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

56 WHAT’S INACALENDAR?
which he interprets differently from the equally unnamed addressee
(B), 65 and from a third party (C) to which he indirectly refers, with a disposition
of the 364-day calendar of which, though, only the tail end is
preserved in one of the six partially extant manuscripts (4Q394 frags. 1–2
cols. 1–5). However, the original text of parts of that lost calendrical roster
can be restored with much confidence with the help of information
gleaned from other calendrical documents. 66
The editors of MMT justifiably draw attention to the conciliatory
tone in which (A) presents his case, intent on drawing (B) into his camp
by convincing him of the exclusive legitimacy of his interpretation of the
statutes itemized. Because of the misleading explication of those statutes
by an evidently official authority, he and his followers had “separated
from the multitude of the people” (MMT 100.7–8). The comparatively
low-key description of the dispute with the unnamed opponents over
issues of halakic-ritual import agrees well with (A)’s intention to persuade
(B) to adopt his explication of the statutes in question. I submit that this
passage in MMT reflects an early stage in the Covenanters’ calendar controversy
with the (proto)-rabbinic mainstream in which halakic disputes
could be discussed with relative equanimity, leaving the door open for a
rapprochement. 67
However, the conciliatory tone did not produce the results which (A)
had hoped to achieve. (B) and his party presumably refused to accept
(A)’s teachings. In consequence, the relations between the yah[ad and its
opponents deteriorated. The change shows in the Damascus Document whose
author strikes a quite different note. For him the rigorous dissent from
mainstream Judaism had become unavoidable and the establishment of
the Community of the Renewed Covenant as a corpus separatum was now
the order of the day (CD 4.10–12):
But with the completion of the appointed time according to the number of
these years, there will no longer be any joining the house of Judah. Rather,
each must stand on his watchtower. The fence is built, the boundary far away.
The Covenanters’ dispute with their opponents hardened into an unbridgeable
rift.
65. The suggestion that (A) is the “Teacher” or a prominent yah[ad member, and (B)
the “Priest” or another representative of the opposing faction, has merit, but cannot
be proven.
66. See my reedition of the text in “Calendrical Documents and Mishmarot,” 157–66.
67. For different reasons, the editors of MMT and other scholars came to the same
conclusion regarding the entire document. See Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell,
“The Literary Character and The Historical Setting,” in Qumran Cave 4.V: Miqsat
Ma(as 8e ha-Torah (DJD 10; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 109–21.