86 10 Davies, art cit., p.118.
20 1 The battle comprises seven stages instead of one
2. The liturgy is conducted by the Chief Priest, who is also in charge of arraying the troops.
-3. The enemy are now the Kittim.
4. The battle is described in dualistic terms, the; sons of light fighting the sons of darkness.
•5* There are casualties from the sons of light.
Had these changes taken place gradually, over a number of years, and reflected ,the development of ideas within the Qumran community, the question of an historical background to XV-XÎX
could not be raised. Indeed, some of the developments in XV-XIX
do reflect the growth of ideas within the sect, but the revision of the earlier war-rule was not a gradual process, but the
be asked, under what circumstances was it decided to produce a result of a single major re-working. The, question may therefore new, and greatly revised, war-rule? An important clue is given in the introduction of the Kittim in place of the earlier neutral word "enemy". If "Kittim" denotes simply the eschatological foe,
whoever they be, then "enemy" is a quite adequate term for this, too. On the other hand, if one is writing a document in which the Final Enemy are described, it is not unlikely that these will be modelled on the present enemy, since these are, after all, the most probable future enemies. We are therefore entitled to look for an identification of the Kittim with a specific nat ion, This must be done, of course, strictly within the terms of
XV-XIX, without prejudice to the meaning of the term elsewhere
in IQM.
I
Only two alternatives exist for this identification;
Seleucid and Eomah* We have argued that the original war-rule
arose in Maccabean times, and that the Seleucids and their allies , fY- were there referred to as "enemy". We must also allow for the
lapse of a fairly long period before the revision is undertaken. "''qY
There are indications that the framework material of XV-XIX w;as composed after II-IX; the use of the name for a trumpet in XVI,12 follows the usage in II-IX"^^ and, as has been argued^ XV^5b.6a may
- ' 22
contain a reference to II-IX,
23 '
These considerations point to a Roman date, A possible
objection to identification of Kittim and Romans is the mbntion
. . ■ ' ' i,
of the "king of the. Kittim" in XV,2. As is well-known, the
Romans had no king. However , the word might well be used
freely in this case to denote "general" or "consul"; if the author were to write "consul", he might as well have written "Romans" instead of "Kittim".
A further argument in favour of identifying the Romans as the Kittim is that the war of XV-XIX is a cosmic war, in which the forces of Belial amass. The human counterpart of the dominion of Belial is the kingdom or empire of the Kittim. This role is scarcely to be attributed to the Seleucid kingdom, for its power
126.
and influence were relatively slight outside Syria. The Roman empire, on the other hand, constituted the major part of the civilised world.
Was it in view of growing hostility to Rome that the docu ment XV-XIX was prepared, adapting an already existing war-rule
to describe the war with Rome which would constitute the final establishment of light over darkness? If so, how accurately may we date this document? Palaeographical evidence confidently places the manuscript IQM in the Roman period, and probably in
24
the, 1st century A.D., but XV-XIX is not the latest element in IQM. We can say that the document was probably written in the second half of the 1st century B.C., but more precise conclus-
ions are not forthcoming. The other developments which XV-XIX -
incorporates, such as the dualistic interpretation, the problem of casualties, and the role of the Chief Priest can all be ex plained as the.product of the theological climate within the sect, reflected in other Qumran documents, in particular IQS, With the success of the Maccabean wars and of the Haamphean policies which followed, the war-traditions which had been be queathed were naturally adapted to serve eschatological specu lations, and the absence of an external enemy together with the : growth of sectarian strife within Judaism led to the portrayal
.
of the war as a conflict between good and evil rather than Israel and her enemies. The advent of the Romans, however, will have caused a fairly rapid change in this; the rather confused co existence of Belial and the Kittim in IQM XV-XIX may reflect the sudden emergence of a human enemy on to the eschatological scene. At all events, our own inclination, based On the evidence we have presented, is that the advent of the Romans in Palestine was the major factor in the production of the war-rule of XV-XIX.
NOTES
1. ZAW (1957), pp.131-151.
2. For the complete list of variants, Hunzinger, art. cit. p.l44f 3. Osten-Sacken, p.101.
4. Although there are two recensions of these hymns, we shall refer throughout to the recension in IQM; the difference between the two recensions are unimportant from the point
of view of literary analysis. Our own division of the hymns * -i"
differs slightly from Hunzinger's, v;hich ends the first hymn
,Rafter ...1 ljX.1 , perhaps in order to retain as much formal similarity as possible between, the two. But the two " are not from the same hand, and it is not necessary to demand complete uniformity,
5. It is apparently a creation hymn, similar to IQM XII,3-10.
6. Restored after 4QMa. '
7. Ezekiel xxxviii,7.16.22.
8. Ezekiel xxxviii,llff.; xxxix,23ff. It is clear throughout that the defeat of Gog is by Yahweh, but xxxviii,21 shows that in spite of the imagery of fire, hailstones and brim stone (xxxviii,22), the defeat of Gog will be in battle, in,Q;0
" -f
the land of Israel ( ' 1 il b ) 3 5 ). Æ
9. Osten-Sacken, pp.l94ff.
10. Cf. Murphy-0'Connor, art.. cit. R-B (1970) pp.201-229.
H i On this material, see below, pp.lBlff. 12& Cf. above, p.118.
13. Cf. I Macc. iii,20; vii,58; etc, 14. Hunzinger, art. cit. p.149.
15. Cf. the JT» 1% ^ of Dan. xi, 32, and see above; p.26f.
- ' . ' . - , ' . ft#
16. Like the previous hymn, it has, of course, been subject to secondary expansion and alteration; above, p.118.