150 A History of Judaism
to his companion with obstinacy, or has addressed him impatiently, going
so far as to take no account of the dignity of his fellow by disobeying the
order of a brother inscribed before him, he has taken the law into his own
hand; therefore he shall do penance for one year [and shall be excluded].^66
It is not possible fully to reconcile this lifestyle with the rather differ-
ent communal life attested in the so- called Damascus Document, of
which fragments were found in three of the Qumran caves. This docu-
ment was already known before 1947 from two incomplete medieval
copies of the tenth and twelfth centuries discovered in 1896– 7 in the
genizah (store- house) of a medieval synagogue in Cairo (on which more
in Chapter 9). The rule book, which gets its name from its frequent ref-
erences to ‘the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus’, lays down
instructions for members of a community evidently involved in the
wider life of Israel, including (for instance) rules ‘concerning the oath of
a woman’, laws to do with property,^ treatment of manservants and
maidservants, sexual relations between a man and a woman, and rela-
tions with gentiles: ‘No man shall stretch out his hand to shed the blood
of a Gentile for the sake of riches and gain. Nor shall he carry off any-
thing of theirs, lest they blaspheme, unless so advised by the company of
Israel. No man shall sell clean beasts or birds to the Gentiles lest they
offer them in sacrifice. He shall refuse, with all his power, to sell them
anything from his granary or wine- press, and he shall not sell them his
manservant or maidservant inasmuch as they have been brought by him
into the Covenant of Abraham.’ It is taken for granted that members of
the community might engage in commerce albeit under controlled con-
ditions: ‘No man shall form any association for buying and selling
without informing the Guardian of the camp.’^67
The fragments of the Damascus Document found in Cave 4 at Qum-
ran include rules about relations with women, so there is no reason to
suspect these passages in the Cairo copies to be medieval additions to
the original documents: ‘Whoever has approached his wife not accord-
ing to the rules, fornicating, he shall leave and shall not return again. (If
he has murmured) against the Fathers he shall leave and shall not return.
(But if he has murmured) against the Mothers, he shall do penance for
ten days.’ As we shall see below, some relationship between the group
which lived by this Rule and those who lived according to the Com-
munity Rule is suggested by their allusions to distinctive characters in a
shared sectarian history. The precise nature of their relationship is
beyond recall, but twelve fragments of a manuscript which included