|
Continued: page 2 of 5
Back to course home page
Welcome back.
To understand the importance of the Dead Sea scrolls in their
own time as well as ours, we need to go back to the beginnings
of Temple-centered Judaism in the age of King Solomon. By
most chronologies, Solomon completed the First Temple in Jerusalem
between about 965-955 BCE. Dedicated during the Festival of
Sukkoth, the First Temple represented a dramatic transition
from the wandering Tabernacle shrine (called the mishkan)
of the tribes. Translated from portable tent to massive stone
structure, the Temple remained the national symbol of the
tribes of Israel, but it could no longer wander among them.
Located in Jerusalem, the unique property of David and his
successors, both the city and the Temple were presented as
neutral ground open to all the tribes. But over the decades
of Solomon's rule and expensive building program, the northern
tribes realized that an unfair share of their wealth was going
south to Jerusalem, which was on the northern edge of the
territory of David's home tribe, Judah. Despite these tensions,
the Israelite Empire established by David and the state religion
apparently remained unified through Solomon's reign. [More
on the history of the Temple in Jerusalem]
The Divided Monarchy of Israel and Judah
When Solomon died (roughly 930 BCE), his empire succumbed
soon after. Solomon's successor, Rehoboam, displayed the same
talent recently encountered among Israeli (and, for that matter,
American) leaders for sticking his foot in his mouth, and
leaving it there. At a gathering of the tribes to confirm
Rehoboam's rule over the empire, the new king promised his
subjects even higher taxes and burdens than his father had
imposed. Rehoboam immediately proved that he was no Solomon,
and the northern tribes immediately rebelled, forming their
own state, Israel. Rehoboam was left with Judah, little more
than the tribal holdings his grandfather David had held at
the beginning of his reign, plus the dynastic capital of Jerusalem.
Adding insult to injury, the Egyptian Pharaoh Sheshonk I (the
Bible calls him Shishak; I Kings 14), raided both Judah and
Israel. Returning home with a lucrative victory, Sheshonk
left Israel and Judah broken and impoverished.
So what happened to the religion of Israel? It was now a
faith practiced in varying degrees by two Jewish states instead
of one. The new king of the northern kingdom of Israel, Jeroboam,
recognized that Solomon had made Jerusalem the true religious
heart of the now divided nation. Israelites from the north
regularly made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the neighboring
and enemy Jewish state of Judah. Jeroboam set up temple and
altar sites with blatantly pagan elements at Bethel and Dan
in his own territory, hoping to tempt his subjects away from
the strong pull of Jerusalem. The result was the first of
many schisms in the development of earliest Judaism.
Over the next two centuries, Israel and Judah evolved their
separate story cycles, rituals and customs, but both remembered
that they shared a common God. Israel's faith was "tarnished"
by the cults of the neighboring Phoenicians and Aramaeans,
and even more distant lands, like Egypt. Archaeologists discovered
several ivory furniture inlays at the Israelite royal palace
of Samaria showing images of pagan deities from Egypt and
Phoenicia, demonstrating the eclectic views of the kings of
Israel. The prophet Amos had a different view: "On the
day I punish Israel for his crimes. . ., I mean to pull down
both winter houses and summer houses, the houses of ivory
will be destroyed" (Amos 3:14). These trappings of wealth
and paganism outraged Amos and the other ancient prophets.
Nor was Judah free of the taint of pagan ideas and practices.
King Ahaz of Judah had a son walk through fire in a strange
ritual that may allude to human sacrifice. The cults of other
gods were frequently tolerated in Jerusalem, and 'sacred'
prostitution and other ills borrowed from the Canaanite world
continued to flourish.
In the declining centuries of Biblical Israel and Judah (ca.
750-586 BCE), we can begin to make out different opposing
components: the kings who tried to compromise between political
necessity and religious zealotry; the priesthood (especially
in Jerusalem), that attempted to maintain the cultic status
quo; and the Prophets, the best of whom gloried in ridiculing
the first two groups in the name of God. The three parties
inspired much of the Bible's dramatic narrative in the Books
of Kings and Chronicles, as well as the piercing and brilliant
expressions of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
On rare occasion, the three parties could put aside their
differences for the sake of unity in the face of a dire threat.
The best example of this was Judah in the reign of King Hezekiah
(ca. 715-687 BCE). Only a few years before he ascended to
the throne, the northern kingdom of Israel was swallowed by
the hated Assyrian Empire (occupying modern Syria and Iraq;
as you can see, our new enemies are little changed from the
old!). The Assyrian king Sennacherib had designs on Egypt,
but a number of small states on the road to Egypt (Judah included)
had chosen to break free of the Assyrian yoke. Sennacherib
led a massive invasion to destroy these rebels. An Assyrian
task force besieged Jerusalem in 701 BCE, and it appeared
that the days of both Judah and its capital were numbered.
