The Biblical World by Barton John

Author:Barton, John
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-134-27219-8
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

A BASIC HISTORICAL OUTLINE

Several historical details emerge from the scroll remains, though quite how all these should be understood is still a matter of some considerable debate.

The period of the Damascus Document

The historical self-understanding of the movement of which the Qumran residents were a part is presented in its classic form in the so-called Damascus Document. The opening column of the version of the A text, which has survived from the Geniza of the Ben-Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, describes how God visited a remnant of Israelites 390 years after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. If they were able to calculate the date of that event accurately, then this divine visitation took place in 196 BCE. For twenty years, the text continues, the newly founded community was leaderless, but then a Teacher arose to lead it, the so-called Teacher of Righteousness. This may have happened during the period of political and religious turbulence leading up to the Maccabean Revolt that broke out in 167 BCE.

The Teacher of Righteousness or Righteous Teacher is an enigmatic figure. He features in only a very few scrolls: the Damascus Document, the Psalms Pesher and the Habakkuk Pesher. Nowhere is he named. From the Psalms Pesher we learn that he was a priest. Several scholars have suggested that he may even have been a high priest, the one who was displaced by Jonathan Maccabee, when he assumed the high priesthood in 152 BCE. Such an interpretation, taken together with the literal reading of the Damascus Document would suggest that this Teacher was active from about 176 BCE for a generation, a period that would encompass the high priesthood of the time (149–142 BCE) for which no ancient source records the name of the high priest.

Those who understand that the Teacher of Righteousness was this displaced high priest commonly suppose that his community was fully established as a separatist group only after his removal from office in Jerusalem. Such modern interpreters also often assume that this group formation was contemporary with the occupation of the Qumran site itself. However, as has already been noted, it is highly unlikely that the first phase of the occupation of Qumran should be dated earlier than about 100 BCE. If the teacher is indeed to be associated with the deposed high priest of 149–142 BCE, then he led the movement initially in Jerusalem or elsewhere, not at Qumran.

The Damascus Document envisages that after the death of the Teacher there will be a final forty-year period before the end of all things. If the dates in the text are made into a total symbolic period of ten jubilees (490 years), and if the author could calculate the time since the Babylonian destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE, then it can be supposed that the Damascus Document itself was written sometime shortly before 96 BCE.

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