or conviction (9 16 ff.).(56)

Besides the penalties of the Mosaic law, the sect has a formidable means
of discipline in expulsion, or as it is called "separation from the
Purity," which may in some cases be inflicted even on the testimony of one
witness (9 21 ff.). Josephus vividly depicts the desperate straits into
which those came who, for grave offences, were expelled from the Essene
order; being unable to eat food not prepared by members of the order, they
were exposed to starvation. This particular consequence would not follow
separation from our sect; but the lot of the excommunicated man was
evidently hard enough. "When his deeds come to light he is to be expelled
from the congregation, as though his lot had never fallen in the midst of
the disciples of God; according to his misdeeds men shall bear him in
remembrance ... until the day when he returns to take his place in the
station of the men of perfect holiness. No man shall have any dealings
with him in matters of property or work, for all the saints of the Most
High have cursed him" (20 3 ff.); such have no part in the "house of the
law"; their names are erased from the rolls of the congregation (20 10
f.). They are not only cut off from the communion of saints in this world,
but are doomed to extermination by the hand of Belial (8 1 f., 19 14 f.).
One who leads men astray and profanes the Sabbath and the festivals shall
not be put to death, but shall be committed to the custody of men;(57) if
he is cured of his error, they shall keep him for seven years, and
afterwards he may come into the assembly (12 3 ff.). A member of the sect
who seduces others to apostasy is more severely dealt with: "A man over
whom the spirits of Belial have rule,(58) and who advocates defection
(Deut. 13 6), shall be judged according to the law of the necromancer and
the wizard" (12 2 f.; cf. Deut. 18 9).(59)

The sect possessed the Jewish Scriptures. The books of the law are "the
hut of the King" (i.e. the congregation)--the fallen hut which God had
promised to raise up; "the pillar of your images" are the books of the
prophets, whose words Israel despised. The founder of the sect, the star
out of Jacob, is the interpreter of the law who came to Damascus (7 14
ff.). The authority of the Pentateuch is appealed to in support of the
position of the sect in the matter of marriage and divorce; their peculiar
statutes and ordinances are the true interpretation and application of the
law