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More recently G. Boccaccini has suggested that the settlement at Qumran represents a
splinter group that grew out of a greater divide in Judaism in the Second Temple period.
According to this view Judaism in the Second Temple period was divided between tem-
ple affiliated Zadokite and dissenting Enochic traditions. Other competing divisions, such
as Tobiad landowners and non-priestly groups more aligned with sapiential world views,
also formed significant opposing factions that allied and diversified throughout the Sec-
ond Temple period.^1355 In this context it is certainly conceivable that different socio-
religious groups lie behind the diverse collections at Qumran and the other sites along the
south-western shore of the Dead Sea. Judaism in the late-Second Temple period is diver-
sified to such an extent under Boccaccini’s model that supposing a single unified group,
wholly aligned with the institution in Jerusalem, to be responsible for such a large and
disparate corpus of manuscripts is more improbable than it is likely. The weight of prob-
ability instead seems to fall on the likelihood that more than one socially and politically
defined group must be responsible for the manuscripts in question.


In this way, the alignment of the Masada Torah scrolls with the MT would indicate that
these scrolls were affiliated with a group that was different from those that concealed the


(^1355) Boccaccini’s assertion is that, upon the return from exile, Judaism was effectively dominated by a
Zadokite line of priests that controlled the authoritative centre of the Jerusalem temple. A group that Boc-
caccini defines as ‘Enochic Judaism,’ initially a non-separatist aristocratic opposition to the Zadokites that
eventually became a more rigidly opposed identity, positioned itself against the authority of the Zadokites
and their powerbase at the Jerusalem temple (see G. Boccaccini, Rabbinic Judaism, 90-102). The subse-
quent rift materialised in the texts as a divergent doctrine on the origins of evil, which was particularly
prominent at Qumran. Boccaccini agrees with Garcia-Martinez that the Qumran library is not the literature
of a single group, but rather a historical collection outlining the development of a narrow group from a
broader socio-religious context (G. Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis: The Parting of the Ways
Between Qumran and Enochic Judaism [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998] 53-67).

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