historical perspectives: from the hasmoneans to bar kokhba in light ...

THE CONCEPT OF THE COVENANT 95
ment of the Second Temple inclined towards hellenistic customs. 26
The second crisis followed when the Zadokite priesthood was deprived
of control of the Temple ritual by the Hasmonean priesthood, which
was sometimes influenced by the Pharisees' legal systems, especially
concerning Temple worship. 27
As inferred from the contexts of the Damascus Document, the designation
'new covenant' was applied to the covenant held by the
original members of the community, organized by the Teacher of
Righteousness in the land of Damascus (CD 6:19, 8:21, 19:33), or
even to this group itself. 28 An explanation of this tide occurs in CD
20:12: "the covenant and the oath which they had taken in the land
of Damascus, that is the new covenant." 29 There is no explicit reference
to Jer. 31:30, possibly because the connection was obvious to
everyone in the community. Nevertheless, its identification with the
eschatological covenant is evident in the historical survey of CD
3:12b-16a, where the covenant based on the revealed interpretation
of God's commandments is considered a replacement for the earlier
covenant that was broken by the generations of the First Temple
period (3:10b-12a). This notion is indicated by the synonym for the
'new covenant,' (CD 19:16). The reward of "seeing God's
salvation," 30 promised to those who are faithful to the new covenant
established by the Teacher of Righteousness (CD 20:31-34; cf. CD
26 On the presumption of the anti-hellenistic tendency of Jubilees,, see J. C.
VanderKam, "Genesis 1 in Jubilees 2," DSD 1 (1994): 319-21 and bibliography;
on the anti-hellenistic tendency of other apocalyptic compositions, see D. S. Russell,
The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (London: SCM, 1964), 15-20.
27 See, for example, L. H. Schiffman, "The Temple Scroll and the Systems of
the Jewish Law of the Second Temple Period," in Temple Scroll Studies, ed. G. J.
Brooke, JSPSup 7 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), 239-55; F. Garcia
Martinez and J. Trebolle Barrera, The People of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1995), 91-96; H. Stegemann, The Library of Qumran (Leiden: Brill and Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 148-52; E. Qimron and J. Strugnell, ed., Qumran Cave
4.V. Miqsat Ma'ase Ha-Torah, DJD 10 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 109-21.
28 See Stegemann, Library of Qumran, 149—52.
29 The English translation follows J. M. Baumgarten and D. R. Schwartz in The
Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations, vol. 2, Damascus
Document, War Scroll, and Related Documents, ed. J. H. Charlesworth (Tubingen: J. C. B.
Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1995), 35.
30 On the motif of "seeing God's salvation" (CD 20:34) as referring to eschatological
salvation, see Isa. 52:10, Ps. 91:16, and 98:3. In Exod. 14:13 and 2 Chron.
20:17 it refers to historical acts of salvation, both of which occurred in the wilderness,
the first in the wilderness of Sinai and the second in the wilderness of Judaea,
near Ein Gedi, during the ninth-century BCE reign of King Jehoshaphat. The
author possibly used this motif as a prototype for eschatological salvation.