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489 Sectarianism in Qumran Book Reviews / Numen 55 (2008) 474–493 489 Sectarianism in Qumran: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. By E yal R egev (Reli- gion and Society 45), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007 (xviii + 438 pp.). ISBN 978-3-11-019332-9 (cloth). € 98.00/$ 132.30. Eyal Regev is senior lecturer at the Martin Szusz Department of Land of Israel Studies at Bar Ilan University. He is a specialist of the sociology of Second Temple Jewish movements and his doctoral dissertation, “Th e Sadducean Hal- akhah and the Sadducees Influence on Social and Religious Life,” completed in 1999, was published under the title Th e Sadducees and Th eir Halakhah: Religion and Society in the Second Temple Period (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2005; see the positive evaluations of Sagit Mor, in Review of Biblical Literature 12 [2006], 280–284, and James C. VanderKam, in Henoch 29 [2007], 397– 400). Over the past few years Regev has published a series of insightful essays on the sectarian features of the Qumran community that produced the so- called Dead Sea Scrolls. Since the discovery of its libraries, between 1947 and 1956, this group of rigorists has generally been identified as an outcome of the Essene movement, one of the Second Temple Jewish “schools” described by Josephus and other Greco-Roman authors. Because of the translation of the technical Greek term hairesis used by Josephus as “sect,” it has been widely (and impressionistically) assumed that all of these movements (the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Zealots) were more or less sectarian. It is only recently, after some preliminary attempts (particularly those made by Anthony J. Saldarini and Albert I. Baumgarten), that a more sophisticated sociological understanding of sectarianism has begun to be applied to the surviving literary evidence. Th is new approach is mainly grounded in (1) the typology of the different sectarian responses (“conversionist,” “revolutionist,” “introversionist,” “manipulationist,” “thaumaturgical,” “spiritualistic,” “reformist,” and “utopian”) to a world globally perceived as evil which was developed by Bryan R. Wilson, a specialist of contemporary New Religious Movements, and (2) the distinc- tion between “sects,” which emerge through a process of schism, and “cults,” being the result of an innovation, proposed by sociologists Rodney Stark and William S. Bainbridge. Regev clearly belongs to this new trend of research and the present volume constitutes the synthesis of his studies to date. After a methodological “Introduction: From Scrolls to Sects” (1–30), the main body of the monograph is subdivided into three parts: the first is devoted to the “Sectarian Ideologies in Qumran” (31–196); the second is about the issue of “Related Movements: 1 Enoch, Jubilees and the Essenes” (197–266), while the third provides “A Comparative Study of Sectarianism: Th e Qumran Sects and the Anabaptists, Mennonites, Hutterites, Amish, Puritans, Quakers and Shakers” (267–376). Th is is followed by a final chapter summarizing © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/156852708X310590 490 Book Reviews / Numen 55 (2008) 474–493 Regev’s “Conclusions” (377–387). Th e book also includes a list of abbrevia- tions (389), a bibliography (391–425), and a general index (427–438). Regev’s approach is grounded in a sociological — “functional,” as he calls it — reading of ancient texts. He assumes that the variety of documents found on the shelves of Qumran libraries betrays the existence of at least two different communities: the “yahad group” of the Community Rule (1QS; 4Q255–264; 5Q11), the Hodayot (1QH; 1Q35; 4Q427–432), the Pesharim (1QpHab; 1Q14–16; 3Q4; 4Q161–173; 5Q10), and other sectarian texts; and the “Damascus Covenant” of the Damascus Document (CDab; 4Q266–273; 5Q12; 6Q15). Both groups displayed, at the same time, strong introversionist and revolutionist features that clearly identify them as sectarian. Evidence for this can be found in the mechanisms of social and religious separateness that they used (42–50) and the eschatological and messianic beliefs that they held (58–72). Regev also aptly stresses the social implications of their extremely rigorous doctrine of atonement (73–78) and the special nature of revelation at Qum- ran (81–86). In his opinion, heavenly revelations were “a fundamental factor that influenced the very creation of the Qumran sects” (81). Since they are described as past experiences in the Damascus Document, he reaches the con- clusion that, in comparison to the yahad group, originally established by the Teacher of Righteousness, the Damascus Covenant was a later and more rou- tinized kind of movement (89–93). Examination of the social structures and organizational patterns described in the Community Rule and the Damascus Document (163–196) seems to confirm such an inference. Th us, according to Regev the highly centralized organization of the Damascus Covenant was quite different from the relatively democratic yahad assembly. “Th e organiza- tion and structure of the two sects, and the relationship between their penal codes, and the fact that CD 20 refers to the yahad as a historical group all lead to the conclusion that the yahad preceded the Damascus Covenant. Th e Cov- enant was not a direct continuation or adaptation of the yahad, but an entirely different movement, which adopted and extensively revised certain precepts and concepts from the yahad ” (192–193). Regev presents some significant arguments in favor of the priority of the Community Rule (previously argued by Józef T. Milik, Frank Moore Cross, or Colin G. Kruse) that all of the specialists who address this delicate issue in the future will need to take into account. In the meantime, one can read Hilary Evans Kapfer’s rejoinder, “Th e Relationship between the Damascus Docu- ment and the Community Rule: Attitudes toward the Temple as a Test Case,” Dead Sea Discoveries 14 (2007), 152–177. Regev also provides an accurate and useful analysis of the social realities embedded in some illustrious pre-sectarian or early sectarian texts, i.e., .
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