The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

224 THE SCROLLS’ IMPACT ON SCHOLARSHIP ON HEBREWS
Several parallels with Hebrews suggest common features of sectarian
life. Like the readers of the scroll, the members of the Christian covenant
community are “perfect,” 84 although their perfection consists not in
observance of Torah, but in the cleansing of their conscience by Christ’s
sacrifice (Heb 9:14). The wish for peace on fellow covenanters is not
unusual in any group based on the religion of Israel, although 12:11–14
offers not a blessing of shalom, but an injunction to pursue peace with
all. Finally, the terrifying voice issuing a curse on those who abandon the
covenant sounds a note similar to the warnings in Hebrews, particularly
to 10:29, which threatens those who consider the “blood of the
covenant,” meaning Christ’s sacrificial death, to be profane. In both
groups the definition of the covenant community requires the imposition
of well-marked social boundaries.
Other aspects of covenantal life according to Hebrews offer parallels to
the scrolls, although most are sufficiently general to characterize any “sectarian”
group that defines itself over against a larger entity. One point on which
the scrolls and Hebrews converge is an interest in the temple cult, although
from quite different points of view. For the scrolls, what transpires in the
temple, at least in the ideal or eschatological temple, is of fundamental significance.
For Hebrews, what transpires in the earthly tabernacle, and by
implication in the temple that succeeds the tabernacle of the desert, is but a
symbol of eschatological reality, the Messiah’s sacrifice (9:9; 10:1). In this
context, the Temple Scroll (11QTemple = 11Q19–20) merits special attention. 85
The Temple Scroll describes cultic areas and processes analogous to
those of Hebrews: the cover of the ark overshadowed by the cherubim
(11QTemple a [= 11Q19] 7.10–12; Heb 9:5); the high priest who sacrifices
for people and then priests (11QTemple a 15.15–17; 25.16–26.7; Heb
5:3); 86 the rituals of the smearing and sprinkling of blood (11QTemple a
84. Cf. Heb 10:1, 14.
85. The relationship between the Temple Scroll and the covenanters is debated. See
Baruch A. Levine, “The Temple Scroll: Aspects of Its Historical Provenance and
Literary Character,” BASOR 232 (1978): 5–23; and Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The
Temple Scroll in Literary and Philological Perspective,” Approaches to Ancient Judaism II
(ed. W. S. Green; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980), 143–58, Koester, Dwelling, 33;
the essays in George J. Brooke, ed., Temple Scroll Studies: Papers Presented at the International
Symposium on the Temple Scroll, Manchester, December 1987 (JSPSup 7; Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1989); and Dwight D. Swanson, The Temple Scroll and the Bible: The
Methodology of 11QT (STDJ 14; Leiden: Brill, 1995). The Temple Scroll lacks most of the
major polemical elements of the clearly sectarian texts and diverges from sectarian
halakah at several points. It seems likely that the text was composed outside of the
community, but perhaps used by the sectarians.
86. Cf. also 11QTemple b (= 11Q20) frag. 1 1.11–13, for a distinction between sacrifices
for the high priest himself and for other priests. For the distinction between the