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

88 MESSIANIC EXPECTATION AT QUMRAN
pronounce upon the matters set before them…let them send up the case
entire to the holy city and let the high priest and the prophet and the
council of elders meet and pronounce as they think fit.” The corresponding
text in Deut 17:8–9 reads: “If a judicial decision is too difficult for
you…then you shall go up to the place the Lord your God will choose,
where you shall consult with the levitical priests and the judge who is in
office in those days…” The “council of elders” is patently an anachronistic
reference to Josephus’ own time. Maier assumes that the “prophet” is
likewise a contemporary institution, which determines authoritative legal
rulings. It is very doubtful, however, whether such an office can be
inferred from a paraphrase of the Pentateuch in Josephus. Maier argues
that this office is implied in 1 Macc 4:46, where the altar stones are stored
“until a prophet should come to tell what to do with them,” and in 1 Macc
14:41, where Simon is appointed leader and high priest “until a trustworthy
prophet should arise.” 47 Allegedly, the office had been disrupted
during the Maccabean crisis, and was temporarily vacant. Most scholars,
however, think that the prophet in question is eschatological, and that
Simon’s appointment as high priest was, in effect, indefinite, since this
prophet was not expected to come any time soon.
The office of “Interpreter of the Law” is otherwise attested only in the
Dead Sea Scrolls. A famous passage in CD 6.11 distinguishes between an
Interpreter of the Law who is clearly past and “he who comes to teach
righteousness in the end of days.” 48 Elsewhere, the Teacher of
Righteousness is a figure of the past, and the Interpreter of the Law is
expected in the messianic age in the Florilegium (4Q174, frags. 1–3 col.
1.11–12). This fluctuation in terminology is only intelligible if Interpreter
and Teacher were identified as offices which might be held at various
times by different individuals. The Teacher of Righteousness who played
an important part in the history of the Qumran community was clearly
a priest. (He is explicitly so identified in the pesher on Psalm 37 (4Q171
4.15). There is no good evidence that he ever functioned as high priest
in Jerusalem, but his followers may well have regarded him as the legitimate
high priest. 49 But the institution of Teacher/Interpreter seems to be
distinctive to the Dead Sea sect. Since the one known historical Teacher
47. Maier, Der Lehrer, 15.
48. See John J. Collins, “Teacher and Messiah? The One who will Teach Righteousness
at the End of Days,” in The Community of the Renewed Covenant (ed. E. Ulrich and
J. VanderKam; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 193–210.
49. See Michael O. Wise, “The Teacher of Righteousness and the High Priest of
the Intersacerdotium,” RevQ 14 (1990): 587–613; John J. Collins, “The Origin of the
Qumran Community,” in Seers, Sibyls and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism (ed. J. J.
Collins; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 246–47.