The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (15 page)

The Qumran sect rejected this seemingly artificial system and adopted instead a chronological reckoning, probably of priestly origin, based on the sun, a practice attested also in the Book of Jubilees and 1 Enoch, and fully laid out in the remains of a series of calendrical documents (4Q320-30). The outstanding feature of this solar calendar was its absolute regularity in that, instead of 354 days, not divisible by seven, it consisted of 364 days, i.e. fifty-two weeks precisely. Each of its four seasons was thirteen weeks long divided into three months of thirty days each, plus an additional ‘remembrance' day (IQS x, 5) linking one season to another (13 x 7 = 91 = 3 x 30 + I). In tune in this way with the ‘laws of the Great Light of heaven' (IQH XII, 5) and not with the ‘festivals of the nations' (4QpHos=4Q171 11, 16), Qumran saw its calendar as corresponding to ‘the certain law from the mouth of God' (IQH xx [formerly XII], 9). Its unbroken rhythm meant furthermore that the first day of the year and of each subsequent season always fell on the same day of the week. For the Essenes this was Wednesday, since according to Genesis i, 14-19, it was on the fourth day that the sun and the moon were created. Needless to add, the same monotonous sequence also implied that all the feasts of the year always fell on the same day of the week: Passover, the fifteenth day of the first month, was always celebrated on a Wednesday; the Feast of Weeks, the fifteenth day of the third month, always on a Sunday; the Day of Atonement, the tenth day of the seventh month, on a Friday; the Feast of Tabernacles, the fifteenth day of the seventh month, on a Wednesday, etc. This solar calendar with its eternal regularity cannot of course stand up to the astronomical calculation of 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 48 seconds to the year, but the Scrolls so far published give no indication of how the Essenes proposed to cope with this inconvenience, or whether indeed they were even aware of it.

One practical consequence of the sect's adherence to a calendar at variance with that of the rest of Judaism was that its feast-days were working days for other Jews and vice versa. The Wicked Priest was thus able to travel (journeys of any distance being forbidden on holy days of rest) to the ‘place of exile' of the Teacher of Righteousness while he and his followers were celebrating the Day of Atonement (cf. above, p. 55). In fact, it is likely that the persecutors of the sect deliberately chose that date to oblige the sectaries to attend to them on what they considered to be their ‘Day of Fasting' and ‘Sabbath of repose', and thus ‘confuse them and cause them to stumble'. The same sort of story is told in the Mishnah of the Patriarch Gamaliel II, who endeavoured to humiliate Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah by sending him the following instruction: ‘I charge you that you come to me with your staff and your money on the Day of Atonement according to your reckoning' (Rosh ha-Shanah II, 9).

Another peculiarity of the liturgical calendar of the Community, attested in the Temple Scroll, was the division of the year into seven fifty-day periods - hence the name pentecontad calendar - each marked by an agricultural festival, e.g. the Feast of New Wine, the Feast of Oil, etc. A similar system is mentioned by Philo in connection with the Therapeutae in his book,
On the Contemplative Life.
One of these festivals, the Feast of the New Wheat, coincided with the Feast of Weeks and was for the Essenes/Therapeutae also the principal holy day of the year, that of the Renewal of the Covenant, the importance of which is discussed above (p. 44). From the Book of Jubilees, where, as has been said, the same calendar is followed, it is clear that Pentecost (the Feast of Weeks), together with the Feast of the Renewal of the Covenant, were celebrated on the fifteenth day of the third month (Jub. VI, 17-19; cf. also 4Q266 fr. II ii; 270 fr. 7 ii). An outline of the ceremony performed on this holy day, with its confession of sin and its blessings and curses, is preserved in the Community Rule (IQS I, 16-11, 25; cf. also 4Q280, 286-7). The sectaries assemble for the service in strict hierarchical order: the priests first, ranked in order of status, after them the Levites, and lastly ‘all the people one after another in their Thousands, Hundreds, Fifties and Tens, that every Israelite may know his place in the Community of God according to the everlasting design' (IQS 11, 22-3). Blessing God, the priests then recite his acts of loving-kindness to Israel and the Levites recall Israel's rebellions against him. This recognition of guilt is followed by an act of public repentance appropriate to a community of converts.

After the confession, the priests solemnly bless the converts of Israel, calling down on them in particular the gifts of wisdom and knowledge :

This paraphrase of the blessing of Israel which God commanded Moses to transmit to Aaron and his sons in Numbers vi, 24-6, and which recalls the fourth of the daily Eighteen Benedictions of traditional Judaism, is accompanied by a Levitical curse of the party of Belial and a special malediction directed by both priests and Levites at any sectary whose conversion may be insincere:

The Cave 4 sources of the Damascus Document depict also the ritual of dismissal from the Community. The Priest overseeing the Congregation, addressing God, declares:

Thereupon ‘the dismissed man shall leave and whoever eats from what is his or greets the man who has been dismissed, and agrees with him, ... his judgement shall be complete' (4Q266 fr. 11 I ii; 270 fr. 7 ii).

Each benediction and curse is approved by the whole congregation with a twice repeated ‘Amen'.

