“Zadokites” in whose tenets also he recognizes resemblances to those of
our sect. Kirkisani, a Karaite author of the tenth century,(87) says:
“Zadok was the first who exposed the Rabbanites and contradicted them
publicly. He revealed a part of the truth, and composed books [a book] in
which he frequently denounced the Rabbanites and criticised them. But he
adduced no proof for anything he said, merely saying it by way of
statement, except in one thing, namely, in his prohibition against
marrying the daughter of the brother and the daughter of the sister. For
he adduced as proof their being analogous to the paternal and maternal
aunt.”(88)
This is a matter about which our sectaries are especially fierce in their
denunciations of the laxity of the orthodox. The argument they employ is
the same which Kirkisani attributes to Zadok. It is, however, the obvious
argument, if the principle of analogy be admitted in the interpretation of
the law; it is common in the Karaite books, and is ascribed to the
Samaritans also.(89) Kirkisani also says that the Zadokites absolutely
forbade divorce, which the Scripture permitted, agreeing in this with the
Christians and with the Isawites, whose founders, Jesus and Obadiah of
Ispahan,(90) had likewise forbidden it. We are not told expressly that our
sect prohibited divorce, but their prohibition of remarriage during the
life of the divorced wife would have the same effect. Finally, Kirkisani
says that the Zadokites fixed all the months at thirty days each,(91) and
that they did not count the Sabbath among the seven days of the
celebration of the Passover and the Tabernacles, making the feast consist
of seven days exclusive of the Sabbath. Substantially the same statements
are made about the Zadokites by another Karaite author, Hadassi, who
flourished in the middle of the twelfth century, and perhaps derived his
information from Kirkisani.
What the “Zadokite” writings really were to which these authors refer is
not known. It is certain, however, that both the Karaites and their
opponents took them to be Sadducean works. In the passage about Zadok,
part of which Dr. Schechter quotes (see above), Kirkisani says: “After the
appearance of the Rabbanites (the first of whom was Simeon the Just), the
Sadducees appeared; their leaders were Zadok and Boëthus.... Zadok was the
first who exposed the Rabbanites,” etc.(92) Zadok’s disclosure of a part
of truth was followed by the full discovery of the truth about the laws by
Anan, the founder of the Karaites. Not only do the opponents of the
Karaites stigmatize Anan and his followers as the remnants of the
disciples of Zadok and Boëthus, but the older Karaites expressly claim
this origin. Thus Joseph al-Baṣir (first half of the eleventh century)
says that, in the times of the second temple, the Rabbanites, who were
then called Pharisees, had the upper hand, while the Karaites, then known
as Sadducees, were less influential.(93) The Karaite author of an
anonymous commentary on Exodus preserved in manuscript in St.
Petersburg(94) polemizes against a disciple of Saadia, the great _Malleus
Karaeorum_, about the proper way of determining the beginning of the
months (and consequently the dates of the feasts), which the Rabbanites
fixed by calculation of the conjunctions, while the Karaites depended on
observation of the visible new moon. The ancients, he says, required
evidence of the appearance of the new moon.(95) Saadia, who mistakenly
assumed that the beginning of the month had been determined astronomically
from remote antiquity—the calendar was, in fact, of Sinaitic
origin(96)—asserted that the taking of testimony about the appearance of
the moon was an innovation occasioned by the contention of Zadok and
Boëthus that the law required the beginning of the month to be determined
by actual observation; witnesses were heard only to prove that observation
confirmed the calculation. To this the author replies: “The book of the
Zadokites (Sadducees) is well known, and there is no such thing in it as
that man (Saadia) avers. In the book of Zadok are various things in which
he dissents from the Rabbanites of the second temple with regard to
sacrifices and other matters, but there is not a syllable of what the
Fayyumite (Saadia) says.”(97) Saadia himself appears not to have
questioned the authenticity of the writings that went under the name of
Zadok, with which he seems to have been acquainted, directly or
indirectly, for in a passage quoted by Yefet ben ’Ali he says that Zadok
had proved from the one hundred and fifty days in the story of the flood
just the opposite of what the Karaites try to prove from them.(98)
Zadokite books thus meant, for all those from whom our information comes,
Sadducean books; and so, in the sense that, whatever their age and origin,
they contained substantially Sadducean teachings, most modern scholars,
also, have understood the name.
