Of the seven original Dead Sea Scrolls recovered from the caves above the Wadi Qumran in 1947, the most unusual is the manuscript that scholars now call the War Scroll, and that bears in the standard inventory of the Dead Sea Scrolls the shelfmark 1QM, where the 1 denotes the first cave in which it was found, the Q denotes Qumran, and the M denotes the initial letter of the Hebrew word milhamah, war. The scroll is not a biblical text. It is not a copy of a known work. It is the rule book of a community that believed the world was about to end, and it lays out, in extraordinary detail, the strategy and the liturgy and the choreography of the war that the community believed would end it. The war described in the scroll is a forty-year war, fought between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, with the Sons of Light drawn up in ordered ranks of thousands and the Sons of Darkness drawn up in the corresponding ranks of their respective armies; it is fought under the strict liturgical supervision of a high priest who stands at the centre of the camp and recites the prayers that govern each phase of the engagement; it is fought according to a precise tactical plan that allocates specific weapons and specific formations to specific units; and it ends in the total destruction of the Sons of Darkness and the inauguration of an eternal peace in which the Sons of Light worship the God of Israel in his temple in Jerusalem without further opposition. The scroll is the most elaborate piece of eschatological warfare literature to have survived from Second Temple Judaism, and it has been, since its appearance in scholarly publication in the 1950s, the subject of an extensive scholarly literature that has debated its dating, its literary sources, its relationship to the community that produced it, and its place in the long history of Jewish apocalyptic thought.<\/p>\n
The War Scroll came to light in the same chain of events that brought the rest of the original Dead Sea Scrolls to scholarly attention, but it was not part of the first purchase of scrolls by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1947. The story of the discovery has been told many times, but the main outlines are as follows. In the spring of 1947, a Bedouin shepherd named Muhammed edh-Dhib, searching a stray goat in the limestone cliffs above the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, threw a stone into a cave and heard the sound of breaking pottery. The cave, later numbered Cave 1 in the standard inventory of the Qumran caves, contained a number of jars, in which were a number of scrolls. The first scrolls to come to scholarly attention were four manuscripts that were acquired by the archaeologist Eleazar Lipa Sukenik of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in November 1947: the Isaiah Scroll A, the Habakkuk Pesher, the Community Rule, and the War Scroll. Sukenik recognised the antiquity and the importance of the four manuscripts at once, and arranged their purchase in difficult circumstances in the closing months of the British Mandate for Palestine. The four manuscripts were eventually brought together in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where they remain. The War Scroll, after a brief period in the hands of the Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan of Jerusalem, was acquired for the State of Israel in 1954, in a transaction arranged by the government of the State of Israel through the offices of the diplomat and archaeologist Yigael Yadin, the son of Eleazar Lipa Sukenik. The transaction is one of the most famous acquisitions of any ancient manuscript in the history of biblical scholarship.<\/p>\n
The War Scroll is preserved in seventeen sheets of parchment that together contain nineteen columns of text, with the text distributed in the irregular way that is typical of the Qumran manuscripts. The manuscript is in a fragmentary condition: many of the columns are torn, and some of the columns are preserved in only a few scraps. The first eighteen columns are substantially complete, though with gaps in places; the nineteenth column is preserved in only a few small fragments and is known as the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, after the title that the scroll uses to describe its content. The text of the scroll is written in a Herodian hand that the paleographers have dated to the second half of the first century BCE, on the basis of the letter shapes that are characteristic of the period. The paleographic dating puts the manuscript itself within the period of the existence of the community at Qumran, but does not necessarily put the composition of the work in that period. The question of when the War Scroll was composed is the subject of a separate scholarly debate, which has ranged from the second century BCE, before the community at Qumran had taken shape, to the first century CE, after the community had been destroyed by the Romans.<\/p>\n
The first publication of the scroll appeared in 1955, in a Hebrew edition by Sukenik and a parallel English edition by Yigael Yadin. Yadin’s English edition, published by the Oxford University Press in 1955 under the title The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, included a full translation and a substantial introduction. The publication was one of the most important events in the early history of the Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship, and it made the War Scroll available to a scholarly audience for the first time. The publication was followed by a series of scholarly studies, by scholars including John Strugnell, Frank Moore Cross, Jacob Liver, and Yigael Yadin himself, that established the literary and historical context of the scroll. The publication of the scroll also had an effect on the popular understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, because the scroll’s vivid imagery of a final war between the forces of good and the forces of evil was, in the popular mind of the 1950s and 1960s, a powerful complement to the more austere texts of the Qumran library.<\/p>\n
