as understood by the sectarians. 4 In addition, the War Scroll alludes to sacrificial law and rules of ritual impurity.5 Cave 4 yielded manuscripts of the Zadokite Fragments and other halakhic works describing an entire system of Jewish law concerning Sabbath, marriage, purity, priestly status, etc. 6 It was this text which was found in two partial manuscripts the Cairo genizah long before the discovery of their counterparts in the caves of Qumran. 7 Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah (4QMMT) reports Pharisee-Sadducean disputes regarding sacrificial and purification laws in a sectarian context.8 The caves also yielded phylacteries and mezuzot 9 that, along 1 For a survey, see L.H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History qf Judaism, the Background I!! Christianity, the liJst Library qfQymran (Philadelphia and jerusalem, 1994), pp. 243-312. 2 C£, L.H. Schiffman, Sectarian Lam in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Courts, Testimony and the Penal Code (Chico, 1983), pp. 161-168. 3 L.H. Schiffman, The Eschatological Community qf the Dead Sea Scrolls (Atlanta, 1989). 4 Reflections of these laws of war are discussed in Yadin, The Scroll qf the War qf the Sons qf Light against the Sons qf Darkness, trans. B. Rabin and C. Rabin (Oxford, 1962), pp. 65-86, 198-228. C£, also L.H. Schiffman, "The Laws of War in the Temple Scroll," in RQ)3, 1998, pp. 299-311. 5 Yadin, The Scroll qf the War, p. 226. 6 J.M. Baumgarten, Qymran Cave 4, XIII: The Damascus Docume:nt (4Q_266-273) (DJD 8; Oxford, 1996), especially pp. 1-22;J.M. Baumgarten, et al., Qymran Cave 4, XXV.· Halakhic Texts (Oxford, 1999). 7 S. Schechter, Documents qfJewish Sectaries (191 0; repr.: New York, 1970); L. Ginzberg, An Unknown Jewish Sect (New York, 1976); Ch. Rabin, The :(pdokite Documents (Oxford, 1954). 8 E. Qjmron and]. Strugnell, Qymran Cave 4, V.· Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah (DJD 10; Oxford, 1994), pp. 142-146, 152-156, 161-162, 166-171. 9 Y. Yadin, Tqillin from Qymran (X Q Phyl 1-4) (Jerusalem, 1969); J.T. Milik, "Tefillin, Mezuzot et Targums (4Ql28-4Ql57)," in Qymran Grotte 4: II (Oxford,

76

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN

with the biblical scrolls, revealed much information on the scribal halakhah of the times. 10 Cave 11 yielded the Temple Scroll, a rewriting of the Torah designed to put forward the author's views on a variety of topics of Jewish law, most notably relating to the Temple, sacrifices, and purity. 11 These materials all help clarify legal issues that arise in Tannaitic texts and Rabbinic judaism. The nature of the law in Qumran documents was revealed in greater and greater detail as more and more pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls puzzle were put into place. 12 Throughout Yadin's commentary on the Temple Scroll, he alluded to the polemical nature of the text as a reformist document, calling for changes in the Temple structure, sacrificial practice, even government and military practices in the Hasmonean state in which the author lived. Yadin observed that numerous statements of the author constituted polemics against what he termed the "solidified law" of the Sages. The polemics Yadin noticed against views inherent in later Rabbinic literature were eventually to be understood by scholars in light of the MMT document. 13 Based on a short allusion to this document and a brief quotation that had been earlier published under the title of 4QMishnique, 14 it had already been proposed that this document 1977), pp. 33-89; E. Tov, "Tifillin of Different Origin from Qumran?" in Y. Hoffman and F. H. Polak, eds., A Light fir J(J£ob: Studies in the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls in Memory qf](J£ob Shalom Licht (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1997), pp. 44*-54*; L.H. Schiffman, "Phylacteries and Mezuzot," in Encyclopedia qf the Dead Sea Scrolls, vol. 2, pp. 675-677. 10 E. Tov, "Scribal Practices Reflected in the Documents from thejudean Desert and in the Rabbinic Literature: A Comparative Study," in M.V. Fox, et al., eds., Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran (Winona Lake, 1996), pp. 383-403; idem, "Scribal Practices and Physical Aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls," in J.L. Sharpe and J. van Kampen, eds., The Bible as Book- The Manuscript Tradition (London, 1998), pp. 9-33. 11 Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll (Jerusalem, 1983), vol. l, pp. 89-385. On the sources of the Temple Scroll, see L.H. Schiffman, "The Temple Scroll and the Nature of its Law: The Status of the Question," in E. Ulrich and]. VanderKam, eds., The Communiry qfthe Renwed Covenant (Notre Dame, 1994), pp. 46-51. 12 L.H. Schiffman, "Legal Works," in Encyclopedia qfthe Dead Sea Scrolls, vol. l, pp. 479-480. 13 E. Qimron and]. Strugnell, "An Unpublished Halakhic Letter from Qumran," in]. Amitai, ed., Biblical Archaeology Today: Proceedings qf the International Co'!ftrence on Biblical Archaeology, Jerusalem, April 1984 (Jerusalem, 1985), pp. 400-407. 14 J.T. Milik, Les 'Petites Grottes' de Qymran (M. Baillet,J.T. Milik, and R. de Vaux, eds.; Oxford, 1962), p. 225. He described the text as an "ecrit pseudepigraphique mishnique."

JEWISH LAW AT QUMRAN

77

as well as the Temple Scroll included some Sadducean laws. 15 Information on the halakhic differences between the Pharisees and the Sadducees is available in Tannaitic sources, 16 but Josephus had reported only theological differences between them, not mentioning any specific halakhic disputes (Ant. 13:171-173; War 2:119-166; Ant. 18:11-17). MMT 17 discusses numerous halakhic disputes, some of which are directly parallel to the Pharisee-Sadducee disputes of Tannaitic texts. This document attributes the Sadducean positions to the Dead Sea sect and the Pharisaic opinions to their opponents. Further, other disputes in this document easily lend themselves to interpretation along the same lines, for they clearly involve differences of opinion in which the Qumran sect's position can be understood as arising from the hermeneutical assumptions of the Sadducees or as a result of their priestly and Temple-centered piety. Clearly, in this document and in the Tannaitic material, we are dealing not with Sadducees bent on Hellenization but rather with members of the Qumran sect who· were highly committed Jews whose homiletical and legal traditions differed from those of the Pharisees. Thus, the polemics of the Temple Scroll and other halakhic documents from Qumran represent the views of the Sadducean trend in Jewish law, the traditions and interpretations of which were already to some extent crystallized before the Maccabean Revolt. But perhaps, more surprisingly, the aggregate of all such polemics in the halakhic material in the scrolls, whether direct or indirect, points toward the existence, certainly by about 150 B.C.E., of a considerably developed Pharisaic system of laws against which these particular priestly sectarian circles were arguing. 18 This indeed constitutes a major conclusion for the history of Jewish law. For not only has direct evidence for the Sadducean approach 15 J.M. Baumgarten, "The Pharisaic Sadducean Controversies about Purity and the Qumran Texts," in JJS 31 (1980), pp. 157-170. Cf., M.R. Lehmann, "The Temple Scroll as a Source of Sectarian Halakhah," in RevQ9 (1978), pp. 579-588. 16 Most of these are conveniently listed in E. Schiirer, The History qfthe]ewish People in the Age qf]esus Christ (175 B.C.-A.D. 135), vol. 2 (rev. and ed. by G. Vermes, F. Millar, and M. Black; Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 384-387. 17 See the halakhic analysis of E. ~mron, in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, vol. I 0, pp. 123-177, and the appendix by Y. Sussman, pp. 179-200. The full version of that appendix is available in Hebrew in "Heqer Toldot ha-Halakhah u-Megillot MidbarYehudah: Hirhurim Talmudiyim Rishonim le-'Or Megillat Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah,"in Tarbiz59, !989/1990,pp.ll-77. 18 See J. Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees bifilre 70 (Leiden, 1971 ).

78

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN

been recovered but, more importantly, it has been established conclusively that aspects of the Pharisaic-Rabbinic tradition are deeply rooted in the Hasmonean period. In fact, these conclusions are in marked contrast to the theory of radical discontinuity between the pre- and post-70 period. 19 These Qumran documents push back the date of some of the halakhic debates known from Tannaitic sources into the Hasmonean period and also show us that the PharisaicRabbinic tradition, at least in certain areas of law and specific halakhot, was well developed and distinct already in the Hasmonean period.

7he

C~ntraliry

ifJewish Law

The corpus of Pharisaic-Rabbinic ritual and civil law clearly evolved not only out of biblical traditions but also out of a complex historical process whereby certain forms of exegesis combined with ancient customary law, as well as later decrees and enactments, to produce the system of thought and law that serves as the basis of the Mishnah. This system became the foundation for Talmudic tradition in the land of Israel and in Babylonia and, hence, for the subsequent history of Judaism. The discovery of the legal materials in the Dead Sea Scrolls has enabled a radical restructuring of our positions on these matters. The possibility now exists for the development of a much clearer picture of the way in which the system of Jewish law enshrined in Rabbinic halakhah developed. While a large amount of the Qumran material deals with issues of Jewish law, what later Rabbinic tradition called halakhah, it differs significantly from that of Rabbinic literature. Two reasons may be cited. First, Tannaitic tradition is the product of a long process of development and, by Hasmonean times, its Pharisaic forerunner had yet to reach full maturity. Second, we have mostly Sadducean-type legal material in the Qumran corpus, so to expect congruency with post-destruction Pharisaic-Rabbinic halakhah is unreasonable.

19 Cf., L.H. Schiffman, "Pharisees and Sadducees in Pesher Nahum," in M. Brettler and M. Fish bane, eds., Minhah le-Nahum: Biblical and Other Studies Presented to Nahum M. Sarna in Honour qf his 70th Birthday (Sheffield, 1993), pp. 272-290.

JEWISH LAW AT QUMRAN

79

Qumran literature demonstrates that legal procedures and regulations were a major vehicle for inculcating the theology and meaning of the Jewish way of life. This purpose should be clear from the sheer quantity of the material alone. Further, we do not find here a dry legalism of the type so often represented in caricatures of Rabbinic Judaism. 20 The laws appear here as a means to come close to God and to one's fellow, as a binding force for Israel, calling for ethical as well as spiritual and ritual purity. Indeed, this is the case with all the groups whose writings are represented, or who are alluded to, at Qumran. For example, table fellowship, eating in a state of ritual purity, was practiced by all groups, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes/ Qumranians. 21 Moreover, the position ofJewish law in the history ofJudaism is so central that issues of law were often the determining factor in the alignment of subgroups within the larger community. The basic issues that led to the very formation of the Qumran sect were matters of Jewish law. Priests displaced in the aftermath of the Hasmonean revolt found the rituals and the rulings of the new Jerusalem establishment unacceptable. 22 Others have insisted that the underlying issues leading to the foundation of the Qumran sect related to messianism.23 Yet the new halakhic letter, 4QMMT, shows beyond a doubt that matters of religious practice were at the very heart of the disagreement. 24 20 See the original edition of E. Schiirer A History rif the Jewish People in the Time rif Jesus Christ, 2nd Division, vol. 2 (New York, 1891), § 28. Life under the Law, pp. 90125. 21 J. Neusner, Fellowship in Judaism (London, 1963); A. Oppenheimer, The 'Am HaAretz: A Study in the Social History rif the Jewish People in the Hellenistic-Roman Period (Leiden, 1977), pp. 51-66; C. Rabin, Qy.mran Studies (Oxford, 1957), pp. 1-21; E.P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (London and Philadelphia, 1990), pp. 131-254. 22 F.M. Cross, "The Early History of the Qumran Community," in D.N. Freedman,J.C. Greenfield, eds., New Directions in Biblical Archaeology (Garden City, 1969), p. 82. L.H. Schiffman, "The New Halakhic Letter (4QMMT) and the Origins of the Dead Sea Sect," in BA 53, 1990, pp. 64-73. 23 S. Talmon, "Waiting for the Messiah-The Conceptual Universe of the Qumran Covenanters," in The World rif Qy.mran from Within (Jerusalem and Leiden, 1989), pp. 273-300; "The Emergence of Jewish Sectarianism in the Early Second Temple Period"; "Types of Messianic Expectation at the Tum of the Era," in King, Cult and Calendar in Ancient Israel (Jerusalem, 1986), pp. 194-196; 202-203, 214-224; cf., Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, pp. 317-350; L.H. Schiffman, "Messianic Figures and Ideas in the Qumran Scrolls," in J. Charlesworth, ed., The Messiah: DI!!Jelopments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity (Minneapolis, 1992), pp. 116-129. 24 The pre-eminent role ofjewish law is certainly true for the Tannaitic period as well. Indeed, in the Tannaitic view of the early Christian community, the essential

80

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN

"77zeology" qf Law One of the fundamental issues in Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism concerned how to incorporate extra-biblical traditions and teachings into the legal system and how to justify them theologically. Despite the fact that in antiquity and late antiquity there was little theoretical theological inquiry in Judaism (except in the Hellenistic diaspora), issues of theology were of central importance and often lie behind other more clearly expressed disputes. In the Amoraic period (third to fifth centuries), we find fully developed expressions of an oral law concept. 25 According to this view, when God gave the written Torah to Israel at Sinai, he also revealed a set of interpretations, or interpretative rules according to some views, with which the written Torah was to be understood. These interpretations were believed to lie at the core of a tradition that the Rabbis possessed and transmitted. Stirrings of this same approach are found in Tannaitic literature in which the dual Torah concept is already mentioned. Indeed, the rabbis assert that this notion was operative as early as Hillel and trace their oral traditions back to Sinaitic revelation (B. Shabbat 3la). For the rabbis, this view essentially elevated the oral Torah to a sanctity and authority equal to that of the written. All Jewish groups in the Second Temple period endeavored to assimilate extra-biblical teachings into their way of life. Although we do not have Pharisaic texts from this period, we can suggest the general lines of the approach of this group based on some hints in the Dead Sea Scrolls, later accounts in the New Testament, the writings of Josephus, and on the reports in the even later Tannaitic corpus. 26 cause of the separation of Christianity from judaism was not doctrinal but halakhic. C£, L.H. Schiffman, f1llzo Was a Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish Christian Schism (Hoboken, 1985). It was the view of the Rabbis that the members of the Christian community, from the mid-second century on, were simply not Jews according to halakhah. For the Tannaim, therefore, Christianity was now to be regarded as a separate religious community. From the Rabbinic point of view, as was the case with the Qumranians, matters of jewish law drew the boundaries between communities. 25 L.H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Hoboken, 1991), pp. 179-181; E.E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 286-314. 26 All the early evidence for the Pharisees is collected and analyzed in]. Neusner, From Politics to Piery: The Emergence of Pharisaic Judaism, 2nd ed. (New York, 1979), pp. 13-141.

JEWISH LAW AT Q.UMRAN

81

Apparently, the Pharisees possessed traditions "handed down by the fathers" and "unwritten laws." These included various legal traditions of great antiquity as well as interpretations of the biblical texts. Indeed, the Pharisees were known as expounders of the Torah and seem to have excelled in the application of the laws of the Pentateuch to their own circumstances and times. The Dead Sea Sect assimilated extra-biblical teachings through the concept of the nigleh ("revealed") and nistar ("hidden"). That which was revealed (nigleh) was the simple meaning of Scripture and the commandments that were readily apparent from it. These were known to all Jews. Only the sect possessed the hidden knowledge (nistar), discovered through what the sectarians regarded as inspired biblical exegesis, regularly conducted by members of the sect. Tradition was regarded as having no authority, since all Israel had gone astray, and the true way had only been rediscovered by the sect's teacher. The sectarian rules and the interpretations upon which they were based made clear the application of the law of the Torah to the life of the sect, and made possible life in accord with the "revealed" Torah in the present, pre-messianic age. 27 The Sadducean approach to this issue has generally been misunderstood. The general claim that the Sadducees were strict literalists is often predicated upon late Rabbinic sources and upon a parallel misunderstanding of the medieval Karaite movement. The Sadducees apparently saw only the written law as authoritative, 28 but they, too, admitted the need to interpret it. Their interpretations attempted to adhere as closely as possible to the plain meaning of Scripture (what the Rabbis later called peshat). It may be that we will be able to refine our view of the Sadducees, and perhaps Boethusians, with the help of the Qumran corpus, most notably with the help of 4QMMT and the Temple Scroll. 29 L.H. Schiffman, The Halakhah at Qjimran (Leiden, 1975), pp. 22-23. Contrary to some modern authors, there is no evidence that the Sadducees rejected the Prophets and Writings. The Samaritans, on the other hand, accepted only the Torah, as their separation from the people of Israel took place before the canonization of the Prophets and Writings. 29 Sussman takes the view (pp. 51-56) that the Dead Sea sectarians, Essenes, and Boethusians should be identified with one another. We, however, prefer to see the term "Essenes" as denoting a wider circle of related or similar groups, not one specific sect. Further, virtually all the parallels that can be cited between Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah and Tannaitic descriptions of opponents of the Pharisees refer to Sadducees, not Boethusians. Finally, the Qumran sect constandy refers to itself as Sons of Zadok, making it much more likely that Qumran origins are to be located in a group of Sadducees. 27 28

82

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN

The author/redactor of the Temple Scroll sought to assimilate extra-biblical traditions by the contention that his new, rewritten Torah properly expresses the will of God as revealed in the original document. 30 Since in his view the correct meaning of the divine revelation at Sinai is to be found in the Temple Scroll, he, like the sectarians, has no dual Torah concept. But he does not accept the Qumran notion of a continuous, inspired revelation through biblical exegesis either. He maintains only a one-time revelation, at Sinai. In this respect he agrees with the later rabbis, except that for them the one-time revelation is of two Torahs. For the author/redactor of the Temple Scroll, it is of a single Torah, the true contents of which are expressed in the scroll he produced. From this survey it becomes apparent that the Rabbinic oral law concept was actually the fruition of a long debate in Second Temple times. The view of the Tannaim is essentially a development from that of the Pharisees. From the Pharisaic notion of tradition, it was only a short step to the divinely-revealed second Torah as fully developed in Rabbinic literature. 31

Midrash and Mishnah One of the most significant characteristics of the laws of the Zadokite Fragments is that they are divided into sections by subject classification. These sections are clearly the result of a collector or collectors who brought together material on one subject. These sections often have titles such as, "Regarding the Sabbath, to Observe It according to Its Regulation" (CD 10:14) or "Regarding Forbidden Sexual Relations" (4QHalakhaa 17 1). 32 We can assume that if the entire work were preserved intact, most of the laws would appear under such section headings. These headings help indicate the literary units from which the larger text was composed. The laws contained in the Zadokite Fragments are based, for the

°Cf., Y.

