by Geza Vermes
The highest office was vested in the person of the Guardian, known also, it would seem, as the ‘Master’ (maskil). The Community was to be taught by him how to live in conformity with the ‘Book of the Community Rule’ (IQS 1, 1; 4QSa=4Q255), and to be instructed by him in the doctrine of the ‘two spirits’. He was to preside over assemblies, giving leave to speak to those wishing to do so (IQS VI, 11-13). He was to assess, in concert with the brethren, the spiritual progress of the men in his charge and rank them accordingly (IQS VI, 21-2). And negatively, he was not to dispute with ‘the men of the Pit (or Dawn)’ and not to transmit to them the sect’s teachings (IQS IX, 16-17). Of the sect’s institutions, the most significant appears to have been the Council of the Community, or assembly of the Congregation. From a passage ordering all the members to sit in their correct places - ‘the Priests shall sit first, and the elders second, and all the rest of the people according to their rank’ (IQS VI, 8-9) - the Council seems to have been a gathering of the whole community, under the priests and men of importance, marshalled by the Levites, and with the Guardian at the head. But in another text, generally held to be an early section, the rule is as follows:
In the Council of the Community there shall be twelve men and three Priests, perfectly versed in all that is revealed of the Law, whose works shall be truth, righteousness, justice, loving-kindness and humility. They shall preserve the faith in the Land with steadfastness and meekness and shall atone for sin by the practice of justice and by suffering the sorrows of affliction. They shall walk with all men according to the standard of truth and the rule of the time.
(IQS VIII, 1-4)
These three priests and twelve men are referred to also as ‘fifteen men’ in a hybrid version of the Community Rule and the Damascus Document (4Q265 fr. 7 ii). Their presence was obviously essential: both documents state that when they ‘are in Israel, the Council of the Community shall be established in truth’ (IQS VIII, 4-5; 4Q265 fr. 7 ii, 7-8). But whether they formed the nucleus of the sect as a whole, or the minimum quorum of the leadership of the Community, symbolically portrayed as consisting of the twelve tribes and the three Levitical clans, or a special elite within the Council designated elsewhere ‘the Foundations of the Community’, must be left open to question. The purpose of the meetings is in any case clear. It was to debate the Law, to discuss their current business, to select or reject newcomers under the guidance of the Guardian, to hear charges against offenders and to conduct a yearly inquiry into the progress of every sectary, promoting or demoting them in rank, again under the Guardian’s supervision (IQS v, 23-4; VI, 13-23). During their sessions, order and quiet were to prevail: a person wishing to offer his opinion or ask a question was to crave permission in a prescribed way. He was to rise and tell the Guardian and the Congregation, ‘I have something to say to the Congregation’ and then wait for their consent before going ahead (IQS VI, 8-13).
The procedure followed in inquiries into infringements of the Law and the sect’s Rule has been preserved, and the list of faults with their corresponding sentences tells us more about the mentality of the Dead Sea ascetics than any isolated exposition of their doctrine and principles can do.
Beginning with the blackest sins: any transgression, by commission or omission, of ‘one word of the Law of Moses, on any point whatever’ earned outright expulsion. No former companion might from then on associate with the sinner in any way at all (IQS VIII, 21-4). Expulsion followed, secondly, the pronouncement for any reason whatever of the divine Name:
If any man has uttered the [Most] Venerable Name, even though frivolously, or as a result of shock, or for any other reason whatever, while reading the Book or blessing, he shall be dismissed and shall return ... no more.
(IQS VI, 27-VII, 2)
Thirdly, a sectary was expelled for slandering the Congregation (IQS VII, 16). Fourthly, he was sent away for rebelling against the ‘Foundations’ of the Community:
Whoever has murmured against the authority of the Community shall be expelled and shall not return.
(IQS VII, 17)
Lastly, where a man had been a member of the Council for at least ten years and had then defected to ‘walk in the stubbornness of his heart’, not only was he to be expelled, but the same judgement was extended to any of his former colleagues who might take pity on him and share with him their food or money
(IQS VII, 22-3).
