Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

tangible throughout the document.
Here Gentile gifts (5ff.) and the 'vessels' that bear them (particularly 'skins'; cf. 18ff.) exercise the
document's authors to no little degree. This theme, particularly as it relates to the 'skins', also exercises
the authors of the Temple Scroll, Columns 46-7, where it is linked to classes of polluted persons
barred from the Temple. The same gist is discernible here. In the Temple Scroll such 'skins' are
referred to as 'sacrificed to idols'. This theme is again discernible in Line 9 of the present document. It
links the whole issue of Gentile gifts and sacrifices in the Temple to idolatry, and is but an
adumbration of the more general theme of 'things sacrificed to idols' elsewhere, particularly in the
New Testament.
These themes, not to mention the ones of 'works Righteousness' and the Law, are also discernible in
extant works relating to James the just (the 'Zaddik' / 'Zadok'), the leader of the so-called 'Jerusalem
Community' from the 40s to the 60s AD - what has retrospectively come to be called 'Jewish
Christianity' in Palestine. The movement that seems subsequently to have developed also came to be
called the Ebionites (i.e. 'the Poor Ones'), a term of self-designation running the gamut of Qumran
documents (see our discussion of it in Hymns of the Poor in Chapter 7). In particular, James is
portrayed in the Book of Acts as insisting upon abstention from 'blood', 'fornication' and 'food' /
'things sacrificed to idols' (Acts 21:25; also Acts 15). His position on 'works counted' or 'reckoned as
Righteousness' is made clear in the letter attributed to his name and the riposte it contains to the
Pauline position on Abraham's faith in Romans and Galatians.
The issue of Gentile gifts and Gentile sacrifices in the Temple was a particularly crucial one in the
period running up to the war against Rome from the 40s to the 60s AD. Josephus makes this clear in
the Jewish War, where he describes the barring of these - demanded by 'the Zealots' and presumably
other opposition groups - as 'an innovation which before our ancestors were unacquainted with'. Other
aspects of this problem, including the barring of Herodians (who were looked upon as Gentiles by
groups such as these, though not by the Pharisees) and their sacrifices, not only from the Temple, but
ultimately from all Jerusalem, was but a special case of this attitude. In the war the Herodian palaces
were eventually burned, as were those of the high priests owing their positions to them, not to mention
all the debt records.
Though it is possible that Gentile gifts and sacrifices in the Temple were also an issue in the
Maccabean period, the literature does not record it. In the end this issue was the one that triggered the
war against Rome in AD 66-70 or rather the one that was used by extremists to trigger it; because in
AD 66 this war was made inevitable when the lower priesthood stopped sacrifices on behalf of
Romans and other foreigners in the Temple, in particular those daily sacrifices which had up to that
point been offered on behalf of the Roman Emperor. That is how important these themes are.
This text also refers to the matter of the Red Heifer for particularly important purification procedures,
a matter further developed in the text by that name below. In line with the general nationalistic
xenophobia across the spectrum of Qumran documents, Ammonites and Moabites are grouped with
people like the deaf and the blind, suffering from some serious physical imperfection (47-83). This
theme, which is also treated above in the Temple Scroll in some manner probably involves barring
Gentiles from the Temple generally.