Outside my comfort zone The Cairo Genizah

29. What is the Damascus Document? The ancient title of this document is unknown. Commonly called “The Damascus Document” (CD [=Cairo Damascus]), it is sometimes referred to as the “Zadokite Documents.” It is represented by two texts discovered in the genizah of the Ezra Synagogue of Old Cairo in 1896 by Solomon Schechter. He published them as the first part of Documents of Jewish Sectaries (2 vols.; Cambridge, UK: University Press, 1910; repr. with a prolegomenon by J. A. Fitzmyer, New York: Ktav, 1970). Volume 1 of this publication contains “Fragments of a Zadokite Work, Edited from Hebrew Manuscripts in the Cairo Genizah Collection now in the Possession of the University Library, Cambridge.” (The second volume contains “Fragments of the Book of the Commandments by Anan,” i.e. Anan ben David, the founder of Qaraite Judaism in early medieval times.)

The text of CD published by Schechter is double: Text A, a copy dated to the 10th century a.d., containing 16 cols. (actually written on both sides of eight parchment leaves [text Al containing cols. 1–8, and text A2, cols. 9–16]); and Text B, a copy dated to the twelfth century a.d., containing two cols., numbered 19 and 20 (actually written on two sides of one long parchment leaf). Column 19:1ff. agrees somewhat with Al, 7:5ff., but from 19:33–20:34 Text B has no parallel in Text A; this is a supplementary exhortation.

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Responses to 101 Questions on the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York; Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1992), 28–29.