Legacy and Memory: The Teacher of Righteousness in the DSS

Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah Edited by Florentino García Martínez Associate editors Peter W. Flint Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar VOLUME 88 i-xii_CHAZON_f1.indd ii 3/18/2010 2:58:19 PM New Perspectives on Old Texts Proceedings of the Tenth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 9–11 January, 2005 Edited by Esther G. Chazon Betsy Halpern-Amaru In collaboration with Ruth A. Clements LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010 i-xii_CHAZON_f1.indd iii 3/18/2010 2:58:19 PM THE LEGACY OF THE TEACHER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS* Loren T. Stuckenbruck Princeton heological Seminary I. Introductory Questions he present discussion is concerned with the legacy of an individual called the “Teacher of Righteousness,” who comes down to us as an anonymous igure frequently mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls. hose who composed and copied the documents which refer to the Teacher are oten associated with the community that lived at Khirbet Qumran.1 It is by no means clear, however, that all the texts which mention this igure were actually composed during the time that the Qumran community occupied the site. Nevertheless, scholars interested in learning more about the origins and socioreligious history of the Yaḥad have sometimes gone to great lengths to investigate what can be known about his identity as a historical personage. Such an investigation, however, is anything but straightforward. he main diiculty is the indirectness and remoteness that characterizes the * his paper presents a more detailed discussion of a similar study of mine published under the title, “he Teacher of Righteousness Remembered: From Fragmentary Sources to Collective Memory in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Memory in the Bible and Antiquity: he Fith Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium (Durham, September 2004) (ed. S. C. Barton, L. T. Stuckenbruck, and B. G. Wold; WUNT 212; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 75–94. he English translations of texts below are my own, unless otherwise indicated. 1 his point holds true even for the Damascus Document; although some scholars have maintained that its setting does not relect a community that had as yet settled at Khirbet Qumran, its correspondences with the Serek ha-Yaḥad, which is associated with the Qumran community, are unmistakable, and thus enhance the likelihood of social continuity behind these documents. For this perspective, see C. Hempel, he Laws of the Damascus Document: Sources, Traditions, and Redaction (STDJ 29; Leiden: Brill, 1998) and her discussion, “Community Structures in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Admission, Organization, Disciplinary Procedures,” in he Dead Sea Scrolls ater Fity Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (ed. P. W. Flint and J. C. VanderKam; 2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 2:67–92; for a recent refutation of other interpretations regarding the relationship between these two documents, see H. Evans Kapfer, “he Relationship Between the Damascus Document and the Community Rule: Attitudes Towards the Temple as a Test Case,” DSD 14 (2007): 152–77. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 23 3/18/2010 3:00:47 PM 24 loren t. stuckenbruck relationship between the primary texts, on the one hand, and the historical Teacher, on the other. he Dead Sea texts, as I shall review below, are both fragmentary in themselves and distinct from one another, requiring close reading and inferential reasoning in order to account for the data without assuming that they must produce a it as precise and smooth as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In addition, there are sources apart from the Scrolls which do not mention the Teacher at all, but which do ofer accounts of the events during the second and irst centuries BCE from which historical reconstructions of the events relected in the Scrolls are frequently derived (e.g., 1 and 2 Maccabees and the writings of Philo and Josephus). he attempts to read the Scrolls’ references to the Teacher and the Qumran community in relation to these external sources has been a necessary step in helping to recover some aspects of Second Temple Judaism during the second century BCE that were unknown before the discovery of the Scrolls. As much as these attempts have shed light on our understanding of the Maccabean revolt and Hasmonean rule in Judea, the limits of this research have not always been formally recognized. Given the predominantly historical interests among scholars, specialists have investigated texts which refer to the Teacher by asking primarily the following questions: (a) What personage mentioned among other Second Temple writings (for example, 1 and 2 Maccabees and the historiographical works of Josephus) might lie behind this enigmatic sobriquet?2 (b) What “facts” can be reconstructed about the Teacher’s life and persona on the basis of the explicit allusions to him in the Damascus Document and the pesharim, and what do these details reveal about the temporal and social origins of the Qumran community and the phases of its development? (c) Which documents or portions of documents amongst the Scrolls, if any, may be thought to have been composed by the Teacher himself? hese questions, notwithstanding their importance, are dominated by an interest in events and people recoverable behind the texts and are shaped by an essentially historical reading. 2 Scholarly discussion of this question has been closely bound up with similar attempts to decipher other sobriquets applied to other igures in the writings of the Qumran community, such as “Wicked Priest,” “Man of the Lie,” “Ephraim,” “Manasseh,” “Seekers of Smooth hings,” “Furious Young Lion,” “House of Absalom,” “House of Judah,” and so forth. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 24 3/18/2010 3:00:49 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 25 he discussion here takes a diferent approach. I shall focus on the twofold, and usually overlooked, dimensions of reception and legacy. While there is no question that a number of Dead Sea documents contain allusions to the Yaḥad’s formative past, I am ultimately concerned with another “history,” that is, the context(s) within which the texts referring to the Teacher were composed and copied. Taking the concerns of the writers and copyists with their community’s past as the essential point of departure, one may formulate another series of interrelated questions: (a) How was the Teacher of Righteousness “received” by community members who found themselves coping with newly emerging circumstances and problems; that is, in what way(s) did his teachings continue to be authoritative for everyday life? (b) How was he “remembered” by a community of his devotees at a later time?3 (c) What factors may be said to have shaped their selection of what (and what not) to relate about him? And, inally, (d) how did the recorded memory of the Teacher relect and reinforce the community’s self-understanding?4 3 here is some analogy between this question and those which have informed redaction-critical approaches to studies, for example, of the Synoptic Gospels. here is therefore potential for Gospel studies to be brought into conversation with the present investigation, and it may in turn become possible for the questions asked here to raise new issues for the presentation of Jesus in the New Testament. To enter into such deliberation goes beyond the limits of this study and would undermine the integrity it requires. However, the comparison illustrates one of several innovative ways Dead Sea Scrolls and New Testament studies can inform one another in future work. 4 A focus on these particular questions is not a denial of the potential relevance of documents (or parts of documents) which the Teacher himself may have authored. Whatever the extent of the Teacher’s authorial output, it remains signiicant that such pieces (e.g., parts of the Hodayot at 1QHa 10:1–19; 12:5–19; 13:20–14:36; 15:6–25; 16:4–40) never in themselves make such an explicit claim (although, in any case, they do not speak about the Teacher in the third person). To be sure, it is possible for the memory of a speciic authorship to be sustained through the passing on of traditions, even anonymously. In this study, however, I concern myself with those texts in which the Teacher is explicitly mentioned, since it is precisely in such passages that he may be said to have been formally remembered. Nevertheless, in anticipation of the discussion below, I may note that the probable existence of anonymous traditions composed by the Teacher may in itself constitute evidence of the degree to which his legacy was intertwined with and absorbed into the emerging and diferent needs of the Qumran community, whose writers found themselves able to place their own compositions and ideas alongside his. A good example, which has been under discussion for a long time, is the Hodayot; concerning the mixed authorship of the Hodayot (Teacher and non-Teacher hymns), see G. Jeremias, Der Lehrer der Gerechtigkeit (SUNT 2; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962), 168–77. For a more recent study, which optimistically isolates fourteen “psalms” among the Hodayot 