The ceremony of the Renewal of the Covenant seems to be the only rite described in any detail in the Community Rule and the Damascus Document, but as the Essenes laid so much emphasis on the full and punctilious observance of the Law of Moses it may be taken for granted that they did not omit the many other basic acts of Jewish religion and worship. The fact that the Community Rule is satisfied simply to state without any specification that a single deliberate transgression of the Mosaic Law would entail irrevocable expulsion from the sect implies that the elite sectaries subject to this rule did not need detailed guidance: they were supposed to be fully versed in the Torah. Legislation addressed to less well-trained members, contained in the Damascus Document and in the Temple Scroll, is more discursive. Circumcision, for example, which was certainly practised, is mentioned in connection with female uncleanness after childbirth when Leviticus xii, 3 is cited in passing (4Q266 fr. 6 ii). It is also referred to figuratively in the context of severing the ‘foreskin of the evil inclination' (IQS v, 5), or possibly and by implication as the ‘Covenant of Abraham' mentioned in connection with (Gentile) man-servants (CD XII, II; XVI, 6). The laws of purity were also assuredly essential to the sect, and some practical guidance is given in IIQTS XLVI-LI, 4Q274-84, and MMT. The dietary laws are dealt with in the Damascus Document, MMT and the Temple Scroll. For instance, the eating of ‘live creatures' (e.g. larvae of bees, fish and locusts) is declared to be prohibited in CD XII, 11-15. MMT states that a live animal foetus must be slaughtered before becoming fit for consumption (4Q396 frs. 1-21). Further laws appear in the Temple Scroll XLVII-XLVIII. Josephus also remarks that an Essene was forbidden to eat food prepared by people not belonging to the brotherhood
(War
11, 143).

On three other topics, the Qumran sources are less taciturn: ritual ablutions, Temple worship and the sacred meal. Discussed already as part of the life of the sect, it remains now to consider the doctrinal significance of these rites.

Josephus, as will be recalled, observes that the Essenes took a ritual bath twice daily before meals (cf.
War
11, 129, 132).
4Q414
- entitled ‘Baptismal liturgy' - deals definitely with such a bathing ritual but the text is so mutilated that no readable translation is possible. As regards the bath itself, the Damascus Document adds that the minimum quantity of clean water required for a valid act of purification was to be the amount necessary to cover a man (CD x, 12-13). This is not of course an Essene invention, but typically, where the Mishnah prescribes a minimum of forty
seahs
(about 120 gallons), the sect's teaching concentrates on the practical purpose of the Mishnaic rule, namely that ‘in them men may immerse themselves' (Mikwaot VII, I), and eliminates the obligation of having carefully to measure out what that quantity should be. Of greater interest, however, is the theological aspect, with its insistence on a correlation between the inner condition of a man and the outer rite. The wicked, according to the Community Rule, ‘shall not enter the water ... for they shall not be cleansed unless they turn from their wickedness' (IQS v, 13-14). True purification comes from the ‘spirit of holiness' and true cleansing from the ‘humble submission' of the soul to all God's precepts.

The second issue has to do with the sect's attitude towards the Temple and Temple sacrifice. While some Essenes, notwithstanding their vow of total fidelity to the Law of Moses, rejected the validity of the Sanctuary and refused to participate (temporarily) in its rites (cf. Philo,
Omnis probus
75; Josephus,
Antiquities
XVIII, 19), they evaded the theological dilemma in which this stand might have placed them by contending that until the rededication of the Temple, the only true worship of God was to be offered in their establishment. The Council of the Community was to be the ‘Most Holy Dwelling for Aaron' where, ‘without the flesh of holocausts and the fat of sacrifice‘, a ‘sweet fragrance' was to be sent up to God, and where prayer was to serve ‘as an acceptable fragrance of righteousness' (IQS VIII, 8-9; IX, 4-5). The Community itself was to be the sacrifice offered to God in atonement for Israel's sins (IQS VIII, 4-5; 4Q265 fr. 7 ii).

Besides this evidence in the Community Rule, the equation of the Council of the Community with the Temple also appears in the Habakkuk Commentary (XII, 3-4) in a most interesting interpretation of the word ‘Lebanon'. Traditionally, ‘Lebanon' is understood by ancient Jewish interpreters to symbolize ‘the Temple'. For example, Deuteronomy iii, 25, ‘Let me go over ... and see ... that goodly mountain and Lebanon‘, is rendered in Targum Onkelos as, ‘Let me go over ... and see ... that goodly mountain and the Temple'. The Qumran commentator, explaining the Habakkuk text, ‘For the violence done to Lebanon shall overwhelm you' (Hab. 11, 17), proceeds from the belief that the Council of the Community is the one valid Temple. He then sets out to prove it by directly associating Lebanon with the Council in the conviction that the traditional exegesis will be familiar to all his readers: Lebanon = Temple. Temple = Council of the Community,
ergo
Lebanon = Council of the Community.
⁷³

The symbolical approach of the sect to sacrificial worship may account for Essene celibacy (where it was practised). Sexual abstinence was imposed on those participating in the Temple services, both priests and laymen; no person who had sexual intercourse (or an involuntary emission, or even any physical contact with a menstruating woman) could lawfully take part. More importantly still, bearing in mind the central place occupied by prophecy in Essene doctrine, clear indications exist in inter-Testamental and rabbinic literature that a similar renunciation was associated with the prophetic state. Thus Moses, in order always to be ready to hear the voice of God, is said by Philo to have cleansed himself of ‘all calls of mortal nature, food, drink, and intercourse with women'
(Life of Moses
11, 68-9). Consequently, despite the attempt made by Philo and by Josephus to attribute the sect's celibacy to misogyny, a more reasonable explanation would be that it was thought that lives intended to be wholly consecrated to worship and wholly preoccupied with meditation on prophecy should be kept wholly, and not just intermittently, pure.

The common table of the Essenes, the third special cultic subject to be examined, has already been discussed in Chapter II (p. 32), but one remaining point needs to be mentioned, namely that since the rules relating to the daily meal and the messianic meal are the same, it is not unreasonable to infer from the New Testament parallel that the former was thought to prefigure the latter. As is well known, the evangelist Matthew portrays the Last Supper as the prototype of the great eschatological feast, quoting Jesus as saying: