The Community Rule (1QS)

If the Dead Sea Scrolls have a house rulebook, this is it. Eleven columns set out how the community lived: the covenant ceremony at which priests blessed the sons of light and Levites cursed the lot of Belial, the two-year probation before a novice could touch the communal meal or property, the ranking of every member reviewed annually, and a disciplinary code of startling precision — penalties for interrupting a brother, for falling asleep in session, for spitting in the assembly, for gesturing with the left hand. **The two spirits.** Columns 3 and 4 contain the theological core. God created for man two spirits, "the spirits of truth and of falsehood," and appointed a Prince of Light and an Angel of Darkness. Every person walks in both until the appointed end, when God will destroy falsehood for ever and purify the faithful. This is the sharpest dualism in ancient Jewish literature, and it is a dualism under one sovereign God, not between two equal powers. **Isaiah 40 as a charter.** The community understood its own retreat to the desert as obedience to a text: they went into the wilderness "to prepare there the way of Him, as it is written, ''Prepare in the wilderness the way of the Lord.''" The same verse the Gospels apply to John the Baptist. **Where it stands.** A sectarian document, in no canon, and never claimed to be Scripture by anyone.

The Community Rule is the single most useful scroll for reading the New Testament, because it shows that its most distinctive-sounding vocabulary was already in use in Judaea. "Sons of light" — which Jesus uses in Luke 16:8 and John 12:36, and Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:5 — is the Qumran community''s name for itself. The contrast of light and darkness that saturates John''s Gospel and 1 John is here in Hebrew a century earlier. The "poor in spirit" of the Beatitudes appears as a phrase in this literature. Shared property, common meals, a ritual washing on entry, an overseer, a council of twelve — the structural resemblances to the Jerusalem church of Acts 2–5 are real and were noticed immediately. And then the differences, which matter more. Qumran cursed outsiders; Jesus commanded love of enemies. Qumran barred the blind and the lame from the assembly; Jesus called them to the feast. Qumran''s washings were repeated for life; Christian baptism is once. Qumran waited for two messiahs, priestly and royal; the New Testament proclaims one man who is both, already come. John the Baptist has often been proposed as a former member of this community. There is no evidence for it, and the parallel of Isaiah 40 is better explained by both reading the same prophet. The scroll illuminates the New Testament; it does not explain it away. Modern translations are under copyright; Berean quotes briefly and links to the published editions.

• John 12:35-36— Sons of light — the Qumran community's name for itself
• 1 Thessalonians 5:4-8— Children of light and of the day
• Acts 2:42-47— Shared property and common meals in the Jerusalem church
• Matthew 5:43-48— Love your enemies — the sharpest break with the Rule

• ·Sarianna Metso, 'The Serekh Texts' (T&T Clark, 2007)
• ·Geza Vermes, 'The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English' (Penguin, 2011)
• ·James H. Charlesworth, ed., 'The Dead Sea Scrolls: Rule of the Community' (Westminster John Knox, 1996)
• ·John J. Collins, 'Beyond the Qumran Community' (Eerdmans, 2010)
• ·The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library

• Manuscripts

  The War Scroll (1QM)

  The same community, preparing for the end

• Manuscripts

  The Temple Scroll, 4QMMT and the Thanksgiving Hymns

  Its law, its letter and its hymns