e who reject and controvert the legal interpretation of the
sect, and of those who have fallen away from it.

The code of law which is the constituent principle of the sect and the
reason for its existence was given it by its founder, the Teacher of
Righteousness. This unique teacher was not a prophetic reformer, but "the
interpreter of the law who came to Damascus," "the legislator." The
statutes he decreed are final; the sect "shall receive no others until the
teacher of righteousness shall arise in the last times."

Mr. Margoliouth thinks that the "teacher of righteousness" to whom the
sect attributed its institutions and laws was Jesus. The statement of this
conjecture is its refutation. The role of a legislator is the last which
the character and teaching of Jesus in the Gospels would suggest even to a
sect in search of a founder. That he, whose disregard for the Pharisaic
rules of Sabbath observance repeatedly got him into trouble, should,
within a generation after his death, have been metamorphosed into the
author of the sabbatical code in our texts, which out-pharisees the
Pharisees at every point, surpasses ordinary powers of imagination. The
Christian Jews of the first century in Palestine, so far as we know
anything about them, conformed in the matter of observance to the
authority of the scribes and Pharisees, and alleged the express command of
Jesus for this practice (Matt. 23 2). Early Christian heresies sometimes
exhibit ascetic features reminding us of the Essenes; but none of
ultra-legalistic tendency is known.

As our sect is very zealous for things which have no connection with
Christianity, so on the other hand the texts disclose no trace of specific
Christian beliefs or conceptions. For the Christian Jews of the first
century, the belief that Jesus, who had been crucified under Pontius
Pilate, was the Messiah of prophecy, that he had risen from the dead and
ascended to heaven, whence he was presently to come in might and majesty,
according to the vision of Daniel, to usher in the new era, was the pith
and substance of their faith, the "heresy" by which they were separated
from their countrymen, the focus of their polemic and apologetic in
controversies with those who rejected their Messiah. It is impossible to
imagine a writing as long as this, and imbued as strongly as this with a
controversial spirit, proceeding from any Christian sect, in which there
should not be so much as an allusion to any o