question of no interest to us here).
But the more recent numbers of the Damascus Document scheme from the authors’ own time or recent memory—the 20 and the first 40—could be approximately correct. Those two numbers (the 20 and the first 40) are not necessarily the same in kind as the 390. The 390 is purely schematic, a filler number, drawn from Ezek. 4:4-6. But the 20 and the 40 may be a mixture of part schematic and part allusion to recent time periods known to the authors as interpreted by the authors, in a sense that the 390 are not. Although the 20 and the 40 also give the appearance of being round numbers, they may reflect firsthand or secondhand knowledge of the authors.
The revival of Israel like a dead plant coming back to life of CD 1.5-8 is usually understood in terms of some sectarian phenomenon, which may not be entirely inaccurate, but another possibility, not necessarily in contradiction, is that the dead plant returning to life could allude to the conquests and expansions of Alexander Jannaeus viewed favorably by the authors of the Qumran texts—a reversal of the conquest of Nebuchadnezzar, Israel at last come ‘back to life’ as a serious and formidable entity on the map as it once had been in a golden age long ago. Compare this historian’s summary for a possible context within which an image of Israel coming back to life like a dead plant reviving could be evocative and understood:
“By the death of Alexander Jannaeus [76 BCE] … all of Palestine except for the territory of Ascalon and much of Transjordan were under Hasmonean control … Jerusalem changed from a small hill-country town far from the main trade routes, whose chief distinction was a not very distinguished temple, to the capital city of one of the largest of the kingdoms which succeeded the Seleucid Empire. Alexander’s grandfather had been a village priest, low-level rebel leader and brigand; Alexander was an important king. Palestine had been a mosaic of Greek cities and little Hellenized semitic tribal and ethnic units, of which the Judaeans were only one, and possibly not the largest; now it was almost entirely ‘Jewish’ …” (Schwartz 1991: 16-17)
The rise of the Teacher twenty years after Israel revived back to life (CD 1.8-11) might then allude to the rise of a high priest who at some later stage was deposed from power and driven into exile and died.
In this picture, schematized according to the skeletal framework of the Damascus Document, the Teacher when he first emerges takes office as the lawgiver, the divinely inspired exegete, looked to for leadership by the already existing yachad groups scattered throughout the countryside and throughout the region. The total span or career of the Teacher lasts some forty years in the schematic reconstruction of the Damascus Document. This period—the schematic forty years of the Teacher—ends with the Teacher’s death.
~ ~ 4 ~ ~
To repeat, in this picture the Teacher of Righteousness of the Damascus Document rises to prominence at a time when the 1QS yachad groups are already in existence. That is, these groups recognize the leadership of the Teacher when he arose twenty years after Israel had /p. 78/ revived back to life again (CD 1.7-10). Was the Teacher of the Damascus Document originally a priest in the temple as most Qumran scholars today think, perhaps a high priest as Louis Ginzberg argued long ago in his landmark 1922 study of the Damascus Document, an idea which a number of scholars today also have regarded favorably? Again, there is no sound basis internal to the texts for the common notion that the Serekh or Community Rule texts are opposed to the temple or its priests. Instead, the yachad groups read well as an extension or projection of the sect of priests in control of the temple, and this precedes the rise of the Teacher of Righteousness.
When the Teacher, who is widely thought to have originally been a priest in the temple, who is spoken of in the texts in language and titles evocative of a high priest, who perhaps was a high priest—when this figure, this Teacher, arises he is revered and h