A Study on the Teacher of Righteousness, Collective Memory, and Tradition at Qumran by Gianc
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MANUFACTURING HISTORY AND IDENTITY: A STUDY ON THE TEACHER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, COLLECTIVE MEMORY, AND TRADITION AT QUMRAN BY GIANCARLO P. ANGULO A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Religion May 2014 Winston Salem, North Carolina Approved By: Kenneth G. Hoglund, Ph.D., Advisor Jarrod Whitaker, Ph.D., Chair Clinton J. Moyer, Ph.D. Acknowledgments It would not be possible to adequately present the breadth of my gratitude in the scope of this short acknowledgment section. That being said, I would like to extend a few thanks to some of those who have most influenced my academic and personal progression during my time in academia. To begin, I would be remiss not to mention the many excellent professors and specifically Dr. Erik Larson at Florida International University. The Religious Studies department at my undergraduate university nurtured my nascent fascination with religion and the Dead Sea Scrolls and launched me into the career I am now seeking to pursue. Furthermore, a thank you goes out to my readers Dr. Jarrod Whitaker and Dr. Clinton Moyer. You have both presented me with wonderful opportunities during my time at Wake Forest University that have helped to develop me into the student and speaker I am today. Your guidance and review of this thesis have proven essential for me to produce my very best work. Also, a very special thank you must go out to my advisor, professor, and friend, Dr. Ken Hoglund. Your patience, brilliance, and unwavering support have helped me reach heights I often did not think possible. Our conversations have greatly improved this thesis as well as my own progression as a student and a colleague in the field of Religion. Finally, none of this would have been imaginable without the emotional support and encouragement of my family and friends. I thank you all so very much for putting me in a position to succeed and believing in me even when times were difficult. ii Table of Contents Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………….…… iv Abstract……………………………………………………………………..……………. v Chapter One…………………………………………………………………..………….. 1 I. The Dead Sea Scrolls and Collective Memory………………..…………. 8 II. Historical Context………………………………………………………. 17 23 ..…………………….………………………………מורה הצדק III. The Title IV. Conclusion……………………………………………………………… 27 Chapter Two………………………………………………….…………………………. 29 I. Teacher as Prophet……………………………………………………… 31 II. Teacher as High Priest………………………………………………….. 36 III. Teacher as Founder……………………………………………………... 41 IV. Teacher as Eschatological Figure...…………………………………...... 44 V. Teacher as Suffering Servant………………………...…………………. 47 VI. Identifying the Teacher of Righteousness……………….……………… 50 VII. Conclusion……………………………………………………………… 56 Chapter Three………………………………………………………………….………... 59 I. Memory Distortion and Narrativization………………………………… 60 II. The Teacher Tradition and Biblical Leaders………………………….... 69 III. The Teacher of Righteousness and the Ezra Model……………….……. 77 IV. Conclusion……………………………………………………………… 85 Chapter Four……………………………………………………………………………. 87 I. The Prototypical Teacher…………………………………….…………. 87 II. The Imagined Teacher of Righteousness…………………….…………. 90 III. Synopsis………………………………………………………………… 92 IV. Conclusion……………………………………………………………… 97 Bibliography……………………………………………………………..……………. 100 Curriculum Vitae……….……………………………………………..………………. 108 iii Abbreviations 1QH Hodayot 1QpHab Pesher Habakkuk 1QpMic Pesher Micah 1QS Rule of the Community 4QpIs Pesher Isaiah 4QpNah Pesher Nahum 4QpPs Pesher Psalm CD Damascus Document DSS Dead Sea Scrolls iv Abstract The Dead Sea Scrolls corpus presents a leadership figure presiding over the Qumran movement known only by the sobriquet “Teacher of Righteousness.” This shadowy character has garnered a significant amount of scholarly attention due to its extraordinary role in the formation and maintenance of Qumran’s sectarian identity. Despite exhaustive efforts to better understand the group’s figurehead, the Teacher of Righteousness has remained an obscurity with the only general consensus being that it represented an historical figure in the Second Temple period. This thesis seeks to problematize this consensus and argue for an imagined leadership figure produced in order to legitimize the sectarian movement. The argument is presented through the purview of collective memory theory in order to read the historical recordings in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the experiential narratives of the Teacher as a tradition rather than objective reality. Furthermore, this thesis looks to display substantial continuity between the scrolls’ presentation of the Teacher of Righteousness and biblical heroes abound the memory of the Qumran