4Qmmt) and Its Addressee(S)
CHAPTER FOUR TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: MIQSAṬ MAʿAŚE HA-TORAH (4QMMT) AND ITS ADDRESSEE(S) 1. Introduction Long before its official publication in 1994,1 and even before its debut in 1984,2 4QMMT had been characterized as a polemical communi- cation (or “letter”) between the sectarian leadership of the Qumran community, or some precursor, and the mainstream priestly or Phari- saic leadership in Jerusalem.3 This framing of the document overall 1 Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell, Qumran Cave 4. V: Miqsaṭ Maʿaśe Ha-Torah (DJD X; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), henceforth referred to as DJD X. 2 See articles jointly authored by Qimron and Strugnell in next note. 3 For a concise statement of the generally held view of 4QMMT, see James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), 59–60. The earliest notices of 4QMMT are as follows: Pierre Benoit et al., “Editing the Manuscript Fragments from Qumran,” BA 19 (1956): 94 (report of John Strugnell, August 1955; the same in French in RB 63 [1956]: 65); Józef T. Milik, Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judea (trans. J. Strugnell; London: SCM, 1959; French orig., 1957), 41, 130; idem, “Le travail d’édition des manuscrits du Désert de Juda,” in Volume du Congrès, Strasbourg 1956 (VTSup 4; Leiden: Brill, 1957), 24; idem, in DJD III (1962): 225; Joseph M. Baumgarten, “The Pharisaic-Sadducean Controversies about Purity and the Qumran Texts,” JJS 31 (1980): 163–64; Yigael Yadin, ed., The Temple Scroll (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983), 2.213; Elisha Qim- ron and John Strugnell, “An Unpublished Halakhic Letter from Qumran,” in Biblical Archaeology Today: Proceedings of the International Congress on Biblical Archaeology, Jerusalem, April 1984 (ed.
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