Scriptures and Sectarianism: Essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls

344 Pages·2014·3.13 MB·English

by  John J Collins

Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen
zum Neuen Testament
Herausgeber / Editor
Jörg Frey (Zürich)
Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors
Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala)
Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL) Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg)
J. Ross Wagner (Durham, NC)
332

John J. Collins
Scriptures and Sectarianism
Essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls
Mohr Siebeck
JOHN J. COLLINS, born 1946; 1972 PhD; 1985–91 Professor at the University of Notre Dame; 1991–
2000 Professor at the University of Chicago; since 2000 Holmes Professor of Old Testament in
Yale.
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ISBN 978-3-16-153210-8
ISSN 0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament)
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Preface
The essays in this volume were written over a decade, roughly 2003 to 2013. The
introductory essay, “What have we learned from the Dead Sea Scrolls?” has not
been published in this form before. The essays are grouped in three clusters. The
fi rst deals with the authority of Scripture and the various ways in which it is inter-
preted. The second deals with historiography, the emergence of the sect and its rela-
tion to the Enochic writings and 4QInstruction. The third cluster deals with aspects
of the sectarian worldview: covenant and dualism, the angelic world, the afterlife,
prayer and ritual, and wisdom. Finally, an epilogue consisting of one essay illus-
trates the relevance of the Scrolls for early Christianity by discussing the case of the
Suffering Servant.
These essays are intended to complement my other writings on the Dead Sea
Scrolls: Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Routledge, 1997); The
Scepter and the Star. Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2nd ed.; Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010); Beyond the Qumran Community. The Sectarian
Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010); and The
Dead Sea Scrolls. A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). I have
not included in this collection essays that are reworked in one or other of those
books, but some occasional overlap is inevitable.
I would like to thank Jörg Frey, with whom I have co-chaired a seminar at SNTS
on the Scrolls and the New Testament for fi ve years, for accepting the volume for
publication in WUNT, Mark Lester for preparing the Bibliography and James Nati
for compiling the indices.

Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V
Chapter One. Introduction. What Have We Learned
from the Dead Sea Scrolls? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The origin of the collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Scrolls and the Bible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
The phenomenon of re-written scriptures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
A biblical canon? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
The Scrolls and Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
The Scrolls and Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Part One
Scripture and Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . 17
Chapter Two. The Transformation of the Torah
in Second Temple Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
The transformation of Torah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Ancestral law in the Hellenistic period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Antiochus Epiphanes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
The Temple Scroll and Jubilees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Halakah and Sectarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Chapter Three. Changing Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
The case of Deuteronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
The second century BCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Rewritten Scriptures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Jubilees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
The Temple Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
The question of fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Chapter Four. Tradition and Innovation in the Dead Sea Scrolls . . . . 51
The nature of the Scrolls collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
VIII Table of Contents
The sectarian ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Pseudepigrapha in the Scrolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
The Torah re-written . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
The sectarian view of revelation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
The role of the Teacher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
An oral tradition? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
A distinctive view of tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Scripture and interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Chapter Five. The Interpretation of Genesis in the Dead Sea Scrolls . . 70
The earliest interpretations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Ben Sira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Wisdom texts in the Scrolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4QInstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
The Instruction on the Two Spirits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Chapter Six. The Interpretation of Psalm 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
The relation between 2 Samuel 7 and Psalm 2 in 4Q174 . . . . . . . . . 89
The messianic interpretation of Psalm 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Psalm 2 in the Pseudepigrapha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
The Psalms of Solomon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
The Similitudes of Enoch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4 Ezra 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
The Scrolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
The Florilegium again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Chapter Seven. The Book of Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls . . . . . . 102
Explicit citations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Allusions to Daniel in sectarian literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Texts related to Daniel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
The Prayer of Nabonidus (4QPrNab) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
The Pseudo-Daniel texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
The Aramaic Apocalypse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
The Four Kingdoms Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Table of Contents IX
Part Two
History and Sectarianism . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Chapter Eight. Historiography in the Dead Sea Scrolls . . . . . . . . . . 119
Apocalyptic Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
The Pesharim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Historiographical texts among the Scrolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
The so-called “annalistic lists” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Chapter Nine. Reading for History in the Dead Sea Scrolls . . . . . . . 133
The Damascus Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
The Hodayot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
The Pesharim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Chapter Ten. “Enochic Judaism” and the Sect of the Dead Sea Scrolls . 150
The Essenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
The Hasidim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
A split in the emerging movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
“The Qumran Community” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
The Essenes revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Enochic Judaism and the Scrolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Chapter Eleven. Sectarian Consciousness in the Dead Sea Scrolls . . . 164
The yahad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Creation and Election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
4QInstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Part Three
The Sectarian Worldview . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Chapter Twelve. Covenant and Dualism in the Dead Sea Scrolls . . . . 179
Covenantal Nomism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
A sectarian covenant? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
The Two Spirits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Persian dualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
The provenance of the Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Covenant and dualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189