The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran

by Robert Feather

The Dead Sea Scroll of the ‘Last Words of Amram’ – the Biblical father of Moses – describes two forces struggling over possession of the spirit of his dead body. Both beings exhibit the reptilian features of an asp and a viper, whilst the one of ‘darkness’ is known as ‘Belial’ and the one of ‘light’ is known by three names. They ‘watch’ over the dead body, but inner knowledge will save Amram from the ‘King of Wickedness’.

  Many interpretations have been made of the origins of this passage, but one possibility that does not seem to have been examined is its parallels to the Egyptian myth of Osiris. All the elements are there. Horus, the redeemer, ‘watches’ over Osiris in his state of suspended death to protect him from the god of darkness, Seth, whilst the serpent doors are guarded by the gods. The serpent was from ancient times an emblem of moral evil and therefore dread for the Egyptians, and they had long believed in a ‘limbo filled with snakes’.21 The combining of gods into three was, as has been seen previously (in Chapter 5), a common feature of Egyptian lore, and a body in limbo was to be revived by ‘three entities’ – the soul (ba), intelligence (xu), and genius (ka).22

  If this scroll is referring to the Biblical father of Moses, as the name implies, it is certainly saying that he was not an Hebrew.

  BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT

  So many are the conventionally inexplicable passages of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the life-patterns of their authors, the Qumran-Essenes, that can be clarified by comparison with ancient Egyptian custom – particularly that of the Akhenaten period – that it becomes irresistible to link the two.

  I think it is quite reasonable to say that the proposition that Judaism emerged out of Akhenatenism has many justifications, just from the evidence already cited. The deep philosophical bases of monotheistic religion, evident even at the time of Moses, is unlikely to have emerged from a group of nomadic Patriarchs. We have already seen how Egyptian religion had moved inexorably towards a consensus that there was only one supreme God. The development of that conviction accelerated with the Amenhotep pharaohs, culminating in Akhenaten’s complete break with multi-deity worship and idolatry.

  The Essenes were the children of the Akhenaten priests in the same manner as Christianity and Islam are the children of Judaism – the torch bearers of the eternal light of God.

  If Moses did acquire his depth of monotheistic understanding from Egypt, then the obvious question arises – is there any other evidence or acknowledgement, from within the Bible or other related sources, that the Biblical Commandments and Laws, other than the very early ‘Noahite Laws’, pre-dated Moses?

  If I am correct, there should be. If there is such evidence, it would be powerful additional proof of my suppositions.

  The immediate answer is a qualified ‘No’ – at least as far as conventional Torah and the Bible admit. However, as already mentioned, religions tend to be selective in their memories and distance themselves from their early antecedents! This apparent lack of confirmation of an earlier structure of Laws is therefore only to be expected. Later Rabbinic teaching does, however, tend to talk in terms of Noahite Laws and Mosaic Laws, as if to half-heartedly admit: ‘Well, if there are any pre-Moses laws they were basic and quite under-developed.’

  The pre-Moses ‘Noahite Laws’, which have been deduced from Genesis 9:4–7, etc., are considered to number seven in total and forbid:

  idolatry

  blasphemy

  murder

  adultery

  robbery

  eating flesh from a living animal

  The seventh requires the establishment of courts and justice. There is no specific mention of keeping the Sabbath holy, or other precepts.

  When, however, one looks at the oldest known Hebrew and Aramaic sources of the Bible – the Dead Sea Scrolls – and especially those of them that do not relate to specific descriptions of the Qumran Community, but to pre-Exodus references, there is a clear, unambiguous acknowledgement that the Commandments of Moses were extant and operative before the time of Moses. This conclusion is not just my own interpretation; it is the view of eminent scholars like Professor Ben-Zion Wacholder of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Dwight D. Swanson and Philip R. Davies,23 the latter being published within a programme of Judaic Studies sponsored by Brown University in America.