The first six columns of the War Scroll lay out, in remarkable detail, the plan of the war that the scroll envisages. The plan begins with a description of the campaign against the Kittim, who are identified in the scholarly literature with the Romans, and who are described as coming from the west with infantry, cavalry, and a fleet of ships. The Kittim are defeated in a series of engagements, the details of which are given in terms of specific tactical formations and specific prayers recited by the high priest before and after each engagement. The campaign against the Kittim is followed by a campaign against the surrounding peoples, which is described in even more elaborate terms. The whole campaign is described as a war of forty years, in which the Sons of Light defeat their enemies in successive engagements, each of which is governed by the liturgical prescriptions that form the second part of the scroll. The plan of the war is, in the technical sense, a piece of military theory that incorporates an earlier agricultural background and is cast in the form of a divine revelation delivered to the Sons of Light through the agency of the community’s teacher.<\/p>\n
The tactical formations described in the War Scroll are remarkable for their specificity. The army of the Sons of Light is described as drawn up in seven columns of infantry, each of which is composed of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, on a pattern that follows the organisation of the biblical armies. Each column has a specific formation, and each unit within the column has a specific role. The shields of the infantry are of a particular shape; the spears are of a particular length; the swords are of a particular weight; the helmets are of a particular type. The cavalry of the Sons of Light is described in similar detail: it includes both chariot teams and mounted cavalry, and the chariots are described as having specific numbers of horses and specific types of arms. The weapons of the Sons of Light include, in addition to the standard weapons of infantry and cavalry, the javelin, the sling, the bow, and the catapult. The detailed tactical prescriptions of the scroll have been the subject of a substantial literature that has tried to determine whether they reflect actual military practice of the Second Temple period or whether they are literary constructions of the scroll’s author. The scholarly literature is divided on this question, but the consensus is that the prescriptions reflect, at least in part, the actual military practice of the period, perhaps as filtered through the writings of Hellenistic military theorists.<\/p>\n
The most striking feature of the tactical prescriptions of the War Scroll is the role of the high priest in the conduct of the war. The high priest is described as standing at the centre of the camp, surrounded by the senior officers of the army and by the leading priests of the community. The high priest’s role is to recite, at specific moments in the engagement, specific prayers that the scroll then sets out in full. The prayers are on the order of twenty in total, and they include prayers before the engagement, prayers during the engagement, prayers after the engagement, prayers of thanksgiving for victory, prayers of dedication of the captured arms, prayers of praise for the divine intervention in the battle, and prayers of mourning for the dead. The prayers are written in the formal style of biblical Hebrew, with extensive use of parallelism and of the vocabulary of biblical praise. The prayers are the most elaborate body of liturgical material in the Qumran library, and they have been the subject of scholarly attention as a witness to the liturgical practice of the community at Qumran.<\/p>\n
The second part of the War Scroll, which runs from roughly the tenth column to the eighteenth column, is taken up with the Liturgical Regulations of the camp. The Liturgical Regulations describe the order of the camp and the order of the liturgy that the camp is to observe throughout the war. The order of the camp is described in terms of the layout of the camp of the Sons of Light, the position of the high priest, the position of the senior officers, the position of the infantry and the cavalry, and the position of the auxiliary services such as the medical corps and the supply corps. The order of the liturgy is described in terms of the prayers recited by the high priest, the prayers recited by the senior officers, the prayers recited by the infantry and the cavalry, and the prayers recited by the priests. The Liturgical Regulations are written in the same formal biblical Hebrew as the prayers of the first part of the scroll, and they include the longest single prayer in the scroll, the Prayer for the Day of Battle, which runs for several columns and which is one of the most remarkable pieces of liturgical poetry in the Qumran library.<\/p>\n
The Liturgical Regulations also include a series of inscriptions that are to be inscribed on the trumpets, the banners, and the shields of the Sons of Light. The inscriptions on the trumpets are described as including the words of the prayers recited by the high priest, so that the trumpets are themselves, in a sense, liturgical instruments. The inscriptions on the banners are described as including the names of the tribal ancestors of the Sons of Light, so that the banners are themselves a record of the lineage of the community. The inscriptions on the shields are described as including the names of the angels who are to assist the Sons of Light in the war, so that the shields are themselves a sign of the divine protection that is to be extended to the Sons of Light in the war. The inscriptions are the most elaborate set of liturgical inscriptions in the Qumran library, and they have been the subject of scholarly attention as a witness to the symbolic imagination of the community at Qumran.<\/p>\n