The possibility that Sadducean writings from the beginning of the
Christian era had survived to the Middle Ages cannot well be denied,
especially in view of the preservation of the book of the unknown sect
that forms the subject of our present study in copies as late as the tenth
or eleventh century; and even if the book which the Karaites took for
Sadducean was erroneously attributed to that sect, there is no sufficient
ground for identifying it with the texts in our hands or for ascribing it
to our sect. A thirty-day month, and the prohibition of divorce and of
marriage with a niece, are much too slender a foundation to support so
large an inference, and it is hardly legitimate to argue that if we had
the entire book, of which only a part—or, according to Dr. Schechter,
excerpts—is preserved, we might find other and more significant
agreements.
Dr. Schechter has also remarked certain coincidences between the tenets of
our sect and those of the Falashas, or Abyssinian Jews, whom, with Beer,
he is disposed to connect in some way with the Dositheans. Their Sabbath
laws resemble those in the Jubilees and in the texts before us; they also
prohibit marriage with a niece; they have a tradition that the Pentateuch
was brought to Abyssinia by Azariah, the son of Zadok (1 Kings 4 2);
certain features of their calendar may possibly be related to that of the
Zadokites as described by Kirkisani. Here, again, the correspondences are
not numerous or distinctive enough to establish an historical connection.
Putting together these scattered indicia, Dr. Schechter arrives at a
theory of the history and relations of the sect which must be given in his
own words:—
We may, then, formulate our hypothesis that our text is
constituted of fragments forming extracts from a Zadok book, known
to us chiefly from the writings of Kirkisani. The Sect which it
represented, did not however pass for any length of time under the
name of Zadokites, but was soon in some way amalgamated with and
perhaps also absorbed by the Dosithean Sect, and made more
proselytes among the Samaritans than among the Jews, with which
former sect it had many points of similarity. In the course of
time, however, the Dosithean Sect also disappeared, and we have
only some traces left of them in the lingering sect of the
Falashas, with whom they probably came into close contact at an
early period of their (the Falashas’) existence, and to whom they
handed down a good many of their practices. The only real
difficulty in the way of this hypothesis is, that according to our
Text the Sect had its original seat in Damascus, north of
Palestine, and it is difficult to see how they reached the
Dositheans, and subsequently the Falashas, who had their main
seats in the south of Palestine, or Egypt. But this could be
explained by assuming special missionary efforts on the part of
the Zadokites by sending their emissaries to Egypt, a country
which was especially favourable to such an enterprise because of
the existence of the Onias Temple there. The severance of the
Egyptian Jews from the Palestinian influence (though they did not
entirely give up their loyalty to the Jerusalem Sanctuary),
prepared the ground for the doctrines of such a Sect as the
Zadokites in which all allegiance to Judah and Jerusalem was
rejected, and in which the descendants of the House of Zadok (of
whom indeed Onias himself was one) represented both the Priest and
the Messiah.
The evidence adduced in support of this ingenious hypothesis has already
been examined in detail, and the results need only be summarized here:
There is nothing in the book before us to warrant classing the men who
made the new covenant in the land of Damascus as a Zadokite sect;(99)
neither the external nor the internal evidence suffices to identify the
work quoted by Kirkisani as Zadokite (by which he and all the rest
understood Sadducean) with the book before us; the connection of the sect
with the Dositheans rests in great part on misunderstanding of the
testimonies about the Dositheans—misunderstandings, it is fair to say,
which are not all original with Dr. Schechter,—in part upon points of
resemblance which are not distinctive enough to prove anything. Of the
peculiar organization of our sect, which would be conclusive, there is no
trace anywhere.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
A much more sensational hypothesis was broached by Mr. G. Margoliouth in
the _Athenaeum_ for November 26, 1910, under the title, “The Sadducean
Christians of Damascus.” He takes “the root” which God caused to spring
from Israel and Aaron (1 7) for the same person who is subsequently called
the Anointed one (Messiah), and distinguishes this figure from the Teacher
of Righteousness, also called the Anointed one, who appeared twenty years
later. “Both these Messiahs were dead when the document was composed, but
they were both expected to reappear in the latter days.”
