The Covenanters of Damascus; A Hitherto Unknown Jewish Sect

by George Foot Moore

Oaths are to be taken only by the covenant and the curses of the covenant, that is, the vows by which the members of the sect bind themselves, on their admission to it, to live in conformity with its rule and submit to the authority of those set over them, [pg 348] and the curses invoked on such as violate these obligations.[44] Oaths by God, whether under the name Aleph Lamed (El or Elohim) or Aleph Daleth (Adonai) are prohibited;[45] nor is it permissible to mention in the oath the law of Moses; the formula of the oath is strictly sectarian (15 1 ff.).[46] But, though the name of God is not used, “if a man swear and transgress the oath, he profanes the name” (15 3). Obligations voluntarily assumed under oath (vows) are to be fulfilled to the letter; neither redemption nor annulment seems to be allowed, unless to carry out the vow would be a transgression of the covenant.

Another point in which the sect is at variance with the great body of the Jews is the calendar. They represent the faithful remnant to whom God revealed the mysteries about which all Israel went astray, his holy sabbaths and his glorious festivals, and his righteous testimonies, and his true ways (3 12 ff.). The point of this appears when it is compared with Jubilees 1 14: “They will forget my law and all my commandments and all my judgments, and will go astray as to new moons and sabbaths and festivals and jubilees and ordinances” (cf. 6 34 ff., 23 19). The texts before us do not explain what the peculiarities of the sectarian calendar were, but inasmuch as the Book of Jubilees, under the title “The Book of the Division of the Times by their Jubilees and their Sabbatical Years,” is cited as an authority for the exact determination of “their ends” (the coming crisis of history), it may be inferred with much probability that our sect had a calendar constructed on principles similar to that of the Jubilees,[47] in which the seasons and festivals were not determined by lunar observations or astronomical tables, as among the Jews generally, but had a fixed place in a solar year. Such upsetting of the calendar is branded as heresy in Midrash Tehillim on Ps. 28 5: “They do not regard the work of the Lord, [pg 349] nor the operation of his hands.... ‘The operation of his hands’ means the new moons; as it is said, ‘God made the two great lights,’ and it is written, ‘He made the moon for festival seasons.’[48] These are the heretics who do not calculate (by the moon) the festival seasons and the equinoxes. ‘He will tear them down and not build them up.’ He will tear them down, in this world, and not build them up, in the world to come.” Perhaps the Boëthusians, who hired false witnesses to deceive the authorities about the appearance of the new moon, were not merely animated by a desire to harass the rabbis, but were partisans of some such calendar reform.

The organization of the sect furnished it an effective means of enforcing its rules by discipline. This organization is so peculiar that it must be described in some detail. Like the normal Jewish community, it consists of three classes, priests, levites, and Israelites, to whom as a fourth class may be added proselytes. In this order they are mustered and inscribed in the rolls of the camp. In some sense all the members of the sect are priests. Ezekiel 44 15 is quoted and explained: “ ‘The priests and the levites and the sons of Zadok who kept the charge of his sanctuary’ [sic]. The priests are the exiles of Israel who migrated from the land of Judah and [the levites are][49] those who attached themselves to them; and the sons of Zadok are the chosen ones of Israel, men designated by name, who arose in the last days.” Allegory apart, it appears that the priests were of the Zadokite line, but this legitimacy is assumed, not emphasized. Priests and levites formed part of every court of ten judges (see below, p. [351]); and in every company of ten Israelites (the quorum of a religious assembly), a priest, well versed in the Book of Institutes,[50] must be present, to whose words all must conform. If the priest does not possess the requisite qualifications, and a competent levite is at hand, it shall be ordained that all who enter the camp shall go out and come in at his orders. In a [pg 350] case of leprosy the priest shall come and stand in the midst of the camp and the Supervisor shall instruct him in the interpretation of the law; even if the priest be an ignoramus, it is he who must shut up the leper, for the decision belongs to them (13 1 ff.). To a priest is assigned also the duty of taking the census of the commonalty; he who fills this office must be between thirty and sixty years old, versed in the Book of [Institutes and] in all the prescriptions of the law, to pronounce them according to their prescriptions (14 3 ff.).

