Chapter 5

Apart from these general considerations, Mr. Margoliouth’s identifications rest upon a palpable misinterpretation. On page 1 we read: “But because God remembered the covenant with the forefathers, he left Israel a remnant, and did not suffer them to be exterminated. And at the end of wrath ... he visited them and caused to spring up from Israel and Aaron a root of his planting _to inherit his land and to prosper on the good things of his earth_.” The italicized clauses prove beyond question that the “root” is not an individual, but is a collective designation for the first generation of the sect.(106) The parallel passage on p. 5 says explicitly: “God remembered the covenant with the forefathers, and he raised up from Aaron men of insight and from Israel wise men, and he heard them, and they dug the well.” “The well is the law, and they who dug it are the exiles of Israel who migrated to Judah and sojourned in the land of Damascus.” In the face of this perfectly plain meaning of the passage Mr. Margoliouth takes “the root” for the person designated in other places as “the Anointed from Aaron and Israel,” who led the people “to recognize their wickedness and know that they were guilty men.”(107) In this first Messiah he recognizes John the Baptist, and, consequently, in the Teacher of Righteousness who came after him, Jesus. The point of correspondence is the relation between the forerunner and his successor. The text, however, as I have just showed, says nothing of a precursor of the teacher of righteousness; on the contrary, it was this teacher who first brought light to the generation which in the consciousness of its sin was groping like the blind, and guided them in the way of God’s heart.(108)

That by the “man of scoffing” the Apostle Paul is meant is for Mr. Margoliouth a corollary of the preceding identifications, and falls with them. The enemies of Paul were doubtless capable of calling him all sorts of hard names, but there is nothing in the epithets “scorner” and “liar,” or in the doings attributed to this figure, which fits Paul better than any other false teacher and sower of discord, while the reference to the fate of the men of war who followed the “man of lies” seems quite inapplicable to Paul.(109)

That we should be unable to identify the Covenanters of Damascus with any sect previously known is not surprising. The three or four centuries in the middle of which the Christian era falls were prolific in sects and heresies of many complexions, as were the centuries following the rise of Islam. Through Philo, Josephus, the church Fathers, and the Talmud, we are acquainted with some of them; but it is probable that there were many others of which no reports have reached us. If we cannot, out of the collection at our disposal, put a label on our Covenanters, we may console ourselves with the reflection that here we know one Jewish sect from its own monuments, and that the texts in our hands, mutilated as they are, suffice to give us a much clearer notion of its peculiarities than we get of most of the other sects from the descriptions which have come down to us.

Its affinities with various antipharisaic or antirabbinical parties, such as the Samaritans, the Sadducees, and, in later times, the Karaites, is obvious. It shared with all these a zeal for the letter and the literal interpretation, and a disposition to extend the law by analogy of principle, as a result of which their rules were in general much stricter than those of the Rabbis, who possessed in the theory of tradition and in their methods of exegesis the means of adapting the law to changed conditions, and who were also more disposed to give the precedence to the great principles of humanity in the law over its particular prescriptions when the two seemed to conflict. The organization of the sect, on the other hand, has no parallel within our knowledge. In view of the use of the name “camps” for the local communities, and the references to the “mustering” of the members, the “trumpets of the congregation,” and the like, it may be surmised that the organization of Israel in the wilderness suggested the plan, and that the Supervisors were meant to correspond to the chiefs of the tribes (for instance, Num. 1 10), each having authority over a separate camp.

The sect seems to have perpetuated itself for a considerable time, otherwise this book would hardly have been preserved. It may perhaps be conjectured that it survived long enough to be gathered, along with numerous younger sects, into the capacious bosom of Karaism, of which it was in various points a precursor. Such an hypothesis would explain how it came about that copies of the book were made in the tenth century and later, we should then suppose by Karaite scribes.(110)

Dr. Schechter has laid all students of Judaism under new obligations by the discovery and publication of these texts. They will join with their congratulations the hope that he may find yet other treasures among the accumulations of the Genizah.

FOOTNOTES

1 Documents of Jewish Sectaries. Volume I. Fragments of a Zadokite Work. Edited, with Translation, Introduction, and Notes, by S. Schechter. Cambridge University Press. 1910.

