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

338 SOCIOLOGICAL AND LITURGICAL DIMENSIONS
Abandon anger and forsake rage. And do not be angry; it results only in evil, for those
who do evil will be cut off. Its interpretation concerns all those who return to the
Torah, who do not rebelliously refuse to turn back from their evil; for all
those who refuse to turn back from their sin will be cut off. And those who wait
for Yahweh, they will take possession of (the) land. Its interpretation: they are the
congregation of his chosen ones, those who do his will (frags. 1–10, 2.1–5a).
In the sections of commentary following each lemma, the scribe places an
emphasis not only on the presence of divine and human will in action,
but also on the relationship between these wills. The presence of wills is
largely a reflection of thought as expressed in the Psalms: human action
is wedded with the greater action of God. However, the connection of
these two wills at Qumran is distinctive. God has acted before the
Qumranites ever had an opportunity to act, thus “the congregation of his
chosen ones” receives an apposition. God’s chosen ones are identical to
“those who do his will.” Furthermore, they understand their own action
as precipitous of God’s further action. Both by their presence in the
wilderness and the dutiful shaping of their daily suffering and tasks
(words and deeds), they presume that they will ultimately take possession
of the Land. Thus, existence is legitimated in a double affirmation. Great
is the man who chooses to be a part of the community and great is the
man whom God has chosen.
Alongside this description of wills, Psalm Pesher 1 uses time as a means
to explore existential questions that form communal identity. As important
as space was for the Qumranites, time—as is the case with biblical
and Jewish theology—is even more paradigmatically crucial. 65 The
pesharim reveal that the key that unlocks the “secrets” of Scripture is the
hermeneutical principle that all prophecy is directed to the “latter days.”
When is that time? It is the time of the Qumranites; prophecy was given
directly to them and to no other Jew.
At Qumran, the present was the time of the fulfillment of prophecy.
Hence, the interpretative mode at Qumran was fulfillment hermeneutic.
The assumption that God is faithful and trustworthy was an indisputable
fact for all religious Jews. For the Qumranites there was much
more. They could obtain meaning and understanding with the wisdom
through which God had disclosed “all the mysteries” of his prophecies to
65. André Neher tends to adopt and exaggerate Abraham Heschel’s claim that the
Jews were “the builders of time.” Yet, while Genesis does not reject space (as Neher
claims), it does embody “the espousal of time, as a result of which biblical ‘philosophy’
will always be alien to Greek philosophy” (André Neher, “The View of Time
and History in Jewish Culture,” in Cultures and Time [Paris: Unesco Press, 1976], 151;
article is on 149–67).