No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Women, Children, and Celibate Men in the Serekh Texts*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2011
Extract
The Serekh or “Community Rule” (in all its variant manuscript forms) is one of the most famous of all the Dead Sea scrolls. It is commonplace to see it as referring to a sect of celibate men; the assumption is that it “contains no allusions to the presence of women in the group which it regulates.”1 However, in an important study, Eyal Regev has recently challenged the notion that celibate men are the focus of the Serekh texts, or of any manuscript in the scrolls corpus, by stressing that there are no explicit statements that deal with the issue of sexual asceticism, unlike what is found in monastic rules, or among the Shakers. Rather, other yaḥad documents (e.g., 4Q502 Ritual of Marriage or 1QSa Rule of the Congregation) refer to marriage, reproduction, and children.2 If this is so, why assume that the Serekh can only refer to a group of celibate men, even without explicit mention of women and children? Regev's view has essentially been the position of Lawrence Schiffman for many years, given the numerous references to issues of women and family in the halakhic texts of the scrolls corpus.3
- Type
- ARTICLES
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2010
References
1 Bernstein, Moshe J., “Women and Children in Legal and Liturgical Texts from Qumran,” DSD 11 (2004) 191–211Google Scholar, at 195; see also, e.g., Schuller, Eileen M., “Women in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (ed. Flint, Peter W. and VanderKam, James C.; 2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 2:117–44Google Scholar, at 117–18.
2 Eyal Regev, “Cherchez les femmes: Were the Yahad Celibates?” DSD 15 (2008) 253–84.
3 Schiffman, Lawrence, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994Google Scholar).
4 The bibliography on this topic is vast, but for a good recent overview of the field see White Crawford, Sidnie, “Not According to Rule: Women, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran,” in Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov (ed. Paul, Shalom M. et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 127–50Google Scholar; see also Wassen, Cecilia, Women in the Damascus Document (Atlanta, Ga.: SBL, 2005Google Scholar); and Christine Barholt Jensen, “Kvinder i Qumran [Women in Qumran],” (Ph.D. diss. [unpublished], K⊘benhavns Universitet, 2004). In the recent conference in Jerusalem, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Contemporary Culture: Celebrating Sixty Years of Discovery (6–8 July 2008), numerous papers were presented on this topic.
5 Regev, “Cherchez les femmes,” 265.
6 For the text of 1QS, I use the reading established by Elisha Qimron in Rule of the Community and Related Documents (ed. and trans. James H. Charlesworth; vol. 1 of Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations; Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1994); with reference also to Brownlee, William H., The Dead Sea Manual of Discipline: Translations and Notes (BASORSup 10–12; New Haven, Conn.: Yale, 1951Google Scholar); and Wernberg-M⊘ller, Preben, The Manual of Discipline (Leiden: Brill, 1957Google Scholar).
7 For the Cave 4 material, see Alexander, Philip and Vermes, Geza, Qumran Cave 4 XIX Serekh Ha-Yahad and Two Related Texts (DJD 26; Oxford: OUP, 1998Google Scholar); and the commentary by Metso, Sarianna, The Serekh Texts (London: T&T Clark, 2007Google Scholar).
8 This method is in particular adopted by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in her many studies of New Testament material, most particularly in But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon, 1992); for a summary, see Fuchs, Esther, “Points of Resonance,” in On the Cutting Edge: The Study of Women in Biblical Worlds (ed. Schaberg, Jane, Bach, Alice, and Fuchs, Esther; New York: Continuum, 2004) 1–20Google Scholar.
9 As noted by Maxine Grossman, “Rethinking Gender in the Community Rule,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls and Contemporary Culture: Proceedings of the International Conference held at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (July 6–8, 2008), forthcoming in the conference volume edited by Adolfo Roitman, Larry Schiffman, and Shani Tzoref.
10 Maxine Grossman, “Gendered Sectarians: Envisioning Women (and Men) at Qumran,” in the forthcoming Festschrift for Carol Meyers (ed. Charles Carter and Karla Bohmback) [italics in original].
11 Grossman, “Gendered Sectarians”; see also Crawford, “Not According to Rule,” 148, where she suggests post-menopausal women could have resided at Qumran, since they were not subject to the impurities of menstruation and childbirth.
12 Taylor, Joan E., “On Method,” in eadem, Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo's ‘Therapeutae’ Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 1–20Google Scholar.
