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The Covenant Renewal Ceremony As the Main Function of Qumran

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The Covenant Renewal Ceremony As the Main Function of Qumran religions Article The Covenant Renewal Ceremony as the Main Function of Qumran Daniel Vainstub Department of Bible, Archaeology and Ancient Near East, Ben‑Gurion University, Beer Sheva 8410501, Israel; [email protected] Abstract: Unlike any other group or philosophy in ancient Judaism, the yahad sect obliged all mem‑ ˙ bers of the sect to leave their places of residence all over the country and gather in the sect’s central site to participate in a special annual ceremony of renewal of the covenant between God and each of the members. The increase of the communities that composed the sect and their spread over the en‑ tire country during the first century BCE required the development of the appropriate infrastructure for hosting this annual gathering at Qumran. Consequently, the hosting of the gathering became the main function of the site, and the southern esplanade with the buildings surrounding it became the epicenter of the site. Keywords: Qumran; Damascus Document; scrolls; mikveh 1. Introduction The subject of this paper is the yearly gathering during the festival of Shavuot of all members of the communities that composed the yahad sect.1 After close examination of the Citation: Vainstub, Daniel. 2021. The ˙ evidence for this annual gathering in the sect’s writings and analysis of the archaeological Covenant Renewal Ceremony as the data on the development of the site of Qumran, it became evident that in the generation Main Function of Qumran. Religions 12: 578. https://doi.org/10.3390/ following that of the site’s founders, the holding of the annual gathering became the main ¶ rel12080578 raison d’ tre of the site and the factor that dictated its architectural development. 2. The Covenant Renewal Ceremony Academic Editor: Jaime V¡zquez Allegue The Qumranic writings acquaint us with a most significant event in the life of the sect, a ceremony of renewal of the covenant between God and each member of the sect, Received: 28 June 2021 described literally as “passing the covenant”, which was held “year by year for as long as Accepted: 21 July 2021 the dominion of Belial endures” (1QS II, 19). The celebration was an exclusively Qumranic Published: 27 July 2021 event,2 distinguishing the communities and their writings found in the Qumran caves from any other Jewish group or philosophy known from this period. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral The most commonly accepted biblical source of inspiration for the ceremony of “pass‑ with regard to jurisdictional claims in ing the covenant” is the instructions for the covenant ceremony to be performed on Mounts published maps and institutional affil‑ Gerizim and Ebal in Deut 27–28 and the subsequent call to observe this covenant in Deut iations. 29, as well as the description of the ceremony itself in Josh 8:30–35. The parallelism be‑ tween the ceremony on Mounts Gerizim and Ebal and the ceremony at Qumran is not limited to the function of the priests and the Levites—blessing and cursing the people, pass” with a direct object“ עבר respectively—but even extends to the vocabulary; the verb Copyright: © 2021 by the author. meaning “covenant,” “law” or “order” normally means “to transgress” in biblical Hebrew Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. (e.g., Deut 17:2; 26:13; Josh 7:11, 15; 23:16; Judg 2:20; 1 Sam 15:24; 2 Kgs 18:12; Isa 24:5; Hos This article is an open access article 6:7; 8:1; Ps 148:6; Esth 3:3; Dan 9:11), as well as in Qumranic Hebrew (e.g., 1QM LV, 7, 17 using ברית and עבר 1QS V, 7, 14; CD I, 20). The only occurrence in the Bible of ;(לעבור בריתי) distributed under the terms and ‑literally “to pass in a covenant”, is in Deut 29:11, while its only occur ,ב conditions of the Creative Commons the preposition Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// rence in the Qumran scrolls is in the description of the renewal of the covenant inspired by creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ the passage in Deuteronomy, both occurrences expressing the passing of the participants 4.0/). Religions 2021, 12, 578. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12080578 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Religions 2021, 12, 578 2 of 26 in the ceremony3 and differing from Rabbinical Hebrew, in which the same expression .e.g., m. Hal. 1:2; 5:4; m. Pesah) ב means “to transgress”, just as without the preposition ˙ ˙ 3:1; m. B. Mes. 5:12). Another biblical source that could have influenced the Qumranic ˙ the (וְהַ͏ﬠֲבַרְ ͏תִּ י) terminology for the ceremony is Ezek 20:36–38, where God says he will pass (͏וּבָר͏וֹתִ י) separating out ,(הַ͏בְּרִ ית) selected people under his shepherd’s staff into the covenant and its (יתברך בלבבו) ”the wicked ones.4 In addition, the term “blesses himself in his heart meaning in this context are taken from Deut 29:19 (see below). The annual celebration is recorded in both the Community Rule and the Damascus Document5 and is one of the points that they have in common (Hempel 2010, especially p. 128), a fact leading to the conclusion that the event was a meaningful one in the life of the sect, in which all full members of the different types of communities described in these two compositions converged on one place once a year. In the Community Rule, the description of the celebration is located in a very honored place at its beginning after the introduction (1QS II, 19–III, 12).6 Some manuscripts of the Community Rule coming from Cave 4, however, lack these passages.7 The section of the Damascus Document that explicitly discusses the covenant renewal ceremony is missing in Cairo Genizah’s versions of the composition, but it is partially preserved in three (4Q266 1, 4Q270 7 II and 4Q269 16, 15–18; see Hempel 2009, p. 371) of the ten manuscripts of the composition found in the Qumran caves (4Q266–273; 5Q12; 6Q15). Most probably, the section was placed at the end of the composition (Baumgarten et al. 2006, pp. 3–4; Hempel 2010, p. 127), and in Fraade’s opinion, the entire document was “an anthology that was drawn upon so as to provide performative ‘scripts’ ... for the annual covenant‑renewal ceremony” (Fraade 2011, pp. 238, 245), a view shared by Falk (Falk 1998, pp. 228, 234). This conclusion is in line with that of Mandel, who concluded previously that the Damascus Document was built in inclusio (Mandel 2004). One of the most prominent and well‑known differences between the Damascus Doc‑ ument and the Community Rule is that the Damascus Document regulates, among others, camps”, whose members could be married and have“ מחנות communities catalogued as children, like the kind of Essenes recorded by Josephus in J.W. 2.8.8. Undoubtedly, the annual convergence of community members who not only came from different places but also followed different rules and social codes was a very significant event that requireda logistical operation on a large scale. Other texts connected with the covenant renewal ceremony are found in the follow‑ ing Qumranic compositions: 4QBerakhot (4Q286–290), which contains a text that was de‑ claimed in the covenant renewal ceremony (Nitzan 2000; Nitzan 2014, pp. 179–85; Falk 1998, p. 236); Scroll 5Q13, which has survived very partially8 and, most probably, Scroll 4Q275. The composition 4QBerakhot contains benedictions to God and curses on Belial and all those who “belong to his destiny” (meaning those who do not belong to the yahad sect), declaimed by the participants of the ceremony based on mystical Merkabah ˙ speculations (Nitzan 2000). The exalted words of the benedictions, which were most prob‑ ably pronounced at one of the climaxes of the ceremony, were intended to reinforce the participants’ belief in the unique perceptual foundations of the yahad sect with regard to the ˙ true calendar and festival dates, the exclusive legitimacy of the priests of the yahad and the ˙ selection by God of the Sons of Light (members of the yahad participating in the ceremony), ˙ while God Himself and His angels themselves take part in the ceremony while standing in their heavenly sanctuary (Nitzan 2014, pp. 180–82, 85). Undoubtedly, the ceremony was a profound spiritual experience that endowed the participants with a strengthened faith that would accompany them for an entire year after their return to their communities. Scroll 4Q275, of which only three small fragments survive, mentions people “walking the paths 9.(י]הולכ̇ ים א̊ת שבילי ה̊[, ] בחודש השליש̊[) ”(in the third month (Sivan ... The annual covenant renewal ceremony is the outcome and the sequel of a funda‑ mental conception in the ideology of the sect: the covenant between God and His chosen Sons of Light that separates them from the Sons of Darkness and is the continuation of a chain of covenants made by God, such as the Revelation at Mount Sinai, which began Religions 2021, 12, 578 3 of 26 with Noah after the Deluge. Through these covenants, God elected His chosen ones by the principle of reduction through the generations, and the members of the yahad were ˙ the Sons of Light chosen by God at that time (Nitzan 2014, pp. 170–74; Schiffman 2004), as stated at the beginning of the Damascus Document: “but when He remembered the covenant of the forefathers, He left a remnant to Israel and did not allow them to be totally ‑However, unlike the pre .(ובזכרו ברית ראשונים השאיר שאירית לישראל ולא נתנם לכלה) ”destroyed ceding covenants, the present one, called the “new covenant” in the Damascus Document, has a very prominent personal dimension: the man who is accepted as a member and joins and is thereby incorporated into the covenant (בא בברית) ”the sect “comes into the covenant between God and the yahad sect.
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