Laws, Works, and the End of Days: Rhetorics of Identification, Distinction, and Persuasion in Miqşat Ma'aśeh ha-Torah (Dead Sea Scroll 4QMMT)

Abstract

4QMMT is one of only a few epistles among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It represents the Qumran community's effort to correct impure priestly practice in the Jerusalem Temple, so that when God descends in final judgment at the end of days, his Temple will not be defiled and Israelites will rejoice in their atonement rather than suffer for their wickedness. The authors of 4QMMT create identification by citing scriptural laws that would be commonly agreed upon. Yet they also create distinction by criticizing the Temple priests' incorrect interpretations of more ambiguous laws.

Notes

¹I thank RR reviewers Richard Enos and David Timmerman for extremely helpful revision comments on an earlier draft of this essay. I am also indebted to Rob Short of the University of Alabama at Birmingham for assistance with research and to Fred Putnam of Philadelphia Biblical University for invaluable help with the Hebrew text of 4QMMT.

²The Second Temple period begins in the late sixth century BCE (circa 516) with the reconstruction of the Jerusalem Temple following the Babylonian exile, and it ends with the destruction of the Temple (again) by Roman forces in 70 CE (Hodge x). It is widely accepted that most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were copied or composed between 170 BCE and 68 CE (Hodge 31).

³Cross defines “priestly orthodoxy” as “correct orthodox practice and observance” (25).

⁴Because all the repeated lines in each overlapping copy are nearly identical and because some copies extend beyond the cutoff points of other copies, it is possible, with a certain degree of confidence, to create a composite text, giving readers a more authentic sense of what the Qumran community might have written and read during the Second Temple period. The first editors of the manuscript for the Discoveries in the Judean Desert series (volume X), Qimron and Strugnell, compiled just such a composite text of 4QMMT, and Martínez translates the composite text in The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English. Throughout this essay I refer to Martínez's translation of Qimron and Strugnell's composite text, and the parenthetical line numbers following each citation are those given by Martínez (not Qimron and Strugnell).

⁵Bernstein (30), Schwartz (79), and Eshel (64) agree with this early date of composition, and Schiffman confirms that “with MMT we have clearly returned to the early days of sectarian law” (98). Fernández suggests 50 BCE to 50 CE as alternate dates for the copies but agrees that the original epistle was probably composed around 150 BCE (193).

Paleographic dating uses records of gradual shifts in the conventions of script writing to date the composition of texts. Texts with Hebrew letters showing certain characteristic shapes can be dated quite accurately, often to within a dozen years. However, in the case of 4QMMT, the date arrived at through paleographic analysis is only the date designating when the text was copied. Linguistic analysis tracks historical changes in vocabulary and usage and can be used to date the original text of which only copies survive.

⁶Although most scholars believe that 4QMMT was written (and presumably sent) to an external audience, there are a few who reject this argument. Fraade suggests that 4QMMT was intended for internal or intracommunal use only, and thus it is not a genuine epistle. Høgenhaven, however, represents a more reasonable (and generally more accepted) position: “[T]he presence of an explicit author—the ‘we’-group of the text—and an addressee—a plural ‘you’ in sections B and C and a singular ‘you’ in section C—does place the document within the epistolary genre” (188).

⁷For more on the early history of the Israelites and Judaism, see Kamm's The Israelites: An Introduction, Bright's A History of Israel, and Coogan's edited volume The Oxford History of the Biblical World. I draw much from these sources in my discussion of 4QMMT's rhetorical ecology.