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

HENRY W. MORISADA RIETZ 213
his exile. And at the end of the festival, the rest-(day) of the Day of Atonement,
he appeared to them to devour them and to cause them stumble on
the day of fasting, their restful Sabbath (Mtxwnm tb#; 1QpHab 11.4–8).
As Talmon persuasively argues, the Wicked Priest probably could not
have launched an attack on a day he considered a festival. Thus, the passage
indicates that the Wicked Priest differed from the Qumran community
in the reckoning of the Day of Atonement; that is, he followed a
different calendar. 33 This interpretation is strengthened by the third person
pronominal suffix (“their”) specifying the “restful Sabbath” as the
community’s. 34
As in the book of Jubilees, the Qumran community was also concerned
that the Sabbath regulations were strictly followed according to their
interpretation. Thus, for example, the community allowed only the
burnt-offering of the Sabbath to be performed on that day: “Let no one
offer-up on the altar on the Sabbath, except for the Sabbath sacrifice
(tb#h tlw(), for thus it is written, ‘apart from your Sabbaths’” (CD
MS A 11.17–18, interpreting Lev 23:38). 35
In the Rule of the Community’s “preamble,” a series of twenty-two infinitive
constructs indicate the purpose of entering into the covenant of
God. 36 Three of the purposes expressed are
in order not to march 37 on any one of all the commands of 38 God in their
times,
and in order not to advance their times,
and in order not to delay from all their appointed times
33. Shemaryahu Talmon, “Yom Hakippurim in the Habakkuk Scroll,” Biblica 32
(1951): 549–63, repr. in idem, The World of Qumran from Within: Collected Studies
(Jerusalem: Magnes and Leiden: Brill, 1989), 186–99.
34. Talmon, “Yom Hakkippurim.”
35. Talmon, “The Calendar of the Judean Covenanters,” 171–73.
36. See Elisha Qimron and James H. Charlesworth, “Rule of the Community (1QS),”
in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek Texts with English Translations, Vol. 1, The
Rule of the Community and Related Documents (ed. J. H. Charlesworth et al.; PTSDSSP 1;
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 7n3.
37. Most translators render dw(cl idiomatically as “transgress” or “deviate”;
however, this sense is not attested elsewhere and probably requires the emendation
of lwkb to lwkm. The classical sense of the root refers to “marching” (appearing
in martial as well as religious contexts such as in processionals; for the latter see 2
Sam 6:13) and generally “walking.” This imagery is lost in the idiomatic translations.
See 1QS 3.9–11, which preserves an almost parallel passage in which the
preposition following d(c is l(; “May he establish his steps so that he might walk
perfectly in all the ways of God…and not march upon (any) one from all his commands”
(wyrbd lwkm dx) l( dw(cl Ny)w). For a positive use of d(c in the sectarian
material, see CD MS B 20.18.
38. Lit. “words of.”