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

GABRIELE BOCCACCINI 53
This leads the Epistle to reject the sectarian claim, made by the community
of the Righteous Teacher since the Damascus Document appeared,
that the chosen are called individually, “by name.” God’s election regards
a broad category of people rather than named individuals, a fact that
leaves more room for human freedom. God did not choose individuals
to form an isolated community but elected a social category, the poor, as
the recipient of God’s promises. Individuals remain free to choose to
which group they want to belong.
The author of the Epistle strenuously opposes the theology of separation
as developed by the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this world, the
poor and the rich live side by side. The separation between the chosen and
the wicked will occur only at the end of times. The emphasis on human
responsibility allows the possibility of conversion. The author opposes any
kind of predestination; in this world, the boundaries between the chosen
and the wicked remain permeable. The door to salvation, which the
Damascus Document keeps open only for a limited period of time and which
the sectarian documents barred since the beginning for those who have not
been chosen, will be open until the very last moment (cf. 1 En. 99:10).
While the Epistle signals a return to some of the traditional themes of
earlier Enochic Judaism, it also marks a fresh start away from those old
foundations. No text of Enochic Judaism had ever before stated with such
clarity that the superhuman origin of evil does not destroy and deny
human responsibility. The Epistle had a lasting impact in shifting the
emphasis from the ancient myth of the angelic sin to the mechanisms
through which evil surfaces within each individual and, therefore, to the
possibility of controlling the emergence of evil and resisting its temptation.
It was the Epistle’s greatest success: the answer of Qumran was not the only
possible answer to the questions raised by the earlier Enochic tradition.
That something went wrong in the relationship between the community
of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Enochic Judaism is confirmed by the
absence of another fundamental document of first century B.C.E. related
to Enochic Judaism: the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. 34 Interestingly, as
34. Among the scholars who have argued for the Jewish Palestinian origin of the
Testaments, see, in particular, Jarl H. Ulrichsen, Die Grundschrift der Testamente der Zwölf
Patriarchen: Eine Untersuchung zu Umfang, Inhalt und Eigenart der ursprünglichen Schrift
(Uppsala: Almqwist & Wiksell, 1991); Paolo Sacchi, “I Testamenti dei Dodici
Patriarchi,” in Apocrifi dell’Antico Testamento (ed. P. Sacchi; vol. 1; Turin: Unione
tipografico-editrice torinese, 1981), 725–948; Anders Hultgård, L’eschatologie des
Testaments des douze patriarches (2 vols.; Uppsala: Almqwist & Wiksell, 1977–81); David
Flusser, “The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,” EncJud 13:184–86; Marc
Philonenko, Les interpolations chrétiennes des Testaments des Douze Patriarches et les manuscrits
de Qoumrân (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1960).