Yadin, 1he Temple Scroll, vol. I, pp. 391-392. See]. Neusner, "Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before A.D. 70: The Problem of Oral Transmission," in JJS 22, 1971, pp. l-18. 32 See E. Larson, M. Lehmann and L.H. Schiffman, in J. Baumgarten, et al., Qymran Cave 4, XXV: Halakhic Texts (DJD 35; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 2551. We have numbered this fragment 17, but it was formerly 12. 3

31

JEWISH LAW AT Q,UMRAN

83

most part, on language derived from biblical verses. 33 It is those verses that are being interpreted, although only rarely are the verses themselves explicitly quoted. It is only by detailed investigation of the apodictic legal statements that one can determine what biblical passages served as the basis of which laws. Nevertheless, some of the prescriptions found in the Zadokite Fragments are actually sectarian regulations, rules dealing with entry to the sect and its particular way of life, not laws based on the Bible. By contrast, the Temple Scroll is of a very different literary character. Like the Zadokite Fragments, the Temple Scroll is a composite work made up of preexisting documents brought together by an author/redactor. These documents were probably composed over a long period of time but share a general literary structure. 34 Because they stem from a common ideological and literary background, they follow set patterns that they share to some extent with the Rewritten Pentateuch, 35 and especially with the 4Q365a material, 36 which may even have originally served as one of the sources of the Temple ScrolJ.3 7 The various laws presented in the Temple Scroll seem at first glance to be rehashes of biblical law, but, in fact, the Bible has been rewritten here in order to allow the expression of a variety of legal views held by the authors of the respective sources. Modifications and expansions designed to convey these views have been made following a variety of literary and exegetical strategies. 38 Yet the overall character of the document-its feel-is that of a virtual Torah, an impression heightened by the utilization in this text of most of the canonical Torah from the end of Exodus through Deuteronomy. If the Zadokite Fragments, with its apodictic law, has the feel of the Mishnah,

33 Cf., D. Dimant, "Ben Miqra' le-Megillot: Sitatot min ha-Torah bi-Megillat Berit Dameseq," in M. Fishbane and E. Tov, eds., "Sha'arei Talmon," Studies in the Bible, Qymran, and the Ancient Near East Presented to Shemaryahu Talmon (Winona Lake, 1992), pp. 113*-122*. 34 Cf., Schiffman, "The Temple Scroll and the Nature of its Law: The Status of the Question," pp. 46-48. 35 E. Tov and S. White, in H. Attridge, et al., Qymran Ca:oe 4. VIII, Parabiblical Texts Part I (DJD 13; Oxford, 1994), pp. 187-318, 335-351. 36 S. White in DJD I3, pp. 319-333. 37 As suggested by J. Strugnell, quoted by B.Z. Wacholder, The Daum ofQymran, the Sectarian Torah and the Teacher of Righteousness (Cincinnati, 1983), pp. 205-206. 38 Yadin, Temple Scroll, vol. I, pp. 71-88; D.D. Swanson, The Temple Scroll and the Bible, The Methodology of II QT (Leiden, 1995).

84

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN

the Temple Scroll, with its scriptural character, has some of the feel of Midrash. One of the profound issues that divided scholars of the history of halakhah was the intractable question of which came first, Midrash or Mishnah. Did exegesis of Scripture generate general, abstract halakhic statements39 or did halakhic statements requiring explanation generate a literature of secondary scriptural justification?4° Or, possibly, did a complex interactive process allow the simultaneous creation of both genres of tradition? The discovery of the Zadokite Fragments presented scholars with a Mishnah-like document in which apodictic legal statements dominated, in which some casuistic statements were included as well, and in which a small number of justificatory scriptural proof-texts also appeared. This actually led some scholars to conclude that the Mishnaic type was the earliest form. This view makes the questionable assumption that the sectarian texts and the Pharisaic-Rabbinic materials would have undergone a similar history. The Temple Scroll, however, shows how the very words of the Torah were rewritten to express the legal traditions and polemics of the author(s). 41 The very same laws are sometimes found both in this "midrashic" text and in "mishnaic" form in the Zadokite Fragments, Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah, or other texts. 42 It is clear, therefore, that, at least for some Jews, already in the second century B.C.E., two forms coexisted among students of the Torah, just as they coexisted in Tannaitic circles by the second century C.E. To be sure, the Pharisaic-Rabbinic and Sadducean/Sectarian approaches were not the same, but they did share the two-fold nature of study, apodictic law and scriptural exegesis.

39 J.Z. Lauterbach, "Midrash and Mishnah," in ]Q,R n.s. 5, 191411915, pp. 503527; 6, 1915/1916, pp. 23-95, 303-323. 40 E.E. Urbach, "Ha-Derashah Ki-Yesod ha-Halakhah u-Ve'ayat ha-Soferim," in Tarbiz 27, 1957/1958), pp. 166-182. 41 Yadin, Temple Scroll, vol. 1, pp. 71-88. 42 L.H. Schiffman, "The Place of 4QMMT in the Corpus of Qumran Manuscripts," inj. Kampen and M.J. Bernstein, eds., Reading 4Q,MMT: New Perspectives on Qgmran Law and History (Adanta, 1996), pp. 81-98; idem, "The Relationship of the Zadokite Fragments to the Temple Scroll," in The Damascus Document: A Centennial qf Discovery: Proceedings qf the Third International Symposium qf the Orion Center for the Sturfy qf the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 4-8 February, 1998 (Leiden, 2000), pp. 133-145.

JEWISH LAW AT QUMRAN

85

Sacrifice and Liturgy Central to the development of Rabbinic Judaism is the effect of the destruction of the Second Temple. This catastrophe is better seen in wider context as including the other effects of the Great Revolt: the destruction of major population centers, the loss of the city ofJerusalem, and the crisis of faith this might have precipitated. This cataclysm played a major part in the transition from a religious system in which the Temple and its sacrificial worship was the main object of piety and devotion to one in which the study of the Torah and observance of its commandments were the central focus. The evidence of the Second Temple materials points to a period of transition rather than a sharp cataclysmic break. By the time the Temple was destroyed, the growing awareness of alternative forms of piety had prepared the way for this change of emphasis and had made this transition from Temple to Torah a much smoother one than would have otherwise been the case. The Qumran corpus provides a rather contradictory picture regarding sacrifice, and, indeed, this is a perfect example of why we cannot assume that the scrolls are all part of a uniform corpus. The Temple Scroll spells out an entire system of sacrificial worship. 43 This system is intended to bring about the ultimate sanctity of people and land and to allow the divine presence to dwell among Israel. 44 The text was finally redacted in the latter days ofJohn Hyrcanus or early in the reign of Alexander Janneus 45 and seeks to set out the ideal Temple and worship, state and government, for the period up to the messianic age, at which time a new Temple would be built by God (11 QT 29:9-1 0). 46 This scroll certainly assumes that the way to God is through the portals of the Temple and in the courtyards of the House of the Lord. When we examine the material composed by the Qumran sect, we

43 44

123.

See the discussion in Yadin, 17ze Temple Scroll, vol. I, pp. 89-168. L.H. Schiffman, "The Theology of the Temple Scroll," in JQ,R 85, 1994, pp. 109-

45 For this dating, see Yadin, Temple Scroll, vol. 3, pp. 386-390; M. Hengel, J.H. Charlesworth, D. Mendels, "The Polemical Character of'On Kingship' in the Temple Scroll: An Attempt at Dating II QTemple," in JJS 37, 1986, pp. 28-38; L.H. Schiffman, "The King, His Guard, and the Royal Council in the Temple Scroll," in PAA]R 54, 1987, pp. 257-259. 46 C£, Yadin, 17ze Temple Scroll, vol. I, pp. 182-187.

86

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN

find a very different situation. Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah speaks of a group that has left the Temple due to disagreement with its practices,47 especially its conduct of the sacrificial cult. Atonement and sanctity are now to be achieved elsewhere, through the sect. The sect is seen as a virtual temple, itself bringing sanctity to its members. The "eternal plantation" has replaced the eternal house. 48 It is not that the sect is against sacrifice but rather that it must be forgone in the present age, until the end of days when the sect will control the Temple and reinstate the proper conduct of the sacrificial ritual. However we explain the animal bones buried around the buildings at Qumran, we cannot see them as the remains of sacrifices, since the texts foreclose this option. 49 Liturgical texts from the Qumran corpus testify to morning and late afternoon prayers, on the analogy of the daily sacrifices in the Temple. Evidence shows that certain of the later Tannaitic usages are already prefigured here, and almost shocking correspondences in prayer language exist. 50 Yet since the daily prayer texts from Qumran seem to follow the luni-solar calendar, 51 it is impossible to know to which group these prayers belonged. Further, the festival prayers appear to speak of a calendar including various additional festivals, similar to that of the Temple Scroll. 52 Yet someone collected these texts, and it seems most likely that they were recited daily at Qumran. If so, we can see prayer already replacing Temple worship, even before the destruction of the Temple

47 For a full list, see L.H. Schiffman, "The Temple Scroll and the Systems of Jewish Law of the Second Temple Period," in GJ. Brooke, ed., Temple Scroll Studies (Sheffield, 1989), pp. 245-250. 48 J. Licht, Megillat ha-Serakhim (Jerusalem, 1965), pp. 167-175. 49 J.M. Baumgarten, Studies in Qjimran Law (Lei den, 1977), pp. 39-7 4; Schiffman, The Eschatological Community qf the Dead Sea Scrolls, pp. 64-67. 50 L.H. Schiffman, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Early History of Jewish Liturgy," in L. Levine, ed., The Synagogue in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia, 1987), p. 42; B. Nitzan, Qjimran Prayer and Religious Poetry (Leiden, 1994), pp. 35-174; E.G. Chazon, "Hymns and Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls," in P. Flint,]. C. VanderKam, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years (Leiden, 1998), pp. 244-270; E.G. Chazon, "Prayers from Qumran and their Historical Implications," in DSD 1, 1994, pp. 265284. 51 Schiffman, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Early History ofJewish Liturgy," p. 38; J.M. Baumgarten, "4Q 503 (Daily Prayers) and the Lunar Calendar," in RevQ 12, 1986, pp. 399-407. 52 See Yadin, The Temple Scroll, vol. I, pp. 116-119.

JEWISH LAW AT QUMRAN

87

in 70 C.E. To put it another way, sectarian groups may have experienced the destruction of the Temple before the rest of Israel. To them an illegitimate shrine was the same as a non-existent shrine. Their solution, the replacement of sacrifice with prayer, would become that of all Israel in the aftermath of the Great Revolt (66-7 3 C.E.), when Rabbinic Judaism made synagogue liturgy and individual prayer the norm for a growing number of Jews who followed the teachings of the Tannaim. 53 Tannaitic literature testifies to an ongoing debate as to whether the evening prayer (ma'ariv), to which no Temple sacrifice corresponds (only the burning of parts of animals sacrificed earlier in the day), is to be considered obligatory or not (baraita at B. Ber. 27b). Behind this debate is the question of whether the daily prayers are, in fact, tied to the sacrificial system at all. The Amoraic materials testify to a continuation of this debate (B. Ber. 4b; B. Shah. 9b), although one senses that by this time what is at stake is only the legal status of what is already a part of the Jewish ritual system. It used to be believed that the Qumran Scrolls provided evidence for a system of six daily prayers. 54 The recently published fragments of daily liturgical texts, however, testify to a system of two daily prayers, held in the morning and late afternoon, at the time of the morning and late afternoon daily sacrifices. These Qumran texts point toward the conclusion that originally two prayers were required and that the evening prayer developed later. This would explain why the status of the evening prayer continued to be debated in the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods. The Qumran texts, therefore, provide evidence for the earlier practice. Further, the beautiful poem appended to the end of the Rule of the Community indicates unquestionably that the reading of the Shema (Deut. 6:4-9)"5 was practiced by the Qumran sectarians. The Pharisaic-Rabbinic tradition consistently claims that the Pharisees enjoyed halakhic hegemony in the Temple, even though

53 E. Fleischer, "Le-Qadmoniot Tefillot ha-Hovah be-Yisra'el," in Tarbiz 59, 1990, pp. 397-441. 54 S. Talmon, "Mahazor ha-Berakhot shel Kat Midbar Yehudah," in Tarbiz 28, 195811959, pp. 1-20; English trans. in "The 'Manual of Benedictions' of the Sect of the Judaean Desert," in RevQ 2, 1959-1960, pp. 475-500; L.H. Schiffman, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Early History of Jewish Liturgy," pp. 39-40. 55 S. Talmon, The World qfQumran.from Within, p. 226.

88

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN

the priests who ministered there were Sadducean. This hegemony is at least claimed for the latter part of the Hasmonean period (from the rule of Salome Alexandra, 76-67 B.C.E., on) and for the Herodian period. This view has been challenged by some who see this claim as an historical retrojection resulting from the self-image of the Pharisaic-Rabbinic tradition as the carriers of the authentic tradition of Jewish law. 56 In light of 4QMiqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah we must re-evaluate this conclusion. In a number of cases it is possible to identify in MMT disagreements recorded in Tannaitic sources as Pharisee-Sadducee debates. The writers of the "halakhic letter" take the very same positions attributed in Tannaitic sources to the Sadducees. The views they impute to their opponents in the Jerusalem establishment are those attributed in Tannaitic sources to the Pharisees. 57 In other words, if this "halakhic letter" indeed dates from a period close to the founding of the sect~and all evidence points to such a dating~58 it proves that the views attributed to the Pharisees in Tannaitic sources were indeed being practiced in the Temple in Hasmonean times. 59 This conclusion requires us to give much greater credence to the claims of Pharisaic authority in the Temple at least for certain periods. Future studies will have to carefully evaluate Tannaitic traditions pertaining to Temple worship in light of Josephus and other sources in the hope of recovering additional information about the Second Temple.

The Role qf Puriry One of the curiosities of the Mishnah and Tosefta is that these two compilations of Tannaitic law show that debate and discussion of matters of sacrifice and ritual purity continued long after there were any practical ramifications to the study of these rituals. Some scholars 56 M. Smith, "Palestinian Judaism in the First Century," in M. Davis, ed., Israel: Its Role in Civilization (New York, 1956), pp. 73-78; Neusner, From Politics to Piety, p. 57. 57 Qmron and Strugnell, "An Unpublished Halakhic Letter from Qumran;" in Qmron and Strugnell, DJD 10, pp. 116-121. 58 L.H. Schiffman, "The New Halabkic Letter (4QMMT) and the Origins of the Dead Sea Sect." 59 See L.H. Schiffman, "New Light on the Pharisees," in H. Shanks, ed., Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York, 1992), pp. 217-224.

JEWISH LAW AT QUMRAN

89

have viewed the mass of minute regulations on ritual purity in Rabbinic texts as part of a theoretical framework invented by the rabbis when there was no longer a Temple. It is argued that the post-70 C.E. sages sought to replace the practice of these rituals with study about them. The mass of purity regulations from Qumran, including prayers to be recited in connection with purification rituals, shows that this is far from the case. Matters of ritual purity were central issues in Second Temple times. The crucial role of ritual purity in the various texts found at Qumran makes it clear that ritual purity was a pillar upon which Second Temple Judaism rested. Further, it is impossible to maintain that purity was devoid of true religious significance, and the Qumran texts testify that purity was not simply a ritual. 5° Rather, it was understood to be a spiritual state of mind, an ethic, and a way of life.61 The Qumran texts sought to extend ritual purity from the realm of Temple and sacrifice to that of everyday life, and boundaries between groups of Second Temple Jews were constructed according to the purity regulations they observed. 62 The comparison of Qumran texts with Talmudic laws of ritual purity63 yields the conclusion that many of the very same principles were in operation. This congruity results from the fact that these principles were part of the common heritage of Second Temple Judaism. The Dead Sea sect's initiation rituals and penal code are based on a notion of degrees of impurity almost identical to that of the Tannaitic teachings. 64 Yet serious differences do exist between Qumran texts and Rabbinic materials. From the Temple Scroll we may cite as an example of such disagreement the laws of the impurity of the dead, which diverge in many details from those of the later 60 Much of the material is surveyed in M. Newton, 1he Concept qf Puriry at Qjlmran and in the Letters qf Paul (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 10-51. 61 See especially Rule of the Community 2:25-3:12 and the purification rituals in M. Baillet, Qpmran Grotte 4, III (4Q_482-4QJ20) (Oxford, 1982), "Rituel de Purification," pp. 262-286. 62 For a recent discussion of this issue as it relates to the Pharisees, see E.P. Sanders, Jewish Law .from Jesus to the Mishnah (London and Philadelphia, 1990), pp. 131-254. 63 On the Rabbinic approach to ritual purity and impurity, see G. Alon, "The Bounds of the Laws of Levitical Cleanness," in Jews, Judaism and the Classical World (trans. I. Abrahams; Jerusalem, 1977), p. 190 64 L.H. Schiffman, Sectarian Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Courts, Testimony, and the Penal Code (Chico, 1983), pp. 161-65.

90

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN

Tannaitic traditions due to the differing perspectives on biblical exegesis that lie behind the Temple Scroll and the Tannaitic corpus. 65 The major feature of the Qumran Scrolls could be seen to be their regarding of themselves as the true Israel in opposition to the other Jews of the time, and especially to those in charge of the Temple. Their desire to separate themselves from this establishment and to move to Qumran is the overarching principle that caused them to create their peculiar sect. The entrance rules and ranks in their sectarian group constitute fully one-third of the contents of their writings found at Qumran. As the true Israel they had the task of perpetuating the nigleh and nistar that other Jews either did not observe correctly or refused to learn. The sect's rigorous rules and strict halakhah were seen as bulwarks against the time of destruction in the soon-to-dawn eschaton wherein everyone except the true Israel, that is, the sectarians, would be lost, and the sect, victorious with the help of the angels, would enter the Temple, purify it once again and reconstitute the cult as it was meant to be, according to the laws of Qumran.

65 L.H. Schiffman, "The Impurity of the Dead in the Ttmple Scroll," in L.H. Schiffman, ed., Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University Conference in M1m1ory qfYigael Yadin (Sheffield, 1990), pp. 135-156.

5. PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC Johann Maier University of Cologne Most scholars are still accustomed to relating the remains of about eight hundred scrolls from caves 1-11 near Khirbet Qumran to a "Qumran community" that lived in and around the installations excavated at Khirbet Qumran. While a connection between the materials from the caves and these installations seems highly probable, the assumption of a "Qumran community" is only a hypothesis based on the identification of the people behind the texts with the Essenes, as they were described by Flavius Josephus. The main presuppositions rest on the impression given by the earliest published texts, particularly 1QS (named "Manual of Discipline"), which has been believed to contain the order of that "Qumran community." But the publication of the fragments from caves 4 and 11 requires a more differentiated view. First of all, it is now clear that the texts cannot be regarded as a "sectarian" literature of a strictly separated community at Qumran alone. A number of texts, biblical and non biblical, are older than the alleged "community" installations at Khirbet Qumran, which were established during the first decades of the first century B.C.E., not between 130-100 B.C.E. as generally assumed during the first decades of Qumran research. The oldest literary layers of 1QS are certainly of an earlier date than the installations at Khirbet Qumran, 1 the date of the copy itself, according to the current paleographical method, is 100-75 B.C.E., but may be older by about twenty-five years. At least one of the 4Q fragments of variant texts (4Q2554Q264)2 may be dated between 150-120 B.C.E. One of the copies of 1 S. Metso, 1he Textual Droelopment qf the Qumran Communiry Rule (Lei den, 1996); P.S. Alexander, "The Redaction-History of Serek ha-Yahad: A Proposal," in Rroue de Q!lmranl7165-68, 1996, pp. 437-456; M. Blockmiihl, "Redaction and Ideology in the Rule of the Community," in Rroue de Q,umranl8172 (1998), pp. 541-560. 2 J.H. Charlesworth, 1he Dead Sea Scrolls: Vol. 1: Rule qf the Communiry and Related Documents (Tiibingen and Louisville, 1994); P.S. Alexander and G. Vermes, "Serekh ha-Yah ad and Two Related Texts," in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXVI (Oxford, 1998).

