Emerging Communal Life and Ideology in the S Tradition

This paper argues that some of the primitive and small scale communal scenarios described in 1QS 6 deserve to be read without presuppositions derived from the overwhelming majority of communal rules in S that describe a much more evolved and complex level of organization. On my reading of these isolated statements they originated independently of S and reflect the life of the forebears of the yahad. Those forebears were, furthermore, not concerned with separation and the establishment of rigid boundaries between themselves and Israel at large. The only visible element of separation was the small-scale gathering of some like-minded people to eat, pray and take council. It is quite possible that this was the kind of thing one did in middle class Second Temple Judaism, and this scenario might, therefore, describe only one group of many that engaged in these kinds of gatherings. To some degree my position overlaps with the views expressed recently by Collins, Metso, and Regev. A big difference is that all three, admittedly in very different ways, presuppose the existence of a framework, a central organization to have existed alongside these small groups.