The Liturgical Regulations also include a series of instructions for the handling of the captured arms of the defeated enemies. The captured arms are to be burned in a ritual fire that is to be lit by the high priest. The burning of the captured arms is described as a sign of the destruction of the enemies of the Sons of Light and of the purification of the camp of the Sons of Light from the contamination of the weapons of the defeated. The ritual burning of the captured arms is paralleled in a number of biblical passages, particularly in the passages of the book of Deuteronomy that prescribe the destruction of the idols and the weapons of the enemies of Israel. The ritual burning is, in the scroll, an extension of the biblical prescriptions to the specific circumstances of the eschatological war, and it is one of the most distinctive features of the scroll’s treatment of the aftermath of the war.<\/p>\n
The Liturgical Regulations conclude with a series of prayers recited by the priests in the temple at Jerusalem, after the war has been won and the Sons of Light have returned to the temple to worship the God of Israel. The prayers recited in the temple are described as including prayers of praise for the divine intervention in the war, prayers of thanksgiving for the victory, prayers of dedication of the captured arms to the service of the temple, and prayers of mourning for the dead who have fallen in the war. The prayers recited in the temple are the longest and the most elaborate part of the Liturgical Regulations, and they are the most elaborate piece of liturgical poetry in the Qumran library. The prayers recited in the temple are also the most direct evidence of the community’s hope that the temple at Jerusalem would be restored to the service of the God of Israel after the war, and they are a witness to the community’s continuing attachment to the temple even in the period after the community had separated itself from the temple establishment of its day.<\/p>\n
The principal subject of the War Scroll is the war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. The two sides are described in the scroll in terms that are heavily indebted to the language of biblical prophecy, particularly the language of the prophet Isaiah and the prophet Daniel. The Sons of Light are described as the community of the Sons of Light, who are the elect of Israel, who are the Sons of Zadok, who are the Sons of Aaron and Israel. The Sons of Darkness are described as the forces of evil, who include the Kittim, who are the enemies of Israel, who are the forces of Belial, who are the army of Satan. The two sides are described as locked in a final cosmic conflict that will determine the fate of the world. The conflict is described as the war that has been foretold by the prophets of Israel, and that is now about to be fulfilled in the generation of the scroll’s author. The conflict is also described as the war that is being waged, in a hidden and invisible way, throughout the present age, and that will be concluded in a coming decade of cosmic history.<\/p>\n
The vocabulary of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness has its origins in the biblical traditions of the dualistic opposition between good and evil, between light and darkness, between the people of God and the enemies of God. The vocabulary is elaborated in the War Scroll, and is taken up by the community that produced the scroll in a wide range of contexts. The vocabulary appears in the War Scroll itself, in the Community Rule, in the Hymns of the community, in the Thanksgiving Psalms, in the Pesharim of the commentaries on the prophets, and in the Damascus Document. The vocabulary is, in a real sense, the principal vocabulary of the community at Qumran, and it is the vocabulary in which the community described its own identity and its own history. The vocabulary is taken up in the New Testament by the Gospel of John, which uses the opposition between light and darkness as the principal symbol of the opposition between the followers of Jesus and the enemies of God. The vocabulary is also taken up in the rabbinic tradition of the period, where the opposition between the good and the evil inclination within the human person becomes one of the principal themes of rabbinic moral teaching.<\/p>\n
The Sons of Light in the War Scroll are described as a community that has separated itself from the world in preparation for the final war. The separation of the Sons of Light from the world is described in the Community Rule, in the Damascus Document, and in the Hymns of the Qumran community. The separation is described as a separation from the world in order to prepare for the war, a separation that is to be maintained until the war is over and the Sons of Light have returned to the temple at Jerusalem. The separation is described as a strict separation, with the Sons of Light forbidden to engage in commerce with the Sons of Darkness, forbidden to intermarry with the Sons of Darkness, and forbidden to participate in the temple service of the Sons of Darkness. The strict separation is the principal expression of the community’s sense of itself as a community set apart for a specific purpose, and it is the principal expression of the community’s hope that the war would come soon and that the separation would be of short duration.<\/p>\n