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 25 3/18/2010 3:00:49 PM 26 loren t. stuckenbruck In order to address these questions, I have adopted the following procedure. First, it is essential to ofer a synopsis of the relevant textual evidence, that is, to provide a broad overview of what is explicitly stated about the Teacher of Righteousness. In particular, I shall ask, where possible, how or to what degree the memory of the Teacher is bound up with, or indeed determined by, the community’s self-understanding as presented by the authors of the documents. Second, and more briely, while taking into account the nature of the data, I shall draw attention to its limitations and to unresolved issues that continue to impede scholarly attempts at any comprehensive historical reconstruction. his last point raises further issues: To what extent, for example, do the data available allow a coherent picture to emerge? Moreover, to what extent do any of the texts themselves signal or assume an interest in preserving a coherent, if not “comprehensive,” memory of the Teacher? hird, and inally, making use of the analytical framework of “social memory theory,”5 I shall inquire into the function of the statements made about the Teacher in relation to the community’s own “collective memory.” II. he “Teacher of Righteousness” in the Dead Sea Texts: An Overview he designation “Teacher of Righteousness” (or ‫ה‬/‫ )מורה הצדק‬occurs at least seventeen times among the Dead Sea documents, very oten in fragmentary contexts. hose instances in which the sobriquet speas having been composed by the Teacher, see H. Stegemann, “he Number of Psalms in 1QHodayota and Some of heir Sections,” in Liturgical Perspectives: Prayer and Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Proceedings of the Fith International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 19–23 January, 2000 (ed. E. G. Chazon, with R. A. Clements and A. Pinnick; STDJ 48; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 191–234. he line numberings and readings of the Hodayot texts cited below are based on their oicial publication in 1QHodayota (ed. H. Stegemann, with E. Schuller and C. Newsom; DJD 40; Oxford: Clarendon, 2008). 5 For an excellent, brief overview of this perspective, initially developed by Maurice Halbwachs (see n. 55 below), and its later adaptations, see A. Le Donne, “heological Memory Distortion in the Jesus Tradition,” in Barton et al., Memory in the Bible and Antiquity, 163–77 (esp. pp. 163–73). While Le Donne attempts to counter a straightforward application of the concept of “memory distortion” to the Jesus tradition in the New Testament gospels, the present emphasis lies more in appreciating the distance, remoteness and (perhaps even) discord between the traditions about the Teacher and the “historical Teacher” himself. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 26 3/18/2010 3:00:49 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 27 ciically occurs are the following: 1QpHab 1:13; 2:2; 5:10; 7:4; 8:3; 9:9–10; 11:5; 1QpMic (1Q14) 10 6; 4QpPsa (4Q171) 1–10 iii 15 and 19; iv 8; iv 27; 4QpPsb (4Q173) 1 4, 2 2; an unidentiied pesher fragment (4Q172 7 1); CD A 1:11 and 6:11 (“one who teaches righteousness,” ‫)יורה הצדק‬. In addition, there are six further texts which contain the use of similar or equivalent terminology; these are CD B 20:1 and 14 (“the Unique Teacher,” ‫ ;)מורה היחיד‬4QpPsa 1–10 i 27 (“the Interpreter of Knowledge,” ‫ ;)מליץ דעת‬CD B 20:28; 4QpIsac (4Q163) 21 6 (“the Teacher,” [‫ ;)]מורה‬and, depending on the correctness of a restoration, 4QpIsae (4Q165) 1–2 3.6 Purported references to the Teacher are much less certain in three other texts: the title “the Interpreter of the Torah” in CD A 6:7 (‫דורש התורה‬, par. 4Q267 2 15; cf. also CD A 7:18, pars. 4Q266 3 iii 19 and 4Q269 5 2), 4QpIsac 47 3 ([‫ )]מרה‬and a reference to “their teacher” in 4QpHosb 5–6 2 ([‫מוריהם‬.]). Before we consider these texts more closely, it is important to draw attention to the scribal context of these materials. In particular, I have in mind the pesharim 1QpHab, 1QpMic, 4QpPsa, 4QpPsb, 4QpIsac, and the Damascus Document manuscripts in which the parallels between CD A and B, on the one hand, and the 4QD manuscripts, on the other, make it possible to restore references in the latter to the Teacher. Early on, Frank Cross noted that, in contrast to many of the other documents among the Dead Sea Scrolls, not one of the pesharim is preserved in more than one manuscript; he deduced from this that these manuscripts might well represent autographs.7 Since this view regards the scribal hand as having been the same as that of the author, the manuscripts themselves represent “mostly original works”; i.e., the palaeographically derived date of the scribal hands of these manuscripts is indicative of the period in which these works were originally composed.8 From this vantage point, the pesharim may be dated mostly to the second half of the irst century BCE and the irst 6 hough the designation itself does not occur in the extant text, it is possible that the subject of the verb in the phrase “revealed the Torah of righ[teousness” is the Teacher of Righteousness. 7 he only exception may be among the ive mss. to 4QpIsa, which probably stem from at least two diferent works: the commentaries preserved in 4QpIsaa,e utilize an older form of commentary that includes cross-referencing and does not refer to the Teacher), while 4QpIsab,c,d, of which 4QpIsac mentions the Teacher, may or may not belong to the same work. 8 E.g., F. M. Cross, he Ancient Library of Qumrân (he Biblical Seminar 30; 3d ed.; Sheield: Sheield Academic Press, 1995; 1st ed. 1958), 91–92. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 27 3/18/2010 3:00:49 PM 28 loren t. stuckenbruck part of the irst century CE9 and would not have been copies of older manuscripts (which, in turn, would bring us closer to the time of the Teacher of Righteousness). However, a number of copyist errors in our sampling of sources— for example, omissions through homoioteleuton (4QpPsa 1–10 iii 5), parablepsis (4QpIsae 5 5), and dittography (1QpHab 7:1, 2; 4QpIsab 1:4), as well as a change of scribal hands in at least one manuscript (1QpHab at 12:13)—indicate that these scribes were working from earlier (and now lost) literary Vorlagen, and were not simply relying on oral tradition.10 his manuscript evidence is not entirely inconsistent with that preserved for the Damascus Document, the oldest manuscript of which, 4QDa (4Q266), is preserved in a late Hasmonaean hand (irst half of the irst century BCE; this early copy, however, contains none of CD’s references to the Teacher). hese considerations, which mitigate against the presumption that, on the whole, the pesharim are autographs, might lead one to think they were originally composed proximate to, or perhaps even within living memory of, the historical events to which they allude. However, this justiiable criticism of Cross’s hypothesis does not provide a warrant to maintain the texts’ historical proximity. On the contrary, my argument immediately below shall emphasize that our sources were composed in and for circumstances remote from the Teacher to whom they refer. Since the beginning of Dead Sea Scrolls research, scholars have been nearly unanimous in regarding the Teacher as the single most important personage for the Qumran community.11 His signiicance is easily 9 Palaeographically, the following dates have been assigned: 1QpHab (early Herodian, last third of the irst c. BCE); 1QpMic (early Herodian, last half of the irst c. BCE); 4QpPsa (mid-Herodian, late irst c. BCE to early irst c. CE); 4QpPsb (early-/ mid-Herodian, end of irst c. BCE to early irst c. CE); 4QpIsac (late Hasmonean— early Herodian, mid-irst c. BCE). 10 In relation to the examples just cited, see the discussions of J. H. Charlesworth, he Pesharim and Qumran History: Chaos or Consensus? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 78–80; and especially, E. Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Relected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (STDJ 54; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 258–59. For a more general discussion, see H. Stegemann, he Library of Qumran: On the Essenes, Qumran, John the Baptist, and Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 124–25. 