The first of them, the Messiah descended from Aaron and Israel, in
consequence of whose work “they meditated over their sin, and knew that
they were guilty men,” is John the Baptist. John’s father was a priest,
and though his mother also is said to have been of priestly descent, “this
need not stand in the way of believing that there was a strain of
non-priestly Israelite blood in the family.” The Sadducees would naturally
prefer a priestly Messiah to a Davidic one, and, when John won the
recognition of the people as a prophet sent by God, it would not be
strange if a priestly party acclaimed him as in some sense a Messiah, or
anointed leader of the nation.
The other Messiah, the Teacher of Righteousness, must then be Jesus. That
he appeared twenty years after John, so far from being an argument against
this identification, would relieve the difficulty of trying to crowd
John’s whole history into little more than a year. “It is surely not
necessary to defend the Lucan tradition on this point at all hazards, and
it seems quite likely that the newly discovered document has at last given
us the right perspective of events.”
If these identifications are correct, the “man of scoffing,” or
Belial,(100) who is sent to pervert the nation and turn it from the law,
can be no other than the Apostle Paul, and it is noted for confirmation
that “the period here assigned to his activity and that of his immediate
following is about forty years, a space of time not far removed from the
result of recent critical computation.”
The New Covenant so often referred to in the texts is clearly to be
connected with the identical conception and expression in the New
Testament, nor does it seem to be accidental that the Teacher of
Righteousness is several times spoken of as the “only” or “unique” one.
Mr. Margoliouth presents his complete hypothesis as follows:—
The natural and apparently inevitable conclusion of the whole
matter, therefore, is that we have here to deal with a primitive
Judaeo-Christian body of people which consisted of priests and
Levites belonging to the Boëthusian section of the Sadducean
party,(101) fortified—as the document shows—by a considerable
Israelitish lay element, besides a real or contemplated admixture
of proselytes. They acknowledged, as we have seen, John the
Baptist, as a Messiah of the family of Aaron, and they also
believed in Jesus as a kind of second (or, perhaps, as
pre-eminent) Messiah whose special function it was to be a
“Teacher of Righteousness.” Paul they abhorred; and they strove
with all their might to combine the full observance of the Mosaic
Law, as they understood it, with the principles of the “new
covenant,” again as they understood it. On the destruction of the
Temple by Titus, finding that it would not serve any good purpose
to linger in Judaea, they determined to migrate to Damascus,(102)
intending to establish their central organization in that city,
and to found communities of the sect in different parts of the
neighboring country. It was at this juncture that the manifesto,
bearing as it does unmistakable marks of personal touch, was
composed by a leader of the movement.
No scholar who has made an independent study of the texts published by Dr.
Schechter can have failed to consider the question whether these
schismatics, with their “unique teacher,”(103) their “new covenant,” their
“Supervisor,” whose name and functions might be compared with those of a
bishop ἐπίσκοπος, their loyalty to their dead leader, God’s Anointed one
(Messiah), who made them know his holy spirit, and their expectation of an
Anointed one in the last times, their hostility to the Pharisees, can have
been a Jewish Christian sect.
The more closely the documents are examined, however, the less tenable
this conjecture appears. One feature of the sectarian eschatology which,
if established, would afford the most striking coincidence with early
Christian belief, namely, that the Messiah who died in the early days of
the sect is to “reappear” (Margoliouth), or “rise again” (Schechter), has
no support whatever in the text.(104) The “new covenant” in the land of
Damascus is plainly the obligation by which the members of the sect bind
themselves to the organization, with its peculiar interpretations of the
law and its distinctive observances. Neither in the terms of the covenant
nor in the law itself is there anything that suggests Christian origin or
influence. That “a man should love his neighbor as himself” is not
peculiarly or even preëminently a Christian precept. The Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs reiterate it; by the most orthodox rabbis it was
recognized as the most comprehensive commandment in the law.
