by Geza Vermes
As in the Community Rule, the head of the ‘camp’ is designated in the Damascus Document, as well as in 4QDa (4Q266 fr. 5 i) and in the hybrid 4Q265 fr. 1 ii, as the mebaqqer or Guardian. He appears, however, not to be supported by a council. In fact, the words ‘Council of the Community’ are absent from this document apart from the transitional 4Q265 frs. 1 ii and 7 ii, where the use of the term is more general in the first case and represents the ideal nucleus of the sect in the second. There is reference to the ‘company of Israel’, on the advice of which it would be licit to attack Gentiles (CD XII, 8), but this type of war council, mentioned also in the Messianic Rule (IQSa 1, 26), can surely have had nothing to do with the assemblies described in the Community Rule. (The only possible parallel is the ‘council of Holiness’ in CD xx, 24, in which a not strictly observant member was to be judged.) The Guardian of the ‘camps’, in any case, stands on his own as teacher and helper of his people. He shall love them, writes the author,
as a father loves his children, and shall carry them in all their distress like a shepherd his sheep. He shall loosen all the fetters which bind them that in his Congregation there may be none that are oppressed or broken.
(CD XIII, 9-10)
The Guardian was to examine newcomers to his congregation, though not, it should be noted, to determine their ‘spirit’, and was to serve as the deciding authority on the question of their admission (cf. also 4Q265 fr. 1 ii). These offices are of course already familiar to us from the Community Rule. But an additional task of the mebaqqer in the towns was to ensure that no friendly contact occurred between his congregation and anyone outside the sect. Whatever exchanges took place had to be paid for; and even these transactions were to be subject to his consent (CD XIII, 14-16).
Instead of dealing with offenders in Community courts of inquiry, the towns had their tribunals for hearing cases, equipped moreover with ‘judges’. These were to be ten in number, elected for a specific term and drawn from the tribes of Levi, Aaron and Israel: four priests and Levites, and six laymen (CD x, 4-7). They were to be not younger than twenty-five and not older than sixty - in the Messianic Rule, which also speaks of judges, the age-limits are thirty and sixty years (IQSa 1, 13-15) - and were to be expert in biblical law and the ‘constitutions of the Covenant’. The arrangement would seem, in fact, to be fairly straightforward. Yet it is not entirely so. For example, it is evident that the Guardian was also implicated in legal matters; he had to determine whether a proper case had been made out against a sectary and whether it should be brought before the court (CD ix, 16-20), and in certain cases he appears to have imposed penalties on his own (CD xv, 13-14). The ‘Priest overseeing the Congregation’ of one of the Cave 4 fragments of the Damascus Document (4Q270 fr. 7 i-ii) appears to perform the same single judicial function as the Guardian in the case of an inadvertent sin. We are not told whether the ten judges sat together, whether they were all drawn from the locality in which they lived, or whether they travelled as it were on circuit as nowadays. The code of law they were expected to administer, as laid down in the Damascus Document, differs in content from that of the Community Rule. Furthermore, although, unlike the Qumran code, a sentence is prescribed only rarely, sometimes it is the death penalty. We have here, in addition to matters relating primarily to communal discipline to a large extent identical with the Community Rule, a more detailed sectarian reformulation of scriptural laws regulating Jewish life as such.
The first group of statutes, concerned with vows, opens with the injunction that in order to avoid being put to death for the capital sin of uttering the names of God, the sectary must swear by the Covenant alone. Such an oath would be fully obligatory and might not be cancelled (CD XVI, 7-8). If he subsequently violated his oath, he would then have only to confess to the priest and make restitution (CD xv, 1-5). The sectary is also ordered not to vow to the altar articles acquired unlawfully, or the food of his own house (CD xvi, 13-15), and not to make any vow ‘in the fields’ but always before the judges (CD IX, 9-10). He is threatened with death if he ‘vows another to destruction by the laws of the Gentiles’ (CD IX, 1). As for the right conferred by the Bible on fathers and husbands to annul vows made by their daughters or wives, the Damascus Document limits it to the cancellation of oaths which should have never been made in the first place (CD XVI, 10-12; for a somewhat different rule, see TS LIII, 16-LIV, 5). It is clearly stated that no accusation is valid without prior warnings before witnesses (CD IX, 2-3). A record of reported moral failings (4Q477) has already been quoted (cf. above, pp. 31-2).