92

JOHANN MAIER

the 4Q versions of CD (4Q266-4Q273J1 also antedates the "community" installations. Both texts (S and D) reflect organizational patterns of older origin but still of interest during the last two centuries before 68 C.E., as the number of copies demonstrates. They represent the actualized legal traditions of an elitarian priestly group, a tradition that had its roots in the Persian and early Hellenistic period, attested also by a number of other Qumran texts, for instance, 4Ql59+ 4Q513-514 (4Q_Ordinances), 4 4Q249 (Midrash Sifer Moshe); 5 4Q251 (4QJ!alakha A);6 4Q264a (4Q_Halakha B); 7 4Q265; 8 4Q274-4Q283 (4Q_Teharot), 9 4Q284 (Purification Liturgy), 10 4Q284a (Harvesting);'' 4Q414 (Ritual qf Purification A); 12 4Q472a (4Q_Halakha C);' 3 4Q512 (4Q_Ritual qf Purification B); 14 4Q524; 5Ql3; the Temple Scroll (11Ql9; 11Q20; 11Q21; 4Q524); 4Q_MMT, extant in fragments of six exemplars. 15 An important source is, finally, the Book ofJubilees of which Hebrew fragments from sixteen exemplars have been found in the caves near Qumran. A good part of these rules concern matters of purity and impurity. 16 3 J.M. Baumgarten, in J.H. Charlesworth, 1he Dead Sea Scrolls Vol. 2: Damascus Document, War Scroll, and Related Documents (Tiibingen and Louisville, 1995); idem., in Discoveries in the ]udaean Desert XVIII (Oxford, 1996). For further information on these texts see now the contributions inJ.M. Baumgarten, G.E. Chazon, and A. Pinnick, eds., 1he Damascus Document. A Centennial if Discovery. Proceedings if the 1hird International Symposium if the Orion Center, 4-8 February 1998 (Leiden, 2000). 4 L.H. Schiffman, "4QOrdinancesa.b," in J.H. Charlesworth, ed., 1he Rule if the Communiry and Related Documents (Tiibingen, 1994), pp. 145-175;]. Milgrom, "Purification Rule (4Q514 = 4QOrdc)," in ibid., pp. 177-179. 5 S. Pfann in Discoveries in the Judean Desert XXXV (Oxford, 1999), pp. 1-24. 6 E. Larson, M.R. Lehmann, and L.H. Schiffman in ibid., pp. 25-51. 7 J.M. Baumgarten in ibid., pp. 53-56 8 Ibid., pp. 57-78. 9 Ibid., pp. 79-122. 10 Ibid., pp. 123-129. II Ibid., pp. 131-133. 12 E. Eshel in ibid., pp. 135-154. 13 T. Elgvin in ibid., pp. 155-158. 14 M. Baillet in Discoveries in the ]udaean Desert VII (Oxford, 1982), pp. 266-286. 15 E. Q!mron and J. Strugnell, Discoveries in the ]udaean Desert X. Qpmran Cave 4. V· Miqsat Ma'ase ha- Torah (Oxford, 1994); Ch. Hempel, "The Laws of the Damascus Document and 4QMMT," in Baumgarten, Chazon, and Pinnick, op. cit., pp. 69-84; S. Metso, "The Relationship between the Damascus Document and the Community Rule," in ibid., pp. 85-93; L.H. Schiffman, "The Relationship of the Zadokite Fragments to the Temple Scroll," in ibid., pp. 133-145. 16 F. Garcia-Martinez, "II problema della purita: Ia soluzione qumranica," in G.L. Prato, ed., Ricerche storico-bibliche 1, Strade all ricercha di identita tra il III sec. a. C. e il I sec. d.C., (Bologna, 1989), pp. 169-191; H.K. Harrington, 7he Impuriry Systems if Qpmran and the Rabbis (Adanta, 1993).

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

93

An integral part of the same priestly inheritance also formed intellectual traditions that presuppose a complete world view, represented by fragments of a rich "Wisdom" literature 17 and, first of all, by a kind of natural science. The Ethiopic Book of Enoch contains elements of such older intellectual traditions, particularly of a historiographical/ genealogical and cosmological character. 18 Their basis is a solar calendar of three hundred and sixty days modified by the insertion of four additional days separating the four seasonal units (teqzifOt) of the year. For a long time, scholars considered this calendaric system of three hundred and sixty four days a product of the "Qumran sect" and an exclusive alternative calendar system, in contrast to the traditional lunar calendar. In fact, both are old systems, and not their exclusive use, but the extent of their application, was subject to controversies. During the Persian period, both systems became closely connected with the running of the priestly courses in the Second Temple. In that context the solar system, with its strict regularity and its perfectly incorporated cycles of priestly service, appeared to be more congruent with the cosmic order than the lunar calendar, with its necessary intercalations and irregularities. This impression was confirmed by the experience that this solar system, in its connection with the priestly cycles, could be used to create a universal chronography that corresponded to a surprising degree to most genealogical-chronographical traditions and dates. The basic units are cycles of seven: seven days (week), sabbatical cycle (seven years), jubilee period (forty-nine years), periods of seven jubilees = two hundred and ninety-four years, 19 and ten jubilees = four hundred and ninety years, the largest basic unit for world chronology. The Book of Jubilees demonstrates the application of this system to history from creation until the arrival of Israel at the borders of the land of Israel, and, in the Animal Apocalypse and in the Apocalypse of Weeks of books of Enoch, the same system has been applied to the whole of world

17 A. Lange, Weisheit und Priidestination. Weisheitliche Urordnung und Priidestination in den Texifimden von Qymran (Leiden, 1995); DJ. Harrington, Wisdom Texts from Qymran (London and New York, 1996);]. Kampen, "The Diverse Aspects of Wisdom at Qumran," in P.W. Flint and J.C. VanderKam, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls afier Fifty Years (Leiden, 1998), vol. I, pp. 211-243. 18 M. Albani, Astronomie und Schbp.fongsglaube (Neukirchen, 1994). 19 The period of rotation of the seasonal dates caused by the difference between the 364 days of this solar-orientated calendar and the natural year.

94

JOHANN MAIER

history. 20 The concept of holy time as represented by the Sabbath and festival cycles covers the whole of creation history. And it even concerns realms beyond the world, for calendaric time reckoning is bound to the creation of the sun and the moon on the fourth day. In this calendar, New Year and the beginnings of the seasons always fall, therefore, on Wednesday. Beyond this cosmic system of time reckoning, however, an eternal system, valid also in heaven, exists: the Sabbath cycles as basic units of the cycles of priestly service are also the basis of the eternal angelic service. The legal traditions formed part of this comprehensive view of the world and the world beyond, and it was presupposed that all legal details correspond to the cosmic and heavenly order, and as far as the latter is concerned appear the relevant regulations not only in form of the Torah from Sinai but also as inscribed on heavenly tablets. 21 Essential for this world view was the comprehension ofthe Temple cult and its rites within a rigid concept of holiness and ritual purity. This concept had been developed during the exile on the basis of the ritual inheritance of the cult of Jerusalem, but now it operated far from this real background and free from programmatic devices. These programmatic regulations had given rise to objections and differing tendencies when the Temple cult resumed after the exile. According to CD 1: 1-6: 10, correct practice existed only for a short time after the exile. Then a movement of "return" to the Torah again promoted correct practice, but again only for a short time, followed by a "period of wickedness," the time between the end of normal history and the eschatological end. One of the riddles in this picture of Jewish history is the significance of the reforms under Ezra and Nehemiah. It seems that for the people behind the Qumran texts, Ezra and Nehemiah, as well as their reforms, were not worth mentioning. Hence it is apparently the Chronicler's work that represents the line that, during the last two centuries of the Temple, actually prevailed and that, to a certain extent, also corresponded to tendencies later shared by Pharisaic and Rabbinic circles. This evidence should not be mistaken as a proof for

20 J. Maier, Die Qymran-Essener: Die Texte vom Toten Meer vol. III: Einftihrung, Zeitrechnung, Register und Bibliographie (Munich, 1996), pp. 52-160. 21 F. Garcia-Martinez, "The Heavenly Tablets in the Book of Jubilees," in M. Albani,J. Frey, and A. Lange, eds., Studies in the Book of]ubilees (Tiibingen, 1997), pp. 243-260.

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

95

a identification of the "Qumran sect" with the Sadduceans and of their opponents with the Pharisees, as known from Josephus and the New Testament. The situation seems to have been more complicated. 4Q,MMT (extant on fragments of six exemplars) contains a list of about two dozens controversial positions. 22 Some of them correspond to regulations and positions mentioned in 11 Ql9 (Temple Scrol~, in CD, and in some legal texts from 4Q Among them are certain regulations concerning the City of the Sanctuary that appear in a more or less identical form in the privileges granted by Antiochus III to the pro-Seleucid representatives ofJudea in 198 B.C.E., at the end of the Ptolemaic dominion over Palestine Qosephus, Ant. 12: 138144). All this points to a compact legal tradition of pre-Hellenistic origin, rooted in priestly circles but already for a longer time disputed among priestly factions. The many of resemblances between the priestly traditions in the Qumran texts and in the Samaritan texts point in the same direction, even if, for chronological reasons, these cannot be regarded as contemporaneous sources in a strict sense. In any case, it seems that certain legal and ritual measures taken under the High Priest Simeon II during the transition from the Ptolemaic to the Seleucid rule (about 200-198 B.C.E.) were in line with a specific "Zadokite" tradition that also formed part of the heritage preserved in Qumran texts, and that an opposite trend favored laic views that also prevailed in the early Pharisaic movement. 23 The non-sectarian character of such traditions is also corroborated by details mentioned by the priest and historian Flavius Josephus as his own legal positions, particularly concerning the ritual quality of the Temple and the "Holy City." We may, however, assume that a sectarian tendency within the group behind the Qumran texts emerged over the course of time, not only during the latest phases, as a consequence of an increasing political and social isolation during :he hundred years before the destruction of the installations at Qumran in the year 68 C.E. The evolution of this group during its last phases is, however, rather obscure, for the bulk of the important and informative texts is of an earlier date and

22 For details see the contributi.Jns inJ. Kampen and MJ. Bernstein, eds., Reading 4Q_MMT· New Perspectives on Qymmn Law and History (Adanta, 1996). 23 E. Regev, "Yose ben Yoezer and the Qumran Sectarians on Purity Laws: Agreement and Controversy," in Baumgarten, Chazon, and Pinnick, op. cit., pp. 95-

107.

96

JOHANN MAIER

concerns in almost all cases events and developments before 63 B.C.E. It is, therefore, difficult to estimate to what degree the production of copies responded to practical demands or was a kind of archivistic activity motivated by eschatological considerations. The archaeological evidence does not favor the assumption of a communal center at Qumran. The fact that of about eight hundred scrolls or fragments only a few can be identified as copies written by the same scribe points to a continuous exchange even of the scribes. It may be that only some of the copies were written at Qumran and that the scribal peculiarities we tend to define as "Qumranic" are characteristic of a more widespread scribal tradition, as the finds from Masada may indicate. Still, to date, we have only a feeble knowledge of the group or groups behind the Scrolls, and the function of the installations and caves at and near Khirbet Qumran is still a riddle. It is, for instance, a widespread assumption that most of the water basins at Qumran served as ritual baths, as described in Josephus' account of the Essenes. But the Qumran texts themselves and the archaeological evidence do not unequivocally confirm this assumption. 24 It rests on the presupposition that Josephus' report concerns Qumran and nothing else. It thus appears that one of the most popular assumptions concerning the use of the water basins at Qumran is probably wrong. One of the most common but, nevertheless, misleading presuppositions in Qumran research is the Bible-oriented approach that has emerged due to the simple fact that most Qumran scholars were and are biblical scholars. Within this approach, scholars think primarily in the exegetical categories of "text" (of a more or less "canonical" significance) and "interpretation" and attribute the same attitude to the Jewish authors of the Second Temple period. As a result, almost all of the contents of the Qumran texts haven been treated primarily as products of exegetical processes, including the laws concerning purities. 25 Many texts thus are regarded simply as reworked biblical texts, the latter assumed to have existed in close to the masoretic form, as though it really was a document written by Moses at Sinai, 24 E. Regev, "Ritual Baths of Jewish Groups and Sects in the 2nd Temple Period," in Cathedra 79 (1996), pp. 3-21; P. Hidiroglou, "Aquadukt, Becken und Zisternen: Die Nutzung des Wassers," in Welt der Bibel 9 (1998), pp. 28-29. 25 C£, for instance, J. Milgrom, "The Scriptural Foundations and Deviations in the Laws of Purity in the Temple Scroll," in L.H. Schiffman, ed., Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Sheffield, 1990), pp. 85-99.

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

97

having no literary and redactional history, unparalleled by other documents with similar contents, and with no evidence of its sources continuing to exist after its final redaction. These assumptions are made despite the evident fact that the date of the final redaction of our biblical Pentateuch and the dates of the oldest literary layers and components of some Qumran texts cannot have been far apart. Some of the Qumran traditions or their sources may even be older than the final redaction of our biblical Pentateuch. Still, scholars are used to deriving Qumran laws and practices concerning what is pure or impure from more or less similar biblical passages, as though all practices of this kind in fact emerged from the biblical texts; no one takes into account the more realistic possibility that the Bible reflects already existing practices known to its authors. Indeed, a good deal of scholarly energy has been devoted to proving such derivations or unilateral exegetical processes, by far more energy than has been put to tracing the juridical reasoning underlying the diverse literary testimonies, biblical or non-biblical. In the history of law it is juridical reasoning that in most cases leads to the solution of a problem, while exegetical operations usually appear only at a secondary level, as a means of lending authority to existing practices, particularly after the establishment of a "canon" (which did not exist when the Qumran texts were produced!). Still, there is sufficient evidence of a tendency to use some verses to support, or debate, specific positions, particularly thanks to a comparison of the variant versions of certain texts, for instance I QS and its 4QS parallels.

The Realms qf Holiness and Their Required Stages qf Puriry The concepts of purity and impurity of the Qumran texts form part of a tradition that was principally and practically related to the sanctuary and its environments. Everything is seen from a priestly point of view, 26 a view from within, beginning at the center of holiness in the Temple and proceeding through concentric, graduated realms of holiness as far as to the boundaries of the land of Israel. 27 It is appar26 J. Maier, "Self-definition, Prestige, and Status of Priests towards the End of the Second Temple Period," in Biblical Theological Bulletin 23, 1993, pp. 139-150. 27 M.E. Isaacs, Sacred Space. An Approach to the Theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Sheffield, 1992); A. Houtman, M. Poorthius, and J. Schwartz, eds., Sanctity of Time and Space in Tradition and Modernity (Leiden, 1998).

98

JOHANN MAIER

ently to a large extent the same concept of graduated holy space as that behind M. Kel. 1:6-9 (and parallels), 28 which means that the basic concept as a whole was not subject to discussions in ancient Judaism. The decisive differences consisted in the opposed visual angles, from a priestly and from a laic point of view, and in certain details. Tractate Kelim lists the holy areas according to a laic point of view, proceeding from the borders of the Land and from the requirements of normal everyday day life to the sanctuary in the center. The Mishnah omits, therefore, some realms that are off limits to the laity and that are exclusively relevant for priests. The Qumran texts, by contrast, display an extremely priestly point of view, proceeding from the center to the periphery. They treat all the ritually relevant realms and stress particularly the cultic points of interest but neglect areas of exclusively laic concern. Within this elaborate conception appear details concerning the demarcation of certain areas and some ritual practices that clearly point to earlier differences among the priests themselves. Such differences were not a new or a sectarian phenomenon. Within the priestly traditions of the Bible differing conceptions similarly appear, not only in connection with single regulations but regarding the concept of holiness itself. 29 On the basis of the cultic concept of purity/impurity, the rabbis developed an elaborate system that became an essential part of the dual Torah, integrating even the cultic theology of the sanctuary. In doing this they allocated to themselves control over ritual matters, leaving the priests only some formal privileges. The resulting shift in values meant that now, in cases of conflicting interests, it was practical life that would prevail over cultic concerns. In essence, if a ritual practice somehow threatened the smooth functioning of everyday social or economic life, the rabbis preferred a solution that favored the requirements of everyday life. At the same time, by systematizing all aspects of the law of purity, the rabbis exerted control over Israel as a whole and challenged the old priestly claims. But this occurred even as the rabbis became prisoners of their own systematic endeavors. For while the priests concentrated on the holy things of 28 See J. Neusner, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities, I. Kelim. Chapters One to Eleven (Leiden, 1974). 29 I. Knohl, "The Priestly Torah versus the Holiness School: Sabbath and the Festivals," in Hebrew Union College Annual 58, 1987, pp. 65-117; I. Knohl, Miqdademamah (Jerusalem, 1993).

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

99

the cultic realms, the rabbis were bound to regulate all aspects of life, developing a sophisticated system of impurities that could not yield a lenient disposition of every situation of concern. Still, the regulations of the laic and Pharisaic movements appeared to the priests to be superficial, and the Pharisaic concern for ritual matters 30 demonstrates the dynamics and the main topics of the rival systems. The priestly theology of the sanctuary and the cult included everything, even cosmogony and cosmology. Priests evaluated all things and persons according to their relation to the sanctuary and its graduated order and regarded every violation of the cultic order as intolerable. Economics were entirely related to the sanctuary and its system of ritual taxes and dues. For all cultic matters they developed effective modes of administration and suitable commercial proceedings that would make the sanctuary the country's dominating economic factor. The economics of the rabbis as representatives of a laic point of view covered, on the contrary, the whole world of labor in every day life, the modes of production, and the handling of the products that provided the possibility for the delivery of cultic taxes and the priestly shares that constituted the basis of the priestly economics.31 Beyond the rulings concerning the demarcation of the holy realms and their respective ritual requirements, for the priests (and in a corresponding measure also for Levites) their own social status and their cultic role was of fundamental significance: a) the priest as a member of the group of the "Sons of Aaron;" b) the priest as admissible to cultic service; c) priests as members of one of the twenty-four priestly courses; d) the priests of the course in service at the cultic institutions within the different holy realms. Rules concerning pure and impure are not a peculiarity of Judaism. 32 Characteristically Judaic, however, is the public significance granted the sanctuary in Jerusalem 33 and the tendency to ex-

30

J. Neusner, From Scripture to 70.

1998).

J.

The Pre-Rabbinic Beginnings qfthe Halakhah (Adanta,

Neusner, The Economics qf the Mishnah (Adanta, 1998). Regarding the evidence and history of its transformation, see M. Poorthius and J. Schwartz, eds., Puriry and Holiness. The Heritage qf Leviticus (Leiden, 2000). For ancient (particularly Rabbinic) Judaism, see J. Neusner, The Idea qf Puriry in Ancient Judaism (Leiden, 1973). 33 Cf., also, M. Newton, The Concept qf Puriry at (}Jtmran and in the Letters qf Paul (Cambridge, 1985). 31

32

100

JOHANN MAIER

tend the pertinent rules to realms not directly connected with the cult. Indeed, both the priestly and the laic or Pharisaic movements endeavored to impose their system of purities on the people. The priests were, however, too elitarian to succeed at this, and some of them-first of all, apparently, the "Sadducees" of Josephus and the NT-contented themselves with the defense of their prerogatives in the cultic realms. The Qumran Zadokites continued to strive to bring the whole of Israel under the priestly rules. In fact, they too had lost this struggle and consequently distanced themselves from the masses of the people, last but not least in terms of purity and impurity.

