Gabriele Boccaccini's Beyond the Essene Hypothesis set out to identify and demonstrate the chain of transmission for the primary documents of the Qumran community, with a view to placing that community within that time's Jewish sects. Over the Hasmonaean period the book advocates this order of transmission:
In the general scheme of things I agree with it, but in some cases I think it overreached. This project submits a more cautious flowchart for the duration.
Boccaccini, following the majority post-Yadin, shows that the Temple Scroll is based on Jubilees (p. 99-101). He cited Gershon Brin's "Regarding the Connection" p. 108: "which I tell you on this mountain" (11QT 51:6-7) depends on "pay attention to the words I tell you on this mountain" (Jub 1:5=4QJuba 1.12-13), and not directly on any verse in the canonical Scriptures. There are other developments which Boccaccini identifies as shared, such as the festivals, rituals, calendar, and preeminence of Levi over Judah and the other tribes. Finally, the Temple Scroll goes beyond Jubilees in codifying Jub's segregationism into "a detailed and consistent constitution for the present". His first link is a strong one.
Boccaccini is under more pressure with the second link (pp. 104-113). Partly this is the result of the source, by far the most ill-transmitted section of Enoch. First, the Epistle is very fragmentary in Qumran. Moreover, what survives shows that the "complete", Ethiopic version is scrambled: its proper order should be 91:1-10, 92:3-93:10, 91:11-92:2, 93:11-105:3. Boccaccini adds to the mess by claiming that a good portion of its final form - 94:6-104:6 - entered the Epistle at a later date and outside Qumran. He argues that it is not found in Qumran and that it contradicts claims made in the rest of the Epistle (much like the Similitudes of Enoch). I will accept Boccaccini's argument and deal with the Proto-Epistle parts alone.
The Epistle of Enoch is divided into three speeches. The first is essentially a sequel / appendix to the many-decades-earlier Dream Visions (1 Enoch 83-90). The second shares with Jubilees the sentiment that there are chosen people within the "chosen people". It also depends on Jubilees in saying that Enoch "learned from the words of the angels and ... the heavenly tablets", and in that history is predetermined from creation. The Epistle even agrees with Jubilees against Dream Visions: the "plant of righteousness" is preordained and existed throughout all time, and the Torah came from God (93:5 - just try to find a reference to the Torah in 1 Enoch 89:29-33!).
Boccaccini in my view is safe in concluding that the Proto-Epistle depends on Jubilees. For dependence on the Temple Scroll, he cites the Proto-Epistle's prediction of the new Temple and the author's self-identification within Judaism.
Enoch in the Epistle "predicts" that a "house will be built for the Great King (or, the reigning Great One) in glory" following the victory of "the righteous" (91:12-13 = 4QEng IV). The faithful must carry the day with knife and sword, with only spiritual help from God. God will deliver his revelation the "week" after the victors build the temple (92:14), and the Last Judgement will follow on the "week" after that (92:15 onward). The Epistle left unstated that a Temple had been standing for centuries already - during which the Jews (according to "Enoch") had not been righteous. Dream Visions (a primary source of the Epistle) even dared claim the Temple was illegitimate. Perhaps the author of the Epistle was willing to allow that the righteous had already won, in the Maccabean revolt. Whether the approved party had won or not, Enoch was made to speak of a human-built Temple in the succeeding period. A new Temple implies a new design, and the Temple Scroll provides one proposal for such a design.
Also, Boccaccini thinks there is a progression from the Temple Scroll's distinction between righteous and unrighteous Jews, to the Epistle's party of righteous Jews in the midst of the others, of which some happen to be unrighteous.
This was a period of debate over the Temple, which at an extreme put its very necessity to the question. In the last centuries BCE, the lawyers were eclipsing the lawmakers. In the accepted Scriptures, the House of YHWH was of the Early Prophets, starting with 2 Samuel 7. The Torah, in whatever recension, utterly failed to mention the Temple. Pharisees could argue that the Prophets were a step removed. Samaritans ignored the Temple altogether. And the priests had lost much credibility by collaborating with the Persians and, later, the Greeks. Americans would call this a "constitutional crisis".
Some priests rebutted the annoying Scriptures with some of their own, starting with 4Q365 and Jubilees. These two, with 11QT, injected the Temple back into Moses's day as a commandment of God. Dream Visions additionally told the Enochian party that the current Temple was no good. Already the ingredients are in place for the Epistle's call for a new Temple. Just as the Epistle argued for the Temple project for followers of Enochic visions, the Temple Scroll did so for followers of the Mosaic Torah.