  These pre-Exodus references are to be found in the Qumran-Essene ‘Jubilees Scroll’, in the ‘Damascus Document’ and in the ‘Temple Scroll’. ‘Two of these scrolls represent the law as having been fully known before Sinai.’24

  Many derivations of ‘the laws’ can be seen in pre-Sinai writings of Egypt. As Raymonde de Gans expresses it in his work Toutankhamon,25 referring to post1422 BCE and moral concepts that are:

  curieusement formulée en termes négatifs à la manière des Dix Commandements de Moise. Souvent très long et très détaillé, ce plaidoyer nous fournit des indications précises sur le Code Moral de l’Egypte antique.

  curiously formulated in negative terms in the style of the Ten Commandments of Moses. Often very long and very detailed, this pleading gives us a precise indication of the Moral Code of ancient Egypt.

  ‘Jubilees’

  The Jubilees Scrolls of the Qumran-Essenes record that the Sinai law was known, and observed, by the Patriarchs.

  And He said to us: I am going to take for Myself a people among my peoples. And they will keep the Sabbath and I will consecrate them as My people and I will bless them. They will be My people and I will be their God. And I chose the descendants of Jacob among all those I saw. And I confirmed him for Me as the firstborn son and consecrated him to Me for ever and ever. The seventh day I will teach them so that they keep the Sabbath on it above all . . . And this is the testimony of the First Law.

  Jubilees, Fragment 1

  In Fragment 7, Terah is talking to his son Abraham:

  You my son, keep His precepts His decrees and His judgements; do not go after idols or after carved or cast effigies. And do not eat any blood of an animal, cattle or any bird which flies in the air.

  Other commandments in Jubilees include prohibition from: accepting a bribe; evil deeds; abominations; and defiling the Holy of Holies.

  The Damascus Document

  The Damascus Document is independently corroborated by the Genizah version found at the Cairo Synagogue,26 and many of its passages can be found in the Torah. There can be little doubt as to its validity in our investigations, or to the authenticity of the other texts. All three scrolls confirm the Mosaic Laws as having been fully known before Sinai.27 It is also apparent that these documents did not originate with the Qumran-Essenes but are copies of much earlier texts.

  Columns 2 and 3 of the Damascus Document read as follows:

  because they did as they wanted and did not keep the commandments of their maker, until His anger was aroused against them. Because of it the children of Noah went astray, as did their families; through it they were cut off.

  Abraham did not follow it, and he was accounted as a friend because he kept the commandments of God and did not choose what he himself wanted.

  And he passed on [the Commandments] to Isaac and Jacob, and they kept [them] and were written down as Friends of God and covenant partners for ever.

  The children of Jacob went astray because of them and were punished according to their error. And their children in Egypt walked in the stubbornness of their heart in taking counsel against the Commandments of God and doing each one as he thought right.

  Columns 5 and 6 read:

  For in ancient times there arose Moses and Aaron, by the hand of the Prince of Lights, and Belial,*50 with his cunning, raised up Jannes**51 and his brother during the first deliverance of Israel… (My italics)

  And in the age of devastation of the land there arose those who shifted boundary and made Israel stray.

  And the land became desolate, for they spoke of rebellion against God’s precepts through the hand of Moses and also of the holy anointed ones.

  The phrase: ‘by the hand of
the Prince of Lights’ as the force behind Moses and Aaron is, I believe, a deeper reference to the Pharaoh Akhenaten, for whom rays of light in the form of a hand with outstretched fingers were symbolic of his belief in God. (Although it is even more likely that it is a reference to ‘Meryra’, the High Priest of Akhetaten, who was also an hereditary Prince.) Figure 5 shows Akhenaten worshipping Aten at the Great Temple of Akhetaten.

  The Temple Scroll

  Still on the theme that the Mosaic Commandments pre-dated Sinai, the balance of authoritative opinion is that the ‘Temple Scroll’ was not an internal Qumran Community document but derived from much earlier times. The assertions within the Temple Scroll itself, that the commandments and Covenant that the Israelites were ordered to follow pre-date Sinai, are most intriguing, especially when compared to the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah 31:31–33 talks of a new Covenant between the Lord and Israel.

  Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After these days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they will be my people.

  The theme is taken up in the New Testament, in Hebrews 8, and is generally seen in Christian theology as the pivotal point of a ‘new beginning’.

  However, in the Temple Scroll, the covenant for the new Temple is not the covenant made with those who led the Hebrews out of Egypt, but with the original patriarchs of Leviticus:28

  Like the covenant which I made with Jacob at Bethel…

  The Temple Scroll contradicts Jeremiah, and maintains that there is no new Covenant. It does, however, clarify Jeremiah’s meaning of a ‘new Covenant’ as referring to a new inward understanding of the old Covenant.29

  THE TEMPLE

  Intriguingly, the above quotation from the Essene Temple Scroll, ‘…the covenant for the new Temple…’, suggests the possibility that there was an older Temple – one prior to Solomon’s First Temple.

  This apparent knowledge of an older Temple makes the attitude of the Qumran community to the Temple at Jerusalem all that more easy to understand. It has already been noted that the Qumran-Essenes were not at all happy with the manning, procedures and geometry of the Second Temple. Their dissatisfaction must also have been directed at the First Temple that, although not as elaborate, was dimensionally essentially the same.

  The Essenes considered the priests corrupt, the festival rituals inappropriate and the size of the building too small, with the wrong number of courtyards. They wanted it to have three courtyards, rather than two. Detailed measurements of the First Temple are given in I Kings 6 and 7, II Chronicles 3 and 4, and are referred to in I Chronicles 28 as being given to Solomon by his father David. The description in Ezekiel 40–47 appears to differ from the earlier Biblical descriptions and seems to be rather more a ‘vision’ of an hypothetical temple rather than a real one. Most scholars, in fact, view Ezekiel’s description as a half-remembered idyllic vision of how the Holy Temple should be constructed. Without going into the complexities of this description, there is one feature that has convinced most scholars that Ezekiel was fantasizing.

  And when the man that had the line in his hand went forth eastwards, he measured a thousand cubits, and he brought me through the waters; the waters were to the ankles. Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through the waters; the waters were to the knees. Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through; the waters were to the loins. Afterwards he measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could not pass over; for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over.

  Ezekiel 47:3–5

  Ezekiel’s guide is telling him that the Temple is 510m (taking a cubit as 0.51m) from a very wide river. Later in the Old Testament Chapter Ezekiel makes it quite clear that this very wide river is to the west of the Temple and that there were trees on either side of the river. The description given by Ezekiel bears no relation at all to the geography of the Temple mound at Jerusalem. However, look again at the maps showing the position of the Great Temple of Akhenaten in Figures 14 and 19. Of course, rivers change course over thousands of years, but geological studies show that in this instance the river has hardly changed its course over the years. Today there are very few visible signs of Akhenaten’s Great Temple, but we know from archaeological work precisely where it stood and even now there are still trees on either side of the Nile, which is particularly wide at this stretch. If you walked 500m from the Great Temple you would be up to your ankles in the water of the River Nile!

  There are many other features of Ezekiel’s vision that are reminiscent of the Great Temple at Akhetaten and its surroundings. There are also some that are quite confusing and that do not appear to relate to the Great Temple. To analyse them in detail would take another book, but his description of the proximity of a large river to the Temple, and its precise distance, could well indicate that it was Akhenaten’s Temple that he was talking about.

  According to I Kings and II Chronicles, the First Temple at Jerusalem was effectively an enlarged edition of the desert Tabernacle, and measured 60 cubits (30.6m) in length, 20 cubits (10.2m) in breadth and 30 cubits (15.3m) in height. (This is based on the Egyptian cubit measurement of 51cm; however, it is likely that by the date of the building of the First Temple, c.940 BCE, the ‘Royal Cubit’ of 53.3cm may have been used.) The inner sanctuary was 20 x 20 x 20 cubits.

