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

4. THE COVENANT IN QUMRAN

58 WHAT’S IN A CALENDAR? concern of the priesthood; as well as practical schedules of the annual “holy seasons” manifestly directed to the entire membership; and simple, possibly mnemotechnical enumerations of the months with the number of the days which each one holds. In distinction, the Book of Jubilees and the “Book of the Heavenly Luminaries” (1 En. 72–82) contain predominantly general references to the 364-day solar calendar but no breakdowns of details such as are explicated in the Covenanters’ calendrical documents. I agree with Stern’s endorsement of Milik’s argument that the 364-day Calendar of Enoch was only an idealistic model, possibly never intended to be used in practice ,70 echoed by other scholars, which is also relevant for the calendar of Jubilees, but not for the Covenanters’ ephemeris. In both these instances no structured community can be defined, which regulated the life of its members by such a calendar. The “Community of the Renewed Covenant” is altogether different. The authors of the apocryphal works seemingly do not address the everyday needs of the members of an identifiable community. They are primarily concerned with “calendar orthodoxy .” In distinction, the overriding concern of the yah[ad authors is “calendar orthopraxis,” viz., the application of the calendar in actual life situations. The Covenanters’ secession from mainstream (proto-pharisaic) Judaism, which riveted the life of the individual Jew and the Temple cult to the 354-day lunar ephemeris was ultimately triggered by their adamant adherence to the 364-day solar calendar, in their fervent hope that in the New Jerusalem, the sacrificial service in the New Temple will be conducted by their priests in accordance with their exclusively legitimate solar calendar. 70. M. Stern, Calendar, 7. 59 CHAPTER FOUR THE COVENANT IN QUMRAN Moshe Weinfeld 1. THE COVENANTAL CEREMONY The Rule of the Community, which contains the rules and legal structures of the Qumran community,1 opens with the theme of the covenant, since the covenant served as the basis of the Qumran sect and its ideology. The opening chapter of the Manual deals indeed with the ceremony of entering the covenant. The covenantal ceremony is actually a procession in which all the members of the sect participate, while the priests and the Levites proclaim blessings and curses. The blessings and the curses are patterned after the ceremony between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, as described in Deuteronomy 27.2 But, unlike Deuteronomy 27 that constitutes a one-time foundation ceremony that is performed by the Israelites while crossing the Jordan (cf. Josh 8:31–35), the ceremony of the Rule of the Community is but an act of ceremony performed, year by year, on the day of Pentecost.3 Such ceremonies belong to the general heritage of the covenant making that is attested in the ancient Greek sources. Thus we read in the episode told by Critias (Plato):4 When they [the ten princes] who govern the territory were about to give judgment they first gave pledges one to another of the following description. In the sacred precincts of Poseidon there were bulls at large; and the ten princes, being alone by themselves, after praying to the God that they 1. Moshe Weinfeld, The Organizational Pattern and the Penal Code of the Qumran Sect: A Comparison with Guilds and Religious Associations of the Hellenistic-Roman Period (NTOA 2: Edtiones Universitai res Friburg Suisse; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986). 2. See Moshe Weinfeld, “The Emergence of the Deuteronomic Movement,” in Das Deuteronomium, Entstehung, Gestalt und Bothschaft (ed. N. Lohfink; BETL 68; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1985), 76–78. 3. Moshe Weinfeld, “Pentecost as Festival of the Giving of the Law,” Immanuel 8 (1975): 7–18. 4. Plato, Critias. 119d–120b (Bury, LCL). 60 THE COVENANT IN QUMRAN might capture a victim well pleasing to him, hunted after bulls with staves and nooses, but with no weapon of iron;5 and whatsoever bull they captured , they led up to the pillar and cut its throat over the top of the pillar, raining down blood on the inscription. And inscribed upon the pillar, besides the laws, was an oath which invoked mighty curses upon them that disobeyed. When, then, they had done sacrifice according to their laws and were consecrating all the limbs of the bull, they mixed a bowl of wine and poured on behalf of each one a gout of blood, and the rest they carried...