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...And it regards itself as the militia of God--a kind of Salvation Army--ready, like its ancestors under Moses and Joshua, to do battle for His name and to drive out the heathen from His land--in this case, from the whole earth (...It even drew up an elaborate plan of campaign for 'Armageddon).

There is, however, one critical difference between this community and its remote prototype: it is not waiting to receive the Law; it already possesses it. Its aim is simply to assert that Law, to deliver it from the realm of darkness in which it had become engulfed. The Torah--that is, the Divine Teaching (or Guidance) as revealed to Moses--has, it is held, been successively garbled and perverted by 'fallen expositors.' (See Hebrews 6, and 2 Peter 2). The community's main purpose is to exemplify and promulgate the true interpretation. It bases that interpretation on a kind of 'apostolic succession,' begun by the prophets and continued by a series of inspired leaders, each of whom is known as 'the correct expositor,' or 'right teacher'...that is, the orthodox expounder of the Word. The 'right teacher' was probably in every case a priest, his title being being derived from Moses' farewell blessing upon the priestly tribe of Levi: 'They have observed Thy word and kept Thy covenant. They shall teach Jacob Thine ordinances, and Israel Thy Law. (Deuteronomy 33:9-10).

Just as Israel has been led of old by these prophets and teachers, so, it is held, a new Prophet and a new Teacher (perhaps one and the same person) will arise at the end of the present era to usher in the Golden Age, when the scattered hosts of Israel will be gathered in, a duly anointed high priest and a duly anointed king (the Messiahs anointed of Aaron and Israel) installed, and 'the earth filled with the knowledge of the Lord like the waters which covered the sea.' The concept is derived directly from the words of Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15-18: 'The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken...The Lord hath said unto me...'I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.'...

But even if the Torah be correctly expounded by a prophet and teacher, men, it is held, can and will receive it only if they be correctly attuned. And that attunement comes--if we may mix the metaphor--through inner 'enlightenment.' The community considers itself, therefore, not only the remnant of Israel but also the specially 'enlightened.' (See 2 Corinthians 4:1-6). Over and over again in the Book of Hymns thanks are rendered to God for 'illuminating the face' of His servants or for shining His light in His servant's hearts. The acquisition of that light, however, is not attributed to any sudden spontaneous act of grace (of course, it is...by those who are enlightened). Rather is it the result of man's own voluntary exercise of that power of discernment which God placed in every creature at the moment of creation. (Genesis 1:16,17; Leviticus 1:1-3). All things, it is affirmed--even the sun and moon and stars--have been endowed by God with sensate knowledge, though the choice of using it or ignoring it has been left, in the case of man, to his individual will. (This is not entirely true. One cannot exercise that will unless it is energized by the Spirit...Romans 8:11-30...KJV). If he heeds the gift, he achieves harmony with the eternal cosmic scheme and breaks the trammels of his mortality (this is true). Automatically, he is embraced in the communion of eternal things; he becomes one with the non-mortal beings of the celestial realm--the 'holy ones' who stand forever in direct converse with God.

It is this state that the members of the Qumran Community claim for themselves. This is the ultimate goal of the entire spiritual adventure; the aim and raison d'etre of the Torah and of the disciplined life which it enjoins. They hold that by virtue of their 'enlightenment' they are members not only of a consecrated earthly 'community' but eo ipso also of the Eternal Communion...

And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament: and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever...(Daniel 12:3).

As one of their psalmists puts it, they walk for ever 'in uplands unbounded' and know that 'there is hope for all that is molded of clay to have converse with things everlasting.'

This is not, as all too many scholars have supposed, a mere belief in bodily resurrection or a mere hope for the survival of the soul in some cloudland of bliss. Rather is it the sound mystic sense that, given the right spiritual posture, given the victory over that darkness which is set before them along with the light, man may live even on earth in a dimension of eternity.

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It would be a mistake to suppose that writers of the Scrolls and the community of Qumran were inspired only by recollection of things past or that they chose their way of life simply because they were unsettled by political turbulence or disgusted by the venality of the Jerusalemitan priests (and now the American religious establishment). They were swept also by other winds. One of these was a widespread and well-attested contemporary belief that the cycle of the ages was about to complete its revolution. This belief was based on a conception, which can in fact be traced to remote Indian antiquity, that existence consists not in linear progressive development...but in constant cyclical repetition of primordial and archetypal events. When major upheavals occurred, it was promptly supposed that the cycle was nearing its end, that the Great Year was at hand, and that cosmos was about to revert to chaos. The primordial elements, restrained and regulated at the beginning of the world, would again be unleashed; all things would dissolve in an overwhelming deluge (of war) or be burned in an everlasting fire which rages in the depths of the earth (at the depths of man's soul). THEN THE CYCLE WOULD BEGIN AGAIN; A NEW WORLD WOULD BE BROUGHT TO BIRTH...

The authors of the Scrolls and the community of Qumran lived at a time of such 'cyclic crisis.' It is writ large in the pseudepigraphic literature of the two centuries immediately preceding the Common Era, and its fading echo may be heard in John the Baptist's cry that 'the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.' It was escape from the inexorable cycle, release not from sin but from mortality, that these men were seeking. The desert to which the Dead Sea community repaired was not simply the Desert of Judah; it was also the mystic's Desert of Quitude--what John Tauler called 'the Wilderness of Godhead (Ephesians 1:17-23; Colossians 1:12-20), into which He leads all who are to receive the inspiration of God, now or in eternity.' In that wilderness (of the nations), they would not merely receive a renewal of the Covenant; they would also have the vision of the Burning Bush. Removed from men, they would acquire an unobstructed view of the divine. Thirsting in an inhospitable wild, they would drink the unfailing waters of God's grace. Shorn of earthly possessions, theirs would be the poverty of the mystics--that poverty which Evelyn Underhill has described as 'complete detachment from all finite things.' Burned by the scorching sun, they would see the semplice lume of Dante, the 'infused brightness' of Saint Teresa, and by that light they would not be dazzled. They would achieve an intimacy, a communion wit the eternal, unchanging things, such as one can achieve only in a desert or on a sea. And in this experience they would reproduce and concentrate within themselves the drama of the cosmic circle, THE DISSOLVING OF THE OLD ORDER AND THE BIRTH OF THE NEW. The Dead Sea Scriptures, by Theodor H. Gaster, pp.5-9.