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

RANDALL D. CHESNUTT 405
However, there is nothing here so distinctive as to suggest a direct connection.
As we shall emphasize below, the solemnity of mealtime, the
concern to avoid impure food, the pronouncing of blessings over meals,
and the role of meal practices as consummate expressions of a whole way
of life are characteristic of many Jewish circles in antiquity. Moreover,
there are striking differences between the Qumran meals and the meal
formula in Joseph and Aseneth that attenuate the alleged connections.
The two meal traditions are poles apart in terms of rules for eligibility
and order. 1QS 6.2–5 specifies that wherever ten members of the sect
reside they are to eat together, that they are to sit according to rank, and
that a priest must be present to bless the first portion of bread and wine.
According to 1QS 6.13–23, before one could even be admitted to the
communal meals, he had to be examined by the community’s Overseer
(dyqp), instructed in the sect’s teachings, approved by the plenary
assembly (“the Many,” Mybrh), and examined yet again at the end of a
one year novitiate. Only then was he granted provisional membership
and admitted to the community’s solid food (Mybrh trhw+). After
another provisional year he was again examined by the Many, and, if
voted suitable for full membership, assigned a rank and granted access to
the sect’s pure liquids (Mybrh hq#m) as well as the solid foods. 32
Anyone allowed to return after being banned from participation had to
repeat the full progression of initiatory stages (1QS 7.18–21; 8.16–19).
Joseph and Aseneth knows nothing of such regimen. Aseneth is a beneficiary
of the bread of life and cup of blessing immediately upon her
renunciation of idols and penitent turning to the God of Israel, and this
advancement and its heavenly confirmation occur independently of any
contact with the Israelite community. The rigid system of seniority
observed in the Qumran meals (1QS 5.23–24; 6.2, 8–11, 22; 1Q28a [=
1QSa]; Josephus, J.W. 2.8.10) clashes with Joseph and Aseneth’s emphasis
on the privileged status of every “worshiper of God” (qeosebh&v); the
anonymous author is concerned to distinguish between idolaters and
“worshipers of God,” but not to make distinctions among the latter (8:5–7;
Nickelsburg; SBLSCS 12; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980), 135–36; and more
recently Devorah Dimant, “Men as Angels: The Self-Image of the Qumran
Community,” in Religion and Politics in the Ancient Near East, Studies and Texts in Jewish
History and Culture (ed. A. Berlin; Bethesda, MD: University of Maryland Press, 1996),
93–103; and Crispin H. T. Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam: Liturgical Anthropology in
the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 42; Leiden: Brill 2002).
32. Variations in detail between this scheme and that described in CD 15.7–15 and
Josephus J.W. 2.8.7 have been much discussed but do not affect the argument here.
For a helpful critique of alternative interpretations of hrh+ and hq#m, see Schiffman,
Sectarian Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls, 161–65.