Humrot from Qumran
Vered Noam has a new article, “Stringency in Qumran: A Reassessment,” in Journal for the Study of Judaism XL,3 (2009), 342-355. From the abstract, (emphases are added)
The attribution of stringency to the Qumranites is prevalent in scholarly research. Indeed it is indisputable that the Sect generally adopts stringent positions, compared to rabbinic halakah. However, closer examination indicates that Qumranic law reflects simple, necessary inferences from Scripture itself, whereas the Tannaitic leniency represents a surprisingly revolutionary divergence from the plain meaning of Scripture. The paper surveys several cases in which the bold and exceptional nature of Tannaitic legislation cannot serve as a criterion for evaluating the stringency of Sectarian law. It goes on to review other instances, where the very same traditions formed the basis of Qumranic as well as rabbinic regulation, except that the latter restricted their scope. The third group of examples shows that it was precisely the unrefined, simple character of Qumranic law, in comparison with the conceptual sophistication of Tannaitic halakah, that occasionally led to the opposite result, in which the Tannaitic halakah was strict, and the Sectarian law lenient. In sum, the strictness of Qumranic law is not “objective” but relative. The understanding that sectarian law reflects a series of inductions not altogether removed from the simple sense of Scripture facilitates a more accurate appreciation of the depth of Tannaitic halakah’s groundbreaking leniency.
Here are some of her conclusions.
Qumranic legislation is rather conservative by nature, deviating little from either the plain meaning of Scripture or from early traditions. Rabbinic halakah, on the other hand, launched an audacious revolution through its lenient scriptural exegesis and its restriction of the applicability of early traditions. In other words, the strictness of Qumranic law is not “objective” but relative. In certain instances, it is even lenient as compared to rabbinic law, either because of the latter’s sophisticated, abstract character, or due to a stringent extra-biblical tradition that the Qumranic corpus
rejected.
The following observations by Noam relate to some of the comments on this post.
The above statements by no means claim that Qumranic law necessarily represents earlier traditions, or that it constitutes the background against which the novel rabbinic legislation evolved, or that the revolutionary aspect of the rabbinic sources is always late.
In other words, the exegetical-legislative innovativeness reflected by rabbinic literature is presumably rooted in a pharisaic reform that took place during the Second Temple period. Various aspects of Qumranic law may have developed simultaneously, in a parallel, but separate, process. Some sectarian rulings originated in protest to this pharisaic revolution, by way of a return to the plain meaning of the biblical source or to old traditions, and rarely by stating new stringencies. Other sectarian rulings probably preserve ancient layers of Jewish customs. MMT proves that the Qumranites were indeed familiar with basic characteristics and manifestations of the legislative system which would later come to be known as
rabbinic.
I’ll end with this formulation which I liked a lot.
Fundamentally, what we have here are two paths of creation and interpretation, which molded two different religious cultures.