The Graduated Concentric Areas if Holiness and Their Ritual Requirements Temple House and Inner Court The Inner Court or Priest's Court (11 Ql9 col. 3-13:7; 30:?-36:?) encloses in the center a) the Temple house with the Holy of Holies and b) the Temple hall, c) the altar area before the Temple house, and d) the surrounding court area. The latter is accessible for all priests but in priestly garments only. Levites in charge of certain duties concerning the slaughtering procedures were also allowed to enter the slaughtering installations at the northwestern comer of the inner court (11 Ql9 col. 34-35). The ritually correct procedure concerning the priestly garments and their purity seems to have been of special concern (c£, also 4Q537). 11Ql9 col. 31-32 provides at the southern border of the altar area two square buildings, one for the ritual washings and a second one for the garments of service (c£, Lev. 6:3-4; Exod. 28:42-43), which should be changed and deposited there in wall niches. Transgressions of the respective prescriptions are in II Ql9 col. 35: 1-9 regarded as violations of something "most holy" and as capital offenses. The beginning of II Ql9 col. 40 contained a passage concerning the garments of service, which in accordance with Ezek. 42:14 and 44:17-19, must not be brought into the areas outside. The relevant Qumran passages are very fragmentary, but it is clear that the objects within the graduated areas of holiness are of a corresponding quality regarding their material and purity and that they become impure by transport into an area outside by contact with persons and things from outside. This also concerns the various sac-

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

101

rifices and the priestly portions from them. According to 4Q_MMT (4Q394 frag. 3+4 i,9) the purity of copper vessels was a matter of dispute if they were used for the cooking of priestly portions from offerings of the people as well as for the boiling of meat that should be consumed exclusively within the priestly court. The differentiation and separation of the various kinds of offerings is particularly stressed in the texts, with special concern not only for the functions and the sequence of the sacrifices but also for their origin and destination: from priests or laics ("Israel") and for priests or laics. They constitute different grades of holiness and purity, and this separation had an impact on the location (c£, llQ19 35:10-15a) of preparation and slaughter of the animals (11 Ql9 col. 34). The same separation must be observed during the preparation and consumption of the priestly portions of different types (11Ql9 37:1238:10). The Qumran texts display a strict system of purity laws particularly for the inner realms of the sanctuary, represented in the tendency to underline the separation of priestly areas from the people through massive porticos and gateway buildings.

The Court qf Men One of the areas subject to controversy was the Court of Men (11Ql9 38:12-40:5). In Ezek. 40-48 it is apparently identical with the Outer Court, the sanctuary according to this scheme being off limits to women and all males who have not yet paid the half shekel (under the age of twenty) and also off limits to descendents of proselytes until the fourth generation (l1Ql9 col. 394b-ll). In the Herodian Temple and in the Mishnah only a small strip of eleven cubits at the eastern side of the Priest's Court served as the Court of Men. The Temple Scroll ordains a separate square court enclosed by porticos and with three gates at each side, within the whole sanctuary the Middle square. The enclosed area corresponds to the holy square of 500 x 500 cubits as in Ezekiel's plan, and in the Herodian sanctuary to the area within the geision, off limits to non-Jews. The Temple Scroll represents, therefore, an extreme solution, demarcating the Men's Court as a square court of its own, shifting the limits for ordinary Israelite men and women to a third court and entirely excluding nonJews from the sanctuary (c£, 4Ql74 col. 3:4).

102

JOHANN MAIER

The Court if Israel The third court of the Temple Scroll (col. 40:5-45:2) appears utopian in its grandeur (1600 x 1600 cubits inside), but these dimensions are, in fact, the logical consequence of the underlying concept of a sanctuary for all twelve tribes of Israel. The court is defined as accessible to adult Israelite men and women in state ofpurity. This court (1Ql9 col. 43:1-12a) is closely connected with the ritual procedures of the first fruit festivals and the laws of tithes, for even laics are bound to consume their portions in the sanctuary within one agricultural year, before the next harvest and the first fruit ceremony. Whatever remains from the current year is regarded as ritually taboo and is to be burned (cf., Book ofjubilees 32:13). The Protection and Separation if the Sanctuary

A series of ritual prescriptions in 11 Ql9 col. 45:7b-48:? is dedicated to the protection of the sanctuary against impurity. As the holy areas must not become defiled by excrement it was necessary to prevent also the presence of birds by appropriate installations (11Ql9 col. 46,03-4). 34 Towards the outside, two areas are assigned to separate the sanctuary as a whole from the "City of the Sanctuary." The first is an elevated terrace, 14 cubits deep (11 Ql9 col. 46:5-8), and the second is an embankment, 100 cubits (col. 46:9-12) deep, called f!jl, as in the demarcation of the real, historical sanctuary by a the holy square of 500 x 500 cubits. These two areas prevent immediate entrance to the sanctuary and accidental desecration of it by visitors who are not aware of their state of impurity. The Temple Scroll (11 Ql9 col. 45:7b-46:?) lists those Israelite persons who are not allowed to enter the sanctuary, and it defines also the conditions for their purification and their admission. Among them are all persons ritually contaminated by sperm pollution: a) Caused incidentally during the night and requiring a three day purification ritual including a ritual bath and washing of the clothes. Particularly stressed and obviously subject to a controversy is the prescription not to enter the sanctuary after the conclusion of the 34 Similar objects are mentioned by Eupolemus, by Josephus (Ant. 5:224), and in M. Mid. 4:6.

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

103

purification before sunset, 35 contrary to the later Rabbinic concept of the "Tebul Yom" but in accordance with a Sadducean position. 36 It is clearly presupposed that the status of impurity continues to exist until sunset, so "they must not come in the contamination of their impurity to my sanctuary to render it impure" (col. 45:10). b) As a consequence of sexual intercourse (col. 45:10-12a). A person polluted this way is not even allowed to enter the city of the sanctuary (Jerusalem) as a whole, where, according to CD 12:1-2, sexual intercourse is forbidden. The City qf the Sanctuary

Jerusalem constitutes a "City of the Sanctuary," a holy realm of its own on a higher level of holiness than the cities of the countryside. Like 11Ql9 col. 47:3-7a, 4QMMT regardsJerusalem as the "camp" of the Priestly Tradition (P), in which everyone and everything should be "holy" and ritually pure. Num. 5:1-4 excludes lepers, persons afflicted by a discharge, and persons impure by contact with a corpse. Like Ezek. 40-48, this Ptradition points to a programmatic concept according to which the Temple-city has a special ritual quality, probably a reaction to the unsatisfying reality of the period of the monarchy. Certain Qumran texts contain elaborate plans for a "New Jerusalem," a combination of architectural city planning and cultic organization in the described ritual tradition. This extreme ritual tendency led to disputes because of its severe practical and economic consequences. Any attempt to introduce the concept of the "camp" in all its aspects into practice would provoke active resistance, a situation that probably occurred when the "Teacher of Righteousness" entered office as the "Prophet like Moses," about 178 B.C.E. According to CD 12:1-2, sexual intercourse is forbidden in the whole "City of the Sanctuary," and sperm-polluted persons are not 35 Cf., also, 4Q277 frag. 1 ii; 4Q},{MT B 13-17 = 4Q394 frag. 3 i + frag. 4 at the end (concerning the priest who burned the red heifer); for other cases of temporary impurity, see 11Q19 45:7-8; 49:19-21; 51:4-5. For the relation to the Pharisaic and Sadducean controversies, see J.M. Baumgarten in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXXV(Oxford, 1999), pp. 81-83. 36 L.H. Schiffman, "The Temple Scroll and the Systems of Jewish Law of the Second Temple Period," in GJ. Brooke, ed., Temple Scroll Studies (Sheffield, 1989), pp. 239-255 (particularly p. 24 7).

104

JOHANN MAIER

allowed to enter it (11 Ql9 col. 45:7 -12). Persons rendered impure in the City would have to leave until completion of their purification. For that reason, 11 Ql9 col. 46: 16b-4 7:2 prescribes installation of three separate places outside the city for persons with skin diseases (lepers), 37 for persons afllicted by a discharge, and for men rendered impure by sperm pollution. The concept was not a sectarian one but part of a rigid priestly tradition still shared by Josephus. He mentions 0fVar 5:227) persons afllicted by a discharge, lepers, and women in their menstruation period or after childbirth. In Ant. 3.261-263, he lists lepers (cf., Contra Apionem 1.282) and cases of defilement by a corpse as two items of equal gravity, as well as persons afflicted with a discharge and women in a state of impurity. It is clear that the Temple Scroll similarly excluded from the City of the Sanctuary women during their period of impurity; the pertinent regulations probably were in the lost passages of the columns 45-46 and 46-4 7. Persons with certain physical handicaps are excluded for ever, so the blind, "in order that they do not render impure the city for I, YHWH, I am (there) present among the sons of Israel for ever" (11Ql9 col. 45:12b-14). 38 A passage in 4QMMT (4Q394 frag. 8 iii-iv I 4Q396 frag. 1 ii) gives a rather rational reason for the exclusion of the blind: he is not able to discern the various types of holy things, particularly sacrifices; and a deaf person is unable to observe the relevant prescriptions for he never heard them: "For one who did not see and did not hear is unable to observe the (correct) practice, and in that state they come (illegitimately) to the purity of the sanctuary." Dogs also are not to be tolerated in the "Camp of the holiness" (that is, the City of the Sanctuary) (4Q394 frag. 1 ii I 4Q496 frag. 1 ii,9-ll ), lest they devour something holy, for instance, meat on bones from sacrificial portions. The danger of defilement is, of course, also the reason for the interdiction of poultry farming (II Q21 frag. 3). A prescription of this kind is the logical consequence of the cultically focused system, not a sectarian invention, for M. B.Q 7:7 gives the same reason and adds that priests should not raise poultry in the

C£, the exclusion of lepers from the "purity" in 4QMMT (4Q396 frag. 2 i.). Also not a sectarian view but rooted in an old tradition (cf., 2 Sam. 5:8). Lev. 21:17 (Josephus, Ant. 3:278-279) excludes priests with physical blemishes from the altar service but not from the sanctuary. It seems that blindness and deafness were considered defects with more severe ritual consequences than other blemishes. 37

38

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

105

whole of the land of Israel, and so out of respect for the purity of their Terumah. The allegation that human excrement defiles is logically justified but creates problematic consequences (cf., Josephus, War 2: 149). Latrines must be installed outside the City of the Sanctuary, a full 3000 cubits39 from its northwestern side (I IQI9 col. 46:13-16a). This is not, as usually has been assumed, the sectarian application of the biblical regulation concerning the military camp in Deut. 23: I 3-15 but one of the consequences of P's "camp" concept. Similarly, the exclusion from this realm of all "unclean" animals and the prohibition against use even of "clean" animals that were not slaughtered in the sanctuary has a remarkable economic bearing. 40 Unclean animals also may not serve to transport goods to the City of the Sanctuary or to the sanctuary itself, "in order not to render impure my sanctuary with the hides of their profane slaughterings" such as are carried out in other cities of the country. The reason is that everything destined for the sanctuary must be brought there in vessels (made of hides) that correspond in holiness to the grade of holiness of the sanctuary itself (11 Q19 col. 4 7: 7b-18). A similar concept of the holiness of the Temple city seems to have been stood behind the demand for certain privileges granted by Antiochus III in about 198 B.C.E. Uosephus, Ant. 12:138-153).

The ;::,ones around the Ciry qf the Sanctuary 11 Ql9 col. 52-53 contains regulations concerning profane slaughterings, and in this context are also geographic limits defined: a) Profane slaughtering of animals apt for sacrifice is not allowed within a three days stretch of road around the city (col.52,13b-19a). b) "Clean" animals excluded from sacrifice because of a individual blemish may be slaughtered and eaten outside a zone of 30 Res around the sanctuary (col. 52,16b-19a). c) No meat from profane slaughterings must be brought into the City of the sanctuary for it is necessary to avoid any confusion with "holy" food from sacrificial slaughterings (col. 52,19b-21). 39 Beyond the Sabbath limits; Josephus (War 2.14 7) relates that the Essenes left their locations to go outside for relief but restrained from relief at all during the Sabbath. 40 4QMMT = 4Q394 frag. 5 + 3 ii + 6 par. 297 frag 2+ I; cf., Josephus, Ant. 12:146.

106

The Cities

JOHANN MAIER

if Israel

As explicitly stated in 11 Ql9 col. 4 7, while all the cities of Israel are expected to be ritually pure, their holiness and purity is of a lesser degree than that of the City of the Sanctuary (the "Camp" of the Ptradition). The regulations concerning the cities differ, therefore, in certain points from those for Jerusalem: 11 Ql9 col. ll-14a prescribes one cemetery for four cities; and 11 Ql9 col. 48: 14-1 7 provides separated places outside the cities for persons afflicted with skin diseases (lepers), for persons afflicted with a discharge, and for women in their menstrual impurity, "in order not to cause impurity in their midst by their sexual defilement." In contrast to the City of the Sanctuary, there is no regulation for men with a sperm pollution.

7he Military Camp Deut. 23: 10-15 contains only two regulations for the military camp, which v. 15 explains as reflecting the presence of God. These regulations concern persons polluted by sperm emission and the avoiding of human excrement in the camp and its immediate surroundings. The passage probably contains only some of the war regulations extant at that time. lQM 7:5-8 is by far more detailed but should not be understood as resulting from an exegetical expansion of the text in Deut. Excluded from the camp are not only all ritually defiled persons but also women, minors, and all persons with a physical or mental handicap. The given reason is not the presence of God but the presence of holy angels, a logical consequence of the identification of Jerusalem as the "camp" in the P-tradition, according to which God's presence remains continually in the sanctuary. Two additional aspects of concern relate to the camp, the purity of the camp itself and the purity of the warriors during the battle. According to 4Q49l frag. 1-3: 10 nobody is allowed to march out to fight in a state of impurity resulting from an accidental sperm defilement during the night in the camp. The reason again is the presence of angels who take part in the battle.

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

107

Rules for Israel and Groups Representing Israel Israel

All Israelites are regarded as "holy (ones)" due to their being the elected people of God. It is this quality that requires the maintaining of corresponding purity standards. In the cultic world view, however, there was a further threefold division of Israel into priests, Levites, and laics. The first two groups, under the larger category of "Levi," comprised an elected body and of higher rank than the laics, and within "Levi," "Aaron and his sons" were on the highest level of holiness. This concept of holiness had it full significance when combined with the concept of graduated concentric holy space related to God's presence in the sanctuary and when associated as well with the concept of holy times revealed in the cultic calendar. Despite the exclusion of the majority of the people from its inner precincts, the Jerusalem Temple was principally conceived as the sanctuary of Israel as a whole. A certain analogy consequently exists between the persons excluded from the sanctuary and those excluded from the assembly of Israel or from the assembly of a group that claimed to represent Israel. Concerning the eschatological assembly of the restored whole oflsrael we read in 1QS28a 2:3b-11a: Nobody smitten by one of the impurities of man must come into the assembly of God, and nobody who becomes smitten by one of these may remain on his post within the assembly. Every man smitten in his flesh, with paralyzed legs or hands, blind or deaf or mute, or with a openly visible wound on his flesh, or an old decrepit man must not remain in the assembly. They are not allowed to draw near and take position in the assembly among the men enlisted by name, for angels of holiness are (present) [in] their [assem]bly. And if one of these (persons) has something to ask before the holy council, they shall find it out by asking him (outside), but he must not come into the assembly, for he is a smitten one.

Similarly in 4QMMT, where one of the controversial points is the practiced marriage with persons who as impure ones are not allowed to enter the holy assembly of Israel (4Q394 frag. 8 iii, 10; 4Q396 frag. I i,5; 4Q38'97 frag. 5,1). The described system of holiness and purity depended on the presence of God in the sanctuary and on the expiating function of the cult. The interruption of this function by the destruction or desecration of the sanctuary would cause a state of emergency, and corre-

108

JOHANN MAIER

sponding measures would need to be taken. The orientation of all religious life towards the sanctuary and City of the Sanctuary had to be revised and its function replaced, even as an intact priesthood could guarantee the continuity of the traditions and functions. Indeed, it was up to the priests to ensure the continuity of the cultic order by exercising an appropriate influence and control within society, ensuring to the meticulous practice of those cultic rules that could be observed in everyday life, without a Temple cult. Such a situation had been experienced after the destruction of the First Temple, when those who went into exile in Babylonia laid the foundations for post-exilic Judaism. After the Exile, they tried to uphold this mode of life in the new Temple-society, apparently without complete success, at least according to some of the priests themselves. We do not know the exact chronology of the disagreement that led to the conviction of one party that the sanctuary was to be regarded as defiled. It is, however, clear that from that moment the same mechanism operated that, during the Exile, led to the postexilic cultic system. The rigid party that separated itself from the cult ofJerusalem and from the "mass of the people" saw itself reduced to a state comparable to the situation in Exile or during the wanderings of Israel in the wilderness. What is exceptional is their determination to live in "camps," and so they organized appropriate modes of living for "Israel," which they believed they represented, just as the earlier exiles had done. This was not a sectarian device but an elitarian claim, for the whole of "Israel" formed the theological and organizational basis of the groups behind the Qumran texts.

In the Yahad-Group The most striking peculiarity of some Qumran texts is that they presuppose the existence of a group with an organizational pattern for which the texts employ an otherwise unknown Hebrew technical term: yahad. The connotation of "together/common" is clear from the well known root and the adverb. In these texts, however, the noun designates a specific form of group organization and kind of living, probably practiced previously in priestly circles. The full members are called rabbfm, which literally means "many" but in this context designates the members of the plenary assembly of the group. It was, however, not a homogenous group. The texts point to the existence of different levels of membership and corresponding ritual re-

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

109

quirements as well as to the possibility of excluding persons temporarily from a level of holiness if their conduct was found not to be appropriate to that level. In such cases they were for a span of time excluded from the "purity" of their brethren, degraded to an inferior status. Symptomatic is the differentiation between the "purity of the rabbfm" and the "mashqeh of the rabbfm." 41 The first term denotes the ritually pure quality of an object or person (4Q274 frag. I); the second concerns liquids admissible for consumption. As liquids were generally regarded as more susceptible to defilement than other materials, 42 it may be assumed that mashqeh ha-rabbfm concerns a higher level of purity within the group, probably connected with group meals, while the "purity of the rabbfm" included also aspects of space and time, not only of materials and persons. In the regulations for the groups in CD and 4QD (see below), no such distinction appears, although the organizational term rabbfm is attested also in CDY The organizational body the rabbim constituted was called 'afat hayahad. The institution of a minimum of "holy men" within the group is still not fully understood. In 1QS 8: 1-14 and 1QS 9:3-6 this minimum group is related to the expiative function of the yahad as a temporal substitution for the defiled sanctuary in Jerusalem. These "holy men" probably lived according to the highest ritual standards of priests in service. Perhaps after 100 B. C.E. they had their seat at Qumran, a site that, with its installations, could have served as an intellectual and professional training center of this Zadokite movement. They may also have collected and copied texts in order to deposit them in the caves of the neighborhood after the beginning of the "period of the sword" (I Enoch 90: 19). The yahad-group formed a priestly dominated part of the movement. A person who disregarded the laws and the orders of the group was not entitled to participate in its holy or pure institutions, as clearly stated in I QS 5: 13-15: He shall not come into the water to touch the holy things of the men of the holiness/sanctuary, for they are not purified unless they turn back 41 F. Avemarie, "Tohorat ha-Rabbim" and "Mashqeh ha-Rabbim-Jacob Licht Reconsidered," in MJ. Bernstein, F. Garcia-Martinez, J. Kampen, Legal Texts and Legallssues (Leiden, 1997), pp. 215-229. 42 See J.M. Baumgarten in Discoveries in the ]udaean Desert XXXV (Oxford, 1999), pp. 89-91. 43 See CD 13,7; 14,7.12; 15,8, and 4QD (4Q266, 4Q267, 4Q269, 4Q270).