A much more important place in the organization is filled by an officer whose title (mebaḳḳer) signifies “examiner,” “inspector,” and may perhaps best be rendered “Supervisor.”[51] Every “camp,” or settlement, of the sect had a Supervisor, and over these stood a “Supervisor of all the camps,” who must be a man in the prime of life, between thirty and fifty years of age. To the Supervisor of the individual camp it belonged to instruct the community “in the works of God, and make them familiar with his wonderful deeds of might, and recount before them the things that happened long ago...; and he shall have compassion on them as a father toward his children (13 7 ff.).”[52] We have seen that he has even to instruct the priest in the rules for the diagnosis of leprosy.[53] The admission of new members to the sect is also in his hands; no one is permitted to introduce a man into the [pg 351] congregation without his consent. He examines the candidates in regard to their character and intelligence, their physical strength and courage, and their possessions, and enrolls each in his proper place in the lot[54] of the camp (13 11 ff.). From the following badly defaced lines so much at least can be made out, that the Supervisor had extensive powers of control over the dealings of members of the sect with outsiders in the way of trade. He evidently had also a leading part in the administration of justice and the enforcement of the discipline of the sect, but the state of the text here denies us insight into the particulars.

Courts were constituted of ten members,[55] chosen ad hoc from the congregation, four of the tribe of Levi and Aaron and six Israelites, all well versed in the Book of Institutes and in the Foundations of the Covenant, between twenty-five and sixty years of age. No man of more than sixty shall be a judge, “for on account of the unfaithfulness of mankind his days were shortened, and through the wrath of God on the inhabitants of the earth he bade to remove their understanding before they completed their days (10 4 ff.).” The rules relating to the competence of witnesses are strict. No one may testify against the accused in a capital case who is not a god-fearing man old enough to be included in the census (that is, at least twenty years of age, Exod. 30 14); nor shall a man's testimony be credited against his neighbor who is himself a wilful transgressor of any of the commandments, until he has come to repentance (9 23-10 3). A peculiar provision is made for the case that a single witness (on whose testimony therefore conviction could not be had) sees a capital offence committed. He is to make known the facts to the Supervisor, who records the testimony in writing. If subsequently the offence is committed again in the presence of another witness, the same process is repeated; on a second repetition, the testimony of the three single witnesses combined suffices for conviction (9 16 ff.).[56]

Besides the penalties of the Mosaic law, the sect has a formidable means of discipline in expulsion, or as it is called “separation from the Purity,” which may in some cases be inflicted even on the testimony of one witness (9 21 ff.). Josephus vividly depicts the desperate straits into which those came who, for grave offences, were expelled from the Essene order; being unable to eat food not prepared by members of the order, they were exposed to starvation. This particular consequence would not follow separation from our sect; but the lot of the excommunicated man was evidently hard enough. “When his deeds come to light he is to be expelled from the congregation, as though his lot had never fallen in the midst of the disciples of God; according to his misdeeds men shall bear him in remembrance ... until the day when he returns to take his place in the station of the men of perfect holiness. No man shall have any dealings with him in matters of property or work, for all the saints of the Most High have cursed him” (20 3 ff.); such have no part in the “house of the law”; their names are erased from the rolls of the congregation (20 10 f.). They are not only cut off from the communion of saints in this world, but are doomed to extermination by the hand of Belial (8 1 f., 19 14 f.). One who leads men astray and profanes the Sabbath and the festivals shall not be put to death, but shall be committed to the custody of men;[57] if he is cured of his error, they shall keep him for seven years, and afterwards he may come into the assembly (12 3 ff.). A member of the sect who seduces others to apostasy is more severely dealt with: “A man over whom the spirits of Belial have rule,[58] and who advocates defection (Deut. 13 6), shall be judged according to the law of the necromancer and the wizard” (12 2 f.; cf. Deut. 18 9).[59]

