The founder of the sect is called the “teacher of righteousness” (1 11),[16] “the only, or beloved, teacher” (20 14);[17] “the only [pg 338] one” (20 32); he is “the legislator,” that is, “the interpreter of the law” (6 7); and this interpreter of the law, who came to Damascus, is the star who, according to Balaam's prophecy, was to issue from Jacob (7 18 f.).[18] He showed them how to walk in the way of God's heart (1 11); as interpreter of the law he ordained them statutes to walk in till the end of wickedness—statutes which shall not be superseded by any others “until there arise the teacher of righteousness in the last days” (6 11 f.). To him, therefore, are attributed the distinctive principles and observances of the sect as they are set forth in this book. “His anointed,” through whom God made known to men his holy spirit, and who is true (2 12 f.), is in all probability the same person with the teacher, the star, just as the anointed from Aaron and Israel who is to arise in the future (20 1) is the same as the teacher of righteousness to whose voice they will then listen (20 32; see below, p. [343]).
Those of the emigrants who accepted the guidance of the teacher of righteousness, the interpreter of the law, entered into the “new covenant in the land of Damascus” (6 19, 8 21, 19 33 f., 20 12). The idea of the “new covenant” was doubtless suggested by Jer. 31 31 ff. (cf. 32 36 ff.; Ezek. 37 26, etc.), where the establishment of the new covenant, in the stead of the old covenant which their fathers broke, marks the restoration of God's favor, the beginning of a new and better time. The same use of the passage in Jeremiah is made at length by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (8 6 ff.), The substance of the covenant may be gathered from 6 11-7 5:
All who were brought into the covenant are not to enter into the sanctuary to light its altar, but became closers of the door, as God said, “Who among you will close its door?” and “Thou shalt not light my altar in vain” (Mal. 1 10);[19] but shall observe to do according to the interpretation of the law for the end of wickedness, and to separate from the children of perdition, and to keep aloof from unrighteous gain, which is unclean by vow and ban,[20] and from the property of the sanctuary, and from [pg 339] robbing the poor of the people and making widows their spoil and murdering orphans; and to separate between the unclean and the clean, and to show the difference between the holy and the common; and to observe the Sabbath day as it is defined, and the season feasts, and the fast-day, in accordance with the commandments of those who entered into the new covenant in the land of Damascus; to set apart the sacred dues as they are defined; and that a man should love his neighbor as himself, and sustain the poor and needy and the proselyte, and to seek each the welfare of the other; and that no man transgress the prohibited degrees, but guard against fornication according to the rule; and that a man should reprove his brother according to the commandment, and not bear a grudge from day to day; and to separate from all forms of uncleanness according to their several prescriptions; and that a man should not defile his holy spirit, even as God separated for them (sc. unclean from clean). All who walk in these precepts in perfection of holiness, according to all the foundations of the covenant of God,[21] have the assurance that they shall live a thousand generations.
Early in the history of the sect a serious defection occurred. Men who entered among the first into the covenant incurred guilt, like their forefathers, by following their sinful inclinations; they forsook the covenant of God and preferred their own will, and went about after the stubbornness of their heart, every man doing as he pleased (3 10 ff.); the men who entered into the new covenant in the land of Damascus went back and proved false, and turned aside from the well of living waters (19 33 f.). Their names were struck out of the registers of the sect, as were those of such as fell away in later times.
We can readily imagine that many found the rule of the sect too strict and the discipline by which it was enforced too severe. Our texts, however, speak not of such occasional and individual lapses, but of the repudiation of the covenant by numbers at one time. It seems that another leader had arisen, of very different temper from the founder, who drew away many after him. In the eyes of those who remained steadfast in the faith, the new teacher was naturally a false prophet, a kind of antichrist. He is called the liar (“the man of lies,” 20 15), the scoffer (1 14); his adherents are scoffers,[22] who uttered error about the righteous [pg 340] statutes, and spurned the covenant and plighted faith which they established in the land of Damascus, that is to say, the new covenant. They and their families shall have no portion in the house of the law (20 10 ff.). For their unfaithfulness they were delivered to the sword (3 10 ff.), until of all the men of war who went with the liar none was left (20 14 ff.).[23] This came to pass about forty years after the death of the unique teacher (l.c.). If the emigration to Damascus occurred under Antiochus Epiphanes,[24] the end of the episode of the false prophet would fall about the beginning of the first century b.c., and we should have at least an upper limit for the writing of the book. The passion which every mention of this defection arouses suggests that it was fresh in memory, and would incline us to date the writing not very long after the time indicated. It should be observed, however, that the sentence which counts forty years from the death of the unrivalled teacher to the end of the liar's army sits loose in the context, and may be a gloss, in which case the book might be some decades older.
