THE priests who held these separatist views, relying on a supernatural source of authority and linking their fate with that of the angels of the Countenance, the Prince of Light, cherubim, holy angels, and godlike beings of knowledge, defined themselves and their allies as ‘chosen ones/knowers/Sons of Righteousness’, ‘righteous plantation’, ‘those appointed for righteousness’, ‘Sons of Light’, ‘those who enter into the Covenant’, or ‘those called by name’, who walked ‘in faith and with a whole heart’, observed the sabbaths, the festivals, and the tablets of the Covenant, and walked in the ways of justice, righteousness, and perfection illuminated by the sun itself.

Enoch, the mythological hero called by God himself ‘righteous man and scribe of righteousness’, embodied the values hallowed by the secessionist priests relating to knowledge, testimony and appointed time, calculation and number, righteousness, light, book and law, sabbath and oath. He defined his heritage through his exhortation to his sons: ‘Now, my children, I say to you: Love righteousness and walk therein! For the ways of righteousness are worthy of being embraced…. But seek for yourselves and choose righteousness and the elect life!’

The secessionists’ opponents, in contrast, were associated with angels of Belial, the Prince of Darkness, the Watchers, angels of destruction, spirits of injustice, Azazel and mastemah (lit. ‘malevolence’, i.e. the forces of evil), the pit and the shadow of death. Members of their circles were defined as a ‘congregation of wayward traitors’, ‘those who have turned aside from your Covenant’, and treacherous men who walk ‘in the stubbornness of their heart’. They are described as ‘Sons of Darkness’, associated with unjust ways; they rely upon sensory perception, upon observation of the moon, upon error and distortion.