Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

Chapter 5 - Testaments and Admonitions
Life is complicated and always has been. In the ancient world, millennia before the time of the
Scrolls, one response to this fact was the development of Wisdom literature. This type of literature
expounded principles of life and made judicious observations, often couched in the form of pithy
sayings. Wisdom literature in the Bible includes Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes.
In the Second Temple period this literature abounded, and new kinds of Wisdom literature developed.
One of the new forms was the 'testament'. Testaments had their origin in the farewell discourses
common in the Bible, such as Gen. 49 (the last words of Jacob) and 1 Sam. 12 (the last words of
Samuel). Thus testaments are speeches delivered in anticipation of death and intended to impart the
lessons of a lifetime from a father to his sons. The most famous apocryphal example of this type of
literature is the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs. In this collection (which came down from
antiquity in Christian circles written in Greek, although in origin Jewish and Semitic), each of the
twelve sons of Jacob speaks in turn. Their words comprise ethical exhortation and predictions about
the future.
Testamentary literature is well attested among the new materials from the Scrolls. Testaments
attached to Levi, Naphtali, Kohath and Amram have emerged. In addition, other forms of Wisdom
literature are ubiquitious in the Scrolls; this Chapter presents several examples. When reading the
Qumran testaments, the reader may want to bear the following genealogical relationships in mind:
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Jacob
Levi – Naphtali (sons of Jacob)
Kohath (son of Levi)
Amram (son of Kohath)
Moses - Aaron (sons of Amram)
Priests (descended from Aaron)
27. Aramaic Testament Of Levi (4Q213-214)
Even though it is possible to harbour reservations about whether all this material of varying emphases
can, in fact, ever be made to correspond to a single whole, it is important to note themes and imagery
even in well-known texts such as this one, which at once move across the entire spectrum of Qumran
literature and are completely harmonious with the Qumran perspective. Here we have the typical
emphases on 'Righteousness', 'Truth', 'Judgement', 'Knowledge' and 'Wisdom' as opposed, for instance,
to 'Evil' and 'fornication'. The 'Righteousness' and 'fornication' themes at Qumran are, as we have
seen, particularly strong. Though it is perhaps possible to identify themes such as these in literature of
the Second Temple period generally, their emphasis in documents like this one is particularly telling.
It is also interesting to see the descendants of Levi or the priests denoted in 1.2.2 as 'a Righteous seed'.
This has clear 'Zadokite' implications according to some of the definitions we have set forth above,
particularly when 'Zadok' is taken in its esoteric sense as denoting 'Righteousness'. The reference to
'Abel Mayin' in 1.2.17 is interesting, too. This is particularly true in view of the visionary materials
from 18-21 thereafter.