Texts, Translations, Notes, and Commentary

Abstract

The chapter provides a critical representation of the text(s), based on manuscript comparison and consulting of digital images, an English translation that cleaves to the original Hebrew while rendering it in accessible prose. Critical Notes to both the Hebrew text and its English translation, and a Commentary that seeks to highlight and interconnect the overarching themes and rhetorical strategies of the text, as it might have been communally performed in the intellectual and ritual life of the Qumran community (or communities). Suggestions for Further Reading are incorporated into each section. The Notes, which form the largest part of this chapter, identify and analyze the plenitude of both explicit (citation) and implicit (allusion) scriptural interpretation, both legal and non-legal, as well as convergences and divergences with a panoply of ancient Jewish sources, including, in addition to the Hebrew Bible, other scrolls, other second temple Jewish literature, New Testament, and early rabbinic sources, the last of which is a particular feature of this commentary in comparison to its antecedents (see Ancient Source indices). These cross-references will serve to better understand and appreciate the Damascus Document in its broader historical and cultural contexts. The Comments on each editorial unit seek to frame the text in relation to broader consideration of the identity formation, reinforcement, and transmission of both individuals and communities, of both veteran members and novices. Particular attention is given to the seeming polemical nature of much of the text, as well as its intra-mural educational purposes. The commentary takes seriously the self-designation of the community, through this text (CD [MS B] 20:10, 13), as a studying and practicing community, “the house of the Torah.” Another important feature of the Damascus Document, and hence its commentary, is the different types and functions of human leadership of the community which sees both it leaders and itself as divinely elect and in possession of esoteric wisdom and discernment.