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The Site of Qumran and the Sectarian Communities in the Dead Sea Scrolls

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The Site of Qumran and the Sectarian Communities in the Dead Sea Scrolls 1 The Site of Qumran and the Sectarian Communities in the Dead Sea Scrolls John J. Collins The first batch of scrolls discovered in 1947 near Qumran, by the Dead Sea, famously included the Rule of the Community, or Serek Hayakhad, also known as 1QS.1 The press release issued by Millar Burrows on behalf of the American Schools of Oriental Research on April 11, 1948, said that this text “seemed to be a manual of discipline of some comparatively little-known sect or monastic order, possibly the Essenes.”2 The idea that this “monastic” sect lived at Qumran did not arise immediately. Initially the ruins at Qumran were thought to be the remains of a Roman fort. But when Roland de Vaux and Lankaster Harding began to excavate the site in November–December 1951, they found a jar, identical to the ones in which the first scrolls had been found, embedded in the floor of one of the rooms. They inferred that the scrolls were related to the site after all. In his account of the excavation, Harding wrote: it would appear, then, that the people who lived at Khirbet Qumran deposited the scrolls in the cave, probably about A.D. 70. The situation fits in well with Pliny the El- der’s account of the Essenes, who had a settlement “above Engeddi,” and the ruin itself, with its peculiar cemetery which is without parallel in other sites in Jordan, is clearly not an ordinary defensive or agricultural post.3 The association of the scrolls with the site was cemented in 1952, when the Bed- ouin discovered Cave 4, with a trove of more than five hundred manuscripts, at the edge of the marl plateau, literally a stone’s throw from the ruins. Several other caves containing scrolls were discovered in the immediate vicinity. 1 This chapter reflects John J. Collins, Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). See also Collins, “Sectar- ian Communities in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins, eds.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 151–72. 2 J. C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 10. 3 G. Lankaster Harding, “Khirbet Qumrân and Wady Murabbaʿat: Fresh Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls and New Manuscript Discoveries in Jordan,” PEQ 84 (1952): 109. 10 The World of Jesus and the Early Church Once the connection between the scrolls and the site of Qumran had been established, it became customary to refer to the community described in 1QS as “the Qumran community,” and to suppose that Qumran was the sectarian settle- ment par excellence. According to J. T. Milik, this rule was the work of the Teacher and “gave its special character to Qumrân monastic life in the first strict phase of Essenism.”4 Frank Moore Cross argued that “the term yahad, ‘community,’ seems to apply to the community par excellence, i.e., the principal settlement in the desert. The Qumrân settlement is probably unique, not only in being the original ‘exile in the desert,’ the home of the founder of the sect, but also in following a celibate rule.”5 Cross allowed that it was “possible, but not probable . that more than one com- munity could be termed the yahad.” 6 Thus the tendency developed to regard Qum- ran as the setting for all the scrolls, or at least for the community described in 1QS. Another Rule Book Almost from the beginning, however, it was realized that the situation was more complicated than that. It was immediately apparent that there was some re- lationship between the newly discovered Community Rule and a text that had been discovered in the Cairo Geniza in 1896, which had come to be known as the Damascus Document (or CD, Cairo Damascus) because of references to a new covenant in the land of Damascus. This document also described a sectarian movement. Not only were there similarities in the organization of the communi- ties described in the two rule books, but also CD contained several code names that now reappeared for the first time in the scrolls. These included “Teacher of Righteousness,” “sons of Zadok,” and “man of the lie.” The relationship was subse- quently confirmed when fragments of the Damascus Rule were found in Qumran Cave 4.7 In 1955, Burrows wrote: The form of the organization and its rules are found in the Damascus Document and the Manual of Discipline. We have seen that these two documents have a great deal in common, though there are sufficient differences to show that they do not come from exactly the same group. They may represent different branches of the same movement or different stages in its history, if not both.8 Milik supposed that the Damascus Rule was a secondary development, drawn up by “a fairly important group” who “left the community at Qumrân and settled in the region of Damascus, without, however, abandoning the priestly charac- 4 J. T. Milik, Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judea (trans. John Strugnell; Studies in Biblical Theology 26; London: SCM, 1959), 87. 