158 A History of Judaism
Unfortunately for them, the legacy of these hopes was negligible. The
settlement site at Qumran was destroyed violently by Roman forces at
some time between 68 and 73 ce and those who hid the scrolls were
unable to retrieve them from their hiding places. It would have been
possible to recreate the Yahad elsewhere if Jews had been so inclined,
but if any such groups survived they left no trace in the rabbinic and
early Christian sources or the archaeological evidence which tell us
about Judaism in the ensuing centuries, apart from the intriguing medi-
eval copies of the Damascus Document which were found in Cairo in
the tenth and twelfth centuries ce.
It is clear that by the first century ce numerous Jewish groups with strik-
ingly different understandings of their shared religious tradition coexisted
in Judaean society. For most Jews, the Jerusalem Temple provided a uni-
fying force, and there can be no doubt that Pharisees and Sadducees
shared in the Temple services both as priests and as lay people despite
their different ideas about fundamental tenets of theology and about
practical issues of how the Temple should be run. This was a society in
which Jews of dramatically different theological complexions argued
and bickered, but ultimately tolerated each other. However, the members
of the sectarian Yahad who treated other Jews with disdain as ‘sinners of
Israel’ must have lived more or less separately from other Jews, and, as
we shall see, at least one variety of Judaism which arose in the first cen-
tury ce was in due course to leave the fold of Judaism altogether.