The Sons of Darkness in the War Scroll are described as the enemies of Israel, the enemies of God, and the army of Belial. The enemies of Israel are described as including the Kittim, who are identified with the Romans, and the surrounding peoples, who are identified with the peoples of the East and the West. The enemies of God are described as the forces of evil in the cosmos, who are ranged against the Sons of Light in the final war. The army of Belial is described as the army of Satan, who has been given, by God, dominion over the world for a limited period of time, and whose dominion will be terminated at the end of the war. The vocabulary of Belial as the leader of the forces of evil is heavily indebted to the biblical traditions of Satan as the accuser of the righteous and the opponent of God. The vocabulary is elaborated in the War Scroll and in the other texts of the community, and it is taken up in the New Testament, where Belial becomes the principal name of the devil.<\/p>\n
The question of when and by whom the War Scroll was composed is one of the most contentious in the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship. The scroll was, as noted above, copied in a Herodian hand that has been dated to the second half of the first century BCE. The date of the copy is not, however, the date of the composition. The scholarly literature on the date of the composition has ranged from the second century BCE, before the community at Qumran had taken shape, to the first century CE, after the community had been destroyed by the Romans. The evidence for the earlier date includes the use of a number of Hebrew forms that are characteristic of the Second Temple period but that had largely disappeared by the first century CE, the presence of a number of Greek loanwords that are typical of the Hellenistic period, and the existence of a number of parallels with the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, a work that is generally dated to the second century BCE. The evidence for the later date includes the presence of a number of Hebrew forms that are characteristic of the first century BCE but not of the second, the absence of any references to historical events that could be dated to the second century BCE, and the existence of a number of parallels with the New Testament, which is generally dated to the first century CE.<\/p>\n
The most plausible modern reconstruction puts the composition of the War Scroll somewhere in the period between the late second century BCE and the early first century CE, with the most likely date being the late first century BCE. The composition is to be distinguished from the copy that is preserved in the manuscript: the manuscript is the work of a scribe who was working in the late first century BCE, but the text that the scribe was copying was, in all probability, a composition of an earlier date. The question of the identity of the composer is the subject of a separate scholarly debate, but the most plausible modern reconstruction is to treat the composer as a member of the community at Qumran, perhaps a senior priest or a senior scribe, who was responsible for a substantial body of the literary output of the community. The composer is not named in the scroll, but the use of the singular “I” in a number of passages suggests that the composer was an individual rather than a committee.<\/p>\n
The War Scroll is one of the most important of the non-biblical texts of the Qumran library. The non-biblical texts of the Qumran library include the Community Rule, the Damascus Document, the Thanksgiving Psalms, the Temple Scroll, the New Jerusalem Scroll, the Pesharim of the commentaries on the prophets, the Testimonia, the Florilegium, the Copper Scroll, the War Scroll, and a number of other texts of varying length and importance. The War Scroll is the most elaborate of these non-biblical texts, and it is the most ambitious in its scope. The War Scroll is, in a sense, the most characteristic of the Qumran texts, because it is the text that most clearly expresses the dualistic and the eschatological worldview that is the principal feature of the community’s theology. The War Scroll is also the most literary of the Qumran texts, because it is the text that most clearly exhibits the formal biblical Hebrew style that is the principal literary achievement of the community’s scribes. The War Scroll is, in short, the most ambitious and the most characteristic expression of the community’s literary imagination, and it is one of the most important witnesses to the world of Second Temple Judaism that has survived from the period.<\/p>\n
The War Scroll has been, since its first publication in 1955, the subject of an extensive scholarly literature. The literature includes the major editions of the text, by Sukenik, Yadin, and a number of other scholars; the major studies of the language of the text, by a number of philologists; the major studies of the theology of the text, by a number of theologians; the major studies of the historical context of the text, by a number of historians; and the major studies of the literary sources of the text, by a number of literary scholars. The literature has established the War Scroll as one of the most important texts of the Second Temple period, and it has established the Dead Sea Scrolls as one of the most important bodies of new evidence for the period. The War Scroll has also had an important role in the popular understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, because the scroll’s vivid imagery of a final war between the forces of good and the forces of evil has, since its first publication, been a powerful expression of the apocalyptic expectations of the Second Temple period. The War Scroll is, in a sense, the most quotable of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it is the most widely cited in the popular literature on the Dead Sea Scrolls and on the Second Temple period more generally.<\/p>\n
