When the first cave above the Dead Sea gave up its seven great scrolls, one of them, the Community Rule, had two shorter texts sewn onto its end. The first of these is called the Rule of the Congregation. It is only two columns long, and parts of it are badly worn. It is not a rule for the community as it was, in the desert, waiting. It is a rule for the community as it would be in the last days, when all Israel would gather and the anointed ones would come. And it ends with a meal.
I have translated those two columns more times than I can count, for students and for myself, and I have never been able to read the ending without setting it beside another meal, in an upper room, a century or so later. This article is about the two tables.
The Meal of the Last Days
Here is the ending of the Rule of the Congregation, as closely as I can render it without the scholar's brackets.
When they gather for the common table, to eat and to drink new wine, and the common table is set for eating and the new wine poured for drinking, let no one stretch out his hand to the first of the bread and the wine before the priest. For he shall bless the first of the bread and of the new wine, and shall stretch out his hand to the bread first. And after him the Messiah of Israel shall stretch out his hands to the bread. And after that all the congregation of the community shall bless, each according to his rank. And they shall do according to this statute at every meal at which at least ten men are gathered.
The Rule of the Congregation, after the scroll from the first cave
Before this passage the scroll describes the session at which the meal takes place: the priest entering at the head of the congregation, then the Messiah of Israel, then the heads of the thousands of Israel, each sitting in his place. One worn word near the beginning of that description has been read by some as when God begets the Messiah among them, and by others in more cautious ways. The leather is damaged and I would not build anything on it. But I have never read the line without a stillness coming over me.
A student will notice two anointed figures, a priest and a king, with the priest first. That was the community's hope: an anointed one of Aaron to restore the true worship and an anointed one of Israel to restore the kingdom, and the priest above the king, as it had not been in Jerusalem for generations.
Every Meal a Rehearsal
The last sentence of the passage is the one that matters most. They shall do according to this statute at every meal at which at least ten men are gathered. The meal of the last days was not only a future banquet. It was the pattern for every common meal the community ate in the present.
The historian, describing the Essenes' daily meal, tells us what that looked like from outside. They bathed and put on white linen and entered the hall as into a sanctuary. They sat in silence. The baker set out loaves in order and the cook a single dish for each. The priest blessed the food before anyone tasted it and gave thanks again at the end. Then they laid aside their linen as holy garments and went back to work. Read beside the Rule of the Congregation, the description changes. These were not merely pious people eating politely. They were rehearsing, twice a day, the meal they would eat when the anointed ones came, so that when the day arrived they would know how to sit.
Who Was Not at the Table
The same scroll, a column earlier, says who may not enter the assembly of the last days. No one smitten with any human uncleanness. No one smitten in the flesh, crippled in the feet or the hands, lame, or blind, or deaf, or dumb, or with a blemish the eye can see, or tottering with age so that he cannot stand firm in the congregation. For the angels of holiness are in their congregation.
As a translator I must be fair to the text. The tone is not cruel, and the reason is not contempt. The community believed that at its table heaven and earth met, that the holy angels sat among them, and that whatever came into the presence of the angels must be whole, as the priests who served at the altar had to be whole in the old Law. They were applying the rules of the sanctuary to the dining hall. But a student who reads the list slowly, as the fellowship asks, will feel what it meant: the most sacred meal they could imagine had no place at it for the lame.
The Other Table
In the gospel of Luke, at a dinner in the house of a leader of the Pharisees, Jesus says to his host: when you give a feast, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your rich neighbors, who can invite you back. Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. Then he tells a parable of a great supper whose invited guests all made excuses, and of the master who sent his servant out into the streets and lanes to bring in the poor and the crippled and the blind and the lame.
The list is the same list. The resurrection of the just is the same hope. The great supper is the same messianic banquet. Everything is the same except the door.
And at the last supper there is again bread, blessed and broken, and a cup; and Jesus says he will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until he drinks it new in the kingdom of God, which is the new wine of the Rule. There are twelve at the table, not ten. In the gospel of John, the one who presides rises before the meal, girds himself with a towel, and washes the feet of the others, which no priest at the head of the congregation of Israel would have done. And earlier, in the hills by the lake, the gospels tell of a crowd made to sit down on the green grass in companies, by hundreds and by fifties, the way the camp of Israel is ranked in the scrolls by thousands and hundreds and fifties and tens. Then the bread is blessed and broken and given to all of them, unwashed and unranked, men and women and children, until everyone is satisfied.
Two Tables, One Hope
The fellowship does not set the two tables against each other as if one were simply wrong. Both believed that the meal of the anointed one would be the sign of the new age. Both blessed bread and wine. Both expected the kingdom soon and ate as if it had already begun. The difference is in how each kept its table holy. The desert community kept it holy by keeping out whatever was not whole. The gospel made it holy by bringing in whatever was broken, and trusting the presence at the table to do the rest.
We keep a great deal of the first table. Its silence, its order, its single plain dish, its blessing before and after, its sense that a meal eaten in the right spirit is a sanctuary: these are in the simple table the fellowship teaches. What we take from the second is the door.
A Practice for the Household
My own household keeps the evening meal in a way that tries to hold both tables. I offer it as one household's habit, not as a rule.
- Silence. When everyone is seated, a minute of silence before anyone touches anything. The children complained for a year and now enforce it on guests.
- The blessing. Whoever's turn it is says the Lection of the Bread: bless the bread, bless the hand that made it, bless the earth that gave the grain, bless the sun that ripened it, bless the rain.
- The rehearsal. We eat as the Essenes ate, as if the anointed one might be at the table. In practice this means only that we do not quarrel, do not eat standing, and do not look at screens. It is astonishing how much it changes.
- The door. Once a month, at least, the table has a guest who cannot repay us: a neighbor who eats alone, a student far from home, an old man from the end of the street whose wife has died. In the language of the scroll, we bring the lame to the table. In the language of the gospel, we have already been repaid.
The Service and Kindness page says more about the common table. The Rule of the Congregation says the meal of the last days is to be kept whenever ten are gathered. The gospel says the kingdom is among you. Between them they suggest that the banquet is not only coming. It is set every evening, in every kitchen where the door is open.