2 It may be added that the quotations are singularly inexact.

3 In my translation I have sometimes thought it possible to adhere to the text where Dr. Schechter has preferred a conjectural emendation.

4 That is, probably, against the legitimate high priest of the time (perhaps Onias).—The rendering “_by_ his Anointed” is grammatically admissible, but would be unintelligible in this context.

5 It would be possible to render “the penitents of Israel.”

6 The four or five words which follow are unintelligible.

7 The references are to page and line of the Hebrew text.

8 Others sought refuge in Egypt; the temple of Onias at Leontopolis had its origin in the same circumstances.

9 So they understood the words translated in the English version “the cruel venom of asps.”

10 See 2 Macc. 4 16: “By reason of which (sc. their predilection for Greek ways) a dire calamity befel them, and those for whose customs they displayed such zeal and whom they wanted to imitate in everything became their enemies and avengers.” Assumption of Moses, 5 1: “When the times of retribution shall draw near, and vengeance arises through kings who share their guilt and punish them,” etc., describes the same situation.

11 Cf. “the whole race of the elect root,” Enoch 93 8.

12 See Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes (3 ed.), vol. iii. p. 189.

13 A comparison with the Apocalypse of the Ten Weeks in Enoch (93 + 91 12-17) is in point here. The sixth “week” (period of 490 years) ends with the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar; in the seventh a rebellious generation arises, all whose works are apostasy (the hellenizers of the Seleucid time); at its end the “chosen righteous men of the eternal plantation of righteousness” are chosen to receive the sevenfold instruction about God’s whole creation (apparently the cosmological revelations of Enoch); the historical retrospect closes before the robbery and desecration of the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes (170, 168 B.C.), of which the seer knows nothing. The chronological error here amounts to sixty or seventy years.

In the Introduction, p. xii, by a typographical error which is repeated on p. xxii, Dr. Schechter says that the 390 years of the text would bring us “to within a generation of Simon the Just, who flourished about 290 B.C.,” and twenty years more would bring us into the midst of the hellenistic persecutions preceding the Maccabaean revolt (about 170 B.C.). Margoliouth, whose hypothesis 490 does not suit any better than 390, takes courage from Schechter’s doubts to disregard the numbers altogether. Gressmann (Internationale Wochenschrift, March 4, 1911) is led by metrical considerations to treat all the chronological notices as interpolations, and gives them no further consideration. But even if the figures were introduced by a later hand, they may still represent the tradition of the sect.

14 Perhaps we should emend _ma’mādō_, “station,” i.e. sect.

15 See below, p. 350, 354 f.

16 Cf. Isa. 30 20 f.

17 The Septuagint renders _yāḥīd_ most frequently by ἀγαπητός, less often by μονογενής.

18 The same prophecy which was applied by Akiba to Bar Cocheba and by the Dositheans to their founder (see below, p. 362).

19 The sect rejects the temple in Jerusalem and its worship. Cf. 20 21 f., in the last crisis, “they will lean upon God ... and will declare the sanctuary unclean and will return to God.”

20 Perhaps better, keep aloof, by vow and ban, from unrighteous, unclean gain.

21 See below, p. 353.

22 The name comes from Isa. 28 14, where the scorners are the rulers in Jerusalem, who boast of their covenant with death and their compact with hell, who have made lies their refuge and hidden themselves in falsehood. See also Isa. 29 20.

23 It might be surmised that the false prophet had headed an insurrection—perhaps a Messianic rising—which ended in disaster.

24 See above, p. 333.

25 Or, as Schechter elsewhere expresses it, “disappeared.” Among the synonyms for death, Aaron ben Eliahu names “gather in” (Isa. 58 8).

26 Introduction, p. xiii.

27 P. xiii. “We gather from another passage that the Only Teacher found his death in Damascus, but is expected to rise again (p. 19, l. 35; p. 20, l. 1; cf. also p. 6, l. 11).” The verb _’āmad_ means, as frequently in the later books of the Old Testament, “appear upon the scene.” In this sense it occurs repeatedly in the book before us, and there is nothing in the context here to suggest a different interpretation.