11 Only a few scholars have supposed that the designation refers to a function which could have been carried out by more than one person at diferent times during the community’s history; so, e.g., I. Rabinowitz, “he Guides of Righteousness,” 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 28 3/18/2010 3:00:50 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 29 ascertained on the basis of several key references. From this evidence, I present the available data about the Teacher under the following six points:12 1) he Teacher, who is called “the priest” (‫)הכוהן‬, is unambiguously identiied as a member of the priesthood. his occurs in 4QpPsa (1–10 iii 15–16), following a citation of Ps 37:23–24 that refers to one who, “though he stumble, will not fall headlong, for Yahweh holds him by the hand.” he pesharist identiies the one supported by the Lord in Psalm 37 as “the Priest, the Teacher of [Righteousness, whom] God [ch]ose as a pillar/to stand (‫)לעמוד‬.” his same igure is associated in the next phrase with the claim that God “established him to build for him a congregation of (‫[ )עדת‬. . .” he interpretation of Psalm 37 as a whole highlights that it was as a priest that the Teacher founded and shaped the character of the community. his emphasis holds, regardless of whether the word ‫ לעמוד‬is taken as a verb la amôd (thus alluding to the performance of priestly duties) or as a noun la amud (metaphorically alluding to a supporting column in the Temple structure).13 Either way, the Teacher’s priestly function underpins the community’s cultic understanding of itself. Another passage that probably designates the Teacher of Righteousness as ‫ הכוהן‬is 1QpHab 2:8, which belongs to the second part of a twofold interpretation of Hab 1:5.14 he irst interpretation of VT 8 (1958): 391–404; G. W. Buchanan, “he Priestly Teacher of Righteousness,” RevQ 6 (1969): 553–58; idem, “he Oice of Teacher of Righteousness,” RevQ 9 (1977): 241–43; and J. Starcky, “Les Maitres de Justice et la chronologie de Qumran,” in Qumran: Sa piété, sa théologie et son milieu (ed. M. Delcor; BETL 46; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1978), 249–56. 12 What follows is based on the thirteen most substantive references to the Teacher, as four instances have little more extant than his title; i.e., 4Q172 7 1; 4QpPsb 1 4; 2 2; and 1QpHab 1:13. 13 On these alternative construals, see M. P. Horgan, Pesharim: Qumran Interpretations of Biblical Books (CBQMS 8; Washington, D.C.: he Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1979), 219. 14 Much less certain is the following passage in 4QpPsa 1+2 ii 18–20, following a citation of Ps 37:14–15: “Its interpretation concerns the wicked ones of Ephraim and Manasseh, who will seek to lay the hand on the Priest and upon the men of his council during the time of testing which is coming upon them. And God will save them from their hands, and ater this they will be delivered into the hands of the ruthless ones of the nations for judgment.” he punishment anticipated here against Ephraim and Manasseh is echoed further along in the description of God’s future judgment against the Wicked Priest because of his desire to kill the righteous man, depicted in frgs. 3+5–10 iv 9–10. Despite this textual similarity, not enough details are provided in either passage to indicate whether the Teacher of Righteousness is in view. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 29 3/18/2010 3:00:50 PM 30 loren t. stuckenbruck Hab 1:5 (1QpHab 2:1–2) identiies the biblical phrase “they would not believe” (‫לוא האמינו‬, 2:3–4; cf. also 2:2, 6) with certain “traitors” (‫בוגדים‬, 2:3, 4) who, because of their association with “the Man of the Lie,” have not aligned15 themselves with the Teacher. he second interpretation of the same verse focuses on traitors (‫ )בוגדים‬of the latter days who “will not believe when they hear all that is going to ha[ppen t]o the last generation from the mouth of the Priest” (2:6–8). Of course, the identity of the priest with the Teacher is suggested by the juxtaposition of the two interpretations for the same lemma. his association becomes even clearer in the next phrase, where the priest is identiied as the one “to whom God gave . . . to interpret all the words of his servants the prophets” (ll. 8–9); this claim anticipates what later in the pesher is explicitly attributed to the Teacher of Righteousness, who is described as the one to whom God revealed the correct interpretation of the prophets (7:4–5).16 In contrast to the passage from the Psalms pesher discussed in the previous paragraph, this text does not explicate or expound on the priestly designation in any way. If correct, the designation of the Teacher as ‫ הכוהן‬in a more casual (i.e., unexplained) sense is all the more signiicant; the author can take this aspect of the Teacher’s identity for granted, even among his readers, and therefore does not have to provide a cult-related explanation. Instead, it is the priestly igure’s teaching activity that is being highlighted. Whether or not the Teacher was a “high priest,” that is, whether or not he presided over the cult in the Jerusalem Temple, is not made explicit. While there are some who doubt that he ever oiciated at the Temple,17 a number of scholars have argued that the use of the term should be understood in a titular sense, and go on to attempt identiications with this or that high priest or priestly igure known from Josephus and 1–2 Maccabees.18 15 he text in 1QpHab 2:2 has a lacuna where the verb would have been located; ‫ האמין‬should arguably be restored, based on the text of Habakkuk. 16 In addition, the passage in 1QpHab 11:2–8 implies the Teacher’s prominent role in the community during the Day of Atonement. 17 See, e.g., M. O. Wise, “he Teacher of Righteousness and the High Priest of the Intersacerdotium: Two Approaches,” RevQ 56 (1990): 587–613; idem, he First Messiah: Investigating the Savior before Jesus (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1999); and J. Y.-H. Yieh, One Teacher: Jesus’ Teaching Role in Matthew’s Gospel Report (BZNW 124; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 95–184. 18 See, e.g., H. Stegemann, Die Entstehung der Qumrangemeinde (Bonn: privately published, 1971), 102, 202–7, and 210–20; J. Murphy-O’Connor, “he Essenes and their History,” RB 81 (1974): 215–44; idem, “Demetrius I and the Teacher of 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 30 3/18/2010 3:00:50 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 31 2) In several texts the Teacher is marked out as an interpreter of biblical tradition par excellence.19 In particular, he is remembered as having been the source of the correct understanding of the prophets and the Torah. he extraordinary claims made in the Habakkuk Pesher regarding his authority have already been alluded to above, but require further attention here. In 1QpHab 7:4–5, the claim about the Teacher occurs ater a re-citation of a part of Hab 2:2 which is cited more fully in the previous column (6:15–16). Regarding the lemma, “hat the one who reads it may run” from Hab 2:2,20 the pesharist states, “Its interpretation concerns the Teacher of Righteousness, to whom God made known (‫ )הודיעו‬all the mysteries of the words of his servants the prophets.” As has been frequently recognized, this view of divine inspiration behind the Teacher’s instructions about the prophetic tradition is remarkable; its negative counterpart occurs in the preceding negative assertion that although Habakkuk had carried out God’s command to write about future things, the prophet himself remained uninformed about the consummation of the age (7:1–2, ‫)ואת גמר הקץ לוא הודעו‬. he pesharist thus relegates the prophet Habakkuk to having been a recorder rather than an interpreter of God’s future plan.21 he temporal alteration in Righteousness (1 Macc. 10:25–45),” RB 83 (1976): 400–420; idem, “Teacher of Righteousness,” in ABD, 6:340–41; G. Vermes, he Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 137–62 (“he History of the Sect”); E. Schürer, he History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (rev. G. Vermes, F. Millar, and M. Black; 3 vols.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973–1987), 1:605–6, 2:586–87; W. H. Brownlee, he Midrash Pesher of Habakkuk (SBLMS 24; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1979), 95–98 (esp. p. 98); Horgan, Pesharim, p. 7; M. A. Knibb, he Qumran Community (Cambridge Commentaries on Writings of the Jewish & Christian World 2; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 6–10; F. García Martínez, “he Origins of the Essene Movement and of the Qumran Sect,” in F. García Martínez and J. Trebolle Barrera, he People of the Dead Sea Scrolls (trans. W. G. E. Watson; Leiden: Brill, 1995), 77–96; and J. C. VanderKam, “Identity and History of the Community,” in he Dead Sea Scrolls ater Fity Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (ed. P. W. Flint and J. C. VanderKam; 2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1998–1999), 2:487–533 (esp. p. 528). Charlesworth, he Pesharim and Qumran History, 88 n. 265, is more cautious, since the terminology is not straightforward. 19 he discussion below focuses on the clearer evidence. For example, while in 4QpPsa 1–10 iv 27 it is possible that the “skilled scribe” of Ps 45:2b is identiied as the Teacher (denoting his function as an interpreter), the salient terms have to be restored: ‫סופר מהיר פשרו [ על מורה] הצדק‬. he implication, nevertheless, remains: the Teacher’s ability to interpret was linked to his function as a “scribe”; see further n. 21 below. 20 he italicized words translate supralinear ‫ירוץ‬. 