  Surrounding and abutting the Temple were storehouses, priests’ quarters, service buildings and Solomon’s Palace, in a similar structural complex to that seen at Akhetaten.

  Notable differences from the Tabernacle descriptions were the addition, by Solomon, of a large brazen altar, ten lavers (rather than one) in the outer court – plus a very large one for the priests, ten seven-branched candlesticks rather than one, and two huge cherubim with 20-cubit long wings forming a protective shade over the Ark in the inner sanctum, which was in total darkness.

  Similar outline designs of temples built in the same period have been found in Canaan and Syria, but it is interesting to draw a comparison between the much earlier Great Temple at Amarna. Whilst Solomon’s Temple appears to have been considerably smaller, there are some remarkable similarities. The Great Temple was oriented north-west–south-east, whilst Solomon’s Temple was probably oriented east to west, and their overall plan sizes are in almost exact proportion – 1:3. The parallel requirement for utter darkness in the inner sanctuary of Egyptian temples has already been remarked on in Chapter 5.

  One puzzle, however, is that the the ‘Temple Scroll’ found at Qumran goes into great detail on the forms of animal sacrifice that are to be carried out in the Temple, and animal sacrifice continued in the Temple at Jerusalem throughout the period of the Qumran-Essenes. The legislative requirements for sacrifice are repeated in parts of the Books of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and all these books were of importance to the Qumran-Essenes. However, I have previously suggested that, not only did the Qumran-Essenes, like Akhenaten, not practice holocaust sacrifice, they were against it.

  For the Qumran-Essenes, their rules required the Community to be ‘without the flesh of holocausts [burnt offerings] and the fat of sacrifices’. A ‘sweet fragrance’ was to be sent up to God, and prayer was to be ‘an acceptable fragrance of righteousness’.30 No evidence of sacrificial shrines, rituals or sacrificial remains have ever been discovered at Qumran.

  The view has been advanced that the Temple Scroll is not a Qumran composition; I tend to go along with this view in relation to the descriptive passages dealing with sacrifices, which are clearly rooted in a post-exilic Canaanite setting. A possible explanation is that whilst one group of the co
nflicting strands of temple priests, who influenced the writing of the Old Testament, condoned animal sacrifice (and the worship of the god Astorath in conjunction with God), the other group of temple priests abhorred it. Going back to the ‘Golden Calf’ incident in Sinai, the condoners were most likely derived from the Aaronic priestly line, as opposed to those who traced their ancestry back to Moses. The passages in the holy texts that advocate holocaust sacrifice could therefore have been promoted by the writers that supported this view.

  SQUARING THE CIRCLE

  One can postulate from our new understanding of their heritage that, with their disenchantment with the Second Temple from both a religious and structural viewpoint, and their separation from normative Judaism, the Qumran-Essenes felt increasingly marginalized. Their only hope for a return to authentic monotheism – Atenism – was in the return of their ‘Messiah of Holiness’. When the Damascus Document of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Genizah collection cite both Moses and the ‘hands of the anointed Messiah of holiness’ as the givers of the Commandments, they are almost certainly referring to Moses and another lawgiver – Akhenaten? – who had the status of a Kingly Messiah. The Priestly Messiah in this context can only be Meryra, the High Priest of Akhetaten, who was also an hereditary Prince.

  As a corollary to the above conclusion, it becomes evident that many other of the controversially perplexing statements and attitudes expressed in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which have not been easy to explain previously, now have very plausible explanations.

  For example, there must have been a reason for the ‘catastrophic messianic’ perspective of the Community. It could have been related to the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. However, although the Qumran-Essenes venerated the concept of the Temple, they did not approve of the First (or Second) Temple and anticipated an imminent messianic age when all would be put right. Why should they be upset over the destruction of a Temple that they detested? Another, more likely, explanation can be proposed: the death of their King and loss of the Temple at Akhetaten, as the centre of their religious world, left an abiding memory of how their world should have been and that only dreams of the future could offer them the catharsis of reinstatement.