s characteristically sectarian, and may suggest, moreover, as has
been said above, that the writer is not far removed in time from the split
in the new organization.

The polemic is especially pointed against certain opponents who are
described as "those who build a wall and plaster it with stucco" (4 19; 8
12).(33) They follow a commandment (_sau_); probably connoting, as in
Hosea 5 11, from which the phrase is taken, an arbitrary rule of their
own, a commandment of men.(34) God hates them, his anger is kindled
against them (8 18). These "builders" are false teachers; Biblical
denunciations of the false prophets are applied to them. (See especially 8
12 f.) Points in which their teaching is particularly assailed are that
they allow polygamy and the remarriage of divorced persons during the life
of the other party, and hold it lawful for a man to marry his niece; that
they defile the sanctuary by the laxity of some of their rules and
practice about sexual uncleanness; they presume blasphemously to impugn
the "statutes of the covenant of God" (the legislation of the sect),
declaring that they are not right, and saying abominable things about them
(4 20-5 14). The positions so hotly denounced, especially in the matter of
marriage and divorce, are those of the Palestinian rabbis as we know them
in the Mishna and kindred works, and in so far as the Pharisees had a
dominating influence in the schools of the law they may be regarded as in
a peculiar sense the object of this invective, which is, however, sweeping
enough to include all rabbinical Judaism. Such verses as Isaiah 50 11 and
59 4 ff. are hurled at them; they are compared to Johanneh and his
brother, whom Belial raised up against Moses (5 17 ff.).(35)

The sect prohibited polygamy, which they stigmatized as fornication,
arguing from the creation--"a male and a female created he them" (cf. Matt.
19 4), and from the story of the flood--"by pairs they went into the ark,"
and from the law which forbade the prince to multiply wives unto himself
(Deut. 17 17), that is, as they understood it, to take more than one wife.
To forestall an objection, it is added: "But David had not read in the
sealed book of the law which was in the ark, for it was not opened in
Israel from the time of the death of Eleazar and Joshua and the elders who
worshipped the Astartes, but was hidden and not brought to light until
Zadok arose" (5 2-5; see below, p. 359).

Marriage with another woman wh