21 hat being an interpreter of visions could be invested with so much, even superior, authority is well-established during the Second Temple period in relation to the 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 31 3/18/2010 3:00:50 PM 32 loren t. stuckenbruck the explanation of the verse, from the present or future in the Habakkuk text (“that the one who reads may run”) to the perfect (“God has made known [to him]”) locates the interpretations revealed to the Teacher of Righteousness in the author’s past. Nevertheless, the impression is let that the Teacher’s interpretations of Habakkuk have a direct bearing on events which the author regards as yet to come: God “will prolong the inal age and it will surpass everything the prophets have said” (lines 7–8). As we have already seen, a similar claim is made in 1QpHab 2:8–10, where the Teacher is probably identiied as “the Priest.” here, adherence to the revelation given to the Priest is regarded as a criterion for loyalty to the covenant. hose who do not heed his interpretation of the prophets about what will happen to God’s people Israel are called “traitors” (2:5, ‫ ;בוגדים‬cf. 2:1, 3) and “ruthless [ones of the cove]nant” (2:6, ‫)עריצ]י הבר[ית‬.22 On the other hand, the text leaves no doubt that those who listen to the Priest are faithful to the covenant. he language applied to the detractors suggests that they had a sociogenetic relationship to the community: by referring to their reception of the Priest’s words through “hearing” (cf. 2:7), the author implies that the “faithless” ones were associates who had been expected to trust the Teacher-Priest, but instead rejected him and, therefore, the covenant community as well.23 he authority ascribed to the Teacher in the Habakkuk Pesher is categorical; he is the index against which to recognize covenant loyalty and unfaithfulness; he was inspired to interpret “all the words of his servants the prophets” (2:8–9) and “all the mysteries of the words of his servants the prophets” (7:4–5). In attributing such comprehensive authority to the Teacher, the pesharist seems to focus on what appears to have been the Teacher’s own running interpretation of a prophetic text (that is, Habakkuk 1–2). However, the interpretations presented in the pesher are not necessarily interpretations that go back igures of Enoch (so esp. the Birth of Noah in 1 En. 106:7; the Genesis Apocryphon, 1Q20 2:20–22; the Book of Giants, 4Q530 2 ii + 6–7 i + 8–12 3–24) and Daniel (Dan 5:11–12, 14, 16), as a development from the portrait of Joseph in Gen 41:11–13. For further discussion, see L. T. Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108 (CEJL; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 217–20 and 640–41. 22 Restored according to the parallel phrase found in 4QpPsa (4Q171) 1–10 ii 14 and iii 12. 23 See the fragmentary statement preserved from the previous column in the interpretation of Hab 1:4a: “they rejected the Torah of God” (1QpHab 1:10). 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 32 3/18/2010 3:00:51 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 33 to the Teacher himself. In column 7, for example, the pesharist goes on, as he does throughout the work, to relate the words of Habakkuk to his own time and to his own community; although the Teacher and the pesharist both live in “the last generation” (7:2) or “last period” (7:7, 12), the era of the writer, described as a prolongation (7:7, ‫;יארוך‬ 7:12, ‫)בהמשך‬, is nonetheless distinguishable from that of the Teacher. his is not, however, a matter of assigning the Teacher’s activity merely to the past; more accurately, the Teacher’s revelatory authority to interpret the prophetic tradition serves as a model for the later generation of community interpreters. For the writer of the pesher, the Teacher’s interpretations of the prophets are not simply remote activities that reinforce the uniqueness of the Teacher; instead, the author inds in the Teacher’s authority a hermeneutical key that opens up, in principle, the way for him (and therefore for his community) to discover afresh the meaning of the text for circumstances in his own day. And the author does this without trying to recover what the Teacher himself said about this or that text and without resorting to the view that the Teacher himself foresaw the immediate events of the pesharist’s day. hus, for all his emphasis on the Teacher’s apparently unique authority, the author takes the mantel of the Teacher’s authority upon himself, by providing a running commentary on Habakkuk with contemporary events in view. At 1QpHab 7, he thus inds in Hab 2:3 a description of the situation of his own community (i.e., the potential among them for slackness; ll. 9–14). In relation to his community, the writer thus maintains that the delay, or prolongation, of the last time, is only apparent (7:13); the increasing gap between the time of the Teacher and that of the pesharist is in fact a divine extension of the inal age.24 herefore, “the men of truth,” also called “doers of the Torah” (7:10–11), are now to orient themselves to this protracted period of divine revelation and not become lax in “the service of truth” (ll. 12–13). he Teacher is also probably regarded as an authoritative interpreter of the Torah, though the extant texts only leave these claims implicit. For this we have several examples. According to 1QpHab 5:10–12, 24 his passage thus militates against the assertion of G. L. Doudna, 4QPesher Nahum: A Critical Edition (JSPSup 35; Sheield: Sheield Academic Press, 2001), 625, that “None of the sobriquet-bearing igures in the Qumran pesharim [including the Teacher of Righteousness] are from a past generation in the world of these texts.” 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 33 3/18/2010 3:00:51 PM 34 loren t. stuckenbruck interpreting Hab 1:13b, “the Man of the Lie” is accused, in the course of his conlict with the Teacher, of having rejected the Torah (ll. 11–12: ‫ ;איש הכזב אשר מאס את התורה‬cf. also 1:10). Moreover, according to 1QpHab 8 (on Hab 2:4b),25 “all those who do the Torah in the house of Judah” are deined as the very ones who will be delivered by God “from the house of judgment” since they have toiled appropriately and have shown idelity to the Teacher of Righteousness (ll. 1–3).26 In 4QpPsa 1–10 iv 8–9, following a citation of Ps 37:32–33, another pesharist alludes to the conlict between the Wicked Priest and the Teacher of Righteousness and then refers, somewhat enigmatically, to “the Torah which he sent to him” (‫)והתורה אשר שלח אליו‬. Admittedly, it is not clear what “the Torah” means, that is, whether it generally has “the (newly-revealed) instruction”27 in view or, more speciically, refers to the Teacher’s interpretations of the Pentateuchal tradition; it is likely, nonetheless, that the choice of one sense does not exclude the other. Moreover, the subject of the verb ‫“( שלח‬he sent”) is not clear; it could be the Wicked Priest, the Teacher of Righteousness, or God. his question is bound up with the problem of to whom “the Torah” is sent; if the Teacher is the recipient—a view that seems possible, though cannot be conirmed—then God is the subject. he pesharist would then be advancing a claim that God has inspired the Teacher in relation to “the Torah.” If however, the Wicked Priest is the one to whom the Torah as been sent, then the Teacher would surely be the subject; in this case, the text implies that the Teacher’s ‫תורה‬, whether it be a speciic instruction or his interpretation of the Five Books of Moses, was the correct one. Finally, the link between the Teacher and the Torah is made in the Damascus Document (CD B 20:27–28), where heeding “the voice of the Teacher” corresponds to behaving in accordance with the Torah. his very point is picked up and reformulated in the following lines: by listening to the voice of the Teacher of Righteousness one does 25 he biblical lemma is itself not extant on the lower part of the previous column, but it is clear that the pesharist is concerned with the statement: “the righteous one will live by faith.” 26 he reference to “their toil” (‫עמלם‬, 8:2) may allude to some form of sufering that the writer attributes to the community. If the next phrase about idelity to the Teacher picks up on this, the text may be correlating the community’s experience with a (paradigmatic) persecution reported about the Teacher in col. 11. 27 his may be the way to understand 4QpIsae 1–2 3, if “Teacher” is to be restored. See n. 6 above. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 34 3/18/2010 3:00:51 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 35 not reject “the righteous statutes” (ll. 32–33). his link between the Teacher and the Torah is further apparent in statements earlier in the document about “the Interpreter of the Torah” (CD A 6:7 and 7:18— ‫)דורש התורה‬, to whose statutes members of the movement are to adhere “until there arises one who will teach righteousness in the end of days” (6:9–11). Even if, strictly speaking, neither the Interpreter nor the eschatological one teaching righteousness can be identiied with the Teacher of Righteousness,28 the passage strongly connects membership in the community with faithfulness to and observance of the Torah, with respect to which the Teacher was seen to have played an indispensable role. We do not have among the Dead Sea materials the same extent of evidence for pesharim to Pentateuchal texts as exists for the prophets. Where remnants of a pesher-like form of interpretation of the Pentateuch are preserved (esp. the fragmentary 4QCommGen in 4Q252– 254, 4Q254a),29 there is no mention of the Teacher, and the pesher form—that is, a biblical lemma followed by the technical term “pesher”—does not predominate.30 Moreover, in a document like 4QFlorilegium (4Q174), interpretations for lemmata in Exodus (15:17–18) are interspersed among others for 2 Samuel (7:10, 11, 12–14), Psalms (89:23; 1:1; 2:1), Amos (9:11), Isaiah (8:11), and Ezekiel (44:10).31 Again, in contrast to what we encounter in the Habakkuk Pesher, no claim emerges about any particular individual to whom these interpretations have been given or by whom they have been authorized. It is possible that eschatological interpretations like those in the pesharim on the prophetic books, speciically associated there with the Teacher, were being carried out widely in relation to 28 See J. A. Fitzmyer, “Qumran Messianism,” in idem, he Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 73–110 (pp. 99 and 103); Charlesworth, he Pesharim and Qumran History, 83. 