With the remnant who remained faithful through the great defection “God confirmed his covenant with Israel forever, revealing to them the secret of things in which all Israel was in error, his holy Sabbaths and his glorious festivals and his righteous testimonies and his true ways and the pleasure of his will, things which if a man do he shall live by them. He opened a way before them, and they dug a well for copious waters.” “In the abundance of his wonderful grace he atoned for their guilt and forgave their transgression, and built for them a sure house in Israel, the like of which did not arise in times past nor until now” (3 12-20). The prediction of the sure house (1 Sam. 2 35) seems to be fulfilled in the stability of the sect itself, or perhaps, with closer adherence to the prophecy, in that of its faithful priesthood.
So much may be gathered from the book about the origin and history of the sect. We turn now to its expectation. As a teacher of righteousness, an anointed one (priest), was the founder of the sect, so in the last times a teacher of righteousness, an [pg 341] anointed one, shall appear (6 10 f.). Those who proved faithless to the covenant are cut off from the community, “from the time when the unique teacher was taken away until the anointed one from Aaron and Israel shall arise” (19 35-20 1), that is, during the whole of the present dispensation. Dr. Schechter regards the anointed one who is to appear in the future as the founder of the sect redivivus: the present dispensation “seems to be the period intervening between the first appearance of the Teacher of Righteousness (p. 1, l. 11) (the founder of the Sect), who was gathered in or died,[25] and the second appearance of the Teacher of Righteousness who is to rise in ‘the end of the days’ (p. 6, l. 11). Moreover, the Only Teacher, or Teacher of Righteousness, is identical with the Messiah, or the Anointed one from Aaron and Israel, whose advent is expected by the Sect.”[26] The texts, however, say nothing of the disappearance, or a second appearance, or reappearance, or return of the founder; nor do the words “until the teacher of righteousness shall arise in the last days,” “until the anointed shall arise from Aaron and Israel,” mean that he shall rise from the dead, as Dr. Schechter interprets them.[27] The Messiah whose advent the sect expects at the end of the present period of history is, as in the older parts of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, a priest; and the function of the priest-messiah is not, as in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to mediate between man and God, but to instruct men in righteousness, to guide them in the way of God's heart. That the founder of the sect also was both priest and teacher is by no means sufficient to establish the identity of the two figures. It was the office of the priest to teach Israel the law, “all the statutes which the Lord hath spoken unto them through Moses” (Lev. 10 11; cf. Deut. 33 10); “the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek [pg 342] the law at his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts” (Mal. 2 7). Ezra is the type of a priest who had not only prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, but to teach in Israel statutes and judgments (Ezra 7 10); he was, according to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the restorer of Judaism. It was a departure from the ideal of the law itself that, when the priesthood showed itself unworthy of its calling, the teaching function was assumed by lay scribes, and even in later times there were many priestly teachers among the Scribes and among the Doctors. That our sect looks back to one such as its founder, and forward to another as the great teacher of the Messianic age, is in no way surprising. If the author had meant what Dr. Schechter thinks, it is fair to assume that he would have said it unmistakably; for the identity of the expected Messiah with the dead founder, if it was part of the belief of the sect, would of necessity be a singular and significant part of it.[28]
The coming judgment of God is represented rather as a judgment on the faithless members of the sect, including those who have seceded from it or been expelled, than in its more general aspects. The long eschatological passage in B (20 15 to the end) is illegible in spots near the beginning, but the general tenor is clear:
In that consummation the anger of God will be inflamed against Israel, as he said, “There is no king and no prince, and no judge and none that reproves in righteousness” (cf. Hos. 3 4). Those who turn from the transgression [of Jacob][29] and keep the covenant of God will then confer with one another; their footsteps will be firm in the way of God (and the prophecy will be fulfilled which says), “And God hearkened to their words and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him for those that fear God and think on his name” (Mal. 3 16), until deliverance and righteousness emerge for those that fear God, “and ye shall return and see the difference between righteous and wicked, and between a servant of God and one who serves him not” (Mal. 3 18). And he shows favor to those that love him and keep his commandments, for a thousand generations....[30]