CHAPTER ONE THE WAR TEXTS: DISCOVERY AND IDENTIFICATION The scroll of “The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness,”1 or more simply, the War Scroll—1QM(ilh. amah)—is one of the first seven scrolls discovered in 1947 by some Bedouin in a cave on the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea near the ruins of Khirbet Qumran.2 This scroll, which describes an ultimate eschatological war between the forces of good—the Sons of Light, and the forces of evil—the Sons of Darkness, for the final undoing of evil in the world, is unique. Outside of the Qumran Scrolls, no other parallels are known in the entire corpus of Second Temple Period lit- erature.3 It describes a series of battles, complete with chronological ———— 1 This is the name given to the scroll by Prof. Eleazar Sukenik who first -Jerus] מילות וות מתו יה קומה מאה במבר יהוה. סקירה ראוה) deciphered it alem: Magnes, 1948], 17). 2 The account of the discovery has taken on almost mythical dimensions, with several versions circulating. For Sukenik’s personal rendition of the events, see מילות וות מתו יה קומה מאה במבר יהוה. סקירה יה ;11–10 ,מילות וות I אור המילות הוות ביי האויברסיה הברית Jerusalem: Magnes, 1950), 12–19; and) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1954), 13–15. An English translation of his version can be found in The Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew University, trans. D. A. Fineman (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1955), 13–19. All references to Sukenik’s work will be from this English translation. Additional details of the discovery are provided by his son in Yigael Yadin, The Message of the Scrolls (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957), 15–52. A slightly different but meticulous account is given by John Trever in “The Discovery of the Scrolls,” BA 11, no. 3 (1948): 46–57; and in The Untold Story of Qumran (Westwood, N.J.: Flemming H. Revel, 1965). 3 For this reason, scholars have been in a quandary to know what kind of literary genre to call M. Henri Michaud called it a new apocalypse; see “Une apocalypse nouvelle,” Positions Luthériennes 3 (1955): 64–76. Jean Carmignac called it a liturgy for the holy war; see “Qu’est ce que l’apocalyptique? Son emploi à Qumrân,” RevQ 10 (1979): 26. Yadin chose to call it a military manual; see The Scroll of the War, 4. For a most thorough survey about the various proposals con- cerning M’s literary genre, see Søren Holst, “Verbs and War Scroll: Studies in the DISCOVERY AND IDENTIFICATION 11 considerations, divisions of the army, tactical issues, types of weaponry, even instructions for priests together with necessary ritual practices, all for the purpose of insuring victory to the Sons of Light. 1. DESCRIPTION OF THE WAR SCROLL FROM CAVE 1 1.1. The main scroll As is well known, Prof. Eleazar Sukenik of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was able to purchase this scroll from an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem on November 29th, 1947.4 It was surprisingly well preserved, although its fragile light-brown leather had decomposed somewhat in places, with damage done primarily along its bottom and through several of the outer sheets.5 Since the scroll had been rolled up from left to right after it had been read, the first inner columns are better preserved than the last outer ones, and as one nears the end of the scroll, the damage increases substantially. The scroll is comprised of four parchment sheets sewn together, for a total length of 2.90 m and an average preserved height of 16 cm. Eighteen columns of text are unequally divided among the four sheets.6 Each column varies between 10.5 and 16.0 cm in width and contains anywhere from 16 to 19 lines of text, written in a clean script ‘hanging’ under ruled lines.7 Margins between the columns measure about two centimeters while the upper margin measures almost three centimeters. At the right edge of the parchment is a five ———— Hebrew Verbal System and the Qumran War Scroll” (Ph.D. diss., Copenhagen Uni- versity, 2004), 14–17. 4 See note 2. In addition to M, Sukenik also purchased an Isaiah Scroll (1QIsab) and the Thanksgiving Scroll, also known as the Hodayot (1QHa, H). The other four scrolls were purchased by the Syrian Metropolitan Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel: a second Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa), Pesher Habakkuk (1QpHab), the Rule of the Community or Serekh haYah.ad (1QS, S) and the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen ar). 5 Sukenik, Dead Sea Scrolls, 35, figs. 11–12. 6 Specific measurements of each parchment sheet and the number of columns they contain are listed in Sukenik, Dead Sea Scrolls, 44. 7 Paleographical dating will be dealt with below after all the relevant texts will have been introduced so as to facilitate comparing them chronologically. .