Chapter 4 4QMMT: A Letter to (not from) the Yaḥad

Gareth Wearne

1 Introduction

4QMMT (hereafter MMT) occupies an important place in studies of the ori- gin and identity of the community, or communities, reflected in the .1 As is well known, early discussions of the text classified MMT as a hal- akhic letter or treatise, written to a royal figure as a polemical response to the views and practices of an unnamed third party.2 More specifically, based on the theological contents of the reconstructed text—and noting its apparent silence on the question of the High Priesthood—the editors, and , suggested that MMT may reflect a time shortly before, or in the earliest organizational stages of, the group.3 As such, Qimron identified it as a polemical letter sent from the nascent Qumran community, or its parent group, in order to persuade the current Hasmonean ruler to forsake what the writers understood to be the errant practices of an opposing party.4 Even before the official publication of MMT in DJD 10, there were signs that the editors, especially Strugnell, had begun to change their minds about its genre.5 Noting the lack of form critical parallels and formal epistolary features, Qimron and Strugnell questioned whether MMT would better be classified as a proclamation, an open letter, an epistle, or a “treatise”; however, they continued

1 My sincere thanks go to Dr Stephen Llewelyn, as well as the anonymous reader and the edi- tors of this volume for their many helpful comments and suggestions. 2 Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell, “An Unpublished Halakhic Letter from Qumran,” in Biblical Archaeology Today: Proceedings of the International Congress on Biblical Archaeology, , April 1984 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1985), 400–7. 3 Elisha Qimron, John Strugnell, et al., Qumran Cave 4.V: Miqṣat Maʿaśeh Ha-, DJD 10 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 121 (hereafter, DJD 10). 4 Perhaps from the “” himself, DJD 10:114–16, 120–21, but cf. 121 where he seemed to back away from this view. Strugnell offered a yet more cautious appraisal in his appendix to DJD 10 and idem, “MMT: Second Thoughts on a Forthcoming Edition,” in The Community of the Renewed Covenant: The Notre Dame Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. and James VanderKam, and in Antiquity 10 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 57–73. 5 Strugnell, “Second Thoughts,” 72; cf. DJD 10:113–14, 121.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004393387_005 100 Wearne in the assumption that it was addressed to the Hasmonean political establish- ment and written by representatives of the early Qumran community.6 At the heart of the sectarian association lies the expression, partly restored, “we have separated from the multitude of the peo[ple],” which occurs in the parenetic epilogue at the end of the reconstructed text (see below). This cryp- tic autobiographical detail led Qimron and Strugnell to conclude that MMT originated in the early days of the schism with the Jerusalem temple.7 But if it is correct to identify MMT with a schism with the temple, then it must be noted that its tone is surprisingly eirenic—a problem already recognized in the editio maior.8 More recently, scholars have tended to move away from the question of MMT’s original purpose, and have focused instead on its intramural use within the community that preserved it. In particular, this approach was championed by Steven Fraade, who drew attention to the fact that MMT was repeatedly cop- ied over a prolonged period.9 That is, it exists in six fragmentary manuscripts (4Q394, 4Q395, 4Q396, 4Q397, 4Q398, and 4Q399), which have been dated on paleographic grounds to the early-mid-Herodian periods (i.e. mid–late first century BCE, or early first century CE).10 This is an unusually large number of copies for a non-biblical text, and suggests that MMT was of considerable im- portance for the copyists. Consequently, and in view of its halakhic contents, Fraade suggested that MMT was an intracommunal pedagogical text, used to train candidates and new initiates of the community for the purpose of “rein- forcing the process of social separation.”11 Fraade’s explanation may well be correct, and he was certainly right to draw attention to the ongoing significance of the text within the community (a point

6 For a discussion of MMT as a proclamation see Strugnell, “Second Thoughts,” 72. 7 DJD 10:109–21; Strugnell, “Second Thoughts,” 72. For a maximalist interpretation, see , “4QMMT and the History of the Hasmonean Period,” in Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on Qumran Law and History, ed. John Kampen and Moshe Bernstein, SBLSym 2 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1996), 53–65. 8 DJD 10:116, 121; Strugnell, “Second Thoughts,” 71; cf. Charlotte Hempel, “The Context of 4QMMT and Comfortable Theories,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Texts and Context, ed. Charlotte Hempel, STDJ 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 275–92, esp. 285. 9 Steven D. Fraade, “To Whom It May Concern: 4QMMT and Its Addressee(s),” RevQ 19 (2000): 507–26. 10 DJD 10:3–6, 14, 16–18, 21–25, 29–34, 38–39. On Ada Yardeni’s contribution to the paleo- graphic dating of the fragments, see DJD 10:9. Regarding the earliest hand, she wrote: “A comparison of the skeleton forms of the letters in 4Q398 to the skeleton forms of the letters in the different stages of development of the cursive and semi-cursive Jewish scripts suggests that the script of 4Q398 belongs to the period of transition from the Hasmonean to the Herodian styles [i.e. mid–1st century BCE],” DJD 10:29. 11 Fraade, “To Whom It May Concern,” 507–26.