thumb|right|300px|The Damascus Document Scroll, 4Q271D<sup>f</sup>, found in Cave 4 at [[Qumran]]

The Damascus Document is an ancient Hebrew text known from both the Cairo Geniza and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is considered one of the foundational documents of the ancient Jewish community of Qumran.

Name

The fragments found in Cairo in 1897 were originally called the Zadokite Fragments but after the work was found at Qumran, the name was changed because the document had numerous references 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 eschatological hope of the restoration of a Davidic monarchy.

Discovery

Two manuscripts (CDa and CDb) were found in Cairo, with further findings at Qumran. In contrast to the fragments found at Qumran, the CD documents are largely complete, and therefore are vital for reconstructing the text.

Cairo Geniza

The main fragments were discovered by Solomon Schechter in 1897 in the Cairo Geniza, a storeroom adjoining Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo), among over 190,000 manuscripts and fragments that were written in mainly Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic. The fragments were quite large, and a number of them matched documents found later in Qumran. They were divided into two separate sections, CDa, and CDb. Schechter dated CDa to the 10th century C.E and CDb to 11th or 12th century C.E. 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).

Qumran scrolls

The fragments from Qumran have been assigned the document references 4Q266-73 (pictured above), 5Q12, and 6Q15.

Structure

The combined text of CDa and CDb contains twenty columns of writing. As it has come down to us, two columns have been mislocated: columns 15 & 16 originally preceded col 9. Fragments from Qumran include material not found in CD (the Cairo manuscripts).

The Damascus Document can be divided into two separate sections, commonly called Admonition and Laws. Davies divides the Admonition into four sections: History, Legal, Warnings, a Supplement (which Wise refers to as exhortations).).

The Admonition

This part is divided into four subsections.

:Expands on the original Admonition. Criticises of the "princes of Judah", i.e. the mainstream religious authorities.

The Damascus Document contains prominent reference to a cryptic figure called the Teacher of Righteousness, whom some of the other 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. (Some of these other scrolls where he is mentioned are the Pesharim on Habakkuk (numerous times), Micah (once) and Psalms, as well as 4Q172.) The document introduces the group as having arisen 390 years after the first fall of Jerusalem, hence around 200 BCE, but attests that for the 20 years they "remained like blind men groping their way" until God "raised for them a Teacher of Righteousness to guide them in the way of His heart." On the basis of that reference, historians date the Teacher to circa 170-150 BCE. Scholars have also believed that he was a priest based on other variations in the text that are also thought to be him. These include: "the teacher", "the unique teacher" and "the interpreter of the law".

This Teacher of Righteousness does not feature at all, however, in the Community Rule, another document found amongst the Qumran scrolls. To some scholars, this suggests that the two works are of different Second Temple groups. Most scholars, however, focus on the 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 and on the likelihood that fragment 4Q265 is a hybrid edition of both documents. They turn to the fact that 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 to explain that both works are from the same group under different situations.

Within this approach of the majority of scholars, 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.

CD as a rewriting of the Community Rule

According to Annette Steudel (2012), the literary comparison of the Community Rule and the Damascus Document shows that the Damascus Document represents a rewriting of the Community Rule. She shows that the Damascus Document closely follows the text of the Community Rule, and specifically of the sections 1QS V-VII. Also she shows that the long Fourth Admonition in the Damascus Document is basically an elaboration of the passage 1QS V,l-7a.

Nevertheless, she also argues that this relationship between the two documents doesn't end there. Because there also appears to be a complex interplay between these two documents. A later passage in the Community Rule (1QS VIII-IX) might have been composed as a reaction to the rewriting/reinterpretation that was offered by the Damascus Document, as mentioned above. So, at a later stage, these two documents appear to be in a dialogue with each other.

Views

Most scholars believe that the rules featured in the Damascus Document, which let men to marry women and own private property, were created to regulate the lifestyles of the Essenes who lived in the camps and did not join the Essene community that resided in Qumran.

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • Boccaccini, Gabriele: Beyond the Essene Hypothesis: The Parting of the Ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism . (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1998)
  • 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: JSOT Press, 1983; Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement series 25)
  • Davila, James R.: "The Damascus Document and the Community Rule " (University of St. Andrews,2005)
  • Ginzberg, L.: An Unknown Jewish Sect (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1976, ©1970, ); translated and expanded from Eine unbekannte jüdische Sekte (New York: Hildesheim, 1922, privately published)
  • Hempel, Charlotte: The Damascus Texts (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000)
  • 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, Vol.1, ed LH Schiffman and JC VanderKam (Oxford: OUP: 2000)
  • Rowley, H. H.: The Zadokite fragments and the Dead Sea scrolls (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952)

2 v.

  • Smith, Barry: The Dead Sea Scrolls, Crandall University course
  • 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)
  • The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection website, by the dedicated research unit (Cambridge University)
  • Full text of the Damascus Document