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

40 QUMRAN AND THE ENOCH GROUPS
Dead Sea Scrolls tell us about the origins and the identity of the group
that selected them, the missing texts furnish us with the key for charting
a rather comprehensive map of the group’s location in the pluralistic
world of Second Temple Judaism.
THE ENOCHIC ROOTS OF THE QUMRAN COMMUNITY
Before the publication of the Qumran fragments, it was customary to
date 1 Enoch around and after the Maccabean crisis, 9 even though the
composite nature of the document, in particular regarding the Book of
the Watchers, made some scholars perceive a much older prehistory. 10
Milik’s edition of the Aramaic fragments in 1976 made clear that the earliest
parts of 1 Enoch (the Book of the Watchers in chs. 6–36 and the
Astronomical Book in chs. 73–82) were pre-Maccabean. 11 The paleographic
analysis showed that copies of these documents went back to the end of
the third or the beginning of the second century B.C.E. The actual composition
might have occurred even earlier.
The importance of Enochic literature lies in the fact that it testifies to
the existence, during the Zadokite period, of a nonconformist priestly tradition.
Zadokite Judaism was a society that clearly defined the lines of cosmic
and social structure. The priestly narrative (Gen 1:1–2:4a) tells that
through creation God turned the primeval disorder into the divine order
by organizing the whole cosmos according to the principle of division,
light from darkness, the waters of above from the waters of below, water
from dry land. The refrain, “God saw that it was good,” repeats that
everything was made according to God’s will, until the climactic conclusion
of the sixth day, when “God saw that it was very good” (Gen 1:31).
The disruptive forces of the universe, evil and impurity, are not
unleashed but caged within precise boundaries. As long as human beings
dare not trespass the boundaries established by God, evil and impurity
are controllable. Obedience to the moral laws allows them to avoid evil,
9. Harold H. Rowley, Jewish Apocalyptic and the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Athlone,
1957).
10. Devorah Dimant, “The Fallen Angels in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the
Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphic Books Related to Them” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, 1974); Goerg Beer, “Das Buch Henoch,” in Die Apokryphen
und Pseudepigraphen des Altes Testaments (ed. E. F. Kautzsch; 2 vols.; Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 1900), 2:224–26.
11. Jozef T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1976).