Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

The two texts on sectarian discipline and the Paean for King Jonathan actually mention historical
people - the disciplinary text quite literally, the Paean or Holy Poem as a dedication anyway or
panegyric. With the Priestly Courses III - Aemilius Kills text also mentioning historical personages,
these passages are of profound historical interest. The Paean to King Jonathan is perhaps a missing
link in solving crucial historiographic problems relating to the Community's attitude towards
Jerusalem. It certainly puts to rest previous theories of Qumran origins envisaging this individual as
the Wicked Priest of Qumran allusion.
Why this remained buried for so long, like so many other texts, is difficult to comprehend. Bringing it
to light now is final testimony to the felicitous effect unlimited and free access to all individuals can
have on the progress of human knowledge. It provides a unique witness to the mindset of the
movement we have before us, in perhaps an earlier formative period and its attitude towards a
principal establishment figure of that period.
The disciplinary text which we entitle after an allusion found in the text, 'He Loved his Bodily
Emissions' is also of some import. Related to some of the Halakhic texts above, it too provides a
unique insight into the everyday life of the Community. That the people involved in such activities
were serious, and this was not simply an ideal to be followed at some future utopian era, is graphically
and vividly attested to. The form of 'Judgement' or 'reproof being referred to is stark. It is, however,
definitely mentioned in the Damascus Document as among those the Mehakker or 'Bishop' was
actually instructed not only to make and carry out but also to record. Clearly we have such a record
here.
45. Brontologion (4Q318) (Plate 23)
The present work in Aramaic is perhaps the most intriguing divination text found at Qumran, for it is
simultaneously a brontologion, a selenedromion and, apparently, a thema mundi. Each of these terms
requires some explanation. A brontologion is a text that attempts to predict the future based upon
where within the heavens one hears the sound of thunder (the Greek brontos means 'thunder', hence
the name). Examples of such works date back many centuries before the period of the Qumran
writings. A selenedromion is a text that plots the movement of the moon (Greek selene) through the
sky and makes predictions based upon those observations. This Qumran text records the movements
of the moon with respect to the signs of the zodiac and combines that approach with the hearing of
thunder. Thus the scheme stipulates that if the moon is in a certain sign of the zodiac (and it will be in
that sign several times during the year) when one hears thunder, then a certain event of importance to
the entire nation will happen.
But the text goes beyond this already interesting combination of divinatory methods in that it regards
Taurus rather than Aries as the first sign of the zodiac. It is possible to ascertain this fact simply by
noting the regular pattern of the text as preserved and then projecting the same pattern backwards to
Nisan, the first month. What does this change in the usual order mean? The reason that Aries is listed
as the first sign even in contemporary newspapers and books is that during the Hellenistic period
(roughly the fourth through the first centuries BC), when astrology developed essentially into its
modern (Western) form, the sun rose in Aries at the vernal equinox. By the year 125 BC, however, a
Greek astronomer had discovered the phenomenon of the precession of the zodiac - that the zodiac