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

SHEMARYAHU TALMON 27
of Judah and the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, and the deportation
to Mesopotamia of large segments of the Judean population. 5 The
Covenanters present themselves as “the people who returned from the
exile,” with whom God reestablished his covenant of old with Israel (CD
1.1–11), as foretold by the prophet Jeremiah:
The time is coming, says YHWH, when I will renew (literally: make a
new) my covenant with Israel and Judah…I will (again) set my law within
them and write it on their hearts. I will become their God and they shall
become my people. (Jer 31:31–33)
This self-identification is shown in their vicarious re-experience of biblical
Israel’s “three-stage” past history: exile—as in Egypt and Babylonia;
sojourn or wanderings in the desert—as after the Exodus from Egypt;
conquest of the land—as in the days of Joshua. It finds an expression in
the reenactment of the Deuteronomic “curse and blessing” ceremony
(Deut 27:11–28:14; cf. Josh 8:30–35 and chs. 23–24) in the induction ritual
of novices (1QS 1–2). 6 It is reflected in their expectation of the future
rise of the “twin anointed,” which derives from the prophet Zechariah’s
portrayal of the Davidic scion Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest as
coregents of the reconstituted Jewish body politic (Zechariah 3–4). 7
The Covenanters’ distinctive “biblical ethos” is diametrically opposed
to the emphatic “postbiblical” stance of the Jewish Sages. It constituted
the most decisive ideational factor that divided their community, which
crystallized in the early second or possibly already in the third or fourth
century B.C.E., from the rabbinic or proto-pharisaic movement8 that consolidated
in that same period. It is my thesis that the rift between the two
factions initially arose from a dissent on matters of an internal
“ideational” nature and ritual prescriptions. However, triggered by the
Covenanter’s adherence to a solar calendar of 364 days per annum,
which is indeed rooted in the tradition of biblical Israel and differs substantially
from the 354-day lunar calendar to which mainstream Judaism
5. See inter alia Shemaryahu Talmon, “Between the Bible and the Mishnah,” in The
World of Qumran From Within (Jerusalem: Magnes; Leiden: Brill, 1989), 11–52; repr., in
Jewish Civilization in the Hellenistic-Roman Period (ed. S. Talmon; JSPSup 10; Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1991), 214–57.
6. Ibid., 36–51.
7. Shemaryahu Talmon, “Waiting for the Messiah—The Conceptual Universe of
the Qumran Covenanters,” in The World of Qumran From Within (Jerusalem: Magnes;
Leiden: Brill, 1989), 273–300.
8. For an attempt to trace preceding stages in the development of the yah[ad see my
remarks in “The Essential ‘Community of the Renewed Covenant’: How Should
Qumran Studies Proceed?” in Geschichte—Tradition—Reflexion. Festschrift für Martin Hengel
zum 70. Geburstag (ed. H. Cancik, H. Lichtenberger, and P. Schäfer; Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 1996), 323–52, esp. 331–34.