The author attempts to identify the influence of messianic-eschatological and soteriological doctrines reflected in the Dead Sea manuscripts on the formation of Jewish identity among the members of the Qumran community. In particular, the author concludes that through identifying themselves with the true Israel, considering only themselves as the true Yehudah (sc. Judeans/Jews), worthy of salvation at the End of Days, the Qumranites approach the idea of individual election, the adherents of which later turn out to be Judeo-Christians. Particular attention is paid to analysing the allegory of the “begetting” of the new Messianic world of justice (through the naturalistic image of the birth of “miraculous” “Man”) through the pious activity of the Qumran congregants in the Judean desert (1QHa 11:7–10; cf. also 1QSa (1Q28a) 2:11–15; 4Q Commentary on Genesis A (4Q252) 5:2–5). This Qumran representation is compared to the similar eschatological allegory of the birth of miraculous “Man” who personifies the transfigured world in Eclogue IV of Virgil’s “Bucolics”. The author does not exclude the possibility that Virgil may have learnt elements of Biblical prophetic eschatology (naturally, in the formulations of ancient imagery) through Philodemus of Gadara, whose Epicurean school in Herculaneum he, judging from the papyrus P.Herc. Paris. 2, attended. Gadara was taken about 97 B.C.E. by the Judean High Priest and King Alexander Jannaeus (Antt., XIII, 356, 396; BJ, I, 87), and its population was thoroughly Judaized (cf., e.g., Antt., XIII, 396). Thus, whoever Philodemus was by ethnic origin, he must have been a Judaist already in his childhood (early youth). The books of the Prophets had been canonized and recognized as sacred in Judaism for at least a hundred years by then, they were to be read and studied, so Philodemus must have known their contents in detail. The concept of actual prophecy among the Qumranites is also analyzed against the background of the process of the formation of the Oral Law in the Pharisaic milieu. Besides, а number of additional arguments in favor of identifying the Qumran community with the Essenes described by ancient authors are presented.
