The Story of the Scrolls by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141937298
Publisher: Penguin Publishing
Published: 2010-01-29T16:00:00+00:00

4. The War Scroll (1QM, 1Q33, 4Q471, 491–7)

The rules of the War Scroll concern not the present but the future age, laying down in advance the scenario and the imaginary regulations concerning eschatological behaviour for the members of the community during the final stages of the conflict between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. The War Scroll has been preserved in a large, but damaged manuscript of nineteen columns from Cave 1, and in further fragmentary manuscripts from Cave 4. On the basis of palaeography and contents the writing is dated to the last decades of the first century BCE or the beginning of the Christian era. Since the Kittim, the final enemy, are led by a king, they must apply to the Romans after 27 BCE when Augustus became Princeps or Emperor.

The War Scroll is a composite work. Columns 1 and 15 to 19 offer an imaginary historical sketch of the reconquest of Jerusalem and the Holy Land by the host of the Sons of Light from the Sons of Darkness (Jewish and Gentile), and the defeat of the armies of the ultimate foe, the Kittim. Between columns 1 and 15 is inserted a series of equally fictive regulations relating to the reorganization of the worship in the Temple of Jerusalem by the priests of the Community, the schedule of the forty-year-long war against the non-Jewish world, the sequence and precise length of the battle against each nation being determined in advance. This single feature suffices to prove that we are faced with an imaginary warfare. There also follow regulations concerning the trumpets, standards, weapons, and the strategy and tactics of the infantry and cavalry. The details of the descriptions remind the reader of the Roman army and its style of strategy and tactics. The age of the combatants and the duties of the priests and Levites, who were to direct the battle with their trumpet signals, the addresses delivered by the chief priest to the soldiers, the battle liturgy and the ceremony of thanksgiving after the final victory over the Kittim complete the document. While some of the accounts and prayers are outstandingly beautiful, the composition as such reflects only the ideas of the sect about the end of time and cannot be used for the reconstruction of the organization and way of life of the Community. To consider the document as a handbook for actual warfare is childishly naive.

Akin to the War Scroll is the set of fragments known as The Book of War (4Q285) which, without setting out battle rules, foresees the fight culminating in the defeat of the king of the Kittim by the sea. It was wrongly made notorious by Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise for its supposed reference to a murdered Jesus-like messianic figure. Accurately understood and translated, the text speaks of a ‘slaying’ or bellicose, and not a ‘slain’, Messiah.

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