28 Cf. Acts 1 11.

29 See Isa. 59 20.

30 The quotation is to be thus restored; see Exod. 20 6 and Deut. 7 9. The next two or three lines are very obscure: “From the house of Peleg, who went out (or, will go out) from the city of the sanctuary, and they will rely on God (cf. Isa. 10 20) when the transgression of Israel is at an end, and will declare the sanctuary unclean, and will return to God. The prince (?) of the people with few words (??).” The house of Peleg may be an etymological allegory for the seceders; the city of the sanctuary is probably Jerusalem (cf. 6 11 ff., above, p. 338); but neither the connection with the preceding nor the meaning of the sequel is clear.

31 Text, “and confessed,” which leaves the sentence without a predicate.

32 See also 7 20: “The sceptre” (Num. 24 17) “is the prince of all the congregation; and when he arises he will destroy all the children of Seth.”

33 It is not improbable that the author thought also of the other meaning of the word _tāphēl_, here rendered “stucco,” viz. something insipid, stupid; cf. Lam. 2 14, in a passage which, like Ezek. 13 10, refers to the false prophets. I see nothing to indicate that “the wall” is the fence or hedge which the Pharisaean rabbis drew around the law to protect it from infraction, as Dr. Schechter thinks.

34 The text explains, “this is the prater of whom it says, they prate unceasingly” (4 19 f.; cf. Mic. 2 11). Dr. Schechter regards this explanation as “a disturbing parenthesis.”

35 The Jannes and Jambres of 2 Tim. 3 8.

36 Such marriages, especially with a sister’s daughter, are not only permitted, but especially commended in the Talmud (Yebamoth 62b-63a; see Maimonides, Issure Biah 2 14), and are still common in countries where the Jews are free to follow the rabbinical law. On the Karaite prohibition of marriage with a niece, see below, p. 366.

37 On the pollution of the sanctuary, cf. Assumption of Moses 5 3; Testament of Levi 14 5 ff.; Psalms of Solomon 2 3.

38 On the portals of the sun, see Enoch 72, etc.

39 Perhaps an error of the text for 2000; see below, § 8.

40 Cf. Jubilees 50 8.

41 This holds on week-days as well as on the Sabbath.

42 Perhaps we should read, “make an ‘_erūb_’ ” (a legal fiction by which dwellings or limits were treated as one). The Sadducees and Samaritans rejected this evasion of the law.

43 See 12 12 ff.

44 Similarly the Essenes, at their reception into the order, bound themselves by the “tremendous oaths” which Josephus describes, B. J. ii, 8 7.

45 The oath by the Tetragrammaton included _a fortiori_.

46 The Essenes excluded oaths altogether, except in the initiation of members. See also Slavonic Enoch 49 1; Philo, De spec. legibus ii, 1, and elsewhere (Charles, Secrets of Enoch, p. 65). Our sect recognizes judicial oaths (9 8 ff.) and imprecations (9 12), as well as vows under oath (16 6 ff.).

47 On the relation of the Jubilees to the sect, see further below, p. 359.

48 Cf. Jubilees 2 9, God appointed the sun ... for sabbaths, and months, and feasts; and Jubilees 6 37, the observation of the moon disturbs the calendar.

49 It seems necessary to supply these words.

50 “The book of _hagu_.” The rendering “Institutes” is not offered as a translation of the name, but as indicating the probable character of the work. See below, p. 353 f.

51 Dr. Schechter renders “Censor,” and remarks, “Such an office, entirely unknown to Judaism, could only have been borrowed from the Romans.” But the functions of the Inspector or Supervisor bear no resemblance to those of the Roman censors; and for the identity of the title the translator is solely accountable, not the constitution of the sect. Mr. Margoliouth talks loosely about dependence on Roman administrative models; it would be interesting to learn in what particulars. With the very large authority vested in the Supervisor may be compared that of the managers, or administrators (ἐπιμεληταί), among the Essenes, “without whose directions they do nothing”; though the functions of the managers in the Essene coenobite establishments were of course quite different from those of the Supervisors of our sect.