The sect possessed the Jewish Scriptures. The books of the law are “the hut of the King” (i.e. the congregation)—the fallen hut which God had promised to raise up; “the pillar of your images” are the books of the prophets, whose words Israel despised. The founder of the sect, the star out of Jacob, is the [pg 353] interpreter of the law who came to Damascus (7 14 ff.). The authority of the Pentateuch is appealed to in support of the position of the sect in the matter of marriage and divorce; their peculiar statutes and ordinances are the true interpretation and application of the law of God. The prophets are frequently cited, and allusions to passages in the prophets or reminiscences of their phraseology are much more numerous. There are similar reminiscences of the Psalms and of the Proverbs, and perhaps of other books among the Hagiographa. As regards the Old Testament scriptures, therefore, the sect stood on common ground with Palestinian orthodoxy.[60] The formula of citation is peculiar; a quotation is usually introduced by the words “as he said,” rarely “as God said”; or with the name of the sacred author, “as Moses said.” Besides the Biblical books, we have a quotation from Levi—probably the Testament of that Patriarch—introduced by the same phrase as quotations from the Bible; and the reader is referred to the Book of Jubilees by name for an exact computation of the last times. There is nothing to indicate that the authority attributed to these writings was inferior to that of the Hagiographa. The canon of the “Scriptures” was not defined, even in the rabbinical schools, until the second century of our era, and in the sects many books enjoyed high esteem which the orthodox repudiated.[61]

To a different class belong, apparently, the Book of Institutes, and the Foundations of the Covenant, in which the judges must be well versed. To every religious gathering of ten men or more belongs a priest well versed in the Book of Institutes. The title Foundations of the Covenant suggests a writing (or a fixed tradition) dealing with the obligations and duties of members of the sect. The name here rendered Book of Institutes, on the other hand, is obscure,[62] but the fact that a knowledge of it is demanded [pg 354] of the priest and of the judges makes it likely that it contained the “statutes and ordinances” of the sect, its peculiar definitions and interpretations of the law, often referred to as perush; in technical phrase, a collection of sectarian halakoth, such as is preserved in the second part of the texts before us, which seems to be derived from such a legal manual. The objection to committing halakah to writing which was long maintained in the rabbinical schools was not shared by the sects, and would be least likely to exist where the ordinances were not in theory a traditional law handed down from remote antiquity, but were attributed to an individual interpreter, the founder of the sect.

The sect had houses of worship, which a man in a state of uncleanness is forbidden to enter (11 22),[63] but nothing more is said about them, except that when the trumpets of the congregation are blown, the blowing shall follow or precede the service, and not interrupt it. It is a natural surmise that they answered to the synagogues both as places of worship and of religious instruction, such, for example, as the Supervisor is required to give. The name, Beth hishtahawōth, literally, “house of bowing [pg 355] down” (in worship), is peculiar, and may have been chosen to distinguish these sectarian conventicles from the synagogues of regular Judaism, as the English nonconformists of various stripes would not call their meeting-houses churches. It is possible that the prayers of the sect may have been accompanied by genuflections and prostrations such as, though unknown in the synagogue, have formed in all ages and religions a common feature of Oriental worship; but it is also possible that “bowing down” simply stands by metonymy for worship, as is often the case with the corresponding Syriac verb, segad.[64]

Sacrificial worship was also maintained.[65] The City of the Sanctuary was eminently holy; sexual intercourse within its limits is forbidden, “defiling the City of the Sanctuary with their impurity” (beniddatham).[66] To this city, probably, the sacrifices were brought to which there is frequent reference. “No one shall send to the altar burnt offerings or oblation, frankincense or wood, by a man who is unclean with any of the forms of uncleanness; for it is written, the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination, but the prayer of the righteous is an acceptable oblation” (11 18 ff.). On the Sabbath nothing is to be brought upon the altar except the Sabbath burnt offerings—that is, we may suppose, the stated daily burnt offerings with the supplementary Sabbath victims (13 17 f.; see Num. 28 1-10). Votive sacrifices are also mentioned; [pg 356] it is forbidden to vow to the altar anything that has been procured by compulsion; the priest shall refuse to receive such offerings (16 13 f.). There is nothing to indicate where this sanctuary was situated, further than the natural presumption that it was in the region of Damascus, where the sect had established itself. The priests have the precedence of all others in the community; in its registers their names are enrolled in the first rank. Their place in the courts and in the local religious community, and their duties in the examination of lepers, have already been mentioned. Those who officiated at the sanctuary had doubtless their legal toll from private sacrifices of every kind. Lost property for which no owner appears falls to the priests; a man who has appropriated such property shall confess to the priest, and all that he pays in restitution belongs to the priest, besides the ram of the trespass offering (9 13 ff.).