Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

an explanation, if substantiated, is helpful in illuminating his Roman citizenship and easy relations
with high Roman officials or their protégés throughout his career.
In Line 12, it is possible that one encounters a 400-year symbolic historical scheme, beginning with the
going out from Egypt of the kind one encounters in the Damascus Document (i.5 -6; 390 years). As
noted above, one should be careful of the chronological precision of these visionary reckonings and
take them as symbolic or as approximations only. Where the 390 years in the Damascus Document is
concerned, for instance, there can be little doubt that this relates to Ezek. 4:9 - an important prophet at
Qumran - having to do with the absence of prophecy in Israel. The reference to 'seventy years' in Line
22, as with similar chronological reckonings in the Angels of Mastemoth and the Rule of Belial text
above, ties this text to the Daniel cycle of literature.