The things which the sect esteems of vital importance lie wholly in the
sphere of the law; polemic zeal for a code which is at every point more
rigorous than that of the Pharisees is the salient characteristic of both
parts of the book. The moral precepts are the commonplaces of Judaism
narrowed to a sectarian horizon.(105) The judgment of God is similarly
circumscribed. It is not a judgment of the world or of the Jewish people,
but of those who reject and controvert the legal interpretation of the
sect, and of those who have fallen away from it.
The code of law which is the constituent principle of the sect and the
reason for its existence was given it by its founder, the Teacher of
Righteousness. This unique teacher was not a prophetic reformer, but “the
interpreter of the law who came to Damascus,” “the legislator.” The
statutes he decreed are final; the sect “shall receive no others until the
teacher of righteousness shall arise in the last times.”
Mr. Margoliouth thinks that the “teacher of righteousness” to whom the
sect attributed its institutions and laws was Jesus. The statement of this
conjecture is its refutation. The rôle of a legislator is the last which
the character and teaching of Jesus in the Gospels would suggest even to a
sect in search of a founder. That he, whose disregard for the Pharisaic
rules of Sabbath observance repeatedly got him into trouble, should,
within a generation after his death, have been metamorphosed into the
author of the sabbatical code in our texts, which out-pharisees the
Pharisees at every point, surpasses ordinary powers of imagination. The
Christian Jews of the first century in Palestine, so far as we know
anything about them, conformed in the matter of observance to the
authority of the scribes and Pharisees, and alleged the express command of
Jesus for this practice (Matt. 23 2). Early Christian heresies sometimes
exhibit ascetic features reminding us of the Essenes; but none of
ultra-legalistic tendency is known.
As our sect is very zealous for things which have no connection with
Christianity, so on the other hand the texts disclose no trace of specific
Christian beliefs or conceptions. For the Christian Jews of the first
century, the belief that Jesus, who had been crucified under Pontius
Pilate, was the Messiah of prophecy, that he had risen from the dead and
ascended to heaven, whence he was presently to come in might and majesty,
according to the vision of Daniel, to usher in the new era, was the pith
and substance of their faith, the “heresy” by which they were separated
from their countrymen, the focus of their polemic and apologetic in
controversies with those who rejected their Messiah. It is impossible to
imagine a writing as long as this, and imbued as strongly as this with a
controversial spirit, proceeding from any Christian sect, in which there
should not be so much as an allusion to any of these things; or that a
sect which put John the Baptist in so high a place should not make
something of baptism in the admission of members.
Apart from these general considerations, Mr. Margoliouth’s identifications
rest upon a palpable misinterpretation. On page 1 we read: “But because
God remembered the covenant with the forefathers, he left Israel a
remnant, and did not suffer them to be exterminated. And at the end of
wrath ... he visited them and caused to spring up from Israel and Aaron a
root of his planting _to inherit his land and to prosper on the good
things of his earth_.” The italicized clauses prove beyond question that
the “root” is not an individual, but is a collective designation for the
first generation of the sect.(106) The parallel passage on p. 5 says
explicitly: “God remembered the covenant with the forefathers, and he
raised up from Aaron men of insight and from Israel wise men, and he heard
them, and they dug the well.” “The well is the law, and they who dug it
are the exiles of Israel who migrated to Judah and sojourned in the land
of Damascus.” In the face of this perfectly plain meaning of the passage
Mr. Margoliouth takes “the root” for the person designated in other places
as “the Anointed from Aaron and Israel,” who led the people “to recognize
their wickedness and know that they were guilty men.”(107) In this first
Messiah he recognizes John the Baptist, and, consequently, in the Teacher
of Righteousness who came after him, Jesus. The point of correspondence is
the relation between the forerunner and his successor. The text, however,
as I have just showed, says nothing of a precursor of the teacher of
righteousness; on the contrary, it was this teacher who first brought
light to the generation which in the consciousness of its sin was groping
like the blind, and guided them in the way of God’s heart.(108)
That by the “man of scoffing” the Apostle Paul is meant is for Mr.
