Читать книгу Judaism II - Группа авторов - Страница 80

Since 1947, a total of 900 fragmentary Jewish writings have been found in eleven caves near Khirbet Qumran, an ancient settlement on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea.⁷⁰ These writings date from the third century BCE to before 70 CE and can be divided paleographically into an »archaic« group (ca. 250–150 BCE), a »Hasmonean« group (ca. 150–30 BCE), and a »Herodian« group (ca. 30 BCE–70 CE). It is possible that there is a link between the inhabitants of the settlement and the authors or owners of the scrolls.

Among the manuscript discoveries—which are heterogeneous in content—are first of all, all the books of the Bible (except for Esther), copied or translated, and some religious writings in Hebrew or Aramaic that were previously known only in the Christian tradition. Also among the manuscript finds are commentaries on Canonical writings (pesharim), which interpret the present time through the prophetic books (e.g. Isaiah, Habakkuk, and Nahum). This interpretation was regarded as the text’s »real« meaning, which had always related to the community itself. Among the actual »sectarian writings« are the Rule of the Community, the War Scroll, the Temple Scroll, and the so-called Cairo Damascus Document. Besides paleographic and terminological similarities, there are agreements in content between these texts, such as the description of life in the community, reflection on its special place within Palestinian Judaism, and the mention of an authoritative teacher.

The influence of Jewish apocalypticism on the sectarian scrolls is supported by the fact that there were also fragments from almost all parts of 1 Enoch, the book of Jubilees, and Daniel in the caves. The scrolls borrow themes, imagery, and motifs characteristic of apocalyptic literature such as dualistic thinking, the division of world time into individual epochs, the presentation of the present time as the end-time, the idea of an imminent catastrophic change of era, and a decisive battle between good and evil, as well as consciousness of the election of their own group, and their liturgical communion with heavenly beings.

The sectarian scrolls depict a priestly sect with a special organizational form, whose life and piety were determined by the sharp contrast to the currently practiced Jerusalem temple cult and the cultic calendar used there. Its community of goods, its extraordinary efforts for purity even in everyday life, its eschatological orientation, and its anti-Hellenistic mentality were based on an expectation of an imminent Eschaton.

Its dualistically structured apocalyptic understanding of judgment served to stabilize its community: the ungodly individual is punished in the final judgment and annihilated. There is, however, very little talk of the future salvation of the individual in the sectarian writings; at the top of all hopes of salvation stood the fellowship of the cultically pure priests of God. It was only within the exclusive circle of the pious and the righteous and only on the basis of a correct lifestyle that people saw themselves as safe from the threat of God’s wrathful judgment. Expulsion from one’s own community based on transgressions that threaten group identity meant irrevocable exclusion from eternal salvation.