CD Manuscript B and the Community Rule – Reflections on a Literary Relationship

This article begins by noting the proliferation of textual overlap between the Damascus Document and the Rule of the Community. Some examples of such overlap, such as the penal code, have received a large amount of scholarly attention in the wake of the publication of all the Cave 4 manuscripts. This study returns to a passage from CD manuscript B (CD 20:1b-8a) that has long been recognized as closely related to 1QS 8-9 and offers a reconsideration of the relationship between both texts in the light of the full publication of all the S manuscripts. The analysis offered here uncovers a complex inter-relationship between both texts as well as some intriguing pointers towards a complex literary history within the S tradition.