The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Volume 2, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Qumran Community

16. THE MOSES AT QUMRAN

351 CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE MOSES AT QUMRAN: THE qdch hrwm AS THE NURSING-FATHER OF THE dxy Jacob Cherian 1. INTRODUCTION This note will focus on a revealing and parallel use of parental imagery in the Hodayota and in the book of Numbers, thus providing another reason for seeing the Righteous Teacher (qdch hrwm)1 as “the Moses at Qumran.”2 The Qumran hymns are full of colorful metaphors and imagery, where the hymnist pictures himself in relation to God, self, his enemies, and his community (dxy). The parental imagery employed by the Righteous Teacher in 1QH 15.19–22a3 is very pertinent and personal , especially in the context of the close-knit, yet hierarchical, Qumran community. This imagery of the “nursing-father”4 captures the Teacher’s authoritative role in the community. It holds heuristic potential for insight into the nature of the Teacher’s leadership and the ethos of the community. Along with an examination of the parental imagery invoked 1. For a succinct introduction, see Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “Teacher of Righteousness,” ABD 6:340–41. I use the terminus technicus “Righteous Teacher” to highlight the fact that, from the standpoint of the Community, this personage was the “Right” and “Righteous” Teacher and Priest, the one who rightly interpreted the mysteries of God, as opposed to other teachers and priests (esp. “the Wicked Priest”; 1QpHab 1.13; 9.9–10; 11.4–17). 2. For one such argument, where the Righteous Teacher is seen as a “typological” or “new” Moses, see Michael O. Wise, “The Temple Scroll and the Teacher of Righteousness ,” in Mogilany 1989: Papers on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Offered in Memory of Jean Carmignac, Part II: The T eacher of Righteousness. Literary Studies (ed. Z. J. Kapera; Proceedings of the Second International Colloquium on the Dead Sea Scrolls [Mogilany, Poland, 1989]; Qumranica Mogilanensia 3; Kraków: Enigma, 1991), 121–47. 3. Column 7, according to Sukenik numbers. 4. I was introduced to this term through Aaron Wildavsky’s book, The Nursing Father: Moses as a Political Leader (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1984). The term excellently expresses the reality of the paternal as well as maternal characteristics that are depicted in the texts studied here. 352 THE MOSES AT QUMRAN in the Thanksgiving Hymns (Hodayota) and in Num 11:12, a brief sketch of the significant parallels in a Pauline letter (1 Thess 2:7–12) and the Odes of Solomon (19:1–4) will be offered. 1.1 On the Semantic Potency and “Models” of Imagery The key role of imagery and the intricate nature of the metaphorical world have received welcome attention among biblical scholars.5 James Barr explains that there is a key relationship between semantics and interpretation .6 Words are not complete semantic units by themselves; rather, they have various meanings in differing contexts. The whole array of semantic devices—ranging from simile and metaphor to typology and allegory—is both essential and integral to human expression. Such literary devices help to express diverse and complex matters in fresh and lucid ways. Max Black speaks of two of the possible classes of semantic “models”: scale models (a miniature or representative reproduction of selected features of the “original”) and analogue models (a reproduction of the “structure or web of relationships in an original”).7 “The analogue model shares with its original not a set of features or an identical proportionality of magnitude but, more abstractly, the same structure or pattern of relationships.”8 It is clear that the use of parental imagery by the hymnist (and others) falls into the latter class of models. Thus the parental imagery found in the Thanksgiving Hymns (Hodayota) evokes an ethos as well as a whole range of emotions that are to be understood in the framework of a complex web of relationships that existed at Qumran. 5. Three representative works are: James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Glasgow: Oxford University Press, 1961); George B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980); and Peter W. Macky, The Centrality of Metaphors to Biblical Thought: A Method of Interpreting the Bible (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1990). 6. Semantics is now approached from various perspectives, including from the viewpoints of philosophy (e.g., a seminal work by Max Black, Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962]) and linguistics (so, Barr, The Semantics of...