Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

As Josephus describes them, these refused to call any man 'Lord' and seem to have rallied to a cry that
can be characterized by the words 'no king but God', i.e. 'God rules here, not man' (Ant 18.23). As a
result, they refused to submit to the rule of distant Caesars or, for that matter, to pay the tax required
of them, which, as we saw in relation to the Testament of Kohath in Chapter 5, consequently became
a burning issue throughout the whole of the first century. Needless to say, they would probably not
have deigned to call any Messianic leader 'Lord' either.
In this text, we find the usual imagery of 'Light' and 'Darkness', (the former now tied to the coming,
obviously, of the Eternal 'Kingdom'), 'Glory', 'Judgement', etc. If the reconstruction is correct, the
Noahic prophecy is fulfilled with Israel (Jacob) subjecting the Canaanites to forced labour (5),
whatever may have been meant by this. The reference from Line 13 onwards to a second captivity in
or by the hand of Egypt, coupled with Jerusalem's downfall, is puzzling, particularly as it seems also
to relate to 'Philistines'.
Technically, the text seems aware that Egyptians were considered 'sons of Ham' and that the
Philistines, though they were also reckoned as 'sons of Ham' in Gen. 10, were actually 'sons of Japhet'
or 'Mycenean Greeks'. This is borne out by archaeological data. In this regard, the text does allow 'the
Kittim' of Qumran usage as sons of 'Javan' (Greece) too. It is therefore possible that the history we
have before us relates to the pre-Maccabean suppression of Jerusalem by Ptolemies from Egypt and
Seleucid Greeks from Syria. On the other hand, we may have a veiled reference, of the kind in the
War Scroll to 'the Kittim of Egypt' and 'the Kittim of Assyria', to Roman legions from Egypt and Syria
at the time of siege of Jerusalem.
However these things may be, the text ends with the usual promise, certainly comforting to the
nationalistically minded, that God would not forget Jerusalem and that her humiliation would be
manifoldly repaid. This is directly paralleled in texts like the last columns of the Habakkuk Pesher or
the Hymns of the Poor above. While envisaging the probable destruction of Jerusalem by the Kittim,
Hab. xii.2-4 concludes that 'on the Day of judgement (.sic) God would destroy from off the earth all
idolators (i.e. the nations) and Evil People'.