From the Damascus Covenant to the Covenant of the Community: Literary, Historical and Theological Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, Volume 66)
Stephen Hultgren
Language: English
Pages: 639
ISBN: 2:00287760
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This volume offers new insight into the origins of the ""new covenant in the land of Damascus"" and the Qumran community, and explores topics related to their covenantal theology.
to despise the accused; or to fail to report a capital crime on the day that it occurs. There is a closer connection to the halakah of the movement here than Murphy-O'Connor allows.44 In fact, Murphy-O'Connor is aware of this, because he shows the parallels himself in an earlier article.45 This supports the argument that apostate members are in view (probably not those who have physically left, but those who are ostensibly members of the covenant but have "departed" from it by continuing to
movement that is older and more extensive than Qumran itself. This picture from the Damascus Document is only strengthened through new evidence such as the Apocryphon of Jeremiah, which gives evidence of criticism of the priesthood and of Israel at large, and perhaps also of the existence of a renewal movement in Palestine, already in the 3rd century BC.3 The Apocryphon of Jeremiah suggests that such movements may have been more extensive than we previously thought, and that a 3rd-century
that these authors had older sources at their disposal, and these may have come from a time closer to the origins of the Essenes. Nonetheless, priority must be given to the older, Hebrew sources that can be safely connected with the origins and early life of thc yahad. The classical sources can be helpful in confirming or rounding out our picture of the Qumran community acquired from the Hebrew sources, but the evidence of the classical sources should be integrated into, and not superimposed
God and of seeking him "with whole heart and with whole soul." Similarly the content of the Damascus covenant is to "return to the law of Moses with whole heart and with whole soul" (CD XV,9-10). Second, the covenant of 2 Chr 15 comes with the stipulation that "all who would not seek ( )וכל אטר לא ידרטthe LORD the God of Israel" were to be put to death. Similar formulae outlining penalties for noncompliance with a covenant occur not only in Ezra 10:8 but also in CD VIII, 1 /XIX, 13-14 and 1QS
remnant for Israel and did not deliver them up to destruction, (CD 1,3-5; cf. 111,13-14) 61 Apart from (or in addition to) any theory of predestination, this view of the covenant—God remembers his covenant by allowing a remnant to "entef' a covenant may help to explain the remarkable fact that members of the community at Qumran were both the "chosen" of God (by God's initiative) and those who "volunteered" (as though at their own initiative) for the community. The very existence of a remnant