29 If the more “thematic” (rather than biblical-exegetical) commentaries speciically drawing on the Pentateuchal texts are included, we may also think of 4Q174 (4QFlorilegium), 4Q175 (4QTestimonia), 4Q177 (4QCatena A), 4Q180–181 (4QAges of Creation), 4Q464 (4QExposition on the Patriarchs), and 11Q13 (11QMelchizedek). 30 he pesher formula known elsewhere is only preserved once, i.e., in 4Q252 5 iv 5 (‫)פשרו אשר‬, while other, less genre-speciic formulae denoting the use of scripture occur throughout, using the terms (a) ‫—אמר‬4Q252 5 iv 6, 4Q254 1 1; 10 2; (b) ‫—כתוב‬4Q252 1+3–5 1; and (c) ‫—דבר‬4Q252 5 iv 2. 31 A similar concatenation of lemmata, this time including Deut 7:15, occurs in 4QCatena A 1–4+14+24+31 2; cf. also the citations of Lev 25:13 and Deut 15:2, respectively, in 11QMelchizedek 2:2, 3–4. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 35 3/18/2010 3:00:51 PM 36 loren t. stuckenbruck other biblical traditions, though less formally so. We are not in a position to know, however, whether the pesher-like formulae that explicitly interpret texts in the Pentateuch derive from the Teacher’s own instructions or relect the community’s expansions upon his interpretative authority to a wider range of biblical tradition. Whatever the case, I am surely not wrong to propose that the community regarded the Teacher as the quintessential exponent of a form of biblical interpretation that expressed itself in a “fulillment hermeneutics”; i.e., a hermeneutics that read sacred traditions as repositories of divine promises coming to fruition in the community’s recent past and more contemporary circumstances. he pesharist form of interpretation, which derives from the extraordinary claims made about the Teacher in 1QpHab columns 2 and 7, is—from our vantage point—not so extraordinary. What the Teacher did ultimately crystallized in the form adopted by the “classic” pesharim, in which interpretations are provided for lemmata taken seamlessly from one book or tradition. hus, while the Teacher probably did not ever compose such a pesher, the community—drawing inspiration from his instructions and claims—did. he Teacher may initially have been considered unique in recent times as a receptor of divine revelation; however, in composing the pesharim, the later authors of the community were, in his wake, indirectly laying claim to the same authority. What is related biographically about the Teacher, then, is in itself very little. For the community, the appropriate memory of him is through the mimesis of the authority that he claimed and the praxis that he initiated. 3) he Dead Sea texts remember the Teacher as one who played a key role in the formation of the community. his memory is expressed in the passage from 4QpPsa 1–10 iii 15–16 cited above, in which the Teacher is called “the Priest”: God “established him to build for him a congregation. . . .” his claim about the Teacher may be a selective collective memory. We know from the Damascus Document that the Teacher did not in fact found the group out of which the community was formed, but rather joined up with the movement and, in efect, inherited it:32 the document refers to a group who, as “a root of plant- 32 As correctly emphasized by P. R. Davies, “he Teacher of Righteousness and the ‘End of Days,’” in idem, Sects and Scrolls: Essays on Qumran and Related Topics (SFSHJ 134; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 89–94 (esp. p. 90). 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 36 3/18/2010 3:00:51 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 37 ing” lourishing (untended) “in the goodness of his [God’s] soil,” “were as blind as those who grope for a way for twenty years.” For this already existing movement, God subsequently raised up the Teacher of Righteousness “to guide them in the way of his heart” (cf. CD A 1:1–17).33 So, in remembering the Teacher as the community’s founder, the pesharist of 4QpPsa was selecting the advent of the Teacher as the essential beginning point, rather than relecting on or recalling the community’s earlier origins. 4) he Teacher of Righteousness is remembered as having been in open conlict with the “Man of the Lie” (‫)איש הכזב‬, probably the same individual who was also called the “Spouter of the Lie” (‫)מטיף הכזב‬.34 Whereas the latter designation does not occur in immediate conjunction with the Teacher (so 1QpHab 10:9–13; 11:1–2; cf. also 4QpPsa 1–10 iv 13–14), several passages involving the former refer explicitly to a conlict that led to a breach in the group. According to 1QpHab 2:1–4, the “Man of the Lie” was associated with “the traitors” (‫ )הבוגדים‬who did not show idelity either to the Teacher or to God’s covenant. A little more is remembered about this altercation later on in the pesher at 5:8–12: “Why do you listen to traitors, but are silent when a wicked one swallows up one more righteous than he?” (Hab 1:13b). Its interpretation concerns the House of Absalom and the men of their counsel, who were quiet at the rebuke of the Teacher of Righteousness and did not support him against the Man of the Lie who rejected the Torah in the midst of all their council. he Man of the Lie, associated again (as in col. 2) with traitors (called the “House of Absalom” by the pesharist), seems to have rebuked the Teacher “in the midst of all their council.” It is diicult to know to what the term “council” refers; that is, whether it denotes a general consultation involving a more open debate with outsiders or a meeting that took place within the community. In the former case the “traitors” would, along with this Man of the Lie, have belonged to an outside group from which the Teacher mistakenly expected support, 33 his would be consistent with the view that the “Interpreter of the Torah” (CD A 6:7; 7:18) does not denote the Teacher of Righteousness. See section 2) above. 34 It is not necessary to follow Geza Vermes who infers, on the basis of 1QpHab 8:8–9, that the “Man of the Lie” was the same person as the “Wicked Priest” (initially “called by the name of truth”); cf. Vermes, he Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective, 139; cf. Brownlee, he Midrash Pesher of Habakkuk, 95–98. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 37 3/18/2010 3:00:52 PM 38 loren t. stuckenbruck while in the latter case these opponents could have been part of the community itself. he depth of disappointment behind the terms “lie” and “unfaithful” suggests that the “traitors” were at one time active in the same community as the Teacher. If this is the case, it is likely that the same can be maintained about the Man of the Lie, who goes by another, though similar, name at the opening of the Damascus Document. he latter passage, at CD A 1:10–2:1, refers to the advent and activity of the Teacher at the end of the twenty years of groping. he Teacher made known to the latter generations what he would do in the last generation in the congregation of traitors (‫—)בוגדים‬they are those who depart from the Way; that is the time of which it was written, “As a wayward cow, so did Israel stray” (Hos 4:16)—when arose the Man of Mockery (‫ )איש הלצון‬who sprinkled/spouted (‫ )אשר הטיף‬on Israel waters of the lie (‫ )כזב‬and led them into a chaos without a way . . . . For they sought smooth things (‫ )דרשו בחלקות‬and chose delusion and sought out loopholes and allowed the covenant to be broken and the statute to be violated, and they banded together against the life of the just one; their soul despised all those who walk in perfection; they persecuted them with the sword and treated with glee the dispute of the people. . . . he terms applied here to the Teacher’s opponent are reminiscent of the designations “Man of the Lie” and “Spouter of the Lie.” One may infer that the Teacher was remembered as having been critical—and rightly so, according to the writers of this part of the Damascus Document—of this man’s leadership (cf. also 1QpHab 10:5–13; 4QpPsa 1–10 iv 14). According to 1QpHab 10:5–13, his corrupting inluence, perhaps in the atermath of the altercation between him and the Teacher, resulted in the establishment of “a congregation of falsehood” (l. 10), the members of which “reviled and reproached the elect of God” (l. 13). he texts suggest that the Man of the Lie was also associated with a group nicknamed the “Seekers of Smooth hings” (‫ ;דורשי החלקות‬cf. CD A 1:18–20, cited above), who may have already emerged during the lifetime of the Teacher,35 but who appear mostly in passages that are linked with events from a later period (4QpNah 3–4 i 2, 7; ii 2, 4; iii 3, 6–7).36 hus, the later writer of the Nahum Pesher may have found in 35 hat is, if his composition of certain of the Hodayot is accepted; see 1QH 10:15. On these allusions, which include an explicit reference to Demetrius, king of Greece (4QpNah 3–4 i 2) and suggest that these “Seekers” were executed by “the Lion of Wrath” (probably Alexander Jannaeus), see the thorough discussion by Doudna, 36 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 38 3/18/2010 3:00:52 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 39 this group a continuation of the opposition displayed earlier against the Teacher himself by the Man of the Lie.37 In this way, the conlict during the lifetime of the Teacher was understood by the pesharist as replicated for the community in his own time. he “traitors” of the Habakkuk Pesher (which is concerned with earlier events) are, as a group, equivalent to the “Seekers of Smooth hings” in the Nahum Pesher (which is concerned with a later period). 