The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English by Geza Vermes Page B

of loving-kindness to Israel and the Levites recall Israel’s rebellions against him. This recognition of guilt is followed by an act of public repentance appropriate to a community of converts.
    We have strayed! We have [disobeyed!] We and our fathers before us have sinned and acted wickedly in walking [counter to the precepts] of truth and righteousness. [And God has] judged us and our fathers also; but He has bestowed His bountiful mercy on us from everlasting to everlasting.
    (IQS I, 24-11, 1)
    After the confession, the priests solemnly bless the converts of Israel, calling down on them in particular the gifts of wisdom and knowledge :
    May He bless you with all good and preserve you from all evil! May He lighten your heart with life-giving wisdom and grant you eternal knowledge! May He raise His merciful face towards you for everlasting bliss!
    (IQS II, 2-4)
    This paraphrase of the blessing of Israel which God commanded Moses to transmit to Aaron and his sons in Numbers vi, 24-6, and which recalls the fourth of the daily Eighteen Benedictions of traditional Judaism, is accompanied by a Levitical curse of the party of Belial and a special malediction directed by both priests and Levites at any sectary whose conversion may be insincere:
    Cursed be the man who enters this Covenant while walking among the idols of his heart, who sets up before himself his stumbling-block of sin so that he may backslide! Hearing the words of this Covenant, he blesses himself in his heart and says, ‘Peace be with me, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart’...
    (IQS II, 11-12)
    The Cave 4 sources of the Damascus Document depict also the ritual of dismissal from the Community. The Priest overseeing the Congregation, addressing God, declares:
    Thou hast cursed those who transgress (the boundary) but we maintain it.
    Thereupon ‘the dismissed man shall leave and whoever eats from what is his or greets the man who has been dismissed, and agrees with him, ... his judgement shall be complete’ (4Q266 fr. 11 I ii; 270 fr. 7 ii).
    Each benediction and curse is approved by the whole congregation with a twice repeated ‘Amen’.
    The ceremony of the Renewal of the Covenant seems to be the only rite described in any detail in the Community Rule and the Damascus Document, but as the Essenes laid so much emphasis on the full and punctilious observance of the Law of Moses it may be taken for granted that they did not omit the many other basic acts of Jewish religion and worship. The fact that the Community Rule is satisfied simply to state without any specification that a single deliberate transgression of the Mosaic Law would entail irrevocable expulsion from the sect implies that the elite sectaries subject to this rule did not need detailed guidance: they were supposed to be fully versed in the Torah. Legislation addressed to less well-trained members, contained in the Damascus Document and in the Temple Scroll, is more discursive. Circumcision, for example, which was certainly practised, is mentioned in connection with female uncleanness after childbirth when Leviticus xii, 3 is cited in passing (4Q266 fr. 6 ii). It is also referred to figuratively in the context of severing the ‘foreskin of the evil inclination’ (IQS v, 5), or possibly and by implication as the ‘Covenant of Abraham’ mentioned in connection with (Gentile) man-servants (CD XII, II; XVI, 6). The laws of purity were also assuredly essential to the sect, and some practical guidance is given in IIQTS XLVI-LI, 4Q274-84, and MMT. The dietary laws are dealt with in the Damascus Document, MMT and the Temple Scroll. For instance, the eating of ‘live creatures’ (e.g. larvae of bees, fish and locusts) is declared to be prohibited in CD XII, 11-15. MMT states that a live animal foetus must be slaughtered before becoming fit for consumption (4Q396 frs. 1-21). Further laws appear in the Temple Scroll XLVII-XLVIII. Josephus also