13 An alternative epistemological position may hold that there is no correlation between the texts and historical actuality, in that the authors may have been archaizing pre-actual circumstances or eschatologizing post-actual scenarios (the latter position often being adopted regarding 1QSa). However, the Serekh texts are concerned with real circumstances and issues, such as the minutiae of order in assemblies. While texts formulating imaginary scenarios—whether past, future, or remote—may have a textual “world” that is detached from reality, the world of the text within regulatory discourse functioning within a group, and written within a group for leaders of that group, would correspond to the actual world of the authors and readers, unless it is specifically defined by the author(s) as applying to another scenario, for example, as a plan for an eschatological circumstance (as in the case of 1QM, War Scroll) or circumstances of the past that may soon be replicated in the future (for example, operations of the temple as defined in the Mishnah's final redaction).
14 Jastrow, Marcus, Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Title, 1943) 406Google Scholar.
15 Davies, Philip R. and Taylor, Joan E., “On the Testimony of Women in 1QSa,” DSD 3 (1996) 223–35Google Scholar. As an example of the ideal self-control of Jewish men, Josephus gives the rule that sex is only allowed for procreation (C. Ap. 2.199, J.W. 2.161).
16 Melissa Aubin, “ ‘She is the beginning of all the ways of perversity’: Femininity and Metaphor in 4Q184,” Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal 2 (2001) 1–23; Matthew Goff, “Hellish Females: The Strange Woman of Septuagint Proverbs and 4Q Wiles of the Wicked Woman (4Q184),” JSJ 39 (2008) 20–45.
17 Satlow, Michael L., “ ‘Try to Be a Man’: The Rabbinic Construction of Masculinity,” HTR 89 (1996) 19–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 22–24.
18 See Craig Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999) 187.
19 See, for example, Brooten, Bernadette, Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) 1–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; therefore, women cast “inviting” glances rather than lecherous ones.
20 Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality (trans. Robert Hurley; 3 vols.; New York: Random House, 1988) 3Google Scholar:39–68; Satlow, “Rabbinic Construction,” 21–22; Grossman, “Rethinking Gender.”
21 See Satlow, “Rabbinic Construction”; Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees,” JBL 117 (1998) 249–73; Maxine Grossman, “Affective Masculinity: The Gender of the Patriarchs in Jubilees,” Henoch 31 (2009) 91–97.
22 Moxnes, Halvor, Putting Jesus in His Place: A Radical Vision of Household and Kingdom (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2003) 92–94Google Scholar.
23 Less extremely, rabbinic literature stresses that men who are truly men should control their sexual desires, as has been explored in Satlow, “Rabbinic Construction.”
24 The same terminology of the “fruitful seed” is found also in Greek sources, for example, in Lucretius, , On the Nature of the Universe, 1230–35Google Scholar.
25 I am grateful to Charlotte Hempel for pointing this out in her paper, “The Teaching on the Two Spirits and the Literary History of the Community Rule” at The Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls Day Conference at King's College London, 14 May 2009.
26 Note the more strongly androcentric character of the language here than above: 
as opposed to 
.
27 The tendency to see this as irrelevant to the actual “Qumran community,” since it is eschatological in tenor, seems unwarranted; rather, there is an integration of traditional communal legislation into an eschatological setting. See Charlotte Hempel, “The Early Essene Nucleus of 1QSa,” DSD 3 (1996) 254–69; Crawford, “Not According to Rule,” 139, endorses this reading of the actual; as well, see the public liturgy of 4Q502.
28 The root 
means “unite, join together”; in Jer 48:7, princes and priests are literally joined together in chains going into captivity.
29 This is explored in Blanton, Thomas R., Constructing a New Covenant: Discursive Strategies in the Damascus Document and Second Corinthians (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007) 28–38Google Scholar.
30 See also Sarianna Metso, “Qumran Community Structure and Terminology as Theological Statement,” RevQ 20 (2002) 429–44, at 437.
31 Alexei Sivertsev, “Sects and Households: Social Structure of the Proto-Sectarian Movement of Nehemiah 10 and the Dead Sea Sect,” CBQ 67 (2005) 59–78.
32 Brownlee, , Dead Sea Manual of Discipline, 53Google Scholar n. 3, appendix G; see also 4Q275, frag. 2, where there are the words “in the third month” with some kind of ceremony.
33 
is usually translated as “counsel” or “council”. Charlesworth, , Rule of the Community, 7Google Scholar n. 10. In adding a corresponding term, “authority,” I aim to preserve more of the ambiguity inherent in the Hebrew word. Here note that 
is an attribute or action of God, counterpointed by the “vengeance of God” in line 11.