5) he texts remember the Teacher as having been actively persecuted by “the Wicked Priest” (‫)הכוהן הרשע‬. Here I will sidestep the endless discussions concerning the historical igure behind the Wicked Priest, and neither do I seek a synthesis of everything that is said of him in the texts; instead, I focus here on what the texts recall about him in relation to the Teacher of Righteousness. Preliminarily, however, it must be observed that the Wicked Priest is a more slippery igure than the Teacher of Righteousness. Whereas the Teacher is almost invariably mentioned utilizing verbs in the perfect, that is, as a igure in the past,38 the Wicked Priest—as is well known—is spoken of not only as an individual of the past39 but also as one whose activity, mediated through verbs in the imperfect, extended beyond the time of the Teacher; he even turns up in the (eschatological) future.40 Furthermore, it is diicult to match all the details given concerning the Wicked Priest with any one of the Maccabean/Hasmonaean high priests. herefore, some scholars have proposed that the Wicked Priest is a more general sobriquet that applied to any 4QPesher Nahum, 389–433 and 627–37. he mention of the Seekers of Smooth hings in 4QCata 7+12 is fragmentary, and its temporal context is unclear. 37 So Stegemann, Die Entstehung der Qumrangemeinde, 72, 76–79, and 120–27; see also P. R. Callaway, he History of the Qumran Community (JSPSup 3; Sheield: JSOT Press, 1988), 158–61, who, while agreeing with Stegemann, cautions that, given the absence of the Man of the Lie in 4QpNah, the “Seekers of Smooth hings” are not necessarily or merely the Man’s contemporaries. 38 So in the pesharim. he possibility remains that he may also be thought of as an eschatological igure, as “the one who will teach righteousness in the end of days” (CD A 6:11). 39 1QpHab 8:9–13, 16; 9:10; 11:5–8, 12–14; 4QpPsa 1–10 iv 9 (though the subject of the verb is uncertain). 40 In 1QpHab, see 10:3–5; 11:14; 12:5 (all impf. verbs); in 4QpPsa 1–10 iv 8, a participial form is restored by F. García Martínez and E. J. C. Tigchelaar in he Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1997–1998), 1:346 (‫)צ]ופ[ה‬, following the participial form used in the biblical citation of Ps 37:32. he perfect verb in l. 9 (‫)שלח‬, however, makes it more likely that a perfect should be restored here as well, i.e., ‫צ]פה‬. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 39 3/18/2010 3:00:52 PM 40 loren t. stuckenbruck high priest who was inimical to the community, at any point in its history.41 While I myself am not sure that this nickname was generally transferable in such a sense,42 it may at least be noted that this hypothesis proceeds on one correct observation: “the Wicked Priest” oten appears in the texts without any mention of the Teacher. In other words, his signiicance for the pesharists and writers was larger than his immediate relation to the Teacher. Most famously, the Wicked Priest is remembered in two pesharim as having persecuted, or even having tried to kill, the Teacher. he passages in which this event is remembered are 1QpHab 11:4–8 and 4QpPsa 1–10 iv 7–8. It is worth citing each of these texts in succession: “Woe to anyone who causes his companion to be drunk, mixing in his anger, making drunk in order that he might gaze upon their feasts” (Hab 2:15). Its interpretation concerns the Wicked Priest, who pursued the Teacher of Righteousness, to swallow him up with his poisonous fury to the House of Exile. And at the end of the feast, the repose of the Day of Atonement, he appeared to them to swallow them up and to make them stumble on the day of fasting, their restful Sabbath. (1QpHab 11:4–8) “he wicked one lies in ambush for the righteous one and seeks [to put him to death. Yah]weh [will not abandon him into his hand,] n[or will he] allow him to be condemned as guilty when he comes to trial” (Ps 37:32–33). Its interpretation concerns [the] Wicked [Pri]est, who w[aited in ambush for the Teach]er of Right[eousness and sought to] have him put to death. . . . (4QpPsa 1–10 iv 7–8) he Habakkuk Pesher assumes a dispute between the Teacher and the Wicked Priest, and implies that this had something to do with the Teacher’s use of a diferent calendar for his group than the one in use at the Temple in Jerusalem.43 he magnitude of the dispute is relected 41 As, e.g., is claimed in the “Groningen hypothesis”; cf. A. S. van der Woude, “Wicked Priest or Wicked Priests? Relections on the Identiication of the Wicked Priest in the Habakkuk Commentary,” JJS 23 (1982): 349–59; García Martínez, inter alia, in “he Origins of the Essene Movement and of the Qumran Sect,” 83–84. 42 In particular, see T. H. Lim, “he Wicked Priests of the Groningen Hypothesis,” JBL 112 (1993): 415–25. 43 So esp. S. Talmon, “he Calendar Reckoning of the Sect from the Judean Desert,” in Aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. C. Rabin and Y. Yadin; ScrHier 4; Jerusalem: he Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1965), 162–99; and W. H. Brownlee, he Midrash Pesher of Habakkuk, 179–89. Callaway is overly cautious when he doubts that calendar had much to do with the conlict (he History of the Qumran Community, 160–61). 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 40 3/18/2010 3:00:52 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 41 by the extent of the measures taken by the Wicked Priest in order to subvert the Teacher’s activity: he (or those under his charge) visits the community in order to ruin their observance of Yom Kippur. he Psalms Pesher of 4Q171 may well refer to the same event in more general terms, though the language is stronger: the Wicked Priest wanted to kill someone, who was probably the Teacher of Righteousness.44 We may assume that this attempt was unsuccessful, as nothing is related about the Teacher’s death in either passage. Of signiicance here is the commemorative framework for an event, especially as related in the Habakkuk Pesher. he event is remembered as happening, not to the Teacher alone, but also to his community, as the plural suixes (both obj. acc. and pron.) suggest. he community of the pesharist understood themselves as heirs to (and, hence, as sharing in the persecution of) the Teacher. While this may seem so obvious as to require no mention, it is signiicant that the pesharist has interpreted the general biblical reference to “their feasts” (plur.) as a much more speciic occasion, “the Day of Atonement.” he association between the Wicked Priest’s persecution of the Teacher and the Day of Atonement thus means that the pesharist not only retells a past event, but also stresses its timing at a festival that was no doubt being observed by the pesharist’s own community, which could not mark the event without recalling what had happened to the Teacher. Here the analogy between Teacher and later community emerges: the passage refers to the observance of Yom Kippur, a festival at which the high priest in the Jerusalem Temple oiciated. he Teacher and his group, however, are said to have been pursued to their “House of Exile,” that is, away from Jerusalem. herefore, the memory of this event, when the Teacher was unjustly pursued by the Wicked Priest, would have functioned to reinforce the community’s self-perception that its observance of the Torah—away from the Jerusalem cult, where an erring calendrical system remained in use— was correct. hus a ritual “site of memory” would have provided a 44 he length of the restoration, ‫( צ]פה למור[ה הצד]ק‬l. 8; cf. n. 40 above), is based on the restoration in the next line in correlation with the wording of the biblical citation and gains strength from the parallel in 1QpHab 11; see M. P. Horgan, “Psalm Pesher 1 (4Q171 = 4QPsa = 4QpPs37 and 45),” in he Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations. Volume B: Pesharim, Other Commentaries, and Related Documents (ed. J. H. Charlesworth and H. W. Rietz; he Princeton heological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project 6B; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 6–23 (pp. 18–19). 