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

100 THE LAW AND SPIRIT OF PURITY AT QUMRAN
of how the details of purification may be relevant to the Christian exegesis
of pentateuchal laws.
We should now like to indicate what may be learned from Qumran
about the moral-ethical dimension of purification. In modern scholarship
on the Essenes one frequently encounters the notion that repeated
immersion for ritual purity could not possibly have had any spiritual significance.
The questionable validity of this assumption already emerges
from the fact that the level of purity attained by senior Essenes was proportional
to their standing in the spiritual a)skhsij practiced by the order:
They are divided, according to the duration of their discipline, into four
grades; and so far are the junior members inferior to the seniors, that a senior
if but touched by a junior, must take a bath, as after contact with an
alien. (J.W. 2.150)
It is also noteworthy that “ritual” purification was held to be a prerequisite
of prophecy by the Essenes, who were highly regarded for this pneumatic
gift. For prophesying they not only utilized the books of the
prophets, but, as Josephus reports, “various forms of purification”
diafo/roij a(gnei/aij (J.W. 2.159).
As far as Qumran is concerned, the link between purity of body and
spirit is salient throughout the literature. One of the primary duties of the
covenanters was “to separate from all impurities, according to their law
and to let no man defile his holy spirit” (CD 7.3–4). “Defiling their holy
spirit” is juxtaposed with failure to separate from menstruants and incest,
among the cardinal sins attributed to their contemporaries (CD 5.7–11).
The insistence that acceptance of the holy spirit h#wdq xwr precede
“sprinkling with waters of purification” is emphatically articulated:
It is by the holy spirit uniting him to his truth, wtm)b dxyl h#wdq xwrbw,
that he can be cleansed from all his iniquities…It is by humbling his soul to
all God’s statutes that his flesh can be cleansed by sprinkling with waters of
purification and by sanctifying himself with waters of purity. (1QS 3.7–9)
This passage describes the purification characteristic of the Qumran
community in which external ablutions, in this case sprinkling with
water for lustration, are effective only when coordinated with inner
receptivity for the divine holy spirit. 9
9. In his illuminating study, John the Baptizer and Prophet (JSNTSup 62; Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1991), Robert L. Webb draws attention to the addition to T. Levi 2:3 in manuscript
E in which Levi’s ablution is followed by the prayer that the Lord make known to him the
“spirit of holiness” (to pneuma to hagion). He finds it significant that in this addition, which
has close parallels with the Aramaic Testament of Levi ar (4Q213), an actual immersion
is performed in running water to symbolize cleansing from sin and conversion to God.