Miraculously, King Hezekiah, the Prophet Isaiah, the Priesthood
and the military formed the ancient equivalent of a 'national
unity government'. In the end, the Biblical accounts of II
Kings, II Chronicles, and Isaiah record that the angel of
the Lord, not the national unity government, defeated the
mighty Assyrian horde. [more
on this unique episode of political and religious unity]
For its last century, Judah gyrated wildly between the pagan
excesses of King Manasseh, the zealous religious reforms of
Josiah, and the vacillation of her last king, Zedekiah. In
the reign of the latter king, Jeremiah the Prophet (ca. 645-580
BCE) emerged as a powerful religious leader. He fervently
preached compromise with the new Babylonian Empire while offering
scathing denunciations of the government, rival prophets and
other wild-eyed zealots who were leading Judah toward its
final doom. On the eve of Jerusalem's destruction at the hands
of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, we see the Jewish people torn
into many factions: the government of Zedekiah, followers
of former King Jehoiachin in Judah and in exile, the Priesthood,
Jeremiah's "party," and many other groups seeking an age of
redemption through violent rebellion against Babylon. This
conflicting scenario of Jewish history will play repeatedly
over the centuries to come, most notably in the age of the
Dead Sea Scrolls.
Israel Under Occupation: Babylon, Persia, and the Greeks
Judah and Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The
Temple was destroyed, the priesthood exiled, and reluctant
refugees (including Jeremiah) made their way to the womb of
Israel's birth, Egypt. Diaspora communities in Babylon and
elsewhere, composed of the former leading lights of Judean
society, began to dream of their return to Zion.
Redemption and return came from a distant and unexpected
source: Persia. Cyrus the Great, heralded in the latter chapters
of Isaiah as Israel's savior, toppled the staggering giant
of Babylon around 539 BCE. He told the exiled Jews of Babylon
that they could go home, even rebuild their temple with his
full support. And this they did.
A contingent of Jews made their way back to Jerusalem shortly
before 520 BCE, and soon prevailed in convincing the Jews
who had stayed behind in Judah to rebuild the Temple. The
task took five years, and was plagued with conflict between
rival parties with different visions of Judaism's future.
The Book of Zechariah notes that some of the elders who had
known Solomon's Temple before its destruction in 586 actually
wept at the dedication of the Second Temple. The modest replacement
lacked both the grandeur and ancient glory that Solomon's
shrine commanded. If the new Temple inspired less reverence
from the people, it's safe to say that the Temple's high priests
received less respect as well. Again, Zechariah tells how
the new high priest, Joshua, was rebuked by many.
The returnees from Babylon asserted their leadership, politically
and spiritually, over the local Jewish population, with varying
degrees of success. The last years of the 6th Century and
the early years of the 5th see the refinement of another concept
that would dominate the thinking of the Dead Sea Scroll community:
God's suffering servants, who ultimately will vanquish hordes
of evil-doers:
But you who have abandoned the Lord,
and forgotten my holy mountain, . . .
I commit you to the sword,
all of you to fall in the slaughter.
. . . You shall see my servants eat,
while you go hungry.
You shall see my servants drink,
while you go thirsty.
My chosen ones will use as a curse the name you leave behind:
May the Lord God strike you dead.
But my servants are to be given a new name.
This passage from the 65th chapter of Isaiah marks a new
level of refinement in a concept that had been taking shape
over the last century. God's ultimate goal was to purge not
just the world, but the Jewish People of evil-doers,
so that a small and righteous remnant would rebuild a broken
nation. Someday, God would unleash a final apocalypse destined
to destroy mighty empires (the enemy without) as well as backsliding
Israelites (the enemy within). The Persian royal religion,
Zoroastrianism, may have contributed some concepts to this
evolving Jewish notion of an end-time battle between the forces
of light and darkness. In the Persian version, Ahura-mazda
represented the forces of light, and Ahriman led the cohorts
of darkness.
Other passages from the book of Isaiah begin to shape features
of a special leader chosen by God to lead the way to redemption:
the Messiah (one anointed by God). In fact, the concept of
an anointed, charismatic leader in ancient Judaism goes all
the way back to David. But with the Monarchy of David and
Solomon already an ancient memory, Jews were beginning to
project their hopes forward, envisioning an extraordinary
savior from the line of David who restore Israel, and its
place in the world.
