A charitable fund is provided by monthly payment of certain dues by members of the community to the Supervisor. From this fund relief is given by the judges to the poor and needy, to the aged, to the wanderer (?), to such as have fallen into captivity to foreigners, and others (14 12 ff.).
The religious conceptions and beliefs of the sect present little that is peculiar. For God the name El is consistently used, without any epithets. Adonai is mentioned only to forbid its use in oaths. The only other name which occurs is the Most High (once, in the phrase “the saints of the Most High,” that is, the members of the sect). There is repeated reference to the holy spirit: God, through his Anointed, made men know his holy spirit (2 12); the opponents of the sect, by blasphemous speech against the statutes of God's covenant, defiled their holy spirit (5 11);[67] its members are warned not to defile his holy spirit by failing to observe the distinctions of clean and unclean which God has ordained (7 3 f.).
The “Prince of Lights (Urim),” through whom Moses and Aaron arise, is perhaps, as the contrast to Belial suggests, one of the highest angels.[68] The destroying angels execute God's [pg 357] inescapable judgment on those who turned out of the way and despised the statute (2 6). The fall of the Watchers, which is a favorite subject in the apocalyptic literature, is referred to in 2 18. The chief of the evil spirits is Belial: he is “let loose” during the whole of the present dispensation; he lays snares for men and entraps them, especially in the three sins of fornication, unrighteous gain, and the defilement of the sanctuary (4 15 ff.); his spirits rule over men and lead them to apostasy (12 2 f.); he also exterminates the faithless in the day of God's visitation (8 1 f.). Another name for the devil is Mastema (the commoner name in Jubilees), equivalent to Satan, “the adversary.” The angel of Mastema ceases to follow a man who resolves to return to the law of Moses (16 4 f.). According to Jubilees 10 8 f., 11 5, Mastema had permission from God to employ some of his evil spirits to corrupt men and lead them astray.
Concerning the future life we read only that those who hold firmly to the law are “for eternal life,”[69] or, as it is elsewhere expressed, “have the assurance that they shall live a thousand generations.” To a punishment of the wicked after death[70] or to a resurrection of the dead there is no allusion whatever.
The moral teachings of the sect have been frequently touched upon above in speaking of their rules of life. Man is led into sin not only by the snares of Belial, but by his own sinful inclination and adulterous eyes (2 16; seemingly the yeṣer hara' of the rabbis). It was through these that the Watchers fell; by them the generation of the flood sinned, and the sons of Jacob, and their descendants in Egypt and in Canaan, and brought judgment upon themselves (2 14 ff.). We have seen that the sect insisted upon monogamy, and perhaps rejected divorce altogether. Particular emphasis is laid in several places on the commandments, “thou shalt not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people,” “thou shalt reprove thy neighbor and not bear sin because of him” (Lev. 19 17, 18).[71] [pg 358] Thus, at the beginning of the legal part of the book, the delivery of a fellow Israelite to the gentiles so that he is condemned by their law is said to fall under this prohibition, and further, “any man of those who enter into the covenant who brings up against his neighbor a matter not in the nature of a reproof before witnesses, but which he brings up in anger, or tells it to his elders to bring the man into disrepute, he is one that takes vengeance and bears a grudge.” It is forbidden also to exact of another an oath except in the presence of the judges; he who does so transgresses the law which forbids a man to take justice into his own hands. Every one who enters into the covenant pledges himself not only not to rob the poor and make widows his spoil, but to love his neighbor as himself, to seek the welfare of his fellow, and to sustain the poor and needy. As regards the relations of the members of the sect to gentiles, it is forbidden to shed the blood of a gentile or to take aught of their property, “in order to give them no occasion to blaspheme” (12 6 f.), that is, to prevent the profaning of God's name (15 3), a motive frequently urged in similar connection in the rabbinical writings. On the other hand, no man may sell to gentiles clean animals or birds, lest they offer them in sacrifice, nor grain, nor wine—naught of his possessions; nor shall he sell to them his slave or maid servant who have come with him into the covenant of Abraham (12 9 ff.), He may not pass the Sabbath in the neighborhood of gentiles. They are unclean, and garments they may have handled require purification.
