154 A History of Judaism
chosen ones as an everlasting possession, and has caused them to inherit
the lot of the Holy Ones. He has joined their assembly to the Sons of
Heaven to be a Council of the Community, a foundation of the Building
of Holiness, an eternal Plantation throughout all ages to come.’ Numer-
ous references suggest a belief that there would be more than one
Messiah, both the Messiah of David and the Messiah of Aaron.^73
What distinguished the group more immediately was their use of a
calendar different from that used in the Temple. The survival among the
scrolls (albeit in fragmentary form) of numerous calendars suggests that
the use by the sectarians of a solar calendar required much dedication. It
is probably significant that one such calendar was copied on the same
scroll as the sectarian tractate Miksat Ma’asei haTorah (‘Some Observ-
ances of the Law’), a text generally known nowadays as 4QMMT,
which pontificated on disputed issues of law, not least with regard to pur-
ity and the Jerusalem Temple. It is not however obvious how this different
calendrical system will have affected the relationship of these sectarians
to the Temple. It has often been suggested that members of the Yahad
turned their backs on the Temple and constructed for themselves a new
Judaism in which the life and prayers and sacred meals of the community
took the place of the sacrifices performed by the priests, and that this sep-
aration was reinforced by the sect’s distinctive calendar. But we have seen
that Pharisees and Sadducees shared the Temple despite calendric dis-
agreements, and no text found among the scrolls asserts any link between
the calendar and the decision of the sectarians to separate themselves
from other Jews, even though the Habakkuk commentary does indeed
refer to a time in the past when the (or a) community, or its leader (the
Teacher of Righteousness), broke with a wicked priest, and to a time in
the future when a corrupt priest or priests will suffer for their sins:
This saying concerns the Wicked Priest, inasmuch as he shall be paid the
reward which he himself tendered to the Poor. For ‘Lebanon’ is the Coun-
cil of the Community; and the ‘beasts’ are the simple of Judah who keep
the Law. As he himself plotted the destruction of the Poor, so will God
condemn him to destruction. And as for that which He said, ‘Because of
the blood of the city and the violence done to the land’: interpreted, ‘the
city’ is Jerusalem where the Wicked Priest committed abominable deeds
and defiled the Temple of God. ‘The violence done to the land’: these are
the cities of Judah where he robbed the Poor of their possessions.^74
The community imagined itself as in some sense constituting a sacri-
fice offered to God in atonement for sin, and plenty of sectarian texts