The remaining offences are of a kind that might be confessed and censured in any Christian religious order of today, though one cannot perhaps say the same of the penances imposed for them.
In a descending order of gravity: a man who ‘betrayed the truth and walked in the stubbornness of his heart’ (IQS VII, 18-21), or transgressed the Mosaic Law inadvertently (IQS VIII, 24-IX, I), was visited with two years of penance. He was to lose his rank and during the first year be separated from the ‘purity’ of the Congregation, and during the second year, from its ‘drink’. Both notions will be developed presently. He was then to be re-examined by the Congregation and subsequently returned to his place in the order.
Lying in matters of property, in all probability the partial concealment of personal possessions, earned exclusion from ‘purity’ for a year and a cut by one quarter in the food ration (IQS VI, 25-7). The penal code of 4Q265, which closely resembles that of IQS, prescribes for deceiving a companion an exclusion for six months and a halving of the guilty person’s food portion. Disrespect to a companion of higher rank, rudeness and anger towards a priest, slander and deliberate insult, all earned one year of penance and exclusion from ‘purity’ (IQS VI, 25-7; VII, 2-5). After this, the sentences decrease to six months, three months, thirty days and ten days of penance.
For lying deliberately and similarly deceiving by word or deed, for bearing malice unjustly, for taking revenge, for murmuring against a companion unjustly and also for going ‘naked before his companion, without having been obliged to do so’ - a curious proviso - the sectary was to atone for six months. For failing to care for a companion and for speaking foolishly: three months. For falling asleep during a meeting of the Council, for leaving the Council while members were standing (in prayer?), for spitting in Council, for ‘guffawing foolishly’, for being ‘so poorly dressed that when drawing his hand from beneath his garment his nakedness has been seen’: thirty days. The penal code contained in another of the Cave 4 manuscripts of the Damascus Document (4Q266) mentions also ten days’ penance, in addition to the thirty days’ expulsion inflicted on someone who has fallen asleep during a meeting! And for leaving an assembly three times without reason, for interrupting another while speaking, for gesticulating with the left hand: ten days (IQS VII, 15). A fascinating fragment (4Q477) has preserved in writing cases of misbehaviour by named sectaries: ‘Yohanan son of ...’ was ‘short-tempered’; ‘Hananiah Notos’ led astray ‘the spirit of the Community’ and either pampered himself or showed favouritism to his near kin(?); and another ‘Hananiah son of Sim[on]’ ‘loved’ something no doubt prohibited.
That the common table was of high importance to Qumran daily life is evident from the fact that only the fully professed and the faultless, that is to say those who were ‘inscribed ... for purity’ and not subsequently disqualified, were allowed to sit at it. There is no explicit mention of a ritual bath preceding the meals, but from various references to purification by water, as well as the presence of bathing installations at Qumran, it is likely that the sectaries immersed themselves before eating as did the Essenes according to Josephus (War 11, 129). But little more is learnt of the meal itself from the Community Rule than that when the table had been ‘prepared for eating, and the new wine for drinking’, the priest was to be the first to bless the food and drink (IQS VI, 4-5). The implication would be that after him the others did the same, an inference supported by the Messianic Rule, where a similar meal is described attended by two Messiahs (IQSa II, 17-21). Some uncertainty surrounds the meaning of ‘new wine’, but it would seem from the use in the Scrolls (
with the exception of the Temple Scroll), of the alternative Hebrew words for wine - tirosh and yayin - that the latter often has pejorative connotations. More likely than not, the ‘wine’ drunk by the sectaries, ‘the drink of the Congregation’, was unfermented grape-juice.
Another topic to be considered under the heading of communal life and institutions is the crucial one of induction into the sect. And if it should seem strange to place it towards the end rather than at the beginning, the explanation is that with an idea, however sketchy, of what was entailed by adherence to the movement, the process by which it admitted a Jew into its company becomes easier to follow. According to the regime adopted at Qumran, a person desiring to join the sect remained on probation, certainly for two years and possibly for three or more. His first move was to appear before the Guardian ‘at the head of the Congregation’, meaning no doubt during a session of the Congregation, who inquired into his principles to discover if he was a suitable postulant. If they were satisfied, he ‘entered the Covenant’ (IQS VI, 13-15). That is to say, he solemnly swore there and then to adhere to the Torah as the sect interpreted it, vowing
by a binding oath to return with all his heart and soul to every commandment of the Law of Moses in accordance with all that has been revealed of it to the sons of Zadok... the Keepers of the Covenant.
