Bible Review

Joseph M. Baumgarten and Daniel R. Schwartz, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Damascus Document, War Scroll, and Related Documents, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1994), vol. 2A, p. 23.

Wise, Abegg and Cook, Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 218.

Wise, Abegg and Cook, Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 120.

Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 119.

I have used the Jewish Publication Society translation here. Other translations often use other locutions for “visit,” such as “take note of”; the important point, however, is that the Hebrew verb is the same in Genesis and in the passage from the Damascus Document.

Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 5th ed. (New York: Allen Lane, 1997), p. 127.

For an exceptional view that the Teacher of Righteousness is a fictive figure, see Davies, Damascus Covenant, p. 3.

Barbara Thiering, Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 19; Robert Eisenman, James the Brother of Jesus (New York: Viking, 1996), p. 482.

For a fuller list of identifications of the Teacher of Righteousness and the Wicked Priest, see Philip Davies, The Damascus Covenant (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1982), pp. 3–47. See also H. Ulfgard, “The Teacher of Righteousness…” in Qumran Between the Old and New Testaments, ed. Frederick Cryer and Thomas Thompson (Sheffield,U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 310–346, esp. 334–338.