Eruv and Sectarianism in Ancient Judaism: Sectarian Prohibitions on Carrying from Domain to Domain

Cairo Genizah Fragment

Cairo Genizah Fragment

The Zadokite Fragments (Damascus Document) 11:7-9 preserves the following prohibition:

No one shall carry (anything) from the house to the outside, or from the outside into (the) house. And if he is in the sukkah, let him not carry (anything) out from it or bring (anything) into it.

(cf. 4Q270 6 v 13-14 and 4Q271  5 i 3-5 for the same text.) We should note at the outset that this text, originally known from the Cairo genizah manuscript, is also preserved in two manuscripts found at Qumran. The first clause of this law is the prohibition of carrying from the private into the public domain or vice versa. From the wording, it is clear that this law constitutes a rephrasing of Jer. 17:21 and 22.
M. Shabbat 1:1 seems to be similarly based. Although this Mishnah is linguistically tied to the Jeremiah passage, the Jerusalem Talmud contains an argument about its derivation. Some amoraim persist in saying that the law stems from Exodus 36:6. This passage refers to Moses’ command to the people to stop bringing contributions for the building of the tabernacle. Clearly, this cannot be the origin of this law. This derivation may reflect the general rabbinic tendency to avoid deriving laws from the Prophets, even where so explicitly stated. The sect had no such compunction and must have derived its law from Jeremiah. In addition, the wording of Jubilees 2:29 and 30 seems to indicate that this author also derived his law from Jeremiah, as he also mentions carrying in or bringing out. Jubilees 50:8, however, shows no such influences. We will return below to the Jubilees material prohibiting carrying on the Sabbath.
The issue of carrying on the Sabbath related also to the booth used for the celebration of Sukkot (the sukkah). Although the Temple Scroll assumes that all of Israel would assemble at its gigantic, idealized and never-constructed temple and sit in sukkot on the roof of the walls of the outer courtyard, our text assumes local observance of this festival. The prohibition of carrying in and out of this structure, despite constituting an inconvenience for those families eating their meals in the sukkah, seems to indicate that the institution of the eruv did not exist. This would have been (excuse the argument from silence) the perfect place for us to hear about mitigation of the prohibition on carrying from domain to domain through the use of an eruv had it existed. Rather, the assumption of our legal text is that this law also applies in the sukkah, no matter what.
It is appropriate here to call attention to a fundamental difference between the sectarian and Mishnaic understandings of the prohibition on carrying from domain to domain or in the public domain on the Sabbath. Although Mishnah Shabbat 1:1 speaks, like our texts, as if there are only two types of domains, private and public, the Tosefta already puts forth the existence of two other types of domains, one intermediate and one exempt. By amoraic times, the Talmuds regularly termed the intermediate type of domain as a karmelit.  The rabbinic institution of the eruv, as noted in the final Mishnah of Shabbat, only is effective where the public domain can be converted into a karmelit or if it is only regarded as a public domain by rabbinic ordinance. Hence, sectarian law, lacking the distinction between Torah laws and prohibitions enacted by the sages, and categorizing all areas as either public or private, could not accept the institution of the eruv. We cannot be sure if that institution existed when the sectarian texts were being composed, but we can be certain that if it had it would not have been consistent with sectarian understandings of Jewish law.

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