The principal seat of the sect was in the region of Damascus, where its adherents formed numerous communities. It was composed of Israelites who had migrated thither from Judaea; thither also had come “the interpreter of the law,” the founder of the sect; there it had been organized by a covenant repeatedly referred to as “the new covenant in the land of Damascus.” Many who entered into this new covenant at the beginning did not long remain true to it; the writer inveighs vehemently against those who fell away, accusing them not only of grave error, but of gross violations of the law; but this crisis had been passed, and when the book was written the community was apparently flourishing. The most coherent account of the origin of the sect is found on pages 5-6:(3) At the end of the devastation of the land arose men who removed the boundary and led Israel astray; and the land was laid waste because they spoke rebelliously against the commandments of God by Moses and also against his holy Anointed,(4) and prophesied falsehood to turn Israel back from following God. But God remembered the covenant with the forefathers, and he raised up from Aaron discerning men and from Israel wise men, and he heard them, and they dug the well. “The well, princes dug it, nobles of the people delved it, with the legislator” (Numbers 21 18). The well is the law, and they who dug it are the captivity of Israel(5) who went forth from the land of Judah and sojourned in the land of Damascus, all of whom God called princes because they sought him.(6)... The legislator is the interpreter of the law, as Isaiah said, “Bringing forth a tool for his work” (Isa. 54 16), and the nobles of the people are those who came to delve the well with the statutes which the legislator decreed that men should walk in them in the complete end of wickedness; and besides these they shall not obtain any (statutes) until the teacher of righteousness shall arise in the last times.