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

JAMES H. CHARLESWORTH 21
May he bless you with all good and keep you from all evil;
May he enlighten your heart with insight for living,
May he favor you with eternal knowledge.
May he lift up his merciful countenance toward you for eternal peace. (1QS
2.1–4) 70
Initially, the blessing following a heartfelt confession would have been
appealing. And it would even be more attractive when one not only
perceives but also experiences how the blessing is fashioned upon the
memory of reciting with other priests the Aaronic (or priestly) Blessing:
The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. (Num
6:24–26 NRSV)
When the Baptizer would have heard the blessing on “all the men of
God’s lot,” during his early years at Qumran, he might have conceived
that these also included Zechariah, his father the priest. Eventually, he
would learn that his father would have been perceived by the
Qumranites as one of the Sons of Darkness and one who did not belong
to “the men of God’s lot.” I have no doubt that there were additional
words in the ceremony for covenantal renewal that would have disturbed
the Baptizer. This assumption seems to be a reliable historical insight, if
we can trust the portrait of the Baptizer given to us by Josephus and the
Evangelists. 71
I have no doubt that eventually the Baptizer would have been disturbed
by the words that followed the blessing just quoted from the Rule
of the Community. Possibly, he would have first recited these words, and
then, over time, mouthed them, and then finally refused to say them.
Subsequently, he would have been signaled out for severe punishment
because he would not say the requisite “Amen, amen.” Here is the section
of the liturgy of covenantal renewal that John the Baptizer would most
likely have found difficult and eventually impossible to affirm:
Then the Levites shall curse the men of Belial’s lot; they shall respond
and say:
70. Charlesworth, “Rule of the Community” (PTSDSSP 1), 9.
71. See esp. Walter Wink, John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1968); and Paul W. Hollenbach, “John the Baptist,”
887–99. Hollenbach rightly thinks that John may have lived at Qumran “for a
while” (898).