1.8). If that is the sense of that allusion, then according to the Damascus Document’s chronological scheme the 1QS yachad groups started ‘twenty years’ before the Teacher of Righteousness arose.
So let us imagine that the 1QS yachad groups began before the Teacher of Righteousness and were sponsored by priests in power in Jerusalem—perhaps in the time of John Hyrcanus I (135-104 BCE) or Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE), perhaps associated with John Hyrcanus’s or Alexander Jannaeus’s conquests and expansions of the Jerusalem state to areas which they turned into ‘Israel’ again, reviving Israel to its former status of old, as at least a possible context. The yachad groups might represent a means by which a ruling elite in Jerusalem, a priestly sect in power, extended its influence and control, and projected its practices and ideology, into the countryside and outlying areas.
And so by this reconstruction 1QS does describe a sect, but it would be an extension of the ruling sect in Jerusalem.
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It has been presupposed in many scholarly discussions that the Serekh texts understand the yachad groups as a replacement for the temple. This has been assumed because in 1QS the yachad groups apply language and imagery of the temple to themselves. The idea is that the temple was regarded as replaced by the people of 1QS who, separated from the temple, saw their own community as a substitution for the physical temple and its priests. This interpretation was dismantled in a posthumously published article by Susan Haber of McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. Here is Haber:
“[Some scholars] argue that the yahad—as the community refers to itself in 1QS—regarded itself as a /p. 76/ temple, and perhaps even as a permanent replacement for the Jerusalem temple. Based on texts such as 1QS V, 5-7; VIII, 4-11; IX, 3-6; and CD IIII, 18-IV, 12, scholars point to the description of the community in terms of temple language, the references to the yahad as a ‘priestly’ community, the importance of atonement, and the use of cultic language to describe the worship of the community. Central to the community-as-temple argument is the observation that 1QS uses temple imagery metaphorically to refer to the community. This observation is correct … As we shall see, however, a metaphorical reading of the temple imagery does not necessar[il]y lead to the conclusion that the community saw itself as a replacement for the Jerusalem temple. … 1QS nowhere explicitly refers to the Jerusalem temple nor does it discuss the relationship of the community to the temple … If we do not a priori assume that the community’s rejection of the Jerusalem temple and cult underlies this passage, a different metaphorical reading emerges … the community may simply be affirming its priestly status, as chosen by God. The language implies that the level of holiness usually reserved for the priesthood is transferred to the community as a whole … With regard to temple language, our study suggests that the imagery was taken metaphorically and was very rich as a way of articulating the self-understanding of the community, but that it was not taken literally to mean that the community viewed itself as the replacement for the temple in Jerusalem …” (Haber 2008: 107-123)
That is the insight. It is correct on a very basic level. Going beyond Haber, not only is this argument gone for 1QS opposition to the temple, but it is time to recognize that all arguments undergirding that notion are immaterial.
Martin Goodman has argued that if the texts found at Qumran were not influenced anachronistically by later rabbinic and Christian modes of interpretation shaped by the destruction of the temple, but read in terms of their own content and contemporary external information, it would be perceived that the authors of the scrolls were ‘as much committed to the Jerusalem cult as other Jews … It was perfectly possible to interpret the sacrifices symbolically without thereby implying that the sacrifices should not also be carried out in practice, as Philo insisted in his attack on extreme allego