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others have recognized as the standard and characteristic idiom of mystical experience. There is the
same harping on the wilderness of isolation; the same reference to the 'ascent' to God and to 'the
height of eternal things'; the same metaphor (particularly in Hymn No. 5) of the New Birth and the
'travail of the world'; the same intensive apprehension of Divine providence, communion and
'enlightenment'; and the same sense of nursing a precious secret against the day of revelation.
Apprehension of these notes is of the essence in understanding the spirit of the hymns in particular
and of the Brotherhood in general.
It has been suggested that some of the hymns, which speak of deliverance from froward assailants
('the company of Belial' or 'the men of corruption'), were designed for the use of soldiers who had
escaped their adversaries or defeated them. To the present writer, such a view seems singularly and
unperceptively overliteral; it confuses the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' with concrete
bazookas and guided missiles. Similarly, there seems no good
reason for assuming, as has been done, that Hymn No. {8} must necessarily have been written by 'the
teacher of Righteousness' simply because it speaks of one who sought to impart God's law to his
brethren but was constantly thwarted and abused by 'preachers of lies' and 'prophets of deceit'. What
the text is describing is the normal and typical frustration of the mystic—the experience of every man
who believes that he has seen God and that he is burning a small candle in the darkness of a world
unredeemed.
To the main body of hymns we have here prefixed another, which the ancient librarians of Qumran
attached to a copy of the Manual of Discipline. If one reads it carefully, one will find that it repeats
almost verbatim the list of obligations and the basic oath of allegiance laid down in that document for
new members of the Brotherhood.
It may therefore be regarded as a hymn chanted by Initiants when they were formally received into the
community; and this would in turn explain why the ancient librarians considered it an appropriate
liturgical 'appendix' to the Manual. On this hypothesis we have called it The Hymn of the Initiants.
The Scrolls themselves, it may be added, bear no titles; those assigned by modern scholars are
therefore in any case quite arbitrary.
II
Several further hymns are included in a compendium (preserved in several incomplete copies) the
major part of which contains portions of the Biblical Book of Psalms. This compendium, which has
been somewhat tendentiously called The Dead Sea Psalm Scroll', and presumed to be a variant form
of the canonical collection, was probably compiled for liturgical purposes. (1)
Three of the extracanonical hymns have been known hitherto from late Syriac manuscripts—none
earlier than the fourteenth century. Evidently once current in the services of the Eastern Orthodox
Church, they are part of a group of five fancifully attributed to David, (2) who is indeed credited, in a
kind of colophon to our scroll, with no less than 4050 effusions! (3)
a. David (Psalm 151). The first of these three 'Davidic' compositions to be here presented (though in
fact the last in the manuscript) is an old acquaintance: it is the poem appended to the Greek
(Septuagint) Version of the canonical Psalter and there entitled, A genuine, though supernumerary,
Psalm of David, composed when he engaged Goliath in single combat. (4) There are, however, some
variations and additions, and that the latter were part of the original text, and no mere interpolations
by some Qum-ramte redactor, is evident from the fact that they complete the chain of ideas and give
coherence to what in the Greek Version appears as a string of somewhat inconsequential sentences.
To put it mildly, the translator was something of a clod.
The psalm relates, in the first person and in an artless style characteristic more of folk poetry than of
sophisticated literary invention, the story of how David, the youngest son of Jesse, was relegated by
his father to the humble task of tending sheep and goats (v. 1); how he made a Panpipe and lyre in
order to pay honor thereon to God (v. 2); how he was inwardly aware all the while that the mute
mountains and hills were incapable of conveying to God what they had witnessed of his piety, and the
rustling leaves of relaying his praises, and the sheep of reporting how well he was tending them (v. 3);
how, though he was himself left wondering who or what could possibly bring word of his activities,
God, Lord of the Universe, nevertheless saw and heard all, without need of intermediaries (v. 4); and
how, in consequence, he was selected by God's envoy, the prophet Samuel, to be the future leader of
Israel and was anointed with sacred oil, in preference to his older and seemingly more attractive
brothers (vv. 5-7).
This, to be sure, is but one interpretation of the text, but it is supported by the fact that echoes of it are
indeed to be heard in later Jewish legend (midrash), where we are told that God chose David to
shepherd His people precisely because He saw how well he shepherded his father's flocks, (5) and
also—a notion repeated in the Koran—that when He heard his songs of praise, He commanded birds
and sheep thenceforth to join in. (6)
There is, however, an interesting alternative. By reading a single word somewhat differently, (7) some
scholars have extracted the sense that, though mountains and hills were indeed inarticulate and
seemingly unresponsive, trees and flocks 'recognized the excellence' of David's words and music. (8)
On this basis it has then been suggested that the poet was influenced by a popular fancy of his day
which assimilated the 'sweet singer of Israel' to the classical Orpheus who, as Shakespeare puts it,
With his lute made trees/ And the mountain-tops that freeze/ Bow themselves when he did sing'.
In support of this suggestion it is pointed out that in a prominent position in the synagogue at Dura-
Europus there is a fresco depicting an Orpheus-like figure by some identified as David; (9) that a
representation of the same scene occurs in a Jewish catacomb at Rome; (10) and that in various
manuscripts of the Psalter David is indeed portrayed as Orpheus. (11) Though all of them
considerably later than our Qumran scroll, these representations are taken to attest the persistence of
an ancient tradition.
In my opinion, this interpretation overshoots the mark. In the first place, there is no solid evidence that
David was ever identified with Orpheus at an earlier date. (12) Secondly, the notion that inanimate
things or nature in general can be charmed by music in fact occurs in folktales from several parts of
the world, (13) so that, even if this is what our text means, it by no means implies a specific
identification of David with Orpheus.
Thirdly, this interpretation overlooks the essential distinction between the inability of the rustling
leaves to repeat David's words—that is, his songs of praise—and that of the sheep to apprise God of
his acts —that is, his proficiency and solicitude as a shepherd. It is just this combination, as later
midrash insists, that fitted him for the leadership of Israel. Fourthly, the proposed rendering, The hills
do not tell forth (God's glory), involves the grammatical anomaly of making a feminine noun govern a
verb with masculine form.
There is also a difference of opinion about the meaning of the succeeding verse (v. 4). In the editio
princeps this is rendered:
For who can proclaim and who can bespeak
and who can recount the deeds of the Lord?
Everything has God seen,
everything has He heard
and He has heeded. (14)
This, I think, misses the sense. The words are a continuation of David's inner thought, and what they
say is, quite simply, that although he was initially left wondering who or what could ever report his
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