e sect in different parts of the
neighboring country. It was at this juncture that the manifesto,
bearing as it does unmistakable marks of personal touch, was
composed by a leader of the movement.

No scholar who has made an independent study of the texts published by Dr.
Schechter can have failed to consider the question whether these
schismatics, with their "unique teacher,"(103) their "new covenant," their
"Supervisor," whose name and functions might be compared with those of a
bishop {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, their loyalty to their dead leader, God's Anointed one
(Messiah), who made them know his holy spirit, and their expectation of an
Anointed one in the last times, their hostility to the Pharisees, can have
been a Jewish Christian sect.

The more closely the documents are examined, however, the less tenable
this conjecture appears. One feature of the sectarian eschatology which,
if established, would afford the most striking coincidence with early
Christian belief, namely, that the Messiah who died in the early days of
the sect is to "reappear" (Margoliouth), or "rise again" (Schechter), has
no support whatever in the text.(104) The "new covenant" in the land of
Damascus is plainly the obligation by which the members of the sect bind
themselves to the organization, with its peculiar interpretations of the
law and its distinctive observances. Neither in the terms of the covenant
nor in the law itself is there anything that suggests Christian origin or
influence. That "a man should love his neighbor as himself" is not
peculiarly or even preeminently a Christian precept. The Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs reiterate it; by the most orthodox rabbis it was
recognized as the most comprehensive commandment in the law.

The things which the sect esteems of vital importance lie wholly in the
sphere of the law; polemic zeal for a code which is at every point more
rigorous than that of the Pharisees is the salient characteristic of both
parts of the book. The moral precepts are the commonplaces of Judaism
narrowed to a sectarian horizon.(105) The judgment of God is similarly
circumscribed. It is not a judgment of the world or of the Jewish people,
but of thos