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 41 3/18/2010 3:00:52 PM 42 loren t. stuckenbruck rallying point for the pesharist’s community. On this day the pronouncement of the biblical “woe” (Hab 2:15) against the Wicked Priest both castigated the operation of the Temple cult and, in portraying how it clashed with observances of the Teacher and his community, reinforced and deined the community’s self-understanding as the faithful receptacle and expression of divine revelation.45 he Habakkuk pesharist’s recollection of the Wicked Priest does not begin with an allusion to his conlict with the Teacher of Righteousness. he irst statements about the Wicked Priest emerge in interpretations of Habakkuk that underscore his past and future condemnation. he pesharist recounts the Wicked Priest’s initially good standing (8:9, “he was called by the name of truth”), and then refers to his moral decadence, brought about through haughtiness, illegitimate amassing of wealth, and religious impurity (8:8–13). hen the author focuses on the result of this decline, based on a double interpretation of Hab 2:7–8a. Two related phrases from Hab 2:7b and 8a (“. . . and you will become to them as booty” and “. . . all the rest of the peoples will plunder you”), are taken to refer to (divine) punishments heaped upon the body of the Wicked Priest: “evil diseases worked in him, and vengeful acts (worked) on the carcass of his lesh (‫)בגוית בשרו‬.” Here the author’s account draws on the sort of language which leaves no doubt that the Wicked Priest’s lot, related in perfect verbs, relects telltale signs of divine punishment inlicted on a notorious evildoer.46 In addition, Hab 2:8a is taken to denote the (future) punishment of “the last priests of Jerusalem,” whose demise will parallel that of the Wicked Priest, for they too “amass wealth” 45 In addition to 1QpHab 11, echoes of Yom Kippur as a signiicant feast for the Qumran community may be inferred from 1QS 8:6 (par. 4Q259 2:15–16), 10; 9:4 (par. 4Q258 7:4–5); and 11Q13 (11QMelchizedek) 2:7–8. Less certain as Qumran compositions, but surely materials collected by the community, are 4Q156 (4QTgLev; 2 frgs. corresponding to Leviticus 16) and 11QTemple 25:10–27:10 (amplifying the biblical account, the text asserts: ‫יהיה היום הזה להמה לזכרון‬, 27:5); note also the interest in Az azel in 4Q180 (4QAges of Creation A) 1 7–10; 4Q203 (4QEnGiantsa) 7 i 6; and Jub. 5:17–19 (esp. l. 18) which, in turn, relect the inluence of the fallen angels traditions developed in the early Enochic works (e.g., the Book of Watchers in 1 Enoch 6–16). 46 Much attention has been devoted to such topoi in the Graeco-Roman world, early Judaism, and Christian antiquity; for a recent convenient listing and discussion of typical descriptions of punishment meted out to God’s enemies, see H. Lichtenberger, “he Down-hrow of the Dragon in Revelation 12 and the Down-Fall of God’s Enemy,” in he Fall of the Angels (ed. C. Aufarth and L. T. Stuckenbruck; hemes in Biblical Narrative 6; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 119–47. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 42 3/18/2010 3:00:53 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 43 and make illegitimate proits (9:5); as punishment, “they will be delivered into the hands of the army of the Kittim” (9:6–7). he analogies drawn between the Wicked Priest and “the last priests” show how the author regards the latter as the legitimate heirs to the former. hus events related about the Wicked Priest provide the mold for activities and problems that are being replicated in the author’s more recent past and present. he pesharist, however, is not merely interested in the activities and punishments of the Wicked Priest and the last priests for their own sakes. What really, and perhaps ultimately, concerns him is the iniquity (9:9, ‫ )עוון‬committed by the Wicked Priest against “the Teacher of Righteousness and the men of his council,” perhaps already a reference to the persecution recounted later in column 11. Signiicantly, the pesharist picks up on the language of punishment already used at the beginning of column 9 to rehearse again the consequences of the Wicked Priest’s moral and religious demise: “God gave him into the hand of his enemies to humble him with a plague for annihilation in bitterness of soul, because he acted against his chosen ones” (9:10–12). Having referred both to the Wicked Priest and to the “last priests” who, respectively, come from the time of the Teacher and from the more recent past/present, the author, in the next column, considers the future (10:3–5). Here the text cites Hab 2:9–11, which refers to “evil gain” (‫בצע רע‬, Hab 2:9), and to the “cutting of many peoples and the threads of your soul” (Hab 2:10b). he pesharist relates these phrases to “the house of judgment” into which God “will bring him (i.e., the Wicked Priest) up for judgment” and where, in the midst of the peoples, he will “condemn him as wicked (‫ )ירשיענו‬and punish him with brimstone ire (‫ובאש גופרית‬ ‫( ”)ישפטנו‬10:5).47 At this point, instead of understanding the prophetic text in relation to events that have already occurred, the author invokes events from the remote and very recent past, extending the pattern of the past to project with assurance what will happen in the future.48 he realities represented by the Wicked Priest thus transcend time in a way that blurs chronological distinctions between past, 47 On the Wicked Priest’s eschatological punishment, see further 1QpHab 11:14 and 12:5. 48 his was, of course, a common procedure among historical apocalyptic writings, such as 1 Enoch 85–90 (Animal Apocalypse), 1 En. 93:1–10 and 91:11–17 (Apocalypse of Weeks), and Daniel 7–12. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 43 3/18/2010 3:00:53 PM 44 loren t. stuckenbruck present, and future. he memory of the Wicked Priest remains alive as more than just a record of what happened in the past; it is activated through biblical interpretation as a way of coming to terms with what is happening in the present and what will, in consequence, happen in the future. he persecution of the Teacher of Righteousness recalled in column 11 is regarded as an event that deines the community’s own continuing story. In one sense, we might say that it is not the events surrounding the Teacher, the Wicked Priest, and other igures that gave rise to the pesher, but rather—and more fundamentally—that the author is determined to interpret the contemporary circumstances of his community, circumstances in which the anticipated advent of the Kittim invited dynamic prophetic commentary within the context of the community’s present self-understanding. hough one can allow for a degree of continuity, the time and particular concerns of the author are, in principle, to be distinguished from the time and concerns with which the Teacher of Righteousness was faced. Perhaps this explains why so much of the focus is devoted to the activities of the Kittim in columns 3–9 of the Habakkuk Pesher. Since both the Teacher’s claims to be the correct interpreter of sacred tradition and his struggle against his opponents provided the frame of reference for this selfunderstanding, the remembrance of selected moments in the Teacher’s life, which are seen to have consequences in the future (e.g., in relation to the punishment of the Wicked Priest), functions as a way of reassuring, exhorting, and challenging the community in the present to adhere to its identity as “men of truth” and “doers of the Torah” (col. 7). 6) What does the expression “Teacher of Righteousness” mean in the texts that refer to him? he two main views are (1) one who teaches righteousness (obj. gen., so that “righteousness” is the content of the instruction given);49 and (2) the “right teacher” (gen. qual., emphasizing either his unique status as the only right teacher50 or his righteous character). While the latter is grammatically possible, the former seems preferable, given the designation’s probable derivation from 49 50 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 44 So, e.g., Jeremias, Der Lehrer der Gerechtigkeit, 308–18. So esp. Charlesworth, he Pesharim and Qumran History, 12. 3/18/2010 3:00:53 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 45 Joel 2:23 and Hos 10:12, in which ‫ה‬/‫ צדק‬follows the verbal root ‫ירה‬ as its object.51 III. What, hen, is Historically Remembered About the Teacher? Ater the review of the evidence above, my answer to this question can only be: very little. We may suppose that when referring to the Teacher of Righteousness, the community in which the pesharim were composed knew exactly who he was (i.e., which historical personage) and probably knew a great deal more about him than the extant evidence provides. Such assumptions on our part, given their plausibility, are not the problem. What is surprising is that, given the Teacher’s obvious importance to the Yaḥad, the details we have just reviewed in the texts constitute almost all the explicit information that we have about him; that is—making allowance for the likelihood that we do not possess everything the community wrote about him—what the pesharists decided to remember about him. If the unpreserved portions of the pesharim contained much the same sorts of details as we ind among the extant materials, then we are in a position to state what the materials do not explicitly reveal about him. First, and most obviously, the Teacher is not explicitly named. Not anonymous to the community, he is anonymous to us (who are outsiders); and, more importantly, he remains without a proper name in the narrative world of the text.52 As I noted at the outset, many, if not most, discussions about the Teacher are devoted precisely to the question of which historical igure he may have been.53 While this does not mean that the community would have known precisely to whom all the nicknames were being applied, the almost exclusive 51 As Jeremias notes (Der Lehrer der Gerechtigkeit, 312), in the texts, ‫ המורה‬and ‫ירה‬, respectively, mean “early rain” (n.) and “to let rain” (vb.). However, when read as the verb “to instruct,” the meaning is transformed, respectively, to “the one who teaches,” and “he will teach.” For this meaning in the Damascus Document, see CD A 6:11: “until one who will teach righteousness stands at the end of days.” 52 his is true for almost all the personages and groups mentioned in the pesharim, with the exception of the reference to Demetrius in 4QpNah 3–4 i 2. 