(IQS v, 7-9)
After a further period of unspecified length, during which he received instruction from the Guardian ‘in all the rules of the Community’, he appeared once more before the Congregation, who confirmed him as a novice or dismissed him. But although he was now accepted into the Council of the Community, he was nevertheless still not admitted to ‘purity’ for another full year. The same rule applied also in the group represented by 4Q265 fr. 1.
This concept of pure things (tohorah, taharah or tohorot, literally ‘purity’ or ‘purities’) needs some comment. It seems to designate here as in rabbinic literature ritually pure food (cf. also 4Q274 I), as well as the vessels and utensils in which it is contained or cooked. It includes also garments. The tohorot, moreover, are distinguished by the rabbis from mashqin, liquids, the latter being considered much more susceptible to contract impurity than solid comestibles. Hence, in ordering the novice not to touch the pure things of the Congregation, the Community forbade him all contact with its pots, plates, bowls and necessarily the food that they held. He was not, in effect, to attend the common table and had to eat elsewhere. Although the context is very different, a parallel rule figures in the Temple Scroll (LXIII, 13-14), prohibiting a Gentile woman married to her Jewish captor to touch his tohorah for seven years.
During this first year of the novitiate, the newcomer could not share the sect’s property. At a third Community inquiry, he was examined for ‘his understanding and observance of the Law’ and, if his progress was judged to be adequate, he handed over his money and belongings to the ‘Bursar of the Congregation’, but they were set aside and not yet absorbed into Community ownership. During this second year, furthermore, the ban on touching the pure things was relaxed, but he could still not touch liquids, the ‘Drink [mashqeh] of the Congregation’ (IQS VI, 20-21; VII, 20; cf. also 4Q284 I). Finally, with the second year over, the novice had once more to undergo an examination, after which, ‘according to the judgement of the Congregation’, he was at last inscribed among the brethren in the order of his rank ‘for the Law, and for justice, and for purity’. Also, his property was amalgamated with theirs and he possessed the right from then on to speak his mind in the Council of the Community (IQS VI, 13-23).
In sum, this strict and extended curriculum falls into two stages. The postulant is first brought into the Covenant, swearing total fidelity to the Mosaic Law as interpreted by the sect’s priestly teachers, and to ‘separate from all the men of injustice who walk in the way of wickedness’ (IQS v, 10-11). He then secondly embarks on a course of training as a preliminary to joining the ‘holy Congregation’ (IQS v, 20). In other words, entering the Covenant and entering the Community was not one act, but two.
It has long been debated whether the Qumran sectaries were married or celibate. From the image of their life projected so far on the basis of the Community Rule, few will probably disagree that the idea of the presence of women among them appears incongruous. The impression received is that of a wholly masculine society: indeed, they were actually enjoined not to ‘follow a sinful heart and lustful eyes, committing all manner of evil’ (IQS 1, 6). In further support of the argument for celibacy, the word ishah, woman, occurs nowhere in the Community Rule. Or rather, to be more exact, it is encountered once in the final Hymn, in the cliché, ‘one born of woman’ (IQS xi, 21). Moreover, against the Cave 4 Damascus Document regulation (4Q270 fr. 7), which envisages a membership of married people and imposes the penalty of expulsion on anyone murmuring against ‘the Fathers’ but only a ten-day penance for murmuring against ‘the Mothers’, the Community Rule speaks only of the crime of murmuring against ‘the authority of the Community’ (IQS VII, 17). Silence concerning the presence of women seems therefore deliberate. Yet the fact cannot be overlooked that although in the main graveyard itself the twenty-six tombs so far opened at random (out of 1,100) have all contained adult male skeletons, the archaeologists have uncovered on the peripheries of the cemetery the bones of six women and three children too (R. de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 47-8; J.-P. Humbert, Fouilles de Kh. Qumrân, 346-52). A more extensive exploration of the cemetery would eliminate most of these uncertainties.