34 This is not to say that 
here is as expansive as defined by Stegemann, Hartmut, “The Qumran Essenes: Local Members of the Main Jewish Union of Second Temple Times,” in The Madrid Qumran Congress: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid 18–21 March, 1991 (ed. Trebolle Barrera, J. and Vegas Montaner, L.; 2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1992) 1:83–166Google Scholar. What exactly 
signifies has been much discussed, with John J. Collins rightly emphasizing that 1QS 6 points to an umbrella organization. “Forms of Community in the Dead Sea Scrolls” in Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov (ed. Shalom M. Paul et al.; VTSup 94; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 97–111; idem, “The Yaḥad and ‘The Qumran Community,’” in Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in Honour of Michael A. Knibb (ed. Charlotte Hempel and Judith M. Lieu; JSJSup 111; Leiden: Brill, 2006) 81–96. Cf. Eyal Regev, “The Yaḥad and the Damascus Covenant: Structure, Organization and Relationship,” RevQ 21/82 (2003) 133–62; Sarianna Metso, “Whom Does the Term Yaḥad Identify?” in Hempel, and Lieu, , Biblical Traditions in Transmission, 213–35Google Scholar.
35 Note also that in 1QS 11:16 the writer calls himself “son of your handmaid”; in doing so, he calls his mother a servant of God, which indicates her inclusion in the category of those within true Israel.
36 Charlotte Hempel suggests that the “council of the community” here indicates an incipient stage of the community: “Emerging Communal Life and Ideology in the S Tradition,” in Defining Identities: We, You, and the Other in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fifth Meeting of the IOQS in Groningen (ed. Florentino García Martínez and Mladen Popović; Leiden: Brill, 2008) 43–62.
37 Heads of households, in charge of property and the welfare of extended families, would also lead in terms of religious decisions, as we see in the early church with Cornelius and his household (“you and all your house”; Acts 11:15), the jailer of Philippi (“you and your household”; Acts 16:31–5), or Crispus (“and his whole household”; Acts 18:8). Note that in Acts, there is also recognition of a female head of house: Lydia (Acts 16:15).
38 Collins, “The Yahad and ‘The Qumran Community,’” 88–91.
39 On this topic, instead, see Philip Alexander, “The Redaction-History of the Serekh ha-Yahad: A Proposal,” RevQ 77 (1996) 437–53, who proposes that the long version inclusive of 1QS 1–4 is earlier than the shorter version. Sarianna Metso presents the opposite thesis, with a complex redactional history, in The Textual Development of the Qumran Community Rule (Leiden: Brill, 1997) and The Serekh Texts; see also Charlotte Hempel, “The Literary Development of the S Tradition—A New Paradigm,” RQ 22/87 (2006) 389–402; Alison Schofield, “Rereading S: A New Model of Textual Development in Light of the Cave 4 Serekh Copies,” DSD 15 (2008) 96–120; eadem, From Qumran to the Yahad: A New Paradigm of Textual Development for The Community Rule (STDJ 77; Leiden: Brill, 2008); and the earlier studies by Murphy-O'Connor, Jerome, “La genèse littéraire de la Régle de la Communauté,” RB 76 (1969) 528–49Google Scholar; and Pouilly, Jean, La Régle de la Communauté de Qumrân. Son évolution littéraire (CahRB 17; Paris: Gabalda, 1976Google Scholar).
40 As noted by Charlotte Hempel, “Literary Development,” 398–400.
41 In Dan 12:3 the term 
, “sage,” is associated with 
, possibly indicating a group obedient to the 
, which would be a very significant precursor of the terminology of the Serekh: “The 
(wise teachers) will shine like the shine of the firmament and those who provide righteousness to the 
like the stars for ever and ever.” See Hempel, Charlotte, “Maskil(im) and Rabbim: From Daniel to Qumran,” in Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in Honour of Michael A. Knibb (ed. Hempel, Charlotte and Lieu, Judith M.; JSJSup 111; Leiden: Brill, 2006) 133–56Google Scholar.
42 It also occurs in the ossuary inscription: CIJ 2:337, 1410.
43 In biblical Hebrew the feminine plural is related only to the feminine adjective 
.
44 This would make it equivalent in many ways to the Greek ἄρχοντεϛ. Metso, , Textual Development, 77Google Scholar, and Hempel, “Literary Development,” 396–98, both note that 
has an administrative meaning.
45 Sanders, E. P., “The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context (ed. Lim, Timothy H. et al.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000) 7–44Google Scholar, at 20–26.
46 This latter attestation in fact raises the question of whether these female elders may be sometimes included among the 
, if we assume this to be an honorific way of referring to elders and leaders, even if women were not included in the 
.
47 See Hempel, Charlotte, The Damascus Texts (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000) 98–104Google Scholar. Here there are fifteen in the council (as opposed to twelve).
