The Damascus Document

Summary

Several writings of a legislative character were discovered amongst the Qumran scrolls, one of which is the work known as the Damascus Document (CD = the Cairo manuscripts of the Damascus Document (see below)) or, as it is sometimes called, the Damascus Rule. It is given this title because it refers several times to a new covenant which was made ‘in the land of Damascus’ (vi.19; viii.21; xix.34; xx.12), and because Damascus is mentioned in some other important passages (vi.5; vii.15, 19); the significance of the references to Damascus will need to be discussed later. In fact this writing was known long before the discovery of the Qumran scrolls. At the end of the nineteenth century two mediaeval manuscripts of this work were found – along with a vast hoard of other manuscripts – in the store room (Genizah) of a synagogue in Cairo, and these were published in 1910 under the title ‘Fragments of a Zadokite Work’. The use of this title reflects the fact that the group that lies behind the document claimed in some sense to be ‘the sons of Zadok’ (cp. iii.20b–iv.4a), and until recently this work was still sometimes called ‘the Zadokite Fragments’ or ‘the Zadokite Document’. When this writing was first discovered it was difficult for scholars to place it properly in its historical context, and many suggestions were made about it.