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

240 PREDESTINATION IN THE BIBLE AND THE SCROLLS
the fifth song of the Angelic Liturgy. 18 Two of these works have been preserved
in several copies—4QSap A in eight manuscripts, the Book of the
Mysteries in four exemplars, a fact that attests to the importance ascribed
to this genre.
The common denominator of these texts is their belief in “a preexistent,
hidden, sapiential order of the world, dualistic in character.” 19
These texts lack the distinctive vocabulary of the Qumranic community,
the Ya4h[ad. However, it has been shown that the Manual of Discipline is
not a homogenous composition but an anthology of several literary
works. 20 The Treatise of the Two Spirits, described above as the fullest, most
eloquent exposition of the doctrine of the dual predestination, is missing
from one of the Cave 4 manuscripts (4Q259) and perhaps also from at
least one other, a proof that it was not an integral part of the manual. 21
This is one of the strong arguments for ascribing it to a pre-, or proto-
Essene stage.
Another source of the Essene predestinarian doctrine is the
Apocalyptic literature. The debt of Qumran to their Apocalyptic predecessors
represented by 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Testament of Levi had been
recognized already in the earliest stages of the research and is still one of
the fruitful fields of research for Qumranologists. 22 The first two books
were preserved until now primarily in their Ethiopic translations and the
Testament in Greek and other languages. Qumran has now furnished us
with parts of the original texts: 1 Enoch and the Testament of Levi in
Aramaic and Jubilees in Hebrew. 23 The pre-Essene origin of these books
18. Even if these works are pre- or proto-Essene, they are still to be regarded as sectarian,
i.e., Essene. It is a significant fact that 1 Enoch and Jubilees were preserved and
books like the Book of the Mysteries were not.
19. Lange, “Wisdom and Predestination,” 343.
20. Hartmut Stegemann, “Zu Textbestand und Grundgedanken von 1QS III, 13–IV,
26, ” RevQ 13 (1988): 96–100.
21. Sarianna Metso, The Textual Development of the Community Rule (Leiden: Brill,
1997), 151.
22. Florentino García Martínez, Qumran and Apocalyptic: Studies in Aramaic Texts from
Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 180–213; Jonas C. Greenfield, “Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha
and Unusual Texts at Qumran,” in A Light for Jacob, Studies in the Bible and the
Dead Sea Scrolls in Memory of Jacob Shalom Licht (ed. Y. Hoffman, F.M. Polak, Y. Polak;
Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1997), 1*–9*.
23. Jozef T. Milik, The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1976); and Enoch also in Greek translation, see Émile Puech, “Notes sur
les fragments grecs du manuscrit 7Q4 = Henoch 103 et 105, ” RB 103 (1996):
592–600; on Jubilees see James C. Vanderkam and Jozef T. Milik, “Jubilees,” in
Qumran Cave 4.VIII: Parabiblical Texts, Part 1 (ed. H. W. Attridge et al.; DJD 13; Oxford:
Clarendon, 1994), 1–185.