The Covenanters of Damascus;
A Hitherto Unknown Jewish Sect
George Foot Moore
Harvard University
Harvard Theological Review
Vol. 4, No. 3
July, 1911
Among the Hebrew manuscripts recovered in 1896 from theGenizah of an old synagogue at Fostat, near Cairo, and now inthe Cambridge University Library, England, were found eightleaves of a Hebrew manuscript which proved to be fragments ofa book containing the teaching of a peculiar Jewish sect; a singleleaf of a second manuscript, in part parallel to the first, in partsupplementing it, was also discovered. These texts ProfessorSchechter has now published, with a translation and commentary,in the first volume of his Documents of JewishSectaries.1The longer and older of the manuscripts (A) is, in the opinionof the editor, probably of the tenth century; the other (B), ofthe eleventh or twelfth.
What remains of the book may be divided into two parts.Pages 1-8 of A, and the single leaf of B, contain exhortations andwarnings addressed to members of the sect, for which a groundand motive are often sought in the history of the Jewish peopleor of the sect itself, together with severe strictures upon such ashave lapsed from the sound teaching, and polemics against thedoctrine and practice of other bodies of Jews. The second part,pages 9-16, sets forth the constitution and government of thecommunity, and its distin