The Covenanters of Damascus; A Hitherto Unknown Jewish Sect

The Covenanters of Damascus; A Hitherto Unknown Jewish Sect is by George Foot Moore and appeared in the Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 4, No. 3, July, 1911. The article says that eight leaves of a Hebrew manuscript, recovered in 1896 from the Genizah of an old synagogue at Fostat, near Cairo, proved to be fragments of a book containing the teaching of a peculiar Jewish sect. Professor Schechter has now published these texts, with a translation and commentary, in the first volume of his Documents of Jewish Sectaries.

The article says that the principal seat of the sect was in the region of Damascus, where its adherents formed numerous communities. The article says the sect had been organized by a covenant repeatedly referred to as the new covenant in the land of Damascus. The article says the place of honor given to Judah in the Testaments, as we have them, is strikingly at variance with the attitude of the sect toward that tribe and its princes.