110

JOHANN MAIER

from their baseness. For (such a) one is impure among with all the transgressors of His word and one should not join in his work and in his property in order not to load on him (15) guilt of iniquity; but one should keep far from him concerning everything, for so it is written (Exod. 23:7): "From every false word you shall keep away."

Concerning the probation period of a new member, we find the following statement in 1QS 6:16-23: And according to the lot-decision of the decree of the rabbfm he shall draw near or keep away. If he draws near to the Council of the yahad he shall not touch the pure things of the (17) rabbfm before they inquire of him regarding his spirit and his practice after his completion of a full year, and he is also not entitled to share in the property of the rabbfm. (18) And if he completed one year within the yahad, the rabbfm shall inquire (or: be asked) about his matters concerning his skill and his practice in the Torah. And if the lot-decision results (19) to draw (him) near to the circle/secret of the yahad by order of the priests and the majority of the men of their covenant, they shall draw near also his property and his work at the disposal of the man who acts as (20) the Supervisor about the labor of the rabbfm, and they shall list it in a record at his hand and he shall not spend it for the rabbfm. He must not touch the drink of the rabbfm during (21) his completion of a second year in the midst of the men of the yahad. When his second year is complete they shall muster him by order of the rabbfm, and if the (22) lot-decision results in his drawing near to the yahad shall they enlist him in the order of his rank among his brothers concerning Torah and jurisdiction and purity, and for joining his property, and his council shall (23) count for the yahad, and his judgement too.

1QS 6-7 contains a collection of disciplinary measures, some of them with consequences concerning the status of purity. (lQS 6:24) And these are the laws by which they shall judge in joint inquiry according to the facts of the cases: If there is found among them a man who lies (25) concerning property and he does it wittingly they shall separate him from the purity of the rabbfm for one year and a quarter of his bread is inflicted as fine .... (1QS 7: 1) And if he blasphemed giving voice to a distress or because of anything affecting him while he is reading in a/the scroll or reciting a blessing, they have to separate him (2) and he shall not return to the Council of the yahad. [ ... ] If he spoke in rage against one of the priests enrolled in the scroll he is fined for one (3) year and separated solitary from the purity of the rabbfm. But if he had spoken unintentionally, he is fined for six months .... (lQS 7:15b) And the man who spreads rumors about his fellow: (16) he (the Supervisor) shall separate him for one year from the purity of the

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

111

rabbfm and he is fined; and if somebody spreads rumors about the rabbfm, he is to be sent away from them (17) and he shall never return. And the man who grumbles at the foundation of the yahad, him he shall send away and he shall never return, and if he grumbles at his fellow (18) without basis on a judgment, he is fined for six months; and the man whose spirit deviates from the foundation of the yahad in order to become unfaithful to the truth (19) to walk in the stubbornness of his heart: if he repents he is fined for two years, and in the first one he shall not touch the purity of the rabbfm, (20) and in the second one he shall not touch the drink of the rabbfm and shall sit behind all men of the yahad. When his (21) the two years are full, the rabbfm shall inquire about his matters, and if they draw him near he is enlisted in his ranking order and afterwards he may be asked for judgement. (24) And as for every man who will be in the council of the yahad on the completion of ten years (25), and his spirits relapse to become unfaithful to the yahad, and he walks away from (26) the rabbfm in order to walk in the stubbornness ofhis heart, he shall never return to the Council of the yahad. And a man from the men of the yah[ad wh]o joins (27) with him regarding his purity or his property....

1QS 8: 15-19 is an isolated introduction to (or conclusion for) a record (midrashr of actual Torah, and it contains as a principal statement: And every man from the men of the Covenant (17) of the yahad who ostentatiously ignores anything from the commandment(s) shall not touch the purity of the men of the holiness/ sanctuary (18) and shall know nothing regarding all their counsel until his practice has been cleansed from all wrongdoing in order to behave in a perfect way. And then they let him approach (19) by a decision of the rabbfm and after it he shall be enlisted in his ranking order. And according to this law (they have to proceed) in the case of every man who has been joined up for theyahad.

A passage of similar character follows 1QS 8:20-9:2: And these are the laws which the men of perfect holiness shall follow, each one concerning his fellow: (21) Everybody who enters the Council of Holiness, (of those) who walk in perfectness as He has commanded, every man of them (22) who transgresses something of the Torah of Moses ostentatiously or by a deceit: he shall send him away from the Council of the yahad (23) and he shall never return, and nobody of the men of the holiness/ sanctuary shall have something in common con44 Until the end of the Tannaitic period, neither the verb drs nor the noun mdrfin legal texts has the meaning "to interpret/interpretation." The verb means always "to proclaim as a valid/applicable law," and the noun designates an official record.

112

JOHANN MAIER

cerning his property and with his advice in any (24) matter. But if he acts inadvertently he becomes separated (only) from the purity and from the counsel, and they declare the verdict (25) that he shall not judge anybody and that he shall not be asked concerning any advice for two years .... The gravest measure that could be taken was the exclusion of a member from the group and, at the same time, from the purity. 45

7he Groups qf the Zadokite or Covenant qf Damascus Document (CD) Only one of the Qumran texts primarily concerns an aspect of life in which non-priests play a major role. The Zadokite Document (CD) and its parallel versions from 4Q (4Q266-4Q273) 46 contain among other regulations a concern for purity and impurity. In most cases, however, these regulations do not apply to normal domestic life. Rather, they are aimed at groups living in cities or "camps" under the supervision of priests who evidently represented the same line of Zadokite tradition as those of the yahad-organization. CD 15: 15-1 7 lists those who are excluded from the group: imbeciles and the insane, simpletons, the blind, lame, and limping, deaf people and minors. These exclusions reflect the presence of holy angels, just as in the military camp. The group regarded itself not as a sect but as a true representative of Israel as a whole, living in an exceptional situation comparable to the people of Israel in exile or in the wilderness. The model for such group life was apparently not the military camp proper but the military colony, a heritage of the late monarchical period. The military colony at Elephantine represents the survival of pre-exilic traditions, including characteristic elements of the popular religion of that day. During the Persian period, the religious/ cultic character of the military colony underwent a fundamental change in line with the priestly dominated exilic theology documented in the Pentateuch's P-tradition. At the time of Antiochus III (223-187 B.C.E) a well established organizational pattern apparently 45 L.H. Schiffman, "Purity and Perfection. Exclusion from the Council of the Community in the Serekh Ha-'edah," in J. Amitai, ed., Biblical Archaeology Today Gerusalem, 1985), pp. 373-289. 46 For the relation of CD to the relevant 4Q fragments, see now H. Stegemann, "Towards Physical Reconstructions of the Qumran Damascus Document ScroHs," in Baumgarten, Chazon, and Pinnick, op. cit., pp. 177-201.

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

113

already existed, which underlies the king's granting Mesopotamian Jews the right to found a military colony in Asia Minor. The pertinent text is rather short but seems to presuppose cultic functionaries. 47 The centralization of the cult in the land of Judah !Israel evidently did not exclude such cultic activities in a military camp outside the Land, a fact that also explains the phenomenon of the sanctuary at Leontopolis. 48 The group at Qumran faced an exceptional situation, as indicated in CD 6: 17. It regarded the very center of holiness, the sanctuary of Jerusalem, as defiled, at least for a temporarily "period of iniquity." This had consequences for the sacred space, the cultic functions, and the communal significance of the cult. The alleged defilement rendered impure the holy realms of the sanctuary as well as all things related to the cultic life; it challenged the expiating effects of the ritual and resulted in non-participation in the Temple cult. This situation required a re-enforcement of those organizational patterns that could safeguard the interests of the group and of its priests, including control over the cultic taxes due to the priests (CD 6:1121 ): (11) And regarding all those who have been admitted to the Covenant: not to enter the sanctuary in order to lighten up His altar in vain but that they shall shut he door, for God has said (Mal. 1: 10): "Who among you will shut its door in order that you don't lighten up my altar?"-in case that they will not be on the alert to proceed according to the full exposition of the Torah for the period of iniquity. And to separate themselves (15) from the sons of corruption, to abstain from the impure wicked wealth in connection with a vow or a cultic dedication ( 16) and in connection with property of the sanctuary, to deprive the poor of His people that in consequence widows become their spoil (17) and they murder orphans. To separate the impure from the pure and to declare (the difference) (18) between the holy and the profane, and to keep the Sabbath day according to its full regulations, and the festival dates and the Day of Fasting according to the extant (law in force) of the members of the Covenant in the Land of Damascus. (20) To deliver the holy 47 Josephus, Ant. 12.148-153. For the cu1tic-organizational significance of the text, see A. Schalit, "The Letter of Antiochus III to Zeuxis regarding the establishment of Jewish Military Colonies in Phrygia and Lydia (Josephus, Ant. 12.148-153)," in Jewish O.Jlarter[y Review 50, 1959/1960, pp. 289-318. 48 For a re-examination of the evidence, see now J.E. Taylor, "A Second Temple in Egypt: The Evidence for the Zadokite Temple of Onias," in Joumal.for the Study qf Judaism 29, 1998, pp. 297-321; concerning the institution of the military camp, see p. 311.

114

JOHANN MAIER

portions according to their explicit prescriptions, and to love each his brother (21) like himself, to sustain the miserable, the poor, and the proselyte ....

Another passage (CD 12:19ff.) formulates the aims of the group as follows: Order of session of cities of Israel: to separate on the basis of these laws (20) the impure from the pure and to declare (the difference) between the holy and the profane. And these are the prescriptions (21) for the instructor, to deal by them with every living (man) for jurisdiction on each occasion and that according to this (22) law the descendants of Israel conduct themselves so that they shall not be cursed. And this is the order of session of the (members of) cam[p]s who conduct themselves in line with these (laws) during the period of iniquity until the entering upon office of the anointed one of Aaron (13: 1) and of Israel. An so as (units of) ten men as a minimum, (as units of) thousand and as (units of) hundred and as (units of) fifty (2) and (as units of) ten. And in the place of (a unit of) ten there shall not be lacking a priest well versed in the Book HHGH, and according to (3) his direction they all shall be ruled. And if he is not an expert in all these (laws) and a man from the Levites is an expert (4) in these (laws) shall the commanding decision go forth according to his direction for all members of the camp. And if (5) a case regarding the Torah of skin disease comes up concerning a man shall the priest appear and take his position in the camp and the Supervisor (6) shall teach him the explicit wording of the Torah. For even if he is ignorant, it is he who (as one of the priests) shall exclude him, for theirs is the (7) jurisdiction.

The laws in CD rest on older legal traditions that formed the basis for regulations in the Temple Scroll and in 4QMMT. 49 Among them are detailed prescriptions concerning matters of purity and impurity. Some of the regulations in CD and 4QD texts recall passages in I QS, but the former presuppose normal family life within the group. Some disciplinary measures resemble those of the yahad, for instance, the temporal exclusion "from the purity" as mentioned in the context of regulations concerning witnesses in CD 9:21. Some regulations presuppose a setting prior to the group's secession from the cult injerusalem. CD 12:1ff., for instance, concerns the City of the Sanctuary as a specific realm of holiness and purity: "Nobody shall have sexual intercourse with a woman in the City of 49 Ch. Hempel, "The Laws of the Damascus Document and 4QMMT," in Baumgarten, Chazon, and Pinnick, op. cit., pp. 69-84.

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

115

the Sanctuary, to defile thus (2) the City of the Sanctuary with their sexual impurity." Other regulations concern every day life. For instance, CD 12 states: (II b) Nobody shall pollute his soul (12) by any savage animal or by small living beings, to eat from them, from the bee's larvae to every living (13) being that swarms in the water. And fish they shall not eat unless they have been gutted (14) when still alive, and their blood been shed. And all the locusts, according to their kinds, shall be put into fire or (boiling) water (15) while still alive, for this is the law of their creation. And all of the wood and the stones (16) and the earth that have been contaminated by human uncleanness so that greasy dirt glues to them: according to (17) (the grade of) their impurity they render impure the person who touches them. Every object-(as) a nail or peg in the wall-(18) that remains in a house with the defunct person will be impure in terms of the same impurity as working utensils.

4QD fragments, like 4Q269 frag. 8 ii I 4Q270 3 ii-iii I 4Q271 2, contain regulations concerning the ritual evaluation and treatment of vessels and objects, and the following passages deal with prescriptions for cases of sexual impurity and with the appropriate purification rites.

Striking details

a) Leprosy In ancient time, the most severe case of human impurity was represented by the leper. In Judaism, the leper was totally excluded from society, not only from the sanctuary and City of the Sanctuary. In many instances, this exclusion applied for the rest of his life. If, however, it was determined that the stricken person was afflicted by some different skin disease, once he was healed from the plague he could return to his home. The decision about his restored state of health obviously was of vital interest to both the alleged leper and the community, so that it was left to an uncontested authority to decide whether a healing process had taken place and to declare the person, after completion of a purification ritual, re-admissible to society (the extant texts are primarily concerned with his admissibility to the holy areas of the sanctuary). According to Jewish tradition, a priest had to decide such matters, and some of the relevant texts seem to have been written as professional handbooks for priests.

116

JOHANN MAIER

4QD fragments 50 contain remnants of an account of the criteria for diagnosing such cases. The fragmentary text once described in detail a procedure by which a priest would control development of a scab and decide if it represents a case ofleprosy or not. Characteristic is its view that the affected parts of the body have been mortified but, by the "spirit" of life, can be regenerated. Scholars have viewed this 4Q text as an exegeses of Lev. 13-15. More likely, both texts are based on older traditions, with 4Q treating the matter according to priestly requirements and Lev. 13-15 constituting a more general regulation. b) Corpse Impurity

Defilement by contact with a corpse was a phenomenon people confronted independent of their status or role. 11 Ql9 49:5-51 :6 treats such instances at length and gives details about the seven day purification ritual. Corpse impurity was a prominent issue in the cultic realm, as shown by texts such as 4QMMT (4Q396 frag. 2), 4Q277 frag. 1 ii, or 4Q512 col. II (frag. 42-44). 51

c) Impurity by Discharge and by Sperm Emission Alongside defilement by a corpse stood the impurity that resulted from a discharge, 52 menstrual impurity, and sperm pollution. Lev. 15: 1-15 presents detailed regulations for the zab, a person who suffers a discharge. In the Qumran traditions, this issue was of great concern; included in the category of zab were persons who experienced a discharge caused by sexual excitement (4Q266 frag. 6 ii, 14-15), distinguished from an incidental sperm pollution during the night or a sperm pollution resulting from sexual intercourse. The later Rabbinic tradition presupposed a similar effect caused by improper thoughts

50 44Q266 frag. 6 i IQ269 frag. 7 I 4Q272 frag. 1 i I 4Q273 frag. 4 ii: For a composite and the single texts, see J.M. Baumgarten in J.C. Charlesworth, ed., The Dead Sea Scrolls, vol. 2: Damascus Document. War Scroll (Tiibingen, 1995), pp. 6475; idem., Discoveries in the ]udaean Desert XVIII· The Damascus Document (Oxford, 1996), pp. 129-130, 188-190, 196-197. 51 E. Eshel, "4Q414 Fragment 2: Purification of a Corpse-Contaminated Person," in Bernstein, Garcia-Martinez, and Kampen, op. cit., pp. 3-10. 52 J.M. Baumgarten, "Zab Impurity in Qumran and Rabbinic Law," in Journal qf Jewish Studies 45, 1994, pp. 273-277.

PURITY AT Q,UMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

117

but did not classify it as a phenomenon of ritual significance. In any case, it was cultic, not moral, concerns that gave rise to the assumption of defilement. According to Num. 5:2, a ;;;ab is obliged to leave the camp until his purification is complete. As already noted, the Qumran tradition identified this camp with the City of the Sanctuary, in which sexual intercourse was in all events forbidden and from which every person incidentally polluted by a sperm emission needed immediately to depart. While discharge, like corpse contamination, requires a seven day purification ritual (ll Q19 col. 45: 15-17), a sperm-polluted person is excluded from the sanctuary only for three day (llQl9 col. 45:1012). Discharge of a liquid was also seen as an issue of impurity. In all cases, the real concern was admission to or exclusion from the sanctuary and City of the Sanctuary, a concern that apparently accorded with an old tradition attested at Exod. 19:15, which viewed Mt. Sinai as in the status of the sanctuary. At the same time, some regulations in 4QTeharot53 relate to concerns other than the sanctuary. According to 4Q27 4 frag. 2 1:4-7, a person polluted by a discharge of sperm must to wash himself and his cloths as well as everything that came in contact with the sperm. In line 6, the regulation presupposes a setting in the camp, 54 not in a normal household. At the same time, 4Q274 frag. 1 presupposes a domestic. scene and mentions several cases of impurity. The impure person has to keep apart from all pure persons and things in order to avoid their defilement by contact, particularly regarding food, for the prescriptions in 4Q274 frag. 3 concerned even fruits and vegetables. d) Liquids and Oil

The Qumran texts accord with Scripture and the Mishnah concerning the higher susceptibility of liquids to defilement. 55 The passage about corpse contamination in 11 Q19 col. 49:6-8 explicitly states that, in the house of the deceased, all food or anything else on which a liquid had been poured becomes impure; even remnants of stains of liquids on objects or on the floor should be carefully removed. 33

97.

J. Baumgarten, in Discoveries in

the Judaean Desert XXXV (Oxford, 1999), pp. 81-

4Q512 frag. 8+9 mentions cities and places of residence. J.M. Baumgarten, "Liquids and Susceptibility to Defilement in Some New 4Q Texts," in Jewish Q_uarter(y Review 85, 1994/1995, pp. 91-101. 54

53

118

JOHANN MAIER

The significance attributed to fruit juice is striking. 4Q274 frag. 3 i, in connection with an impure person, and 4Q284a seem to have treated a similar matter. 4QMMT (4Q396 frag. 1 ii par. 4Q394 frag. 8 iv) lists as one point of dissent the question of whether during the process of pouring out the impurity may be transported by the liquid to the second vessel or not. Another detail of interest is that vessels of stone may be defiled by (impure) oil, 56 which presupposes for (impure) oil a higher degree of defiling than for other liquids. According to josephus 0/Var 2:123) the Essenes avoided contact with oil, but this concerns only cosmetic purposes, 57 presumably as in that use, oil was a luxury. Rancid oil may haven been regarded as particularly problematic for the purity law, because CD 12:1 apparently regards as shemen all smeary substances in the soil, which may stem from impure materials, here particularly excrements. New oil (jifhar) played a prominent cultic role, according to the Temple Scroll, in connection with the festival of the new oil (11 Ql9 col. 21:12-23:?).

e) Idolatry and the Gentile Realm In the law of Qumran, the interdiction against idolatrous practices forms part of the measures to safeguard the correct cult (11 Ql9 col. 51: 19-54: 7). Infringement of these regulations, as well as other ritual violations, results in defilement of the Land and the need for its purification. The same attitude is found in the Book of Jubilees (cf., Jub. 22:16ff.). Impurity because of idolatry appears in Qumran texts also in connection with gentiles. 58 For instance, the problem emerged concerning what may be sold to gentiles without violating ritual and principal conditions. CD l2b states: (8) ...Nobody shall sell clean cattle (9) and fowl to gentiles lest they sacrifice them. And out of his granary and out of his winepress shall he sell nothing within all his wealth to them, and his male slave and his 56 H. Eshel, "CD 12:15-17 and the Stone Vessels Found at Qumran," in Baumgarten, Chazon, and Pinnick, op. cit., pp. 45-52. 57 J.M. Baumgarten, "The Essene Avoidance of Oil and the Laws of Purity," in Revue de Qymran 6/22, 1967, pp. 183-192 = idem., Studies in Qymran Law (Leiden, 1972), pp. 88-97. 58 J. Klawans, "Notion of Gentile Impurity in Ancient judaism," in American Journal for the Study of Religion 20, 1995, pp. 285-312.

