Damascus Document
The Damascus Document, also called the Damascus Covenant or the Book of the Covenant of Damascus, Cairo Damascus document (CD) or Damascus Rule, is an ancient Jewish document that some scholars suggest serves as a "bridge" document, connecting Judaism's post-exilic 'Enochian'-Essene majority to the asserted leadership of its radical minority Qumran–Essene community that was established in isolation near the shores of the Dead Sea. It forms part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, found after 1947 near Qumran, but two fragments had already been discovered in 1897 in the Cairo Geniza. The redactor of the CD  text allows that the covenant is open to all Israelites who accept the sect's halakha, while condemning the others as the "wicked of Judah" against whom God would direct "a great anger with flames of fire by the hand of all the angels of destruction against persons turning aside from the path". The text states that those who abandon the true covenant "will not live". The Damascus Document is a composite text edited together from different sections of a larger source, and scholars have attempted to place the different sections in a chronological order to generate a more complete  idea of the original using evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Name. The fragments found in Cairo in 1897 were originally called the Zadokite Fragments, but after the work was found at Qumran, the name was changed because the document had numerous references to "Damascus". The way this "Damascus" is treated in the document makes it possible that it was not a literal reference to Damascus in Syria, but to be understood either geographically for Babylon or Qumran itself. If symbolic, it is probably taking up the Biblical language found in , ""therefore I shall take you into exile beyond Damascus ; Damascus was part of Israel under King David, and the Damascus Document expresses an eschatological hope of the restoration of a Davidic monarchy. Discovery. Two manuscripts (CDa and CDb) were found in Cairo, with further findings at Qumran. In contrast to the fragments found at Qumran, the CD documents are largely complete, and therefore are vital for reconstructing the text. Cairo Geniza. The main fragments were discovered by Solomon Schechter in 1897 in the Cairo Geniza, a storeroom adjoining Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo), among over 190,000 manuscripts and fragments that were written in mainly Hebrew and Judaeo -Arabic. The fragments were quite large, and a number of them matched documents found later in Qumran. They were divided into two separate sections, CDa, and CDb. Schechter dated CDa to the 10th century C.E and CDb to 11th or 12th century C.E. These fragments are housed at the Cambridge University Library with the classmarks T-S 10K6 and T-S 16.311 (other references are CDa and CDb). Qumran scrolls. The fragments from Qumran have been assigned the document references 4Q265-73 (see photo of 4Q271), 5Q12, and 6Q15. Structure. The combined text of CDa and CDb contains twenty columns  of writing. As it has come down to us, two columns have been mislocated: columns 15 & 16 originally preceded col 9. Fragments of this text from Qumran include material not found in CD. The Damascus Document can be divided into two separate sections, commonly called "Admonition" and "Laws". Davies divides the Admonition into four sections: History, Legal, Warnings, a Supplement (which Wise refers to as "exhortations"). The Admonition comprises moral instruction, exhortation, and warning addressed to members of the sect, together with polemic against its opponents; it serves as a kind of introduction to the second section. The Laws looks  at this new covenant community expressed to them through the Teacher of Righteousness. It goes into great detail of the different social arrangements that were taking place at the time. The Laws feature Oaths & vows, Sundry rulings (halakhot), Camp laws, and a fragment of Penal codes (more of which were found in the Qumran fragments). The Admonition. This part is divided into four subsections. A. Admonition (columns 1–8 + 19–20) The Laws. The first 12 laws are from the Damascus Document found at Qumran, while the others are from the Cairo Geniza. B. Laws (columns 15-16 + 9-14 ) Another way to organise the laws would be: CD and the Community Rule. The document contains prominent reference to a cryptic figure called the Teacher of Righteousness, whom some of the other Qumran scrolls treat as a figure from their past, and others treat as a figure in their present, and others still as a figure of the future. (Some of these other scrolls where he is mentioned are the Pesharim on Habakkuk (numerous times), Micah (once) and Psalms, as well as 4Q172.) The document introduces the group led by the Teacher as having arisen 390 years after the first  fall of Jerusalem (circa 200 BCE): "And God observed their deeds, that they sought Him with a whole heart, and He raised for them a Teacher of Righteousness to guide them in the way of His heart." On the basis of that reference, historians date the Teacher to circa 150 BCE. Scholars have also believed that he was a priest based on other variations in the text that are also thought to be him. These include: "the teacher", "the unique teacher" and "the interpreter of the law". This "Teacher of Righteousness" does not feature at all, however, in the Community  Rule, another document found amongst the Qumran scrolls. To some scholars, this suggests that the two works are of different Second Temple groups. Most scholars, however, focus on the high degree of shared terminology and legal rulings between the Damascus Document and the Community Rule, including terms like "sons of light", and their penal codes and on the likelihood that fragment 4Q265 is a hybrid edition of both documents. They turn to the fact that the Damascus Document describes the group amongst whom the Document was created as having been leaderless for 20 years before the "Teacher of Righteousness" established  his rule over the group to explain that both works are from the same group under different situations. Within this approach of the majority of scholars, the textual relationship between the Damascus Document and Community Rule is not completely resolved, though there is a general agreement that they have some evolutionary connection. Some suspect that the Community Rule is the original text that was later altered to become the Damascus Document, others that the Damascus Document was redacted to become the Community Rule, a third group argues that the Community Rule was created as a utopian ideal rather than a  practical replacement for the Damascus Document, and still others that believe the Community Rule and Damascus Document were written for different types of communities, one enclosed and the other open.