A few ordinances are concerned with witnesses. No one under the age of twenty was to testify before the judges in a capital charge (CD ix, 23-X, 2). Also, whereas the normal biblical custom is that two or three witnesses are needed before any sentence can be pronounced (Deut. xix, 15; cf. also IIQTS LXI, 6-12), a single witness being quite unacceptable, unustestis nullus testis, sectarian law allowed the indictment of a man guilty of repeating the same capital offence on the testimony of single witnesses to the separate occasions on which it was committed, providing they reported it to the Guardian at once and that the Guardian recorded it at once in writing (CD IX, 17-20). With regard to capital cases, to which should be added apostasy in a state of demonic possession (CD XII, 2-3), the adultery of a betrothed girl (4Q159, fr. 224, 10-11), slandering the people of Israel and treason (TS LXIV, 6-13), it is highly unlikely that either the Jewish or the Roman authorities would have granted any rights of execution to the sect. So this is probably part of the sect’s vision of the future age, when it as Israel de jure would constitute de facto the government of the chosen people.
The penal code of the Damascus Document (4Q270) stipulates irrevocable expulsion in the case of a man ‘fornicating’ with his wife. This may refer to illicit sexual relations with a menstruating woman or, perhaps more likely, with a pregnant or post-menopausal woman since, as Josephus clearly states in connection with married Essenes, sex between spouses was licit only if it could result in conception (War 11, 161).
A section devoted to Sabbath laws displays a marked bias towards severity. In time, rabbinic law developed the Sabbath rules in still greater detail than appears here, but the tendency is already manifest.
The sectary was not only to abstain from labour ‘on the sixth day from the moment when the sun’s orb is distant by its own fullness from the gate (wherein it sinks)’ (CD x, 15-16), he was not even to speak about work. Nothing associated with money or gain was to interrupt his Sabbath of rest (CD x, 18-19). No member of the Covenant of God was to go out of his house on business on the Sabbath. In fact, he was not to go out, for any reason, further than 1,000 cubits (about 500 yards), though he could pasture his beast at a distance of 2,000 cubits from his town (CD x, 21; XI, 5-6). He could not cook. He could not pick and eat fruit and other edible things ‘lying in the fields’. He could not draw water and carry it away, but must drink where he found it (CD X, 22-3). He could not strike his beast or reprimand his servant (CD XI, 6, 12). He could not carry a child, wear perfume or sweep up the dust in his house (CD XI, 10-11). He could not assist his animals to give birth or help them if they fell into a pit; he could, however, pull a man out of water or fire without the help of a ladder or rope (CD xi, 13-14, 16-17). Interpreting the Bible restrictively (Lev. xxiii, 38), the sect’s lawmaker (or makers) commanded him to offer no sacrifice on the Sabbath save the Sabbath burnt-offering, and never to send a gift to the Temple by the hand of one ‘smitten with any uncleanness permitting him thus to defile the altar’ (CD xi, 19-20). He was also never to have intercourse while in the ‘city of the Sanctuary’ (CD XII, 1-2; 11QTS XLV, 1-12).
The punishment imposed for profaning the Sabbath and the feasts in any of these ways was not death as in the Bible (Num. XV, 35), nor even expulsion as in the Community Rule. It was seven years’ imprisonment.
It shall fall to men to keep him in custody. And if he is healed of his error, they shall keep him in custody for seven years and he shall afterwards a
pproach the Assembly.
