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

348 SOCIOLOGICAL AND LITURGICAL DIMENSIONS
1QpHab 7) and teaches them so that they are “the Trees of Life.” Indeed,
the authority of the Righteous Teacher is absolute, because God chose
him “as the pillar” (frags. 1–10, 3.16). A rigid set of rules (morality) and
authority define social existence within the community. Qumran phenomenology
mirrors Durkheim’s insight that morality “constitutes a category
of rules where the idea of authority plays an absolutely preponderant
role.” 89 Thus, the author(s) of Psalm Pesher 1 in col. two emphasizes that
God’s “chosen ones” (2.5) are those who “return to the Torah” (2.2–3),
“turn back from their evil” (2.3), do God’s “will” (2.5), and “accept the
appointed time of affliction” (2.10).
The corollary to this emphasis on purity and morality is retribution,
as Max Weber stressed, when he argued in The Sociology of Religion that
“the distinctively ethical view was there would be concrete retribution of
justices and injustices on the basis of a trial of the dead, generally conceived
in the eschatological process as a universal day of judgment.” 90
Thus, the author of Psalm Pesher 1 promises that “the wicked ones” (frags.
1–10, 2.18) who are “all the wicked…will be consumed” (2.7–8), but the
“chosen ones” (frags. 1–10, 2.5) “will be delivered” (2.10) so that they
“will delight” and “grow fat” (2.11).
Our study has indicated that when a single pesher is separated from
the larger group of pesharim, and the generic “genre” studies these texts
have fostered, and examined independently, aspects of social life at
Qumran may appear. That is, the realization that the Psalter was the
hymnbook of the Second Temple and its liturgy should be the presupposition
by which we explore the possible collective and liturgical use of
a commentary upon it at Qumran (namely Psalm Pesher 1). The text itself,
which seems to be a copy of an earlier text, seems to mirror liturgical use
(note esp. the vacats).
Likewise, the distinct speech found in Psalm Pesher 1 represents an
aspect of the sociology of knowledge, because it is an example of the
communal speech known only to the Qumran community. Indeed,
the text provides a particular socio-religious vocabulary significant to the
members of the Qumran community who have lived for some decades
in the wilderness preparing the way of the Lord, 91 and eagerly expecting
89. Emile Durkheim, Moral Education (trans. E. K. Wilson and H. Schnurer; New
York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1961), 29.
90. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 142.
91. The book of Numbers was exceedingly important at Qumran, but not as
important as Isaiah. On the wilderness motif in Numbers, see the reflections of Mary
C. Douglas, In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001).