Among the most influential of the scholarly studies of the War Scroll is the work of Frank Moore Cross on the literary sources of the scroll. Cross argued, in a series of studies published from the 1950s onward, that the War Scroll is a literary compilation that draws on a number of earlier sources, including an earlier Hebrew source that Cross identified with the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, an earlier Aramaic source that Cross identified with the book of Daniel, and an earlier liturgical source that Cross identified with the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. Cross’s argument was, in effect, that the War Scroll is a literary mosaic that draws on the same sources as other Jewish apocalyptical literature of the Second Temple period, and that the War Scroll is therefore best understood as a representative example of Jewish apocalypticism rather than as an idiosyncratic product of the community at Qumran. Cross’s argument has been broadly accepted in the scholarly literature, though with significant qualifications in detail. The most important qualification has been the recognition that the War Scroll is more than a literary compilation, because the War Scroll contains substantial material that is not found in any of the identified sources, and that appears to be the original composition of the War Scroll’s author.<\/p>\n
Among the most influential of the more recent studies of the War Scroll is the work of John J. Collins on the theology of the scroll. Collins has argued, in his Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in a series of related studies, that the War Scroll is a witness to a distinctive theological tradition within Second Temple Judaism, a tradition that has come to be called apocalypticism. The tradition, in Collins’s analysis, is characterised by a number of features: a belief in the imminent end of the present age; a belief in the divine intervention in human history that will end the present age; a belief in a final war between the forces of good and the forces of evil; a belief in a new age in which the divine order will be fully realised; and a literary genre in which these beliefs are expressed in the form of visions, dreams, and pseudonymous prophecies. The War Scroll is, in Collins’s analysis, the most elaborate of the apocalyptical texts of the Second Temple period, and it is the most characteristic of the genre. Collins’s analysis has been broadly accepted in the scholarly literature, and the War Scroll is now regularly cited as one of the principal witnesses to the apocalyptical tradition of the Second Temple period.<\/p>\n
Among the most influential of the more recent studies of the War Scroll is the work of Philip Davies on the historical context of the scroll. Davies has argued, in a series of studies, that the War Scroll is best understood not as a description of an eschatological war to be fought at the end of time, but as a coded description of a contemporary political situation, in which the Sons of Light represent the community at Qumran and the Sons of Darkness represent the contemporary political enemies of the community. Davies’s argument is, in effect, that the War Scroll is a work of political theology rather than of eschatology, and that the War Scroll is therefore best read as a witness to the political situation of the community at Qumran in the late Second Temple period. Davies’s argument has been broadly accepted in the scholarly literature, but it has also been the subject of significant criticism. The critics have pointed out that the War Scroll contains substantial material that is not easily reducible to political allegory, and that the War Scroll is best understood as a genuine expression of apocalyptical expectation rather than as a coded political commentary.<\/p>\n
Whatever its theological and historical context, the War Scroll is, and is likely to remain, one of the most remarkable texts to have survived from the Second Temple period. The scroll’s vivid imagery of a final war between the forces of good and the forces of evil, its elaborate tactical prescriptions, its remarkable liturgical poetry, and its comprehensive programme of the conduct of the war all make it one of the most ambitious and the most characteristic expressions of the apocalyptical worldview of the period. The scroll is also, and perhaps most importantly, a witness to the literary imagination of the community that produced it. The community, whatever its precise identity, was a community that took the literature of the Hebrew Bible seriously, and that was capable of producing from that literature an original and elaborate piece of literary work. The War Scroll is the most elaborate expression of the literary imagination of the community, and it is, in a sense, the most lasting monument of that community’s literary achievement. The scroll is preserved in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where it continues to be one of the most visited of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and where it continues to be the subject of scholarly attention more than seventy years after its first publication.<\/p>\n
Of the seven original Dead Sea Scrolls recovered from the caves above the Wadi Qumran in 1947, the most unusual is the manuscript that scholars now call the War Scroll, and that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":389,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[258,261,131,46,101,45,263,100,264,260,259,262,207,265,257,210],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripture-interpretation","tag-1qm","tag-apocalyptic-literature","tag-cave-1","tag-dead-sea-scrolls","tag-essenes","tag-hebrew-bible","tag-maccabees","tag-qumran","tag-roman-period","tag-sons-of-darkness","tag-sons-of-light","tag-sukenik","tag-temple-scroll","tag-war-rule","tag-war-scroll","tag-yigael-yadin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}