of God. The prophets are frequently cited, and allusions to passages
in the prophets or reminiscences of their phraseology are much more
numerous. There are similar reminiscences of the Psalms and of the
Proverbs, and perhaps of other books among the Hagiographa. As regards the
Old Testament scriptures, therefore, the sect stood on common ground with
Palestinian orthodoxy.(60) The formula of citation is peculiar; a
quotation is usually introduced by the words "as he said," rarely "as God
said"; or with the name of the sacred author, "as Moses said." Besides the
Biblical books, we have a quotation from Levi--probably the Testament of
that Patriarch--introduced by the same phrase as quotations from the Bible;
and the reader is referred to the Book of Jubilees by name for an exact
computation of the last times. There is nothing to indicate that the
authority attributed to these writings was inferior to that of the
Hagiographa. The canon of the "Scriptures" was not defined, even in the
rabbinical schools, until the second century of our era, and in the sects
many books enjoyed high esteem which the orthodox repudiated.(61)

To a different class belong, apparently, the Book of Institutes, and the
Foundations of the Covenant, in which the judges must be well versed. To
every religious gathering of ten men or more belongs a priest well versed
in the Book of Institutes. The title Foundations of the Covenant suggests
a writing (or a fixed tradition) dealing with the obligations and duties
of members of the sect. The name here rendered Book of Institutes, on the
other hand, is obscure,(62) but the fact that a knowledge of it is
demanded of the priest and of the judges makes it likely that it contained
the "statutes and ordinances" of the sect, its peculiar definitions and
interpretations of the law, often referred to as _perush_; in technical
phrase, a collection of sectarian _halakoth_, such as is preserved in the
second part of the texts before us, which seems to be derived from such a
legal manual. The objection to committing _halakah_ to writing which was
long maintained in the rabbinical schools was not shared by the sects, and
would be least likely to exist where the ordinances were not in theory a
traditional law handed down from remote antiquity, but were attributed to
an individual interpreter, the founder of the sect.

The sect had houses of worship, which a man in a state of uncleanness is
forbidden to enter (11 22),(6