the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

230 THE BIBLICAL AND QUMRANIC CONCEPT OF WAR
that “all Israel” never did exist except as an idea, and that continuity with
this “Israel” was always claimed by each group or sect (Samaritans,
“children of the golah [Diaspora],” so-called “Hellenizers,” Hasmoneans,
Christians, as well as the authors of the Qumran literature).
A second paradox, and one of more immediate cultural relevance, lies
in the War Scroll’s choreography. Because this is the final great war, and
necessarily a holy one, a cultic liturgy, and preordained from the moment
of creation, everything that happens in it conforms to the plan laid down
for it. Rather than a real test of valor or strength, a test of strategies, it has
a foregone conclusion. Not only the outcome, but also the entire sequence
of events is beyond human control, at least in the description given in
columns 15–19. Commentators have noted the attention to detail lavished
on the trumpets, banners, weapons, and tactics, many of which probably
derive from actual military manuals, possibly including some Hasmonean
ones, and have asked whether the author of this scenario is trying to be
realistic or is simply rehearsing a fantasy. In the end, the mixture of realistic
detail and absurd overall conception (such as the enemy obligingly
observing sabbatical years) leaves what appears to be an insoluble contradiction
between reality of detail and fantasy of conception.
Nevertheless, fantasy often does indulge in realistic detail, and such
detail somehow allows the fantasy to work, redeeming it from total
incredulity. It is, perhaps, possible to argue that the author(s) did believe
that the final war would soon come and would see all evil obliterated and
the true Israel triumphant, and even that a war with mighty Rome was
inevitable and would represent the eschatological conflict between God
and the greatest human earthly power, a fitting final opponent. Nor
should we underestimate the limits of such an imagination: Jews did
make war with Rome, and some may have believed their God would
secure victory for them. When played out in 66–73 C.E., the events did
not conform to the script of 1QM. Even so, a second war against Rome
was launched six decades later.
We almost certainly need to interpret the War Scroll as a document of
fantasy, but that is not to dismiss it. On the contrary, fantasy is an important
ideological mechanism, and in our own culture too. The biblical
notions of monotheism, justice, election, order, and meaning in history
induce a “cognitive dissonance” to any observer of a world that is pluralistic/secular,
unjust, relatively egalitarian in its principles and in relative
disorder. The desire for a convergence between the biblical values (which
to an extent moderns also share) and the obvious reality can give rise to
a resolution on the level of fantasy, similar in kind, though not in scale,
to the daily fantasies in which police catch criminals, virtue is rewarded,