(CD XII, 4-6)
In the last group, the ordinances appear to be only loosely connected, though some of them involve relations with the larger Jewish-Gentile world. One such forbids killing or stealing from a non-Jew, ‘unless so advised by the company of Israel’ (CD XII, 6-8). Another proscribes the sale to Gentiles of ritually pure beasts and birds, as well as the produce of granary and wine-press, in case they should blaspheme by offering them in heathen sacrifice. MMT further prohibits acceptance of offerings (wheat or meat) by Gentiles (4Q394 frs. 3-7). A ban is similarly laid on selling to Gentiles foreign servants converted to the Jewish faith (CD XII, 11). But in addition to these regulations affecting contacts with non-Jews, a few are concerned with dietary restrictions. Thus:
No man shall defile himself by eating any live creature or creeping thing, from the larvae of bees to all creatures which creep in water.
(CD XII, 12-13)
Others deal with the laws of purity (CD XII, 16-18) and purification (CD x, 10-13) and with uncleanness resulting from various sexual discharges and childbirth (4Q266 fr. 6 i-ii). Outside the Damascus Document, the B section of MMT (4Q394-5), 4QPurities (4Q274, 276-7, 284) and the Temple Scroll (11QTS XLV-LI) provide ample information on purity matters, including the law relative to the burning of the ‘red heifer’ whose ashes were a necessary ingredient for the making of the ‘water for (removing) uncleanness’ (MMT 4Q394 3-7 i, 395; 4Q276-7).
Two types of meeting are provided for, with equal laconism: the ‘assembly of the camp’ presided over by a priest or a Levite and the ‘assembly of all the camps’ (CD XIV, 3-6). Presumably the latter was the general convention of the whole sect held on the Feast of the Renewal of the Covenant, the annual great festival alluded to in 4QD (266, 270), when both the ‘men of holiness’ and the ‘men of the Covenant’ confessed their former errors and committed themselves once more to perfect obedience to the Law and the sect’s teachings. According to the available texts, the sectaries were to be mustered and inscribed in their rank by name, the priests first, the Levites second, the Israelites third. A fourth group of proselytes is unique to the ‘towns’, but as has been observed these were Gentile slaves converted to Judaism. A further remark that in this order the sect’s members were to ‘be questioned on all matters’ leads one to suppose that the allusion must be to the yearly inquiry into their spiritual progress mentioned in the Community Rule (CD XIV, 3-6).
Two Cave 4 manuscripts of the Damascus Document describe the expulsion ceremony of an unfaithful member. He was cursed and dismissed by the Priest overseeing the Congregation and cursed also by all the inhabitants of the camps. Should the latter maintain contact with the renegade, they would forfeit their own membership of the sect (4Q266 fr. 11 ii; 270 fr. 7 i-ii).
Apart from these familiar directions, we learn only that the priest who mustered the gathering was to be between thirty and sixty years old and, needless to say, ‘learned in the Book of Meditation’. The ‘Guardian of all the camps’, in his turn, was to be between thirty and fifty, and to have ‘mastered all the secrets of men and the language of all their clans’. He was to decide who was to be admitted, and anything connected with a ‘suit or judgement’ was to be brought to him (CD XIV, 7-12).
As for the initiation of new members, the Statutes appear to legislate for young men reaching their majority within the brotherhood and for recruits from outside. This is not entirely clear, but the instruction that an aspirant was not to be informed of the sect’s rules until he had stood before the Guardian can hardly have applied to a person brought up within its close circle (CD xv, 5-6, 10-11).
Of the sect’s own young men the Damascus Document writes merely:
And all those who have entered the Covenant, granted to all Israel for ever, shall make their children who have reached the age of enrolment, swear with the oath of the Covenant.
(CD xv, 5-6)
The Messianic Rule is more discursive. There, enrolment into the sect is represented as the climax of a childhood and youth spent in study. Teaching of the Bible and in the ‘precepts of the Covenant’ began long before the age of ten, at which age a boy embarked on a further ten years of instruction in the statutes. It was not until after all this that he was finally ready.
From [his] youth they shall instruct him in the Book of Meditation and shall teach him, according to his age, the precepts of the Covenant. They [shall be edu]cated in their statutes for ten years ... At the age of twenty years [he shall be] enrolled, that he may enter upon his allotted duties in the midst of his family (and) be joined to the holy congregation.