No record of a schismatic body such as reveals itself in our texts is preserved in the early catalogues of Jewish heresies, nor have references to it been discovered in rabbinical sources. Like many sects, it exhibits the separatist inclination to outdo the orthodox in zeal for the letter and in strenuousness of practice, and it is not surprising that its interpretations of the law frequently agree with those of other strict-constructionists, such as Samaritans, Sadducees, Karaites; but these coincidences illustrate a common tendency rather than prove historical connection. The [pg 359] relation to the Book of Jubilees is, however, such as to show that there was some affinity between our sect and the circles in which that work originated. Jubilees is cited as authority on the last times; its calendar probably contains the secrets of God's holy sabbaths and glorious festivals about which all Israel was in error; the rules for the observance of the Sabbath in our book accord in many particulars with the injunctions in Jubilees 50 6 ff. (see also 2 26 ff.); and various other resemblances might be pointed out, such as the preference for the unornamented word God (in Jubilees, God, or the Lord), in contrast with the many mouth-filling periphrases in Enoch; the holy spirit in men; the name Mastema for the adversary instead of Satan; Belial who ensnares men, and the spirits of Belial which rule over sinners, besides others to which Dr. Schechter directs attention in his notes. The relation to the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is less clear. The saying attributed to Levi (4 15) is not found in the Testament, and the other resemblances Dr. Schechter has noted are vague or belong to the commonplaces. The place of honor given to Judah in the Testaments, as we have them, is strikingly at variance with the attitude of our sect toward that tribe and its princes. The Levite Messiah of the Testaments is not precisely the same as the “Anointed from Aaron and Israel” in our book. In Jubilees also there are salient features, such as the more developed angelology and the form of the Messianic expectation, which hardly permit us to suppose that the book was a product of our sect, however highly it may have been esteemed by it.
The sect gives especial honor to the sons of Zadok, the ancient priesthood of the temple in Jerusalem (Ezek. 44 15, 2 Chron. 31 10, Sirach 51 12 Heb.); they are the chosen ones of Israel, men designated by name, who arose in the latter times (4 3); it was Zadok who brought to light the Book of the Law which no one had seen since the death of Eleazar and Joshua (5 5). The context of the latter passage would suggest that Zadok the contemporary of David is meant, who after the deposition of Abiathar became Solomon's chief priest.[72] The precedence given [pg 360] to the sons of Zadok may possibly have a side reference to the illegitimate high priests of Seleucid creation, such as Menelaus, though, if this were the intention, we should expect it to be emphasized.
The passages quoted are the only places in the book in which the name Zadok or the sons of Zadok appear, and they are certainly a very slender reason for describing the body which produced the book as a “Zadokite” sect, whatever meaning may be attached to the term. On the contrary, one of the outstanding things in the constitution of the sect is the predominance of the lay element. The Supervisor is a layman; laymen form the majority in every court; the Messiah is the “Anointed from Aaron and Israel.” Whether the external testimony upon which Dr. Schechter relies for justification of the name is more adequate will be considered below.
Zadok and the sons of Zadok suggest the Sadducees,[73] whose name, according to the most probable explanation, designates them as descendants (or followers and partisans) of Zadok. Here again it is a question whether Zadok of David's time is meant, so that the Sadducees were the Zadokite aristocracy of the priesthood, as most modern scholars think, or whether the name of the Sadducee sect is derived from a heresiarch of much later times, as the Jewish legend represents which makes Zadok, from whom the sect descends, a recalcitrant disciple of Antigonus of Socho, about the middle of the second century b.c., contemporary, if we rightly interpret our texts, with the origin of the sect we are studying.