Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

It will be recalled that the term 'Many' was also used to describe 'the Priest commanding the Many' in
the last column of the Damascus Document. But the Mebakker or Bishop is clearly described in
Columns xiii-xiv of the published Cairo Damascus Document as being in absolute charge of 'the
camps'; therefore our problem concerning the identity of the two is solved. If the desert 'camps' are
'the camps of the Many' alluded to in passing in this text, then the Priest Commanding the Many and
the Mebakker / Bishop commanding the camps are the same. Again, the references in early Church
literature to James as 'Bishop of the Jerusalem Community' and 'high priest' are not irrelevant.
It is also vivid testimony of the fact of the existence of the 'camps'. Here are actually two people who
lived in them the 'inhabitants of the camps' so vividly alluded to in the last column of 4QD, 'Hananiah
Nitos' and 'Hananiah ben Shim' . . . (presumably Shim'on or Shemaiah). Moreover, the rank and file of
these 'camps' were actually referred to as 'the Many'. This is extremely moving, absolutely immediate
testimony.
Again we have an allusion to 'the Spirit of Radiance' of the kind seen in more ecstatic texts like the
Son of Righteousness (Proverbs), the Chariots of Glory, and the Mystery of Existence in Chapters 5
and 7. The allusion in Line 6 of the second column to 'turning aside' is also common in documents
like the Damascus Document or the Community Rule, particularly when it comes to 'turning aside'
from the Law or 'wandering astray in a trackless waste without a Way'. Such references are
omnipresent.
The allusion to 'reproved' in Line 9 ('reprove' in Line 2 Column 1) is not the same as 'expel' in more
serious excommunications pronounced in 4QD above, the Community Rule, ii and the Chariots of
Glory. The offenses treated in this record are not capital or excommunicable ones, but rather more in
the nature of those listed in 1QS, vii or CD, xii-xv, presumably preceding 4QD. The allusion
recapitulates one already encountered in Jacob's 'reproving' Reuben in the Genesis Florilegium's
presentation of Reuben's violation of his father's bedroom arrangements. This is a record of 'picayune'
disciplinary 'acts' kept by the Mebakker in his role presumably as 'Priest commanding the camps' in
the last days.
In Latin usage, the word 'acts' related to real administrative records kept by officials like governors,
procurators and the like. Eusebius, for instance, in Ecclesiastical History 1.9.3 reveals that he knows
about 'acts' circulating under Pontius Pilate's name in his own time - the 300s - purporting to be the
real administrative records of that individual's procuratorship. The 'acts' or records we have before us
in this disciplinary text are real administrative proceedings in contradistinction to some others of this
genre, hence their thoroughly pedestrian and mundane tone.
Finally the allusion to loving one's 'bodily emissions' recapitulates material about mourning and
sexual matters in Purity Laws Type A in Chapter 6. It is completely in accord with the Qumran ethos
as we have been following it. Reuben's 'reproval' also had to do with sexual indiscretions. It is in
accord with the Qumran concern not to 'mix' with such individuals, because 'the Holy Angels were
with them in their camps' - again the reason for the camps themselves. The allusion to the 'Holy
Angels being in the camps' is to be found, as we have noted, in both the War Scroll and the Damascus
Document - the former particularly with regard to keeping such impurities from the camp 'from the
time they (the Holy Ones of the Covenant) leave Jerusalem and march out to war until they return'.