52 In the partly illegible lines that follow, his dealing with the congregation is compared with that of a shepherd with his flock.—Dr. W. H. Ward suggests that the title _mebaḳḳer_ may be connected with Ezek. 34 11 f., where the verb is used of a shepherd’s looking out for his flock.

53 As in Mishna _Yoma_ the High Priest has to be instructed by experts in the ritual of the Day of Atonement, and made to swear not to depart from his instructions.

54 Probably the lands belonging to the sect.

55 That a court must consist of ten judges, the Karaites deduce from Ruth 4 2. So Anan quoted by Poznanski, Revue des études juives, vol. xlv, p. 67, and p. 69, n. 1.

56 This seems to be the meaning of the somewhat obscure passage.

57 It is not clear whether imprisonment or surveillance is meant.

58 On the spirit of Belial (ruling over Israel) see Jubilees 1 20.

59 “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,” 1 Sam. 15 23.

60 In contrast to the Samaritans.

61 In 8 18 ff., after saying, “Such will be the judgment of every one who despises the commandments of God, and he forsook them and they turned away in the stubbornness of their heart,” A adds: “This is the word which Jeremiah spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah and Elisha to his servant Gehazi,” referring probably to otherwise unknown apocryphal books. Johanneh and his brother, whom Belial raised up against Moses, are familiar figures of Jewish legend.

62 The simplest explanation of the form would be to take it as an abstract noun of the type _fa‘l_, like _sáḥu_; “swimming” or _fi‘l, fu‘l,_ like _séku_ (n. pr.), _tóhu_, _bóhu_, etc., from the verb _hagah_ (root _hagw_), “reflect, give thought to something,” also “read” (aloud), so that the noun might literally mean “study,” equivalent to _midrash_, or perhaps “reading.”—If the opinion which connects the sect with the Dositheans were tenable (see below, p. 360 ff.), another explanation of the name might be suggested by a passage in Abul-Fath’s account of the origin of the Dositheans. He narrates that a son of the Samaritan high priest, named Zar’ah, a man preëminent for learning in his time, having been expelled from the community for immorality, betook himself to Dositheus, who made him the chief of his sect. This man “wrote a book in which he vituperated all the Samaritan religious heads and set forth heresies.” The words are, _haja fīhī kul al’ a’immetin wa’abda’a fīhī_. Inasmuch as the Arabic _hajwun_ formally corresponds to the Hebrew _hagu_, the Book of _Hagu_ in our texts might be identified with this controversial writing of Zar’ah, the disciple of Dositheus. The Hebrew verb _hagah_ is thought by Kohut (Aruch Completum, III, 177) to occur in Echa Rabbathi on Lam. 1 4 and 3 33 in the sense “contemn, deride,” equivalent to the Arabic _haja_, “lampoon, vituperate.” It might then be conjectured that Abul-Fath had heard of a Dosithean book of _hagu_ (in Hebrew) and, taking the word in its Arabic meaning, evolved his description of the character of the work from this etymology.

63 Some Karaite authorities, also, transferring to the synagogue the holiness of the temple, forbade a man in a state of uncleanness to enter the inner room of the synagogue (Nissi; see Winter und Wünsche, Die jüdische Litteratur, vol. ii, p. 74).

64 The coincidence of the name with the Arabic _masjid_, “place of bowing down,” mosque, is hardly a sufficient reason for suspecting Moslem influence, as Dr. Schechter does, who thinks it possible that the word was introduced by a later (Falasha?) scribe as a substitute for the original term.—Elia Bashiatzi (Adereth Eliahu, p. 58), a Karaite writer of the 15th century, gives _Beth hishtaḥawīya,_ together with _Beth hakeneseth_ and _Beth hamidrash_, as the three names of the place of worship. Moslem influence can here hardly be questioned; in a later chapter Elia describes the postures of prayer quite after the Moslem pattern, alleging Biblical authority for all of them.

65 The opinion that after Josiah’s reform, or after the restoration of the temple by Zerubbabel and Joshua, Jerusalem was the only place where Jewish sacrifices were offered is refuted by an accumulating volume of evidence from various regions. See D. S. Margoliouth, Expositor, 1911, pp. 40 ff.