Margoliouth a corollary of the preceding identifications, and falls with
them. The enemies of Paul were doubtless capable of calling him all sorts
of hard names, but there is nothing in the epithets “scorner” and “liar,”
or in the doings attributed to this figure, which fits Paul better than
any other false teacher and sower of discord, while the reference to the
fate of the men of war who followed the “man of lies” seems quite
inapplicable to Paul.(109)
That we should be unable to identify the Covenanters of Damascus with any
sect previously known is not surprising. The three or four centuries in
the middle of which the Christian era falls were prolific in sects and
heresies of many complexions, as were the centuries following the rise of
Islam. Through Philo, Josephus, the church Fathers, and the Talmud, we are
acquainted with some of them; but it is probable that there were many
others of which no reports have reached us. If we cannot, out of the
collection at our disposal, put a label on our Covenanters, we may console
ourselves with the reflection that here we know one Jewish sect from its
own monuments, and that the texts in our hands, mutilated as they are,
suffice to give us a much clearer notion of its peculiarities than we get
of most of the other sects from the descriptions which have come down to
us.
Its affinities with various antipharisaic or antirabbinical parties, such
as the Samaritans, the Sadducees, and, in later times, the Karaites, is
obvious. It shared with all these a zeal for the letter and the literal
interpretation, and a disposition to extend the law by analogy of
principle, as a result of which their rules were in general much stricter
than those of the Rabbis, who possessed in the theory of tradition and in
their methods of exegesis the means of adapting the law to changed
conditions, and who were also more disposed to give the precedence to the
great principles of humanity in the law over its particular prescriptions
when the two seemed to conflict. The organization of the sect, on the
other hand, has no parallel within our knowledge. In view of the use of
the name “camps” for the local communities, and the references to the
“mustering” of the members, the “trumpets of the congregation,” and the
like, it may be surmised that the organization of Israel in the wilderness
suggested the plan, and that the Supervisors were meant to correspond to
the chiefs of the tribes (for instance, Num. 1 10), each having authority
over a separate camp.
The sect seems to have perpetuated itself for a considerable time,
otherwise this book would hardly have been preserved. It may perhaps be
conjectured that it survived long enough to be gathered, along with
numerous younger sects, into the capacious bosom of Karaism, of which it
was in various points a precursor. Such an hypothesis would explain how it
came about that copies of the book were made in the tenth century and
later, we should then suppose by Karaite scribes.(110)
Dr. Schechter has laid all students of Judaism under new obligations by
the discovery and publication of these texts. They will join with their
congratulations the hope that he may find yet other treasures among the
accumulations of the Genizah.
FOOTNOTES
1 Documents of Jewish Sectaries. Volume I. Fragments of a Zadokite
Work. Edited, with Translation, Introduction, and Notes, by S.
Schechter. Cambridge University Press. 1910.
2 It may be added that the quotations are singularly inexact.
3 In my translation I have sometimes thought it possible to adhere to
the text where Dr. Schechter has preferred a conjectural emendation.
4 That is, probably, against the legitimate high priest of the time
(perhaps Onias).—The rendering “_by_ his Anointed” is grammatically
admissible, but would be unintelligible in this context.
5 It would be possible to render “the penitents of Israel.”
6 The four or five words which follow are unintelligible.
7 The references are to page and line of the Hebrew text.
8 Others sought refuge in Egypt; the temple of Onias at Leontopolis
had its origin in the same circumstances.
9 So they understood the words translated in the English version “the
cruel venom of asps.”
10 See 2 Macc. 4 16: “By reason of which (sc. their predilection for
Greek ways) a dire calamity befel them, and those for whose customs
they displayed such zeal and whom they wanted to imitate in
everything became their enemies and avengers.” Assumption of Moses,
5 1: “When the times of retribution shall draw near, and vengeance
arises through kings who share their guilt and punish them,” etc.,
describes the same situation.
11 Cf. “the whole race of the elect root,” Enoch 93 8.
12 See Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes (3 ed.), vol. iii. p.
189.