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

119

female slave he shall not sell (11) to them, if they have entered the Covenant of Abraham while being with him.

The other side of the coin is the question of whether or not certain gentile products or property are permissible for Israelite ritual use. 4QMMT (4Q394 frag. 3 i + frag. 4) considers, apparently as a matter of dispute, the use of gentile's wheat in the sanctuary (this reference may be to Levites not gentiles). 59 More revealing is 11 Q19 63:10ff.: during the first seven years, a female prisoner of war who has been taken as a wife is not allowed to touch pure things or eat portions from Shelamim-offerings.

f) Purification Remnants of several purification rituals are extant among the 4Q fragments, 60 for instance, in 4Q512 and 4Q414. They contained something not attested to elsewhere, namely, liturgical formulas with benedictions to be recited after the process of purification. An important issue in this context is the interdiction against sharing food with an impure person. 61 The necessity of distinguishing between the various grades and kinds of impurity also is stressed in 4Q274 frag. 1 col. i. Impure persons have to keep apart not only from pure ones but also from persons impure by other reasons. 4Q284 contained a similar collection of liturgical formulas ("Order of Thanksgivings for Israel"), and here we find in passages concerning purification certain phrases that show that the main concern is priestly holiness, with its focus in the sanctuary. The bulk of the relevant fragments probably formed part of a professional text for 59 Y. Elman, "MMT B 3-5 and Its Ritual Context," in Dead Sea Discoveries 6, 1999, pp. 148-156. 60 J.M. Baumgarten, "The Purification Liturgies," in Flint and VanderKam, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 200-212. 61 C£, 4Q514 (4QOrd) frag. I i: "(5) And concerning all the temporarily defiled: On the day of their purification they shall bath (6) and wash (their clothes) and are pure. And after that they eat their bread according to the law of the purity. (7) But one must not eat in the first phase of his impurity and as long as he has not begun to become pure from his 'well.' (8) And one should not eat during the first phase of one's impurity." And concerning all temporarily defiled: on the day (9) of their purification they bath and wash their clothes in water and are purified. After that they eat their bread (10) according to the law. But he must not eat and not drink together with a man, who ... "

120

JOHANN MAIER

priests. They claimed, nevertheless, that their system was incumbent on the whole of Israel, as the title and some phrases in the benedictions clearly indicate. The rituals mention in particular the first, third, and seventh day for ritual actions in connection with grave cases of impurity: defilement by a corpse, discharge, or menstrual blood. The use of water for purification took place in three stages: 62 ( 1) By bathing or washing and by washing the cloths, (2) by immersion, and (3) by sprinkling purification water (produced with the ashes of the red heifer; cf., 4Q276), an act that requires a bath before, and that should be executed by a priest (4Q274 frag I; 4Q277 frag. 1 ii ). 63 This is the decisive and concluding act of purification. Compared with the Rabbinic tradition, it is notable that, according to the Qumran texts, the sprinkling of purification water was not restricted to cases of corpse contamination. Its extensive application apparently corresponded to requirements for visitors to the sanctuary and among the priests, as Philo still presupposed (De specialibus legibus I §261, and III § 64; cf., De decalogo §45). It is improbable that the Qumran practice was an exegetical extension of a biblical text. It is far more likely that the Rabbinic practice emerged as a reduction of a cultic practice in order to ease the requirement upon the laity, particularly the people on the countryside. 64

Basic 7heological Convictions One of the most fiercely discussed issues concerning purity and impurity is the relationship between ritual performances and moral values. This is, however, a primarily modem issue, based only on certain tendencies in ancient Hellenistic Judaism and Christianity to distinguish ritual, juridical, doctrinal, and/ or moral precepts and presupposing a higher dignity for the latter ones. In light of the common prejudice according to which ancient Judaism was a ritualistic reli-

62 See J.M. Baumgarten in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXXV (Oxford, 1999), pp. 83-87. 63 J.M. Baumgarten, "The Red Cow Purification Rites in Qlmran Texts," in JoumRl qf]ewish Stutfies 46, 1995, pp. 112-119. 64 For the Rabbinic sources, sre particularly J. Neusner, 7he Judaic Law qf Baptism, Tractate Miqvaot in the Mishnah anti the Tosifia (Atlanta, 1995).

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

121

gion, it seemed an important discovery that some Qumran texts reveal a close connection between ritual and moral preconditions for expiation, as for instance in the famous doctrinal passage at 1QS 3:13-4:26. But the alleged concept of an "opus ex opere operatum" fits only to a certain extent the cultic theology of ritual, namely, insofar as this theology itself is not taken into account. Regarding expiation it was, of course, never an accepted view that it could be attained without a corresponding intention. In polemical contexts about correct ritual practices, the correspondence between the cultic and the cosmic order played a prominent role, and it is in such cases that the correct intention or "spirit" was particularly stressed. Sometimes this accentuation resulted in a more or less dualistic view of the world and of humanity in general. For priests who regarded their service as an angelic function were such considerations of special concern. 4QMMT repeats several times the phrase "it is the obligation of the priests to be careful in matters of.... " 65 Beyond such "ontological" viewpoints, 56 it seems anachronistic to distinguish "ritual" and "moral" defilement. 67 The correct spiritual orientation was at that time seen as an integral part of the whole system of cultic theology and as a necessary presupposition for the effectiveness of the ritual. Proof for this is found in the benedictions of the purification liturgies, such as at 4Q284 and 4Q414. The most impressive testimony is, of course, still 1QS 2:253: l2a: No ritual purification and no atonement is possible without a preceding spiritual re-orientation and a corresponding correct practice. This includes, according to l QS 4:5-6, abhorring all impure things. But it will be only in the last days that man shall become definitely refined from all impurity (cf., IQS 4:29-22) and wicked spirits. 1QS 3:1-4 states that a non-penitent sinner cannot achieve atonement by purification rites alone: He will not be purified by water of purification and will not become sanctified by oceans (5) and streams, and not purified by all waters of 65 For holiness and purity of the priests see also 4Q525 frag. 3; 4Q537 frag I: 4Q542 frag. I i. 66 J. Neusner, "Uncleanness: A Moral or an Ontological Category in the Early Centuries A.D.?," in Bulletin for Biblical Research 1, 1991, pp. 63-88. 67 J. Klawans, "Idolatry, Incest, and Impurity: Moral Defilement in Ancient Judaism," in Journal for the Stut!J '!!Judaism 29, 1998, pp. 391-415, tried to :find a distinction between ritual and "moral" defilement in Qlmran texts. But all the alleged "moral" issues also have ritual significance.

122

JOHANN MAIER

ablution: impure, impure he will remain all the time he disregards the laws of (6) God, without disciplining in the yahad his counsel; for by the spirit of God's truth (in) the conduct of a man will be atoned all (7) his (deeds of) guilt, in order to see the light oflife, and by a holy spirit in the yahad of his truth will he become purified from all (8) his (deeds of) guilt, and by a spirit of uprightness and humility will his sin be atoned, and by the submission of his soul to all prescriptions of God will he become purified.

The doctrinal literary unit of 1QS 3: 13-4:26 is a kind of systematic speculative tractate dealing with the destiny of mankind. Human thinking and conduct is to a certain degree predetermined by two opposite spirits, a spirit of light and a spirit of darkness or evil that strive continuously in the "heart" until the final purification by God in the eschaton. Nonetheless it is the individual's (i.e., the Israelite's) decision to follow the impulses of the good spirit and to return in penitence to the right spirituality and correct practice of God's commandments (lQS 4:18-26): But God, in the mysteries of his knowledge, has fixed an end to the existence of iniquity, and at the appointed time (19) ofvisitation he will annihilate it for ever. Then shall got forth the world's truth for eternity, for it has been polluted in ways of injustice during the dominion of iniquity until the (20) appointed time of final judgment. Then will God by his truth refine all the practices of a man, will purify the sons of man in order to make an end to all spirit of iniquity from the components (21) of his flesh, and to purify him by a spirit of holiness from all deeds of injustice, and he will sprinkle on him the spirit of truth like water of purification, (purifying him) from all abomination of deceit and pollution (22) by a spirit of uncleanness, in order to give insight to upright (men) in cognition of the Most High and in wisdom of sons of heaven, to instruct those of a perfect conduct. Because God has chosen them for an eternal covenant (23) and theirs is all glory. And no iniquity exists (further on) and to shame will be put all practices of deceit. Until then the spirits of truth and iniquity will strive in the heart of a man ....

This view presupposes an ontological or "natural" basis for impurity and evil that cannot be removed until the end of days, and then only by God himself. It has been recognized that this concept includes not only a dualistic scheme but also a kind of predestination, and many scholars imagined Iranian influence. If the Iranian world view really exercised an influence of that kind, it would, anyway, only have been possible thanks to a corresponding inclination to explain facts in a similar way. Dualistic formulations are not uncommon in the context of monotheistic religious concepts, and they also have certain roots in

PURITY AT QUMRAN: CULTIC AND DOMESTIC

123

theological traditions about the creation that includes light and darkness. Darkness, impurity, and death are in any case linked by the assumption of spirits in charge of such sinister realms. They form the counterpart of the positive aspects of creation, the realms of light and life, for Israel guaranteed by practice of the Torah. There was an obvious opportunity for priestly circles to explain specific circumstances as the result of predestiny. All the sons of Aaron were elected for cultic service, but some of them were excluded from it, some because of a temporary state of impurity to be corrected by a purification ritual but others permanently, because of physical defects that were a condition of birth. The contradiction between the alleged election of all members of the group and the ineligibility of some for service demanded a speculative explanation, and such explanations existed, usually based on an "astrological" and "chieromantic" determination that presupposes a correspondence between certain physical conditions and shares in "light" and "darkness."68 A complementary method of explaining evil and impurity was historical. The eschatological perspective regarding the end of impurity and iniquity presupposes as its counterpart a "historical" perspective regarding these things beginnings. While it is true that the concept of purity/impurity is essentially independent of historical considerations, 69 this does not exclude primordial and eschatological perspectives. On the contrary, the pre-diluvian origins of evil was a subject of great concern in the priestly intellectual traditions. Old mythological materials about the negative consequences of an unnatural mingling of gods and men justified the exclusion of priests who had uncertain or clearly illegitimate roots, an argument which 68 K. von Stuckrad, Frijrnrnigkeit und Wissenschqft. Astrologie in Tanach, Qyrnran und friihrabbinischer Literatur (Frankfurt a.M., 1996); idem., Das Ringen urn die Astrologie. }iidische und christliche Beitriige ;:.urn antiken ::{,eitverstiindnis (Berlin 1999); P.S. Alexander, "Physiognomy, Initiation and Rank in the Qumran Community," in Geschichte, Tradition, Riflexion. Festschrift for Martin Hengel (Tiibingen 1996), vol. I, pp. 385-394; F. Schmidt, "Astro1ogie et predestination a Qoumran," in Qgdrnoniot 30, 1997, pp. 115118; idem., "Ancient Jewish Astrology. An Attempt to Interpret 4QCryptic (4Ql86)," in M. Stone and E.G. Chazon, eds., Biblical Perspectives: Earl,y Use and Interpretation qf the Bible in Light qf the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden, 1998), pp. 189-205; M. Albani, "Horoscopes in the Dead Sea Scrolls," in Flint and VanderKam, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 279-330. 69 See J. Neusner, "History and Purity in First-Century Judaism," in History qf Religions 18, 1978, pp. 1-17.

124

JOHANN MAIER

seems to have been used to exclude whole priestly families and groups from the "sons of Aaron." Marriages with non-priestly partners were regarded as a violation of the order of creation, mixing up ontologically different realms. It already has been observed that the elaboration of the old mythological motif of the fall of the watcher angels in the Book of the Giants and the Enochic Book of the Watchers aimed at analogous violations of the separation of ontologically disparate realms, namely priests and non-priests/ 0 and, on a secondary level, Israelites and gentiles. By analogy to the idea that different realms of holiness require corresponding stages of purity, it was held that intermarriage constitutes a violation of a degree of purity. 4QMMT (4Q394 frag. 8 iii 9b20), for instance, censures in traditional terms intermarriage with Moabites and Ammonites and also marriage with sterile Israelites. The text explains: "for impure ones are they." As a couple forms "one bone" (cf., Gen. 1:23), it seemed obvious that the pure ones are rendered impure by marriages of that kind. Regarding priests 4Q.MMT also stresses this ontological aspect in 4Q396 frag. 2: Inappropriate marriages are not only denounced as "fomication," 71 they are explicitly said to represent a forbidden mixture, by analogy to the concept of shatnez and cross-breeding. The Book of Jubilees displays the same ontologically motivated attitude, particularly in chapter 30. The reason is that a state of holiness has to be upheld by an appropriate conduct: "for they are holy ones and the sons of Aaron are most holy ones." The sons of Aaron are in the same sense "holy ones" as angels, and the Israelites are holy in relation to them as the outer realms of holiness in relation to the Holy of holies in the Sanctuary (cf., Jubilees 33:7). Some passages seem to expect for the eschaton a higher, angel-like level of holiness and purity for all of lsraeF 2 but apparently not in an egalitarian sense. For according to this world view there also exists among the angels a rigid hierarchic order in accordance with heavenly liturgical functions. 73 70 D. Suter, "Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest. The Problem of Family Purity in Enoch 6-16," in Hebrew Union College Annual 50, 1980, pp. 115-135; cf., CD II, 16-19; TestLevi 14,1: TestNaft 3,1- 4,1. 71 Cf., CD IV,17.20 ; cf., particularly 4QMMT (4Q396 frag. 2), a text that presupposes the concept of a "seed of holiness." 72 Cf., for instance, the fragment 4Q5ll frag. 35,3. 73 See the impressive descriptions in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, 4Q4004Q407; ll Ql7; Ms. Masada. For the text, see now C. Newsom, "Shirot 'Olat Hashabbat," in Discoveries in the ]udaean Desert XI (Oxford, 1998), pp. 173-401.

6. WORSHIP, TEMPLE, AND PRAYER IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Eileen Schuller McMaster University Among the writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls are to be found the texts of more than two hundred hymns, psalms, and prayers, most of which were unknown to us prior to the discovery of these ancient manuscripts; 1 there are also at least thirty-five manuscripts containing some portion of one hundred and twenty-six of the psalms of the biblical Psalter. 2 In addition to these works that give actual words addressed to God, there are descriptive statements about prayer, atonement, and sacrifice, plus prescriptions as to when and how to pray. This material is a rich resource for exploring how prayer and worship were understood and practiced by the Judaism of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Scholars of religion have traditionally worked from the premise that there is some correlation between words addressed to God-both what is said and how it is said-and what is believed about God; the monk Prosper of Aquitance (a fifth century disciple of Augustine) expressed this in the classical adage, lex orandi, lex credendi. 3 The dialectic of belief and prayer is never simple or univalent. Prayers cannot be reduced to mini-statements of dogma, yet they reveal simultaneously something about their subject and about their object, even as they function in the rhetoric of self-definition, serving to censor in and to censor out on an individual and a communal level. 1 This is the figure given by Esther G. Chazon, "Hyrrms and Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls," in P.W. Flint andJ.C. VanderKam, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls qfier Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (Leiden, 1998), p. 245. The exact number could be slightly different depending upon which texts are included and how multiple copies are counted. 2 The exact number of psalm manuscripts is a matter of dispute. Peter W. Flint, The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls and the Book rif Psalms (Leiden, 1997), lists some thirty-nine psalm manuscripts but includes in that count some manuscripts that may not be "psalters" in any traditional sense of the term. 3 For a discussion of his original statements and its adaptation, see Paul de Clerck, "Lex orandi, lex credendi: The Original Sense and Historical Avatars of an Equivocal Adage," in Studia Liturgica 24, 1994, pp. 178-200.

126

EILEEN SCHULLER

Although there is such a large amount of prayer material in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is necessary to begin with words of caution and an explicit acknowledgement of some of the serious limitations and unresolved problems that face us as we examine this material. To make any statements about what is distinctive in Qumran prayer, in both content and practice, implies that we have some comparable data on prayer in other contemporary types ofJudaism as a basis for comparison-and even at this basic level the problems are many. There is certainly a rich corpus of specific prayers to be found in many apocryphal and pseudepigraphical books from the Second Temple period, but most of these prayers are literary compositions embedded in a narrative (e.g., in Enoch, Judith, Tobit, 4 Ezra, 2 Maccabees, Pseudo-Philo), and much of this material has been studied even less than the Scrolls. 4 Furthermore, when it comes to trying to reconstruct the practice of worship prior to the destruction of the Temple, there is much dispute in scholarship at present about the relationship between the Temple and its sacrificial system and the recitation of set prayers. Was the practice of regular, fixed communal prayer already widely known and established, or was it limited toand thus a distinctive mark of-the Judaism of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Some scholars emphasize that it is precisely because the texts of prayers were written down and preserved in the Scrolls that we have some glimpses of the types of liturgies that were already in the process of development even while the Temple system still was operative; other scholars are very skeptical about whether there was any concentrated development of regular communal prayer prior to the destruction of the Temple except in marginal "sectarian" groups that had somewhat withdrawn from the realm of the Temple. 5 In any case, a comparison of actual texts and formulations often necessitates juxtaposition of a pre-70 Qumran text with a prayer or blessing from a copy of the Siddur that was written only many centuries later. 4 For basic surveys, see J.H. Charlesworth, "A Prolegomenon to a New Study of the jewish Background of the Hymns and Prayers in the New Testament," inJJS 33, 1982, pp. 164-185; D. Flusser, "Psalms, Hymns and Prayers," in M.E. Stone, eds., Jewish Writings qf the Second Temple Period (Philadelphia, 1984), pp. 551-577. For a selected collection, see M. Kiley, et al., eds., Prayer .from Alexander to Constantine: A Critical Anthology (London, 1997). 5 For a recent survey of the issues in the current debate, see Ruth Langer, "Revisiting Early Rabbinic Liturgy: The Recent Contributions of Ezra Fleischer," in Proqftexts 19, 1999, pp. 179-204; also Stefan C. Reif, Judaism and Hebrew Prayer: New Perspectives on Jewish Liturgical History (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 53-87.

