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

ADELA YARBRO COLLINS 239
[And I will make] all your pinnacles [of agate] (54.12a)
Interpreted, this concerns the twelve [chief Priests] who shall enlighten
by judgement of the Urim and Tummim…which are absent from them,
like the sun with all its light, and like the moon…
[And all your gates of carbuncles] (54.12b)
Interpreted, this concerns the chiefs of the tribes of Israel… (4Q164
lines 1–7) 38
Second, the members of the community believed that they had been
commanded by God to build a temple in the final period of history,
which they called “the end of days” (Mymyh tyrx)). They also referred
to this period of time as the “time of refining” (Prcmh t(). They
defined it as a time of separation and affliction for the pious, a time of
temptation and suffering in which the community had to stand the test.
This final period of history included events that, from the point of view
of the community, were already past; the present time from the point of
view of sectarian works from the oldest to the latest; and events of the
future, such as the coming of the Messiahs. 39 The temple to be built in
this period is probably the one described in the Temple Scroll. 40
Three copies of this work have been discovered near Qumran, two
copies from Cave 11 and one from Cave 4. 41 Although the composition
of the work has been dated at various points from the fifth century B.C.E.
38. Trans. from Vermes, Complete DSS, 469.
39. Annette Steudel makes a persuasive case for these conclusions in her article
“Mymyh tyrx) in the Texts from Qumran,” RevQ 16 (1993): 225–46.
40. Some scholars, for example, Hartmut Stegemann and Jacob Milgrom, have
doubted that the community actually intended to build this temple; see Stegemann,
“Literary Composition,” 144; Milgrom, “The Qumran Cult: Its Exegetical
Principles,” in in Temple Scroll Studies: Papers presented at the International Symposium on the
Temple Scroll, Manchester, December 1987 (ed. G. J. Brooke; JSPSup 7; Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1989), 177. Other scholars describe the design and norms for the temple in the
Temple Scroll as a statement about how the first and second temples ought to have been
built and administered. The latter point of view is certainly correct. But it is plausible
that the community wished such a temple to be built and would have built it, if
they had had the authority and the means. Johann Maier argues along these lines,
concluding that, although the design is ideal, it is not unrealistic; idem, “The Temple
Scroll and Tendencies in the Cultic Architecture of the Second Commonwealth,” in
Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University Conference in Memory
of Yigael Yadin (ed. L. H. Schiffman; JSPSup 8; JSOT/ASOR Monographs 2;
Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 67–82, esp. 67–68.
41. 11Q19; 11Q20; and 4Q524. See Florentino García Martínez, “New
Perspectives on the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Perspectives on the Study of the Old
Testament and Early Judaism (ed. F. García Martínez and E. Noort; VTSup 73; Leiden:
Brill, 1998), 233–40.