The Community Rule (1QS)
The rule book of the community behind the Dead Sea Scrolls, found almost complete in Qumran Cave 1 in 1947. It sets out how members were admitted, how they met, ate and were disciplined, and what they believed.
See the object at imj.org.il ↗The museum’s description of the scroll on its Digital Dead Sea Scrolls site (Internet Archive copy; the site itself is served without https) ↗A Cave 4 copy, 4Q258, in photographs (Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library) ↗Description of 4Q258 (Library of Congress exhibition, 1993) ↗English translation of the 4Q258 fragment by E. Qimron (Library of Congress) ↗
The scroll is one of the first seven found in Cave 1 at Qumran. It is written in Hebrew, about two and a half metres long, and the Israel Museum dates this copy to between 100 and 75 BC. Fragments of ten more copies came from Cave 4 and of another from Cave 5, which shows how much the text mattered to the people who kept it. In Hebrew it is called Serekh ha-Yahad, the rule of the yahad, “the community”.
According to the museum’s description, the rule deals with the admission of new members, conduct at the common meals and the community’s teaching that the world is divided between two opposed powers and that all things are predestined. It is the community’s own account of itself, written by members for members, and so stands beside the outside descriptions of the Essenes given by Josephus, Philo and Pliny. See the Community of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Cited in
- about 150 BC to AD 68, estimated date