CD Manuscript B and the Rule of the Community-Reflections on a Literary Relationship

This article begins by noting the proliferation of textual overlap between the Damascus Document and the Rule of the Community. Some examples of such over-lap, such as the penal code, have received a large amount of scholarly attention in the wake of the publication of all the Cave 4 manuscripts. This study returns to a passage from CD manuscript B (CD 20:1b-8a) that has long been recognized as closely related to 1QS 8-9 and offers a reconsideration of the relationship between both texts in the light of the full publication of all the S manuscripts. The analysis offered here uncovers a complex inter-relationship between both texts as well as some intriguing pointers towards a complex literary history within the S tradition.