The Damascus Document, the hybrid Community Rule-Damascus Document text (4Q265) and the Temple Scroll, as well as the Messianic Rule and occasionally the War Rule and MMT, are concerned with a style of religious existence quite at variance with that at Qumran. In the ‘towns’ or ‘camps’, as the Damascus Document terms them (CD XII, 19, 23), adherents of the sect lived an urban or village life side by side with, yet apart from, their fellow Jewish and Gentile neighbours. They had wives and reared children, but clearly their sexual morality followed particularly strict rules. A Cave 4 Damascus Document manuscript lays down that ‘whoever has approached his wife, not according to the rules, (thus) fornicating, he shall leave and will not return again’ (4Q270 fr. 7 i). The married sectaries employed servants, engaged in commerce and trade (even with Gentiles), tended cattle, grew vines and corn in the surrounding fields, and discharged their duties to the Temple by way of offerings, but in doing so they were obliged like their brothers in the desert to show absolute obedience to the Law and to observe the sect’s ‘appointed times’. There is no indication, however, that the continual and intensive study of the Torah played any part in their lives. Nor in their regard is there any mention of instruction in the doctrine of the two spirits, as membership of the group was a birthright and not the outcome of a process of selection and training.
How many of these people, if any, lived in Jerusalem is not known, but they must at least have visited the city from time to time, since a statute forbids them to enter the ‘house of worship’ (possibly the Temple) in a state of ritual uncleanness, or to ‘lie with a woman in the city of the Sanctuary to defile the city of the Sanctuary with their uncleanness’ (CD I, 22; XII, 1; TS XLV, 11-12).
Little is revealed in the Damascus Document of how the life span of the individual progressed in the ‘towns’, and for this we have to turn to the Messianic Rule in the hope that it reflects contemporary actuality as well as the ideal life of an age to come.
According to the latter Rule, members of the Covenant were permitted to marry at the age of twenty, when they were estimated to have reached adulthood and to ‘know [good] and evil’ (IQSa 1, 9-11). For the subsequent five years they were then allowed to ‘assist’ (as opposed to taking an active part) at hearings and judgements. At twenty-five, they advanced one grade further and qualified to ‘work in the service of the Congregation’ (IQSa 1, 12-13). At thirty, they were regarded as at last fully mature and could ‘participate’ in the affairs of the tribunals and asse
mblies, taking their place among the higher ranks of the sect, the ‘chiefs of the thousands of Israel, the chiefs of the Hundreds, Fifties and Tens, the Judges and the officers of their tribes, in all their families, [under the authority] of the sons of [Aar]on the Priests’ (IQSa 1, 8-16). As office-holders, they were expected to perform their duties to the best of their ability and were accorded more honour or less in conformity with their ‘understanding’ and the ‘perfection’ of their ‘way’. As they grew older, so their burdens became lighter (IQSa 1, 19).
As at Qumran, supreme authority rested in the hands of the priests, and every group of ten or more was to include a priest ‘learned in the Book of Meditation’ and to be ‘ruled by him’ (CD XIII, 2-3). His precedence, on the other hand, is not represented as absolute in the ‘towns’. It is explicitly stated that in the absence of a properly qualified priest, he was to be replaced by a Levite who would perform all the functions of a superior except those specially reserved in the Bible to the priesthood such as applying the laws of leprosy (CD XIII, 3-7). The Cave 4 manuscripts of the Damascus Document (4Q266, 269, 272-3) describe at length the diagnosis of the onset and eventual cure of skin disease. Priests with speech defects, those who had been prisoners of war or had settled and been active among Gentiles were disqualified from performing priestly duties or eating ‘sacred food’ (4Q266 fr. 5). The Cave 4 version of the Damascus Document legislates also on agricultural priestly dues (4Q266 fr. 6; 271fr. 2).
