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he Damascus DocumentDate: 10th century
MATERIAL: Paper
LANGUAGE: Hebrew, late Second Temple period
CONTENT:
The laws, practices and ideology of a group of Jews who lived in Judea before the rise of Christianity. They cover such topics as the role and rules of the group and its attitude to other Jews, dietary laws, marriage customs and sabbath observance. The form of Judaism here represented has common elements with Essene, Pharisaic and Sadducean forms of the religion but is not identical with any one of them. The only other source for this work is the Dead Sea Scrolls.
IMPORTANCE:
The survival of this document points to its use a millennium later than the period in which it originated, possibly by the Karaites or a similarly minded group of non-rabbinic Jews. It raises interesting questions about the contexts in which such literature survived during the intervening centuries.
QUOTE: "Let no man perform any work on Friday from the time that the disc of the sun is distant from the gate by its own fulness...Let no one speak of anything vain and pointless on the sabbath day nor lend anything to his colleague, nor discuss matters relating to profit and business nor even speak about work that is planned for the day afterwards."
READING: The Damascus Document: A Centennial of Discovery, eds. J. M. Baumgarten, E. G. Chazon and A Pinnick, Brill, Leiden, 2000