Sectarianism and Soteriology 391 And the priests will bless all the men of God’s lot who walk unblemished in all his paths and they shall say: “May he bless you with everything good, and may he protect you from everything bad. May he illuminate your heart with the discernment of life and grace you with eternal knowledge. May he lift upon you the countenance of his favour for eternal peace.” (1QS 2,1b-4a) The blessing’s content is quite ordinary by both biblical and Qumranite standards. Changes with respect to the biblical form are limited to the replacement of the verbal element in “give you peace” with a noun, the elimination of the divine name, and the insertion of the sectarian petition that God would “illuminate your heart with the discernment of life and grace you with eternal knowledge”(7). On the level of function the PB-derived blessing of the Community Rule also resembles in some ways the blessings of the OT, particularly in its emphasis on the divine agency that brings the benediction into being. The differences between the use of the PB in the Community Rule and the use of comparable blessings in the OT, however, are extensive and intriguing. First, the modified PB and the curses which follow it in 1QS constitute a covenant renewal liturgy that differs markedly from the much more extensive complex of covenant blessings and sanctions delineated in the Pentateuch (Lev 26,4-12.14-39; Deut 27,15-27; 28,1-68). As a result, and unlike biblical Israel which proleptically pronounced upon itself either the covenant’s blessings or its sanctions dependent upon her compliance with its demands, the Qumran community pronounced blessings upon itself without reference to its covenant fidelity. The preceding confession that “we have acted sinfully, we have [trans]gressed, we have [si]nned, we have committed evil” (1QS 1,24-25) is repeatedly pushed to the periphery of the covenant- renewing group’s identity: first by assigning its recitation to the past life of the initiates (1,24-26), then by the preface to the blessing which directs it to those “who walk unblemished [μymt] in all [God’s] paths” (2,2), and finally by the absence of any link between obedience and blessing in the blessing itself (8). Instead, the blessing’s recipients are identified by means of their election as “the men of God’s lot” (2,2). It is a testimony to the power of the concept of election in the sect’s thought that here it displaces fidelity to the covenant’s obligations as a means of obtaining the covenant’s blessings. The the “corrupt generation”; see further W. BAXTER, “1QSb: Old Divisions Made New”, RevQ 84/21 (2006) 615-629. All citations of the DSS in translation are from F. GARCÍA MARTÍNEZ (ed.), The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated. The Qumran Texts in English (Leiden – Grand Rapids, MI 21996). (7) See J.A. LOADER, “The Model of the Priestly Blessing in 1QS”, JSJ 14 (1983) 11-17. (8) More elements could be noted, such as the community’s ability to atone for itself (cf. 1QS 5,4-7; 8,4b-10; 9,3-6); see D. TIMMER, “Sinai ‘Revisited’ Again: Further Reflections on Qumran’s Appropriation of Exodus 19-Numbers 10 in 1QS”, RevB 115 (2008) forthcoming.