WORSHIP, TEMPLE, AND PRAYER IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

127

Even with regards to the Dead Sea Scrolls material itself, specific realia have rendered the study of this corpus of material more problematic and difficult than it might seem at first glance. It is cautionary to remind ourselves of how fragmentary most of this material is: the three hundred and thirteen little pieces of the Festival Prayers (4Q509) or the two hundred and fifteen little bits of the Song qf the Sage (4Q511) supply but a portion of what was contained in the original scroll, and when only isolated words and phrases are preserved there is always the danger of mis-emphasis and the problem of how much to attempt to reconstruct a putative text, often by assuming a high degree of regularity of form and structure with what happens to have been preserved. The problem of the fragmentary nature of the surviving evidence has been exacerbated by the slow and random process of publication. Prayers and psalms were already prominent in the first materials that came from cave 1, both in the large Thanksgiving Scroll (Hodayot) purchased by E. Sukenik and published in 1954/19556 and in the smaller fragments recovered by archaeological exploration (another copy of the Hodayot published as 1Q35, the Prayers for the Festivals, 1Q34, 34bis, the Rule qf Blessings, 1Q28b, and some very fragmentary hymnic compositions,lQ37-40). 7 Bits and pieces of prayer texts were made available over the next decades, but these were often published only in part, which sometimes tantalized and sometimes downplayed the real significance of the material. 8 The publication of the large scroll, llQPsa, in 1965 highlighted the methodological difficulty of distinguishing between a "biblical manuscript" (albeit one different from what came to be the canonical Psalter) and a secondary "prayerbook" collection. 9 But it was only in 1982 in DJD 7, when M. Baillet published all the fragmentary materials assigned to him, that scholars began to get a real sense of the diversity and importance of the whole corpus: that were actual collecE. Sukenik, 7he Dead Sea Scrolls if the Hebrew University (Jerusalem, 1954/ 1955). D. Barthe!mey andj.T. Milik, Qymran Cave I (Oxford, 1955). 8 For a fuller history of the process of scholarly publication, see Chazon, op. cit.; also E. Schuller, "Prayer, Hymnic and Liturgical Texts," in E. Ulrich and J.C. VanderKam, eds., 7he Community if the Renewed Covenant: Notre Dame Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls (Notre Dame, 1994), pp. 153-159. 9 J. Sanders, 7he Psalms Scroll if Qymran Cave 11 (llQfS') (Oxford, 1965). For issues of interpretation, see the extensive discussion and bibliography in P. Flint, 7he Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls and the Book if Psalms. 6

7

128

EILEEN SCHULLER

tions of prayers for the days of the weeks on both a monthly and weekly cycle, prayers for the festivals, blessings for purification, and songs for warding off demons. And it was another fifteen years until two more volumes ofDJD were devoted to this type of material: DJD 11 (1998) gave us the cave 4 and Masada copies of the Songs if the Sabbath Sacrifice (4Q400-407), 10 a collection of Non-Canonical Psalms (4Q380-381) and Berakhot (4Q286-290), and DJD 29 (December, 1999) gave us the cave 4 copies of the Hodayot (4Q427-432) and Hodayot-like compositions (4Q433, 433a, 440), the first publication of the Barkhi Nojshi psalms (4Q434-438), and many very fragmentary bits and pieces. A number of small prayer texts did not get included for various reasons and will be scattered in other DJD volumes still to appear. The fact that so much of this material has only become available very recently means that integrative study is necessarily at a most preliminary stage; in many ways, we are still trying to discover the right questions to ask. In the last few years a number of very helpful surveys of the prayer materials of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been published, and in this paper I will not attempt to duplicate that type of comprehensive enumeration and categorization. 11 As all such surveys have noted, it is difficult to know where to draw the boundary lines in setting up the category of "prayers," and the judgment is somewhat subjective especially since terms tend to be used imprecisely and even in contradictory ways. For example, "prayer" is used by some scholars as a generic term that can include any religious sentiment or address to God (no matter what the content); for others, "prayer" is limited to compositions in prose (rather than poetry) where the content is petition (rather than praise). Another question is whether religious poetrywhich I will designate by the generic term "psalm" for all such poetry that is modeled on the biblical psalms-is to be included in a study of The copy from cave II, II Ql 7, appears separately in DJD 23, 1998. See the survey of Chazon, op. cit.; a shortened version appears under the tide "Psalms, Hymns and Prayers," in L. Schiffman and J.C. VanderKam, eds., The Encyclopedia qf Dead Sea Scrolls (New York, 2000). See also the survey of Daniel Falk, "Prayer in the Qumran Texts," in W. Horburg, W.D. Davies, and J. Sturdy, eds., The Cambridge History qf]udaism: Vol. Three: The Early Roman Period (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 852-877. Earlier survey-type articles include M. Weinfeld, "Prayer and Liturgical Practice in the Qumran Sect," in D. Dimant and U. Rappaport, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years qfResearch (Leiden, 1992), pp. 241-258, and Schuller, op. cit.; Bilhah Nitzan, Qymran Prayer and Religious Poetry (Leiden, 1994); Daniel Falk, Daily, Sabbath and Festival Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden, 1998). 10

11

WORSHIP, TEMPLE, AND PRAYER IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

129

prayer or to be put into a separate category of personal meditation and devotional piety. In this paper I have chosen to cast my net widely rather than to fix on a narrow definition, using examples from the texts that seem to be most significant but also trying to give some sense of the scope and diversity of the material available for study. The prayer texts found in the Scrolls do not have a single origin and authorship and this, in itself, tells us something about a kind of diversity-as opposed to uniformity-that is perhaps too often unacknowledged. There are some texts that are generally recognized as having been composed by a particular type of Judaism in that they use specific vocabulary and categories of thought that are most closely paralleled in the Rule of the Community and the Damascus Document. Texts generally accepted as "sectarian" 12 would include the Thanksgiving Hymns, the Berakhot (4Q286-290), the Rule if Blessings (lQSb), Blessings for Purification (4Q512, 4Q414), and the liturgies for Entrance into the Community (lQS 118-2 18) and Expulsion from the community (4Q266 11 5-21). Some of these may be compositions of the Teacher of Righteousness himself, but this is notoriously difficult to prove for a specific composition, and the status of such authorship is never articulated explicitly as a claim for authenticity or authority. That it was considered necessary to compose such "new" compositions may be in itself an indication that there was a sense of a "new" relationship with God that had to find its own words and channels of expression. Yet even such compositions most often followed standard biblical forms and genres (e.g., the psalm of thanksgiving, blessings, curses, covenant formularies) with only limited and controlled innovation. 13 But this group ofJews did not use only prayers of their own composition. A surprisingly large number of texts contain nothing distinctively sectarian in vocabulary or content, and had they not been found in the Qumran caves would have never been associated with this type ofJudaism but would be slotted into that nebulous category 12 The terminology of "sectarian" and "non-sectarian" in this context has become somewhat standard usage, even if we recognize that there are many problems in imposing the modem sociological category of "sect." See the careful discussion by C.A. Newsom, '"Sectually Explicit' Literature from Qumran," in W.H. Propp, B. Halpern, and D.N. Freedman, eds., The Hebrew Bible and Its Interpreters (Winona Lake, 1990), pp. 167-187. 13 For both similarities to and differences from biblical forms, see the detailed studies of specific texts by B. Nitzan, Qymran Prayer & Religious Poetry.

130

EILEEN SCHULLER

of "Persian-Hellenistic compositions." This category includes both collections of prayers (e.g., the Words qfthe Luminaries, 4Q504 14 ), and poetic works, especially the "non-biblical" psalms in llQPsa and 4QJV (e.g., the Apostrophe to Sion, the Hymn to the Creator, the Plea for Deliverance) and the collection of psalms attributed to prophets and kings in 4Q380 and 4Q38l. For other compositions there is an ongoing and unresolved debate about whether to classify them as "sectarian" or "nonsectarian" (e.g., the Songs qf the Sabbath Sacrifice, the Barkhi Nqfshi psalms, and the Daily Prayers). The point to be noted here is that the very difficulty in making this distinction and the presence (and presumed use) of so much nonsectarian material indicates some linkage and sense of continuity with the broader community. However polemical and harsh might be the condemnation of those "caught in the snares of Belial" (CD 4: 15), there was no attempt to expurgate all "their" prayers in favor "our own" way of addressing God. Perhaps some of these texts had already acquired a certain authority or fixity of expression so that they were not readily abandoned or even radically adapted. Or more to the point, the language of prayer was fluid enough that the same stereotypical words (e.g., "you have chosen us," 4Q504 1-2 iii 9) could be invested with radically different referential frameworks. Finally, in setting forth the whole scope of the corpus, the significance of so many copies of the biblical Psalter should not be underestimated.15 We know that the psalms were used for purposes of study, as evidenced in the compositions of commentaries/pesherim on the Psalms (1 Ql6, 4Ql 71, 4Ql 7 3), but the large number of psalm manuscripts suggests some liturgical use, though little can be said for certain about how or when the psalms would have been recited or sung. 16 But if this were the case, the psalms in their multiple genresnoting particularly the numerical predominance of the psalms of Ia-

14 For a careful presentation of the arguments, see Esther G. Chazon, "Is Divrei hame'orot a Sectarian Prayer?" in Dimant and Rappaport, op. cit., pp. 3-17. 15 Seen. 2. 16 For further discussion of whether psalms, both biblical and sectarian, formed a part of the communal worship, see my forthcoming article, "The Use and Function of Psalms from Qumran: Revisiting the Question," in the volume of the Orion Center containing the papers of the conference in Jerusalem, 2000. The use of psalmody in the Dead Sea Scrolls community may have followed a quite different trajectory than in the synagogue liturgy, where the evidence of silence suggests that the psalms did not become an integral part of the service until quite late.

WORSHIP, TEMPLE, AND PRAYER IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

131

ment-must also be factored into the texts that shaped the piety of this community. There are relatively few places where explicit statements are made about the purpose and function of prayer. In one such statement, in the Rule qf the Community, IQS 9:5, prayer is described with technical vocabulary that in the biblical text is applied to sacrifice, "and prayer rightly offered shall be as an acceptable fragrance of righteousness, and perfection of way as a delectable free-will offering." The allusion is to a verse from Prov. 15:8, and the same verse is quoted explicitly in CD 11 :21 as scriptural justification for not participating in the sacrificial system: "the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination, but the prayer of the just is like an agreeable offering." Prayer can function "like" sacrifice as a means of atonement, but this atonement is effected within the context of the entire life of the community-its purity, obedience to Torah, and shared wealth-as the previous lines make explicit, "when these matters occur in Israel [and the sect is formed] .. .in order to atone for the guilty rebellion and the iniquitous sin so that acceptance shall come to the land apart from the flesh of burnt offerings or the fat of peace of offerings" (1 QS 9:3-4, also 8:89). It is not a particular prayer or liturgical ritual nor a particular component of communal life that substitutes for, or replaces, specific sacrifices, but rather it is an entire way of life, of which prayer is an intrinsic part. The claim that there could be a means of atonement apart from the sacrificial system established in the Torah seems to have developed as a pragmatic response to the conviction that the presentjerusalem Temple and the sacrifices that were being carried out there by the officiating priests were being carried out according to misguided practice (as spelled out in 4QMMT) and according to the wrong calendar. Particularly in the Admonition section of the Damascus Document and in some of the Pesharim, the polemic is sharp and absolute: the Temple is defiled (CD 5:6, 20:23, IQpHab 12:9). Thus those who enter the covenant to observe the Mosaic Torah "during the age of wickedness" must not "enter the Temple to light his altar in vain;" in barring the door, that is, not participating in sacrificial worship, they are in fact carrying out what was prescribed in Mal. I: 10, "forasmuch as God said, 'Who among you will bar its door?' and 'You shall not light my altar in vain"' (CD 6: 11-13). In other places there are some hints that the actual relationship to the Temple

132

EILEEN SCHULLER

may have been somewhat more complex, allowing for some continued involvement in activities not specifically linked to the calendar. That the substitution of prayer for sacrifice is a present expediency rather than a theological rejection or a reconfiguration of the sacrificial system per se is made clear when eschatological hopes and dreams are articulated. In looking ahead to the final days of the great final battle of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness, the first stage of victory after seven years will involve the restoration of Temple worship injerusalem (lQM 2:1-6). Similarly, in the visionary description of the "New Jerusalem" to be build in the future, there is clearly a section, though very fragmentarily preserved, devoted to a Temple, altar, priests, and sacrificesY Thus it seems that the recitation of prayers is not to replace, indeed cannot replace, ultimately the sacrificial system ordained by God for all eternity in the Torah; only in the present "time of Belial" did it need to take on that role. This prayer is conceived primarily as a corporate activity. The Rule of the Community stipulates that "they shall eat together, they shall bless together, and they shall take counsel together" (lQS 6:3-4); "the Many are to be on watch together... to read the book, to explain the regulation and to bless togethd' (lQS 7:7-8). A large number of the prayers are formulated in the first person plural, and there are some hints of dialogical or antiphonal style; for example, the response of "Amen, amen" in the Berakot (4Q287 14) and the Words if the Luminaries (4Q504 3 ii 3), or in the response "Peace upon you, Israel" which may have been spoken by a priest in the Daify Prayers (4Q503 1-6 iii 10). In addition to these communal prayers, we can assume that there would have been personal words of devotion, the spontaneous turning to God in times of crisis-or of joy-but this is not what is preserved, though perhaps this more unregulated type of prayer is referred to in the first part of the "Hymn about the Times of Prayer," "[and in distr]ess he shall bless his Creator and in all that happens he shall rec[ount ... " (lQS 9:26). Those members living in the towns and cities presumably had a place to gather for communal prayer. Since the basic unit was an

17 The fragments that describe the Temple and its accoutrements are to be found in the 2Q24 and llQl8 copies of the "New Jerusalem" text; at present it is very difficult to reconstruct precisely where this material may have come in the order of the original scroll. An eschatological Temple may also be referred to in The Temple Scroll, 11 Ql9 29:9-10.

WORSHIP, TEMPLE, AND PRAYER IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

133

assembly of ten (IQS 6:3, 6), we need not think in term of a large separate, public building, nor expect to find archaeological remains of these places of prayer. There is one much-discussed passage in the Damascus Document that refers to a/the "house of prostration" (beth hishta~ut, CD 11:21-22/ I 4Q271 5 i 15-17). Some scholars would interpret this as a reference to the Temple (where people prostrated in worship), but others have proposed that the "house of prostration" is the term for the local place of worship. 18 If local centers of worship are being referred to in this admittedly-cryptic passage, then the choice of that specific designation is noteworthy as a reflection of what was considered of prime importance in worship. The subsequent phrases in the passage that mention "impurity requiring washing ... when the trumpets of the assembly sound ... the house is holy" also indicate that certain features associated with the realm of Temple worship (ritual purification, trumpets, holiness) were being extended to this non-Temple setting. All this is very tentative but may hint at a basic conceptual framework for the practice of communal prayer that was quite different than that which informed the institution of the synagogue in other types of Judaism. It is very difficult, at least at the present stage of our study of the Dead Sea documents, to combine descriptive statements and the actual prayer texts and come up with a precise ritual of what was done and said by whom and when. 19 What is certain is that prayer is to take place at fixed times mandated by divine decree. The concern for the proper time is not spelled out so much as a matter of legal regulation but for its theological and cosmological significance. Thus, at the end of the Rule of the Community, the principle of divinely prescribed times is set forth, "with the offering of lips he [the Maski~ will bless God [with the offering] of the lips during the set times that he prescribed" (lQS 10: 1), and then the list of times is given. A similar detailed calendric listing of fixed times is given in the Hodayot, introduced by the rubric, "For the Maskil, praises and prayer, to bow down and make entreaty always, from period to period ... " (lQI-P

18 See A. Steudel, "The Houses of Prostration, CD XI 21-XII 1, Duplicates of the Temple," in RQ)6, 1993-1994, pp. 49-68. For a reexamintion of the evidence and the arguments that have been proposed for both interpretations, see Falk, Daily, Sabbath and Festwal Prayers, pp. 242-246. 19 For the purposes of this paper, I have not tried to include the description of the daily pattern of prayer for the Essenes as described by Josephus, War 2.128-131.

134

EILEEN SCHULLER

20:7-14 [12:4-11] 20 ). In both passages, the times ofprayer are given in terms of the regular movement of the luminaries (the sun and the moon) over the course of the day, week, year, and the jubilee cycle (lQS 10: 1-6): at the beginning of the rule of light in its time, and when it is gathered to its appointed place ... when the lights shine out of the holy vault, when they retire to the abode of glory ... at the entry of the seasons on the days of the new moon .. at the beginning of the months ... at the beginning of the years ... at the beginning of their weeks for the season of Jubilee.

Because of the poetic nature of the passages in the Communiry Rule and in the Hodayot, it is frustratingly difficult to establish how many times of prayer are being described: the text has been read variously as fixing two daily times of prayer (morning and evening), three times (morning, noon, and evening), or six times (though this may be a too literal reading of a poetic calendar). 21 What is more important is that these times are set in accordance with the order of the cosmos: the regular cycle of morning and evening, the beginnings of the months, the festivals, the sabbatical years and jubilee years. In the words of another composition Afysteries (1Q27 1 5), "as darkness disappears before the light ... so will evil vanish forever. .. and justice will be revealed like the sun," that is, the cycle of light and darkness is experienced as a confirmation of the defeat of evil and the reign of righteousness. Through prayer at these pivotal moments the community is brought into harmony with the whole of this cosmic reality-and this includes the angelic world of those who praise God at these same intervals (cf., Hymn to the Creator, "Separating light from darkness, by the knowledge of his mind he established the dawn. When all his angels had witnessed it, they sang aloud," llQPsa 26: 11-12). There may be an implicit link with the daily Temple sacrifices, which are also offered in relationship to the daily cycle of the heavenly bodies (Jub. 3:27, 6:14, 49: 19), but that 20 There is a particular problem in referring to specific passages in lQH•. The first set of column and line numbers is according to the order as the scroll has been reconstructed by Emile Puech and by Hartmut Stegemann; the second set of numbers is according to the traditional ordering as given by Sukenik in the editio princeps. Most recent English translations follow the column numbers of the reconstructed scroll, but there may be some variation in the line numbers from what is given here. 21 For a detailed comparison of the two listings and the reconstruction of six times, see Sh. Talmon, "The Emergence of Institutionalized Prayer in Israel," reprinted in Ike World rif Qymran from Within (Leiden and Jerusalem, 1989), esp. pp. 212- 220.

WORSHIP, TEMPLE, AND PRAYER IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

135

Temple/sacrificial connection is not made explicit. Rather the emphasis is on the fact that the daily cycle of prayer accords with the cosmic order. There are two sets of prayers associated with the diurnal cycle, and their differences in both form and content is a manifestation of differing theological emphases. Daily Prayers (4Q503), preserved in only one copy, is a collection of blessings for each day of one month (either Nisan or Tishrei-which month is still disputed and depends on complex calendrical calculation). There is a standard rubrical notation "on the X-day of the month in the evening, they shall bless and answer and say," and "when the sun goes forth to illumine the earth they will bless and answer and say.... " Each prayer seems to begin (or can be so reconstructed) with a blessing formula in the third person, "Blessed be the God of Israel who ... "; the unit may conclude with a second person blessing, though few examples have been preserved: "Blessed be you/your name, 0 God oflsrael..." (col. 10:20, frg. 14 2, 68 2). Someone, perhaps the priests(?), then addresses the congregation directly with the words, "Peace upon you, Israel" (cf., Pss. 125:5, 128:6). These blessings praise God for creation and for the daily cycle of both the sun and the moon over the course of the month in its progressive phases. Another set of prayers is also associated with morning and evening because of the title The Wordf rif the Luminaries (Divrei hamme'orot) written on the outside of one copy (4Q504). This is a collection of petitionary prayers for each day of the week (for the Sabbath section, see below). As the scroll has been reconstructed by Esther Chazon, 22 these prayers follow a set structure: a superscription, "Prayer for X-day;" an imperative "Remember, 0 Lord;" an extended historical narrative divided over the consecutive days of the week from the creation of Adam (Sunday) to the post-exilic time of tribulation and distress (Friday); a petitionary imperative, its theme rising in some sense from the narrative; and a concluding blessing in which God is praised in relationship to the theme of the prayer (e.g., "Blessed be] the Lord who taught us ... " frg. 4 14). The strong Deuteronomic salvation-historical perspective of The Wordf rif the Luminaries issues in petitions for forgiveness, knowledge, and deliverance; the emphasis is on sin, repentance and confession,

22 See her unpublished dissertation, "A liturgical Document from Qumran and Its Implications, 'Words of the Luminaries,"' Hebrew University, 1991.