(IQSa 1, 6-9)
The newcomer from outside who repented of his ‘corrupted way’ was to be enrolled ‘with the oath of the Covenant’ on the day that he spoke to the Guardian, but no sectarian statute was to be divulged to him ‘lest when examining him the Guardian be deceived by him’ (CD xv, 7-11). Nevertheless, if he broke that oath, ‘retribution’ would be exacted of him. The text subsequently becomes fragmentary and unreliable, but he is told where to find the liturgical calendar which his oath obliges him to follow.
As for the exact determination of their times to which Israel turns a blind eye, behold it is strictly defined in the Book of the Divisions of the Times into their Jubilees and Weeks.
(CD XVI, 2-4)
It should be added here that one big difference between the organization of the brethren in the towns and those of the ‘monastic’ settlement is that new members were not required to surrender their property. There was none of the voluntary communism found at Qumran. On the other hand, where the desert sectaries practised common ownership, those of the towns contributed to the assistance of their fellows in need. Every man able to do so was ordered to hand over a minimum of two days’ wages a month to a charitable fund, and from it the Guardian and the judges distributed help to the orphans, the poor, the old and sick, to unmarried women without support and to prisoners held in foreign hands and in need of redemption (CD XIV, 12-16).
When the two varieties of sectarian life are compared, we find many similarities, especially since the fragments of 4QD and 4Q265 have become accessible, but some of the differences still remain striking. In the desert of Qumran men lived together in seclusion; in the towns they were grouped in families, surrounded by non-members with whom they were in inevitable though exiguous contact. The desert brotherhood was to keep apart from the Temple in Jerusalem until the restoration of the true cult in the seventh year of the eschatological war; the town sectaries participated in worship there. The judges of the towns had no counterparts at Qumran. The Qumran Guardian was supported by a Council; the town Guardians acted independently. Unfaithful desert sectaries were sentenced to irrevocable excommunication, or to temporary exclusion from the common life, or to suffer lighter penances; the penal code concerned with the towns envisages also the death penalty (whether actually executed or not) as well as corrective custody. The common table and the ‘purity’ associated with it played an essential role at Qumran; in connection with the towns the common meal, but not the pure food, goes unmentioned. Furthermore, at Qumran all the new recruits came from outside; in the towns, some were converts but others were the sons of sectaries. The desert novices underwent two years of training and were instructed in the doctrine of the ‘two spirits’; the towns’ converts were subjected to neither experience. In the desert, property was owned in common; in the towns, it was not. And last but not least, the desert community appears to have practised celibacy, whereas the town sectaries patently did not.
Yet despite the dissimilarities, at the basic level of doctrine, aims and principles, a perceptible bond links the brethren of the desert with those of the towns. They both claim to represent the true Israel. They both are led by priests, Zadokite priests according to 1QS, the Damascus Document and the Messianic Rule, but not 4QSb(=4Q256), 4QSd (=4Q258) and MMT.68 Both form units of Thousands, Hundreds, Fifties and Tens, both insist on a wholehearted return to the Mosaic Law in accordan
ce with their own particular interpretation of it. They are both governed by priests (or Levites). The principal superior, teacher and administrator of both is known by the unusual title of mebaqqer. In both cases, initiation into the sect is preceded by entry into the Covenant, sworn by oath. Both groups convene yearly to review the order of precedence of their members after an inquiry into the conduct of each man during the previous twelve months. Above all, both embrace the same ‘unorthodox’ liturgical calendar that sets them apart from the rest of Jewry.
There can be only one logical conclusion: this was a single religious movement with two branches. It does not, however, answer all our questions. It does not tell us in particular whether the differentiation resulted from a relaxation or from a hardening of the original ascetic rules. Neither are we told whether the sectaries of desert and towns maintained regular contact among themselves. After all, the history of religions furnishes scores of examples of sister sects which turned into mortal enemies. Did the Qumran and towns fellowships profess and practise unity? A few vital clues suggest that they did.
