Damascus Document

The caves at Qumran, in the area where the Damascus Document and other Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

The Damascus Document, also called the Zadokite Fragments, one of the works found in multiple fragments and copies in the caves at Qumran, and as such is counted among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The current majority view among scholars is that the scrolls are related to an Essene community based there around the first century B.C.E. Because it gives specific insights into the unique religious attitudes of its writers, the Damascus Document is considered one of the most important sources for understanding the ancient Essene movement.

Historians believe that some of the Essenes isolated themselves in the wilderness near Qumran during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes beginning around 175 B.C.E., in order to escape persecution.

The Damascus Document seems to have been written in stages between that time and 70 C.E., when the Essen community at Qumran community at Qumran was abandoned.

The first section of the Damascus Document consists concerns the community's religious teachings. It stresses devotion to Israel's covenant with God and an absolutely strict interpretation of Jewish Sabbath laws and other injunctions. The document also speaks of a Teacher of Righteousness, who is opposed by the Wicked Priest. Various theories have emerged concerning the identity and roles of these two antagonists. The document predicts that the age of the Messiah would begin 40 years after the Teacher death.

The Damascus Document's second section contains a set of regulations concerning community life and discipline that gives a sense of the Qumran sect's way of life as they prepared themselves for the Messiah's coming.

Body Text

The fragments from Qumran have been assigned the document references 4Q265-73, 5Q12, and 6Q15. Even before the Qumran discovery of the mid-20th century, this particular work had been known to scholars, through two manuscripts found during the late 19th century amongst the Cairo Genizah collection, in a room adjoining the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat. These fragments are housed at the Cambridge University Library with the classmarks T-S 10K6 and T-S 16.311 (other references are CDa and CDb, where "CD" stands for "Cairo Damascus"), and date from the tenth and twelfth centuries, respectively. In contrast to the fragments found at Qumran, the CD documents are largely complete, and therefore are vital for reconstructing the text.

Two medieval manuscripts dating from the 10th and 12th centuries were discovered in 1896–97 in the geniza (storeroom) of the Ezra synagogue in Cairo. They were published under the title Fragments of a Zadokite Work because members of the Essene community also called themselves Sons of Zadok (the Righteous One). The subsequent discovery of extensive Hebrew fragments from caves IV and VI at Qumran confirmed that the document was indeed one of the major doctrinal and administrative codes of the Essene sect. (copied text... do not publish)

The title of the document comes from numerous references within it to Damascus. The way this Damascus is treated in the document makes it possible that it was not a literal reference to Damascus in Syria, but to be understood either geographically for Babylon or Qumran itself. If symbolic, it is probably taking up the Biblical language found in Amos 5:27, "therefore I shall take you into exile beyond Damascus"; Damascus was part of Israel under King David, and the Damascus Document expresses an eschatalogical hope of the restoration of a Davidic monarchy.

The document contains a cryptic reference to a Teacher of Righteousness, whom some of the Qumran scrolls treat as a figure from their past, and others treat as a figure in their present, and others still as a figure of the future. This Teacher of Righteousness features prominently in the Damascus Document, but not at all in the Community Rule, another document found amongst the Qumran scrolls, suggesting a difference in the situation during the writing of each. The Damascus Document describes the group amongst whom the Document was created as having been leaderless for 20 years before the Teacher of Righteousness established his rule over the group. Usually historians date the Teacher to circa 150 B.C.E., since the document states that he arrived 390 years (a period which, however, is unlikely to be precise) after the Babylonian Exile.

There is a high degree of shared terminology and legal rulings between the Damascus Document and the Community Rule, including terms like sons of light, and their penal codes. The fragment 4Q265 appears to have come from a hybrid edition of both documents.

The textual relationship between the Damascus Document and Community Rule is not completely resolved, though there is a general agreement that they have some evolutionary connection. Some suspect that the Community Rule is the original text that was later altered to become the Damascus Document, others that the Damascus Document was redacted to become the Community Rule, a third group argues that the Community Rule was created as a utopian ideal rather than a practical replacement for the Damascus Document, and still others that believe the Community Rule and Damascus Document were written for different types of communities, one enclosed and the other open.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Broshi, Magen: The Damascus document reconsidered (Israel Exploration Society: Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 1992)
• Davies, P. R.: The Damascus covenant: an interpretation of the "Damascus document" (Sheffield, 1983)
• Ginzberg, L.: An Unknown Jewish Sect (E.T.: New York, 1976)
• Kahle, Paul: The Cairo Genizah (Oxford: Blackwell, 1959)
• Rabin, C.: The Zadokite documents, 1: the admonition, 2: the laws (2nd ed. Oxford, 1958)
• Reif, Stefan: Article "Cairo Genizah," in Encyclopaedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: OUP: forthcoming 1997) ed LH Schiffman and JC VanderKam
• Rowley, H. H.: The Zadokite fragments and the Dead Sea scrolls (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952)
• Schechter, S.: Documents of Jewish sectaries/ edited from Hebrew MSS. in the Cairo Genizah collection, now in the possession of the University Library, Cambridge (Cambridge: University Press, 1910) 2 v
• Zeitlin, Solomon: The Zadokite fragments: facsimile of the manuscripts in the Cairo Genizah collection in the possession of the University Library, Cambridge, England (Philadelphia: Dropsie College, 1952)

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