53 For discussions of scholarly theories and reconstructions of the history of the Qumran community, including the identity of the Teacher of Righteousness, see Callaway, he History of the Qumran Community, 12–20. he literature devoted to this question is wide-ranging in opinion and legion, though many are convinced that the Teacher was the unnamed high priest who oiciated in the Temple between the time of Alcimus and Jonathan (158–150 BCE). 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 45 3/18/2010 3:00:53 PM 46 loren t. stuckenbruck choice to use sobriquets in the texts reveals something about how they wished to remember these personages; in our case, they wished the Teacher to be remembered as ‫מורה הצדק‬. Second, in addition to not knowing the Teacher’s name, we have very little biographical information about him (even in the ancient sense of “biography”). Of the writings composed by the Qumran group, the Teacher of Righteousness is only expressly mentioned in a few documents (1QpHab, 1QpMic, 4QpPsb, Damascus Document), and he is certainly not mentioned in a number of the pesher-like documents (as fragmentary as they may be). We have neither storyline nor running account of the Teacher’s life in general or even of his life in the community. No attempt seems to have been made within the Qumran community to produce a portrait which in itself could have inspired others both within the community and beyond its bounds. In other words, no “comprehensive memory” (or anything close) exists, even in reconstructable form, in the documents we have to hand. hird, and most importantly, the texts do not tell us very much about the content of his teachings. While scholars have suggested that his writing activity is relected, for example, among the Hodayot or even among the pesharim, it remains diicult to ascertain with any conidence just what, concretely, he taught. Despite the claim in 1QpHab 7 that “all the mysteries of his servants the prophets” were revealed to the Teacher of Righteousness, the texts have nothing direct or speciic to tell us about these mysteries.54 We are let with the impression that the strands of information about the Teacher of Righteousness are not actually based on the writers’ immediate experiences of him. Drawing on the distinction of Maurice Halbwachs, one might conclude that their memory of him was less “biographical” or direct than “historical” or remote.55 At the same time, the Teacher’s 54 he closest we come is the mention in CD A 3:12–16 of the group which remained steadfast, ater “the irst ones” who had entered the covenant became guilty; with this remnant, “God established his covenant with Israel for ever, to reveal to them hidden things in which all Israel had erred: his holy Sabbaths, his glorious feasts, his righteous stipulations and his truthful paths, and the desires of his will which man shall do in order to live by them (cf. Hab 2:4b).” Since this passage alludes to the narrative concerning the origins of the community at the opening of the Damascus Document, it may be that the Teacher’s instructions are in view. 55 M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (trans. L. A. Coser; Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992; French ed., 1925). In making this distinction, I do not, in contrast with Halbwachs, ind it necessary to press too far the notion of discontinu- 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 46 3/18/2010 3:00:53 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 47 instructions and activities were not considered ideologically remote by those members of the Yaḥad who referred to him. he inevitable distortion that came with remembering the Teacher in relation to the community’s evolving self-understanding betrays, at the same time, the community’s undeniable indebtedness to this igure. In the end, we are let with a conundrum: the Teacher’s unparalleled importance, on the one hand, and the very little explicit information about him in the texts. What, then, can we say, on the basis of the Dead Sea materials we have looked at, was his discernible legacy? How are the concrete “fragments of memory,” isolated as they are, related to the wider memory about him shared by a community that distinguished itself sharply from other groups? Answer: he Qumran community developed a “collective memory” about the Teacher of Righteousness, a process that was well underway from his own time and that continued to be shaped by the community’s own (later) self-understanding. We may assume that there was a “collective memory” in this case, since the texts about the Teacher preserve interpretations that were shared between the authors and readers of those texts which were but fragments of a larger framework that could be taken for granted (and therefore did not have to be expressed in the sources before us). (a) he statements about the Teacher that recall his conlicts with others (Man of Lies, Wicked Priest) are told precisely because the dynamics generated by these conlicts persisted into the time of the community out of which the documents (pesharim) were authored. he community of the Man of the Lie and the sacerdotal community of Jerusalem were both inimical to the Qumran community during the irst century BCE. It would, therefore, have been signiicant for the authors of the pesharim to “remember” the Teacher’s conlicts with igures associated with these communities. In the Teacher of Righteousness, inasmuch as he was in conlict with his opponents, the authors of the pesharim found an exemplary igure whose fortitude was inspiring and who, they were convinced, was and would be ity, so that, for example, “historical memory” invariably distorts or is discontinuous with the event or person being remembered; cf. B. Schwartz, “he Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory,” Social Forces 61 (1982): 374–97. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 47 3/18/2010 3:00:53 PM 48 loren t. stuckenbruck supported by God in the coming eschatological showdown, in marked contrast to the divine punishment (past and future) against the Wicked Priest and his ilk. (b) Statements about divine revelation given to the Teacher are likewise signiicant, not so much on account of the fact that the Teacher is singled out as one who was of unique importance, but because the community understood itself as participating in the mode of revelation given to him. Although, for example, the Habakkuk Pesher does not actually reveal anything about what the Teacher of Righteousness taught in relation to the biblical texts cited, the document is written in a way that re-presents and carries out, perhaps even more systematically than the Teacher did himself, the method of interpretation that the Teacher originated. Stories told about the Teacher, then, are sacred history, that is, selected fragments that reinforced and guided the collective self-understanding of the community as relected in those documents that refer to him. IV. Conclusion In other words, the documents which refer to the Teacher are essentially presentist. Whereas the community would doubtless have “received” and known a great deal about the Teacher of Righteousness, including his name, the formal “memory” or record about him in the extant texts was far more selective. Certain events from the Teacher’s life were chosen to be preserved because they were closely bound up with the community’s self-understanding and activity. he “collective memory” of the community about the Teacher was thus inextricably determined by an ideology of mimesis. Memory and application, mnemonic mimesis (if you will), are not so much two distinct steps taken up in sequence, but rather two sides of the same coin. Of course we may infer that the community probably regarded itself as adhering to the instructions of the Teacher; more important for this discussion, however, is the further point that it was above all else the perspective brought by and attributed to the Teacher that shaped the community’s self-understanding (in regard to, e.g., calendar, halakhah, hermeneutical perspective). hese considerations lead us to propose new questions for discussion. Scholars have frequently read the community’s documents about the Teacher by asking, “What do the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 48 3/18/2010 3:00:53 PM the legacy of the teacher of righteousness 49 about who the Teacher was?” or “To what extent can we learn about past events by studying the Qumran pesharim?”56 We do well to devote more attention at this stage of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship to the question: “What can we learn about the later authors of the pesharim (and other documents) by studying what they have to say about their community’s formative past?” 56 So the question raised by Charlesworth, he Pesharim and the Qumran Community, 83. As emphasized throughout this discussion, my argument does not deny the importance of the question in itself; rather, I mean to highlight the fact that, despite the frequent cautions against any conident identiication of the sobriquets with historical igures, the understanding of these nicknames in relation to those who applied them has not received proper attention. 23-50_CHAZON_f3.indd 49 3/18/2010 3:00:53 PM