Boccaccini is right that the Temple Scroll would have been a perfect source for the Epistle. But the Epistle did not use the Scroll as a source. If the Scroll came out of the Enochian party, as Boccaccini insists, and was already extant, there is no reason the Epistle should have ignored it.
One could go further. The Epistle is directed at the Enochian sectarians, while the Temple Scroll is directed at those who follow the standard Torah because it is "Mosaic". If one assumes that a sectarian would first get his own house in order before attempting to convert others, it would be more likely the Epistle precedes the Temple Scroll!
Also, while there certainly was a progression from a "Moral Majority" to a more centralised (and marginalised) party within Judaism - like the Moral Majority in America - the Temple Scroll and Proto-Epistle are not the documents to prove it. In America, to this day one can find publications (ostensibly Christian or otherwise) which argue for such bromides as monotheistic prayer in schools, on the assumption that Christianity is a righteous, non-threatening, and most importantly mainstream religion. Likewise, one can also point to fundamentalist publications in the 80's that say the majority of the population only feign Christianity, and that only a few will be chosen of the many called.
What Boccaccini needs is a passage where the Epistle cites any of the regulations of the Temple Scroll, or quotes any of its phrases, as the Temple Scroll cited and quoted Jubilees. This would prove dependence. But such a passage doesn't exist, any more than the Temple Scroll cites the Epistle. Frankly, any such dependence is unlikely; their concerns are too different.
There may have been competing Temple Scrolls in the early years; some scholars say that the Scroll has its own redactional history, and other Temple Scrolls have survived in Qumran: 1Q32, 2Q24, 4Q554-555, 5Q15, 11Q18. Demand for a new Temple can only prove demand for the Temple Scroll, not the Scroll's existence.
So the second link reliably takes us only from Jubilees to the Proto-Epistle. At this time the evidence is enough to show that the Temple Scroll must be classed as a contemporary of the Proto-Epistle within that community. It cannot prove a ancestral relationship.
Boccaccini then moves to 4QMMT (pp 113-7). By contrast with the Proto-Epistle, 4QMMT did use the purity rules of the Temple Scroll: Jerusalem is the camp, and the temple the tent of meeting (4QMMT B29-31). It was also shrewd enough to accept the rabbinic claim that the Pentateuch was the core of the Law, while at the same time allegorising it to encompass the Temple. As with the Proto-Epistle (and, implicitly, the Temple Scroll), 4QMMT allows that the sinful age is ending - "this is the end of days" - during which a group has "separated from the rest ... in these matters".
Again, Boccaccini sees the separation of the 4QMMT party as another step in that community's marginalisation. And so it is. But once again, this cannot place it in a linear progression after the Proto-Epistle. 4QMMT is a public announcement of separation, but only in some matters. The Epistle was likewise assuming the mantle of a Plant of Righteousness, but with the divine right to slaughter dissenters. Who's to say which came first?
So far we have been in a fog. Boccaccini takes us onto the other side with the Damascus Document (pp. 119-129) which at least limits when the others could have been written.
The Damascus Document "echo[es] the language of the Temple Scroll and the Halakhic Letter" in calling Jerusalem "the city of the Temple" (CD 12:1-2) and "the camp" (10:23), and in halakhic details. It is at the same time focused on the person of the Teacher of Righteousness, possibly expanding on the vague messianism of the Epistle of Enoch. (In Ethiopic, the Epistle mentions the "Righteous One", which is probably a generalisation of righteous people but may at least be taken as messianic. In Qumran, those portions are unfortunately not among the perserved scraps.)
This is the progression, as far as I can push the sources:
Boccaccini has hit on one important truth through all this: the Enochian party provided witness to its own decline. Therefore each document symbolises a point in its history, whether or not it was actually written at that point. If one were writing a cautionary history of the Enochians and Qumranites, perhaps directed at modern sectarians, that one would not get far without Boccaccini's work. To that end it does not really matter except in rough outline when such-and-such a document was written.
If one needs more detail, on the other hand, it is important to know the limits of our knowledge. Again, Boccaccini provided plenty of primary sources.
Any thoughts? e-mail me :^) zimriel@sbcglobal.net
25 Nov- 1 Dec 2000: I conceived this project when looking into the First Epistle of John in July. At that time I found parallels between 1 John and the Epistle of Enoch. 31 Dec 2002: language cleanup.