‘jewish doctrine takes three forms’ 151
material from both the Sabbath law in the Damascus Document and the
penal code in the Community Rule suggest strongly that the two groups
were connected in some way.^68
Both groups envisaged authority as lying in the hands of priests. So,
for instance, a priest would recite the blessing for each group of them
gathered for a communal meal, and ‘where the ten are, there shall never
be lacking a priest learned in the Book of Meditation, they shall all be
ruled by him’ (although, according to the Damascus Document, one of
the Levites could replace a priest if he is more experienced). For both
groups, an official described as the ‘Guardian’ was in charge of admit-
ting neophytes, and of both instructing and examining them: ‘He shall
love them as a father loves his children, and shall carry them in all their
distress like a shepherd his sheep.’ In both groups, initiation into the sect
was marked by an oath for entry into the covenant, and there were
yearly meetings to decide whether the behaviour of each individual
required that his position within the community be altered. It has been
suggested that both communities celebrated this annual covenant cere-
mony on Shavuot, since we have seen that the Therapeutae gave special
prominence to this day. The book of Jubilees, of which a number of
fragments have been found at Qumran, considers Shavuot the most
important of the festivals because renewing the covenant between God
and Israel was a central part of its observance, and asserts that it had
fulfilled this function since the time of Noah, even before Moses.^69
Among the other scrolls found at Qumran which are likely to have
been composed by or for one or other of the sectarian communities are
the War Scroll, which describes the symbolic struggle between the Sons
of Light and the Sons of Darkness, in which the sectarians imagine
themselves fighting a series of stylized battles until God will destroy
Belial and his kingdom, and probably the Temple Scroll. The Temple
Scroll is a very long text dealing with biblical law mostly relating to the
Temple, sacrifices and festivals, but also law courts, purity regulations,
vows and many other topics. It presents the harmonization of different
biblical texts as if it was a new revelation spoken by God in the first
person: ‘Justice and justice alone shall you pursue that you may live and
come to inherit the land that I give you to inhabit for all days.’ Frequent
reference to Belial in the moving Thanksgiving Hymns, which are simi-
lar to the biblical Psalms, suggest a sectarian origin. But for many other
scrolls it is impossible to ascertain whether they are sectarian or not.^70
Of the distinctive doctrines of these sectarians, most significant were
their notions of a new covenant and of the role in their history of a