48 4Q265 also relates to 4QPurification Rules (4Q274), which discusses a woman with an issue of blood having impurity for seven days (see also 4QDa 9:2:2–6).
49 In Charlesworth, , Rule of the Community, 33Google Scholar (see in particular n. 185), it is translated as such: “Whoever causes his penis to come out from under his garment.”
50 Brownlee, , Dead Sea Manual of Discipline, 31Google Scholar.
51 Jastrow, , Dictionary, 1152Google Scholar. The term is related to the noun 
, “nakedness, poverty.”
52 In regard to this translation, the word 
is to be corrected, on the basis of 4QSg, to 
, which means, strictly speaking, one who is “the victim of an accident, unavoidably prevented”; so in b. Ned. 27a: “the Merciful acquits from responsibility him who is the victim of an unavoidable accident” (Jastrow, , Dictionary, 86Google Scholar). A translation such as, “without being forced,” implies some element of coercion not present in the Hebrew (Charlesworth, , Rule of the Community, 31Google Scholar).
53 Taylor, Joan E., The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997) 556Google Scholar. If a garment were not arranged properly after immersion this could perhaps occur. Jews likely immersed themselves wearing loincloths or wraps, as Josephus specifically indicates in regard to the Essenes (J.W. 2.161), but people would then remove these and put on clean, dry clothing afterwards.
54 The word, 
, in 7:13 is the Hiphil imperfect form, which may be rendered as “bring forth” or “produce” (see Gen 1:12; Isa 54:16); the participle is found in 7:15.
55 Magness, Jodi, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002) 194Google Scholar.
56 For the modest wearing of this garment, see Taylor, , Jewish Women Philosophers, 292–93Google Scholar. The Graeco-Roman Museum in Alexandria has a statue of a barefoot man dressed in a himation, with his hand inside the clothing in this way (G532). It is possible that for Jews this deportment was designed to preserve the purity of the right hand.
57 Ibid.
58 See above.
59 Charlesworth, , Rule of the Community, 2Google Scholar. The text of 1QS is palaeographically dated to 100–75 B.C.E., but, given the textual errors, it is clearly a copy of another, earlier manuscript. This, along with the evidence of earlier variant forms, leads to an assumption that the first shaping of the Serekh took place in the middle of the second cent. B.C.E.
60 With dates: ca. 40 C.E., Philo of Alexandria, Quod omnis probus liber sit (“Every Good Man is Free”) 75–91; ca. 41 C.E., Philo of Alexandria, Apologia pro Iudaeis (“Apology for the Jews”) or Hypothetica (in Eusebius's Praeparatio evangelica 8.11, 1–18); ca. 75 C.E., Josephus, , Jewish War 2.118–161Google Scholar; also J.W. 1.78–80, 2.112–113, 2.567, 5.145; ca. 78 C.E., Pliny the Elder, , Naturalis historia 5.15Google Scholar, 4/73; ca. 90 C.E., Josephus, , Jewish Antiquities 18.18–22Google Scholar; Ant. 13.171–172, 13.310–314, 15.371–379, 17.345–348; ca. 90 C.E., Dio Chrysostom, in a lost treatise evidenced in Synesius, , Dio, sive de suo ipsius instituto 3Google Scholar,2. See Taylor, Joan E., “The Classical Sources on the Essenes and the Scrolls Communities,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Collins, John J. and Lim, Timothy; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) 173–99Google Scholar.
61 Taylor, , Jewish Women Philosophers, 282–86Google Scholar; see also Corley, Kathleen, Private Women, Public Meals: Social Conflict in the Synoptic Tradition (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1993) 25–28Google Scholar.
62 See Mason, Steve, “Essenes and Lurking Spartans in Josephus' Judean War: From Story to History,” in Making History: Joseph and Historical Method (ed. Rodgers, Zuleika; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 219–61Google Scholar.
63 Vermes, Geza, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (rev. ed.; New York: Penguin, 2004) 26–48Google Scholar.
64 They were simply an unknown Jewish group; see Ginzberg, Louis, Eine unbekannte jüdische Sekte (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1922Google Scholar); trans. idem, An Unknown Jewish Sect (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1976).
65 See Davies, Philip R., The Damascus Covenant: An Interpretation of the Damascus Document (Sheffield: JSOT, 1983) 173–201Google Scholar.
66 Joan Taylor, “Philo of Alexandria on the Essenes: A Case Study on the Use of Classical Sources in Discussions of the Qumran-Essene Hypothesis,” Studia Philonica Annual 19 (2007) 1–28, at 21–23.
67 One may also note the curious similar sound of the words 
and Εσσαῖοι.