Abstract
Unlike any other group or philosophy in ancient Judaism, the yaḥad sect obliged all members of the sect to leave their places of residence all over the country and gather in the sect’s central site to participate in a special annual ceremony of renewal of the covenant between God and each of the members. The increase of the communities that composed the sect and their spread over the entire country during the first century BCE required the development of the appropriate infrastructure for hosting this annual gathering at Qumran. Consequently, the hosting of the gathering became the main function of the site, and the southern esplanade with the buildings surrounding it became the epicenter of the site.
Highlights
The subject of this paper is the yearly gathering during the festival of Shavuot of all members of the communities that composed the yahad sect.1 After close examination of the evidence for this annual gathering in the sect’s writings and analysis of the archaeological data on the development of the site of Qumran, it became evident that in the generation following that of the site’s founders, the holding of the annual gathering became the main raison d’être of the site and the factor that dictated its architectural development.2
The most commonly accepted biblical source of inspiration for the ceremony of “pass‐ ing the covenant” is the instructions for the covenant ceremony to be performed on Mounts Gerizim and Ebal in Deut 27–28 and the subsequent call to observe this covenant in Deut 29, as well as the description of the ceremony itself in Josh 8:30–35
The only occurrence in the Bible of עברand בריתusing the preposition ב, literally “to pass in a covenant”, is in Deut 29:11, while its only occur‐ rence in the Qumran scrolls is in the description of the renewal of the covenant inspired by the passage in Deuteronomy, both occurrences expressing the passing of the participants in the ceremony3 and differing from Rabbinical Hebrew, in which the same expression means “to transgress”, just as without the preposition ( בe.g., m
Summary
The subject of this paper is the yearly gathering during the festival of Shavuot of all members of the communities that composed the yahad sect.1 After close examination of the evidence for this annual gathering in the sect’s writings and analysis of the archaeological data on the development of the site of Qumran, it became evident that in the generation following that of the site’s founders, the holding of the annual gathering became the main raison d’être of the site and the factor that dictated its architectural development.
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