Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

Put another way, one has irrefutable proof here that the Messianic 'Leader', mentioned in the text by
that name, is to be identified with this 'Messiah of Righteousness', because the allusion to 'the Branch
of David' is used in both as an identifying epithet. This makes the matter of whether the Messianic
Leader is doing the killing or being killed more important than ever. Later in this work we shall find
additional support for the latter interpretation, when we reconstruct the phraseology hemitu Zaddikim
at the end of the Demons of Death ('Beatitudes') text in Chapter 5 as 'they put to death the Righteous'
(plural).
The conjunction of 'the Righteousness' terminology with 'the Messiah', much in the manner that it is
co-joined with 'the Teacher' and 'the Pourer' above (the Moreh and the Yoreh) in the definition of the
Shiloh in Gen. 49:10, is of the utmost significance. This is consistent with the total ethos of Qumran
and has, in fact, important resonance’s with presentations of the Melchizedek ideology ('the King of
Righteousness') in relation to the eschatological priesthood set forth in Heb. 5:7 - 10 (including,
interestingly enough, reference to 'the Logos of Righteousness' in Line 5:14).
The explanation in the final decipherable line of this exegesis 'because he, i.e. the Messiah of
Righteousness, kept ...the Torah' together with the others 'of the Community' is also important, not
only for Qumran Messianic notions but for Qumran ideology as a whole and its overtones with early
Christianity of the Jamesian mould. We have already mentioned that the Community Rule defines the
'sons of Zadok' in terms of 'keeping' or being 'Keepers of the Covenant'. This is a qualitative exegesis,
not a genealogical one. It is reinforced in the Damascus Document's exegesis of Ezek. 44:15 - also
qualitative - and an eschatological element is added, that of 'the last days'.
These also have supernatural connotations, e.g. in CD, iv.3 and 7, 'they stand in the last days' (as does
the Yoreh ha-Zedek)and 'justify the Righteous and condemn the Wicked'. If these notations are
consistent, then the words 'keeping ...the Torah' also imply that the Messiah or Shiloh was also to be
reckoned among 'the sons of Zadok'. It should also be clear that Zedek and Zadok are to be reckoned
as variations of the same terminology - that is, the 'sons of Zadok' and 'sons of Zedek' are equivalent -
and that allusions to Melchizedek amount simply to a further adumbration.
Here, too, the allusion in 5.5 to 'the men of the Community' with 'the Messiah of Righteousness' as
'Keepers of the Covenant' implies that the Messiah has either already come, is eschatologically to
return, or is, in fact, at that very moment connected to or among 'the Yahad' (Community). That the
Community honours a Davidic-style, singular Messiah associated in some manner with the concept of
Righteousness - a matter of some dispute in Dead Sea Scrolls studies heretofore - is no longer to be
gainsaid. All these are very important conclusions indeed with serious implications for Qumran
studies. This is the importance of publishing these texts completely and not in bits and pieces.
The text ends in Column 6, a little anticlimactically, with portions from Gen. 49:20-21 about blessings
on Asher and Napthali, of which little is intelligible.