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

GABRIELE BOCCACCINI 47
salvation of the chosen people. Hence, Jubilees insists on people following
the ritual laws with the utmost accuracy and respecting the liturgical times
that God has established since the beginning of creation (6:32–35).
Although the harshest words are reserved for Jews who risk the purity
of Israel (30:7–17), the separation that Jubilees promotes is essentially
between Jews and Gentiles (22:16), and not properly within the Jewish
people themselves. Jubilees does not use the language of the remnant. No
special group appears on the scene as the recipient of divine instruction.
Jubilees claims to represent the majority of the Jews against a minority of
traitors in a time that in its view was the beginning of the eschaton. The
theology of separation in Jubilees is not the last recourse of people
devoured by a minority complex, who feel persecuted and isolated and
struggle to defend themselves. On the contrary, it betrays a majority complex
of people who were confident that their time was the time of the conversion
of Israel, and that their hopes would soon be fulfilled. They
expected to see the deviants persecuted and rejected. The audience of
Jubilees is evidently to be found among the nation as a whole and not
among an embattled sectarian community. 24
Following the same trajectory, the Temple Scroll transposed Jubilees’ theology
of separation into a detailed and consistent constitution for the present,
the final days of Israel in this world before the end of days and the
world to come. 25 This constitution provides the plan for an interim
Temple (11QT a [11Q19] 29.2–10), not envisaged in Jubilees, as well as a
new, stricter code of purity laws, which with greater accuracy meets the
requirements set by Jubilees. The basic principle is that the Temple-city is
equivalent to the camp of Israel in the wilderness, and correspondingly,
the biblical laws concerning the purity of the Sinai encampment (Leviticus
13; Numbers 5; Deuteronomy 23) are strictly applied to Jerusalem (cf.
11QT a [11Q19] 47.3–6). 26 The requirements of purity for the Temple are
extended to the whole city of Jerusalem (cf. Lev 15:18 and 11QT a
[11Q19] 45.11–12), and the requirements of purity for the priests to the
entire people of Israel (cf. Lev 21:17–20 and 11QT a [11Q19] 45.12–13).
Jubilees and the Temple Scroll transform the oppositional ideology of the
earlier Enochic literature into a platform for a new government of Israel.
24. Orval S. Wintermute, “Jubilees,” in OTP 2:44, 48; Philip R. Davies, Behind the
Essenes: History and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls (BJS 94; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 117.
25. Michael O. Wise, A Critical Study of the Temple Scroll from Qumran Cave 11 (SAOC
49; Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1990).
26. Jacob Milgrom, “The Qumran Cult: Its Exegetical Principles,” in Temple Scroll Studies
Presented at the International Symposium on the Temple Scroll, Manchester, December 1987 (ed. G. J.
Brooke; JSPSup 7; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 165—80; Lawrence H. Schiffman,
“Exclusion from the Sanctuary and the City of the Sanctuary,” HAR 9 (1985): 315–17.