5 Frank Moore Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran (New York: Doubleday, 1958; repr., Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 71. 6 Ibid. 7 J. M. Baumgarten, ed., on the basis of transcriptions by J. T. Milik, with contributions by S. Pfann and A. Yardeni, Qumran Cave 4. XIII: The Damascus Document (4Q266–273) (DJD 18; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). 8 Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Viking, 1955), 230. The Site of Qumran and the Sectarian Commmunities in the Dead Sea Scrols 11 ter of the movement’s theology, and remaining in communion with the ‘mother h ou s e .’ ” 9 Cross also supposed that 1QS was the older rule and that CD was a sec- ondary development.10 More recent scholarship, however, has generally favored the priority of CD.11 The Damascus Rule preserves the older, simpler form of community structure, while the Community Rule, or Serek, is more developed. In CD, the admission process requires only a simple oath. This simple process is also found in 1QS 5:7c–9a, but it is followed by a much more elaborate, multiyear process in 1QS 6. The Damascus (D) community required the contribution of two days’ salary per month. The Serek requires full community property. The D rule places restric- tions on sexual activity. The Serek does not speak of women or children at all. The Damascus Rule is critical of the Jerusalem temple. The Serek imagines the community as an alternative temple. Each of these cases suggests that the line of development was from the more primitive kind of organization found in the D rule to the more elaborate provisions of the Serek. It is not the case that one rule simply superseded the other. Both were copied throughout the first century BCE. Equally, there is no evidence that the differences between the two rules were due to a schism. Rather, it appears that within one broad movement some people opted for a stricter, more demanding form of community life. Multiple Settlements The yahad, however, cannot be identified simply with one settlement in the wilderness, “the Qumran community.” We read in 1QS 6: In this way shall they behave in all their places of residence. Whenever one fellow meets another, the junior shall obey the senior in work and in money. They shall eat together, together they shall bless and together they shall take counsel. In every place where there are ten men of the council of the community, there should not be missing amongst them a priest . And in the place in which the ten assemble there should not be missing a man to interpret the law day and night, always, one relieving another. (1QS 6:1c–8a)12 “The council of the community” cannot be distinguished from “the community” or yahad. The plain meaning of this passage is that the yahad consists of mul- tiple communities, with a minimum of ten members.13 Some scholars have tried to deny this by arguing that the passage refers to members traveling outside of 9 Milik, Ten Years of Discovery, 90. 10 Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran, 71 n.2. 11 P. R. Davies’s The Damascus Covenant: An Interpretation of the Damascus Document (JSOTSup 25; Sheffield: JSOT, 1982) was a pivotal book in this regard. The priority of the Community Rule is still defended by Eyal Regev, Sectarianism in Qumran: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 163–96. 12 The passage is attested in 4QSd, although the text is fragmentary. 13 See John J. Collins, “The Yahad and ‘The Qumran Community,’ ” in Biblical Tradi- tions in Transmission: Essays in Honour of Michael A. Knibb (ed. Charlotte Hempel and Judith Lieu; JSJSup 111; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 81–96. 12 The World of Jesus and the Early Church community14 or that the “places of residence” are temporary structures. But mul- tiple settlements are just what we should expect if the movement in question is iden- tical with the Essene sect, as most scholars suppose. Josephus writes of the Essenes: “They have no one city, but many settle in each city; and when any of the sectarians come from elsewhere, all things they have lie available to them.”15 Josephus clearly assumes that Essenes, apparently of the same order, live in many cities. Similarly, Philo says that the Essenes “live in a number of towns in Judaea, and also in many villages and large groups.”16 Scholarship seems to have lost sight of these statements about the Essenes when it focuses exclusively on the site of Qumran.
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