66 Cf. the accusation against the orthodox Jews (5 6): “They defile the Sanctuary in that they do not separate according to the law,” etc.—It is possible that the prohibition quoted above applied, not to the inhabitants of the city, but to persons who visited it for the purpose of worship, as is the rule for pilgrims to Mecca.

67 The holy spirit in them. Dr. Schechter adduces parallels in Jewish writings. Cf. Jubilees 1 21, 23, “Create in them a clean heart and a holy spirit.”

68 Dr. Schechter conjectures that the author wrote _Sar ha-Panim_, the Prince of the Presence, but the passages from Jubilees which he quotes in support of this opinion are hardly convincing.

69 See Slavonic Enoch 42 5; cf. 9.

70 So far as may be argued from silence, this is an important difference from Jubilees.

71 See 7 2; cf. Slavonic Enoch 50 4: “When you might have vengeance, do not repay either your neighbor or your enemy. For God will repay as your avenger in the day of the great judgment. Let it not be for you to take vengeance.” (ed. Charles, p. 67); cf. Ecclus. 28 1.

72 That Zadok was the name of the “interpreter of the law,” the founder of the sect, is a much less probable opinion; the name stands in no connection with the origin of the sect or its legislation, but with the bringing to light again of the Pentateuch. The author cannot have supposed that the _written_ law remained unknown till the second century B.C.; the reforms of Josiah, based on another recovery of the book by Hilkiah, would preclude such a notion.

73 The coincidence of names does not count for very much. Abul-Fath names two Samaritan “Zadokite” subsects among the later Dositheans alone.

74 See Hilgenfeld, Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums, 1884, pp. 155 ff.; Montgomery, The Samaritans, 1907, pp. 252 ff.

75 See also Epiphanius; the Sadducees were an offshoot from Dositheus.

76 Not in the time of Alexander the Great, as Dr. Schechter has from Montgomery. Abul-Fath, indeed (and Adler’s Chronicle after him), introduces this whole story before Alexander, and makes Simon a protégé of Darius; but the testimony that Dositheus appeared after the time of Hyrcanus, which, as a matter of Samaritan history, may be conceived to rest on tradition, is not to be set aside because, in fitting his Samaritan traditions into the framework of universal history, Abul-Fath is in error by two or three centuries about the date of Hyrcanus. This used to be understood; see, e.g., De Sacy, Chrestomathie arabe, vol. ii (1806), p. 209.

77 Epiphanius avers, on the contrary, that the Dositheans kept their festivals at the same time with the Jews.

78 See Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, vol. i, pp. 437 ff., 517; Ginzel, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, vol. i, pp. 170 f., 287. On the calendar of Gaza, Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes (3 ed.), vol. ii, pp. 88 f.

79 We have experience of the inconvenience of this system in the wandering of Easter and the Christian festivals dependent on it; a reform by which Easter should come on a fixed date in the solar year has repeatedly been proposed, and a movement is now on foot in Europe to bring this about by agreement of governments and churches.

80 The year of 364-days is found also in Enoch 72-82, and (by the side of the true solar year of 365-¼ and the lunar year of 354 days) in the Slavonic Enoch. The intercalary days are introduced one at the beginning of each quarter of the year (Enoch 75 1); this is also the method in Jubilees; see 6 23. In effect this is equivalent to a year in which eight months have thirty days and four—those in which the equinoxes and solstices fall—have thirty-one (Enoch 72 13, 19). It is not impossible that this system is implied in the chronology of the flood in Genesis; see B. W. Bacon, Hebraica, vol. viii (1891-1892), pp. 79-88, 124-139; Charles, Jubilees, p. 56.

81 This is not the place to discuss the value of Epiphanius’s testimony. His description of the Scribes and Pharisees at least admonishes to caution.

82 The text is certain enough, in the sense that all the manuscripts hitherto collated have the same reading.

83 Nicetas, in reproducing Epiphanius’s account of the Dositheans, has τεκνῶσαι, “after having begotten children,” which also agrees very well with the context.

84 The familiar title of Porphyry’s book on vegetarianism, Περὶ ἀποχῆς ἐμψύχων, will occur to every one. Epiphanius himself explains the word in Haer. 18, 1, “they (Nasaraei) thought it unlawful to eat meat.”