136

EILEEN SCHULLER

though always against the background of election. 23 This is a very different theological thrust than the cosmologically-based worldview of Daify Prayers that issues in praise and reinforces the unchanging stability of the cosmic order. As another example of difference, we can observe that in the Daify Prayers the Sabbath prayers are not particularly distinctive in structure, though the content highlights specific themes of rest, delight, and election ("appointed time of rest and delight ... who chose us from all the nations;" frgs. 24-25). In the Words qf the Luminaries, however, the Sabbath prayer is radically distinct from that for the other days of the week; it is formulated in parallel poetic lines rather than as prose, and focuses on themes of creation and covenant. In its total doxological thrust, with no place for supplication, this collection seems to anticipate and share the fundamental orientation that gave expression to later Tannaitic and Amoraic restrictions on "crying out" with petition on the Sabbath. Yet the supposition is that the Daify Prayers and the Words qf the Luminaries were not experienced as fundamentally contradictory but that both found a place in the complex of prayers that made up the daily liturgy, or, at the very minimum, there was some impetus for the preservation and copying of both collections. In addition to the calendric cycle, certain specific key moments in the life of this community were given liturgical expression. In exploring aspects of identity and self-understanding, special attention needs to be paid to the distinctive liturgy that was developed for the annual ceremony of the Renewal of the Covenant held during the feast of Weeks (Pentecost) in the third month ("all [the inhabitants of] the camps shall congregate in the third month," 4Q266 11 17). At this time new members took their solemn oath, and all members renewed their commitment and received their ranking (lQS 2:21-23). The ritual of entrance is described in some detail in lQS 1:18-2:18, and included both a narrative description and some of the actual words to be said; a section of the Damascus Document (preserved in 4Q266 ll) also gives the words of the liturgical pronouncement in the same ceremony for the expulsion of a member who had rejected the discipline of the community and its atoning power. The priests and Levites first "bless the God of victories and all the works of his faith23 For a study of the wider context of these types of prayers, see R.A. Werline, Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism: The Development qf a Religious Institution (Atlanta, 1998), esp. pp. 126-156.

WORSHIP, TEMPLE, AND PRAYER IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

137

fulness" and all those who enter the covenant give their assent with a double "amen, amen." The priests then recite the mighty deeds of God and the Levites recite the sins of the people "during the dominion of Belial." Those who enter the covenant confess their sins with the words, "we have acted sinfully, we have transgressed, we and our fathers before us have sinned, we have committed evil..." (IQS 1:2425) and declare God's justice. This follows a pattern of prayer attested in various penitential prayers from throughout the post-exilic period (Dan. 9, Neh. 9, Ezra 9, I Kgs. 8); the similarity with the words of the High Priest on Yom Kippur is also to be noted, "0 God, I have committed iniquity, transgressed and sinned before thee" (M. Y oma 3.8). The blessings for those of God's lot and curses for those of the lot of Belial follow the pattern of blessings and curses on Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal (Deut. 27-29, Josh. 8:30-35). The blessing pronounced by the priests is an adaptation of the priestly blessing of Num. 6, expanded in accordance with the community's dualistic outlook and sense of being the recipients of a special knowledge with a salvific role (IQS 2:2-4): may he bless you /with everything good/ and may he keep you /from everything evil/ may he illuminate your heart /with the discernment of life and grant you eternal knowledge/ and be gracious to you /for everlasting bliss/.

The combination of distinct elements from the covenant formulary, the penitential confession, and the priestly blessing creates a liturgy that is at once innovative and yet firmly rooted in long-established biblical models. One theme that plays a central role in the piety of this Judaism is expressed in a wide variety of texts, both prose and poetry: mortals on earth can join with the angels in heaven precisely through the agency of the words of praise that both groups offer to God. 24 The dynamics of the interrelationship is not articulated explicitly and what was understood often is hinted at rather than explained. In the Dairy Prayers, only isolated phrases are preserved-"we with the holy ones" (4Q503 4 8); "[and we] the sons of the covenant shall praise [...]with all the troops oflight (4Q503 7-9 1-4);25 "those praising with 24 For a survey of the relevant texs, see Bjorn Frennesson, "In a Common Rf!Joicing:" Liturgical Communion with the Angels at Qymran (Uppsala, 1999). 25 The expression "troops of light" here is an epithet for the angels.

138

EILEEN SCHULLER

us" (4Q503 37-38 21; 64 5)-and so it is difficult to know precisely how this motif functioned in the blessing as a whole. But in spite of the fragmentary state of preservation, these prayers demonstrate that the concept of praying with the angels had developed prior to the destruction of the Temple and that already in this very early stage it was associated with daily worship, not limited to the Sabbath. 26 There was, however, a special association of angelic and human worship on the Sabbath as reflected in the Songs if the Sabbath Sacrifice, nine copies of which were found at Qumran (4Q400-407, 11Ql7) and another copy at Masada. These are songs designated for thirteen consecutive Sabbaths, as attested by the explicit rubric: "By the Maskil [Instructor]. Song of the sacrifice of the X-Sabbath on the xday of the x-month." 27 Praise is the dominant motif of all these songs although the specific content is quite varied. Only in the first five songs is there an actual address to God; humans speak in the first person plural but with a profound sense of the incommensurability of human and angelic words of praise: "to praise your glory wondrously with the gods ofknowledge and the praiseworthiness of your kingship with the holiest of the h[oly ones]. .. how shall we be considered [among] them? What is the offering of our tongues of dust (compared) with the knowledge of the g[ods?" 4Q400 2 1-6). Songs 6-8 are quite different in form, repetitious formulaic lists of the praises and blessings offered by "seven chief princes" and the "seven deputy princes" and imperative summonses to the seven priestly councils to give praise; again no actual texts for the angelic songs are given. The final section, songs 9-13, works through an elaborate description of the heavenly Temple, including the merkabah (chariot-throne) and the dress and worship of the angelic priesthood. The repetitious, almost hypnotic language may have served to produce a kind of "communal mysticism," that is, to allow the reciters to experience, through the medium of words, some sense of participating in the heavenly cult even while shut out from the earthly Temple. 28 26 For a comparison with the Qgdushah in the standard liturgy, see Esther G. Chazon, "The Qgdushah Liturgy and Its History in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls," in ]. Tabory, ed., From Qjimran to Cairo: Studies in the History of Prayer Gerusalem, 1999), pp. 7-18. 27 It is usually assumed that the cycle was repeated four times over the year (4 x 13 = 52), but there is little evidence. 28 The origin of these songs has been much disputed. C. Newsom, as editor, first argued they were "sectarian" composition and thus distinctive to the thought of this particular type of Judaism; more recently she has emphasized certain features not

WORSHIP, TEMPLE, AND PRAYER IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

139

In the worldview of the Scrolls, not only does the heavenly angelic world impinge on this earthly realm, but malevolent spiritual forces and powers are also operative. In most of Second Temple Judaism, the existence and influence of evil spirits is taken for granted (c£, Tobit 3:8, En. 15, 91, Jub. 10:1; 4Q266 6 i 6, where scale disease is attributed to the harmful spirit), but in the dualistic and apocalyptic worldview of the Scrolls, the present age is fundamentally defined as the time of the "dominion of Belial" (IQS I: 16-18), the period of history in which "Belial will be unleashed against Israel" (CD 4: 15). The taking of the oath to enter the community is understood as one means of deliverance from the sway of these powers, for "the angel Mastema will depart from behind him if he carries out his word" (CD 16:4-5). Another means of defense is prayer and praise. There is one Aramaic text (4Q560) in which the demonic spirit is addressed directly and commanded to depart through words of exorcism. More often, the address is directed instead to God and divine power and intervention is invoked, "do not allow Satan or any spirit of uncleanness to rule over me" OlQPsa 19: 15-16). But many texts that are concerned with demons are neither imprecatory nor petitionary but rather songs of praise. In the Songs if the Sage (4Q51 0-511) the explicit claim is made that it is the recitation of "praises ... bene[dictions ...] words of thanksgiving in psalms of [splendor]" that can serve "to frighten and to terrify all the spirits of the angels of destruction and spirits of the bastards, demons, Lilith ... " (4Q51 0 1: 1-6). Indeed in this collection, there is surprisingly little emphasis on the power of the name of the God, 29 though the tetragrammaton is given a more prominent role in another collection of four psalms attributed to David (llQapPs). Instead the recitation of the praises of God becomes the main weapon to frighten the demons "for the present time of sinful humiliation" as a prelude to their "eternal destruction" (4Q51 0 l 7-8). The doxological conclusion of this scroll "and blessed be your name for ever and ever" and the shared with sectarian texts, especially in the specific designations for God (frequendy 'elohim'), although Newsom considers they were used by the community. Maier has postulated that these may have been part of a much larger and highly developed complex of priesdy texts of which only these have survived. 29 In one place (4Q511 20 12) the cryptic "the judgments of yorf' may be a substitute for the tetragrammaton, but it has also been suggested that this is to be interpreted as a scribal error for "the judgments of his hand." In 11 QapPs there are eight occurrences (or partial restorations) of the tetragrammaton.

140

EILEEN SCHULLER

double amen (4Q511 63 iv 1-3) suggests that this understanding of what could be accomplished through songs of praise was not just a matter of theological speculation but found expression in some sort of public liturgical ritual. In addition to the prayers considered so far that are connected explicitly with certain times or occasions, the major collection of over thirty poetic compositions, the Hodqyot or Thanksgiving Psalms, deserve separate consideration. The presence of two copies in cave I and the carefully-crafted format of the IQHa copy, plus the fact that at least six more copies were preserved in cave 4 point to the importance of this collection, 30 even though it is very difficult to know how these psalms were actually used, whether in public liturgical singing or for personal mediation. 31 The reconstruction of the original shape of the cave I scroll and the evidence of the recently-published copies from cave 4 of different orders and collection support the hypothesis that this is not a monolithic document, but that there were sub-collections of smaller blocs of psalms that were joined together in various combinations as well as copied separately (although attempting to reconstruct and recover the details of the process remains a work for the future). 32 Many scholars have argued that at least some portion of these psalms (the so-called "Hymns of the Teacher") were written by the Teacher of Righteousness himself; 33 that is, they are highly personal

30 The uncertainty about the precise number of copies is because there are a number of Hodayot-Like manuscripts (4Q433, 433a, 440, and 440a); that is, these contain material that is similar in some ways to the Hodayot of cave l but do not overlap exacdy. Particularly 4Q440 could be still another arrangement of otherwise unattested Thanksgiving Psalms. See the discussion in DJD 29, pp. 233-254. 31 The occasional references to singing-"1 will sing with knowledge and all my music shall be for the glory of God; my lyre and my harp should sound for his holy order" (I QS 10:9)-are suggestive, but this could simply be a reuse of traditional biblical language in a metaphorical sense. 32 For example, when the original placement of the columns and fragments of lQHa is reconstructed, it becomes clear that there is one system of orthography in the first eight columns, a different system in columns 9-20:6, and still another in the final columns, suggesting that these were copied from different sources. For the differences in the cave 4 copies, see DJD 29, pp. 69-7 5. 33 This division of the Hodayot reflects the results of an interrelated series of monographs by German scholars, especially G. Jeremias, Der uhrer der Gerechtigkeit (1963), J. Becker, Das Heil Gottes (1964), H.-W. Kuhn, Enderwartung und gegenwiirtiges Heil (1966). For a recent discussion of the issue, see M.C. Douglas, "The Teacher Hymn Hypothesis Revisited: New Data for an Old Crux," in DSS 6, 1999, pp. 239-266.

WORSHIP, TEMPLE, AND PRAYER IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

141

in tone, and the speaker functions as a mediator of revelation to others. Other psalms (the "Hymns of the Community") seem more the corporate voice of the community and share certain standard components, most notably an explicit confession of God's salvific action and justice-"! know [that] righteousness is yours," (lQHa 19:20-21 [11:17-18])-and extended reflections on the sinful nature and misery of the human condition-"What is one born of a woman in the midst of all your awesome works? He is a construction of dust and kneaded with water; his foundation is sinful guilt, and ignominious shame, and a source of uncleanness; a spirit of perversity rules over him," (lQHa 5:31-33 [13:14-16]). But all of these compositions (there may well be more than just two types) are written as psalms of thanksgiving, and this fundamental stance before God is perhaps more important than the differences. Unlike the biblical prototypes, where the thanksgiving psalm can begin in quite different ways, these all start with a set introductory formula, either "I thank you, 0 Lord" or "Blessed are you, Lord;" indeed it is not clear that there is any real distinction between the two introductions, and in one case (lQHa 13:22 [5:20]) the first is erased and the second written in above the line. The psalmist then states his reason for offering praise by recounting what God has done for him: "because you have placed my soul in the bundle of the living" (lQHa 10:22 [2:20]); "because you have redeemed my soul from the pit" OQHa 11:20 [3:19]); "for you have illumined my face by your covenant" (lQHa 12:6 [4:5]); "because you have dealt wondrously with dust and mightily with a creature of clay" (lQHa 19:6 (11:3]); other reasons frequently cited for giving thanks is that God has granted the psalmist knowledge of marvelous mysteries (e.g. lQHa 12:28-29 [4:27-28]) and brought him into the community (the ya~ad), giving him fellowship with the elect on earth and the angels in heaven (e.g. lQHa 11:23-24 [3:22-23]. The virtual absence of petition is not only because of the constraints of the biblical genre (compositions could break the boundaries of standard genres and introduce new elements as did the Entrace Liturgy) but is in keeping with the strongly deterministic worldview in which God has set all in place and all is already decided by his gracious design. In the Thanksgiving Psalms, the speaker is confident that as a member of the community he is able to "become united with the sons of your truth and in the lot with your holy ones ... so that he can take his stand in your presence with the perpetual host and [with] the [ever-

142

EILEEN SCHULLER

lasting] spirits to be renewed with everything that will exist and with those who know in a community of jubilation" (lQHa 19: 14-17 [11:11-14]). This experience is not only something to be longed for and fulfilled in the future but can be already experienced as a present reality. Thus the psalmist can speak of his present relationship to the heavenly realm in highly exalted language. He is "beloved of the King," "a companion to the holy ones (4QHa 7 i 10/ /4QHe 1 6); 34 he can make bold to ask rhetorically, "who is like me among the heavenly beings" (4QHa 7 i 8/ /4QHe 1 4) precisely because he and the angels share this common activity of praising and rejoicing in God's marvelous deeds of salvation. In looking ahead to the future, the distinctive eschatological and apocalyptic orientation of the Judaism of the Scrolls took specific shape in some of the psalmic and liturgical texts. The conviction that the final end-time drama was imminent, indeed had already begun, found concrete expression in the provision of the actual texts of victory songs and blessings and curses for use at various stages of the final war (e.g., lQM 10-19, 4Q285/llQ14). The Rule qf Blessings (1Q28b) likewise gives the text of blessings for various groups and individuals, including both the priestly and the Davidic eschatological figures, blessings to be recited by the maskil at that future day when there will be no need for curses. For the present time of waiting, however, there are few prayers that call for the hastening of the end or petitions for divine intervention; the decisive moment has been fixed and set from all eternity "in the mysteries of divine knowledge" (lQS 4:8), and pleas either to hasten or to delay its arrival are both futile and unnecessary. But eschatological anticipation is not to be separated from the present life of praise. This is powerfully illustrated in one of the thanksgiving psalms (lQHa 11:20-37 [3:19-36]) that speaks most explicitly of the final destruction of all the powers of evils. In a lengthy

34 The psalm quoted here is admittedly one of the most interesting and most puzzling of all the Hodayot, but my interpretation seeks to understand it as part of the larger collection. Other scholars have interpreted this passage as referring to an exceptional individual who has ascended to heaven in a unique way; see the summary of proposed identifications in JJ. Collins, Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls (London, 1997), pp. 143-147. In addition to overlapping copies of one recension of this psalm in 4QHa, 4QHe, and 1QHa, a separate recension appears in 4Q491 ll, perhaps as part of a copy of the War Scroll, although this is may be a separate manuscript.

WORSHIP, TEMPLE, AND PRAYER IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

143

passage, the psalmist develops a word-picture (in poetry that almost defies translations) of that day in which "the torrents of Belial will reach to all sides of the world, in all their channels a consuming fire ... to devour as far as the great Abyss ... so that all the deeps shall howl. .. and the world's foundations shall stagger and sway... until the determined eternal unparalleled destruction." Yet for the faithful member of the Community this end-time scenario is not a cause of terror and fear, nor is it totally a future concern; it is integrated within the framework established by poem as a whole. Because in the past God "saved my life from the pit, and from Sheol of Abbadon you lifted me to an everlasting height," because the psalmist already "takes his place with the host of the holy ones and enters in communion with the congregation of the sons of heaven" (lines 20-25), the anticipated future divine action can be subsumed into the present moment of praise and becomes part of "I thank you, Lord." This union of heavenly and earthly, past, present, and future in the act of praise and thanksgiving is an expression of the piety of the Judaism of the Scrolls.

7. THE CALENDAR AT QUMRAN Martin G. Abegg, Jr. Trinity Western University Calendars, or the writings that assume them, comprise a substantial percentage of the Dead Sea Scrolls. If not the prime intentional element among the Scrolls, it certainly is the calendar that in large part demonstrates that the corpus is the product of a particular ideology rather than an accidental collection of unrelated manuscripts. If we are to understand the Scrolls, we must come to terms with their practice of measuring time. I accordingly have designed this article to be a primer to the study of calendar reckoning, highlighting the chief components that are significant to an understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The discussion is into four parts: 1) introductory comments concerning the still unsolved mysteries of the Qumran calendar, 2) a review of the eight cycles that describe the calendar's function, 3) a review of the Qumran festival calendar, which is a key component to the calendar's theological purpose, and 4) a table that plots a complete six-year priestly rotation, a helpful tool with which to understand various discussions throughout the article. 1

Introduction to i\1ysteries

of the

@mran Calendar

In truth, before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls little was known of a detailed nature concerning the Jewish calendar in the 1 Two excellent recent publications provide additional information on the Qumran calendar:J.C. VanderKam, Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Measuring Time (The Literature rif the Dead Sea Scrolls (London and New York, 1998) and U. G!essmer, "Calendars in the Qumran Scrolls," in P. Flint andJ. VanderKam, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fif£v Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (Leiden, E199), vol. 2, pp. 213-278. My appreciation goes to Emanuel Tov for alerting me to manuscript reassignments. References in this study are to B.Z. Wachokler and M. Abegg, A Preliminary Edition rifthe Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew ami Aramaic Texts .fiwn Cavt FtJIJT (Faso::icle One; Washington, 1991 ), pp. 60-10 I, and M. Wise, M. Ahl:gg, and E. Cook, 7he Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (San Francisro, 1996), pp. ~323. Preliminary identifications can be translated to Qnumben using thr iJAowing ~arions: manuscript A=4Q320, Ba=4Q32L Bb=4Q32la, Cc=4Q32-f. (~ 4Q32