sectarians. In arguing for a fictitious Teacher figure in the Dead Sea Scrolls, this thesis seeks to discourage further research into the figure’s historical persona and rather encourage future inquiry to focus on the influence of its narratives on the Qumran members. v Chapter One the Teacher ,מורה הצדק The leadership figure in the Qumran movement known as of Righteousness, constitutes the most mysterious and consequential character in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The title appears in some form in at least seventeen occurrences throughout the Qumran corpus.1 Scribes display their leader in several variant ways and the aforementioned definitive ;יורה הצדק ;מורה הצדקה ;מורה ;מורה צדק :which include The person behind the title is portrayed in several different lights 2.מורה הצדק form throughout the scrolls including, but not limited to, taking on the role of prophet, priest, throughout the מורה הצדק and founder. Due to the high volume of appearances by the writings of the scrolls, the position he is portrayed to have employed, and the influence a leader may have had on a community of his exilic followers, there has been an abundance of research done on the subject. He has, in fact, almost unanimously been considered the single most important character in the Dead Sea Scrolls corpus.3 Inquiry has normally revolved around three major issues: (1) what person known through other Second Temple writings is behind the epithet? (2) What can be reconstructed about the Teacher’s life and how does this relate to the origins of the Qumran community? And (3) which documents from the Dead Sea Scrolls, if any, were authored by the Teacher of Righteousness?4 1 Stuckenbruck (2010: 26-27) relays the following passages as specifically mentioning the Teacher of Righteousness: 1QpHab 1:13; 2:2; 5:10; 7:4; 8:3; 9:9-10; 11:5; 1QpMic (1Q14) 10:6; 4QpPsa 4Q171 1-10 3:15, 19; 4:8, 27; 4QpPsb (4Q173) 1 4, 2 2; an unidentified pesher fragment (4Q172 7:1); CD A 1:11; 6:11. The use of this sobriquet in the variant forms provided appear in six further texts: CD B 20:1, 14; 4QpPsa 1- 10 1:27; CD B 20:28; 4QpIsac (4Q163) 21:6; and depending on its restoration, 4QpIsae (4Q165) 1-2 36. 2 Based on the context there is no reason to believe that the different titles refer to separate people but rather one individual or office. Rabinowitz (1958: 392-393) even notes that in one case a scribe seems to have He concludes that the author .מורה and proceeds to fill in the word יורה crossed out the first three letters of .as synonyms ירה regarded the masculine singular participles qal and hiph’il from the root 3 Stuckenbruck 2007: 78 4 Stuckenbruck 2007: 75-76 1 Despite exhaustive efforts to understand this shadowy character, scholarship has remained conflicted with theories ranging from the possible to the absurd. One of the more curious aspects involved in the study of the Teacher of Righteousness is the fact that he was discovered in the Cairo Geniza well before the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Solomon Schechter first published the work which has come to be known as the Damascus Document under the headline “Fragments of a Zadokite Work” in 1910. It is not known how the document made its way to Cairo or what bearing that has on the Qumran movement but the important point for this study is Schechter’s early work on the Teacher of Righteousness. Beyond simply stating that the Teacher was an historical character, he further developed his theory to envelop the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel into the personage of the Teacher of Righteousness and he ascribed the community’s founding to this person.5 Some modern scholars who study the figure of the Teacher of Righteousness have expressed questions about what the field would be like had scholarship not previously been aware of the Teacher’s existence. Since Schechter first proposed the likelihood that the Teacher of Righteousness in the Damascus Document was an historical character, most of scholarship has continued with this theme and looked to explore the identity of the Teacher. In fact, scholars often refer to his historical validity as the only consensus about the figure.6 The Teacher’s historicity has been accepted almost as a truism in Qumran scholarship and the few studies which have demurred this position have failed to sway the field. 5 Schechter 1910: 44-45 6 Wacholder 1999: 28 2 The purpose of the current project is two-fold. The history of scholarly discourse concerning the Teacher’s role and historical character will be presented in order to demonstrate the widespread disagreement regarding the leader of the Qumran sect. Despite the fact that most consider him to be certainly an historical character the evidence, or lack thereof, has left conclusions varied and asserted. When considering the historicity of the Teacher