The cracks in Jewish religious unity are more clearly defined
in the 5th-early 4th centuries BCE. This is the age of Nehemiah
and Ezra, who were sent under Persian authority to oversee
the religious life of Judah. Ezra found a Jewish community
that had intermarried with the local Jewish population, violated
the Sabbath and engaged in other transgressions from the Law.
The text proclaims the repentance of the backsliders, but
it is certainly clear that unity of observance was an illusory
goal, not a reality. The Persian masters of the Holy Land
further complicated the situation by dividing Jerusalem from
the Samaritan province of the north, fomenting animosity between
the northern Jewish territory of Samaria and the southern
Jewish territory of Judah.
By the time the relatively benign centuries of Persian control
ended in Judah with the arrival of Alexander the Great (ca.
331 BCE), the Jewish faith may have had numerous sects. Some
were beginning to embrace the notion of a final cleansing
of the land and the restoration of a chosen remnant in it.
The new Greek masters only contributed to this Jewish dream
of expelling foreigners from their land. The crisis in Greek-Jewish
relations came in the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who
not only continued the policy of his predecessors toward full
hellenization of the Jewish people, but happily allowed hellenizing
Jewish claimants to the High Priesthood to bribe their way
into the office. In short, there was a Jewish party that would
gladly betray Judaism to promote a grab for local power with
Antiochus' blessing. There were also various factions raging
with hatred for the Greeks. When Antiochus effectively banned
the practice of Judaism in 167 BCE, and profaned the Jerusalem
Temple with an altar to Zeus, the stage was set for rebellion.
A Last Freedom: The Maccabees
This brings us to a minor priestly family hailing from a village
not far from Jerusalem called Modi'in. The patriarch of the
family was Mattathias, an old priest blessed with five hardy
sons. Mattathias sparked a grass-roots rebellion against the
Greeks when he took a sword and ran through both a Jew willing
to make a pagan offering as well as the Greek officer who
ordered the Jews of Modi'in to do so. Mattathias died a few
months after the rebellion got going, leaving the leadership
to his third son, Judah, known by the nickname "Maccabee"
(the hammer). The nickname became the rallying cry of the
revolt. The Maccabees and their allies, including the 'Hasidim'
(who may have been the forerunners of the Pharisees and/or
the Essenes), ultimately succeeded in driving the Greeks out
of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, establishing the last independent
Jewish state until 1948 CE: we know it as the Hasmonean Kingdom.
Within a few decades, the political divisions of Jewish religious
parties began to crystallize. The party of the Jerusalem priesthood,
the Sadducees,allied themselves with the Maccabees
and their Hasmonean Kingdom. The Pharisees emerged
from the seminal 'Hasidim' group of earlier years as the main
party of religious and political opposition. They quickly
made their influence felt, offering so much opposition to
the Hasmonean ruler Alexander Jannaeus that he had 800 Pharisees
crucified. A third group, perhaps also deriving from the Hasidim,
was the Essenes. Today, most scholars (although hardly
all) believe that the Dead Sea Scroll community at Qumran
was populated by a group of Essenes. Although there were many
other Jewish sects by the First Century BCE, these three were
probably the most important, so we'll spend a few minutes
introducing each one.
First Century Jewish Sects
The Sadducees take their name from the Hebrew "tsadiqim,"
the descendants of the early High Priest of Jerusalem under
David and Solomon, Zadok. Although claiming wide official
support while the First Temple stood, this power began to
decline after the dedication of the modest Second Temple in
515 BCE. By the Second Century BCE, the Sadducees were not
only bribing their Greek masters to steal away the High Priesthood,
they were often locked in bitter conflict with each other.
The Judaeo-Roman historian Flavius Josephus of the First Century
CE records that the Sadducees were religiously conservative
in outlook. Their first religious goal was to preserve the
ritual and customs of the Temple cult as prescribed by Torah.
Josephus and later Rabbinic literature claim that the Sadducees
rejected the increasingly popular Jewish notion of resurrection
and immortality of the soul. In denying the interpretive efforts
of the Pharisees and Essenes, the Sadducees were later cast
in the mold of antiquated reactionaries of the old Temple
Cult who were also guilty of cultural and political fraternization
with the Greeks and Romans when they weren't busy preserving
the 'letter' if not the 'spirit' of Torah. Since the Sadducees
fade away with the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, it
is the records of the Sadducees' opponents that remain. These
records leave us with a sketchy and prejudiced view of the
Sadducees. In the end, their true beliefs and roles in early
Judaism may never be fully understood. It is likely that,
as Josephus claims, their base of support was a relatively
small and elite group associated with Temple leadership in
Jerusalem. If you'd like to learn more about Jerusalem museums
that focus on how the Sadducee leadership lived in Jerusalem,
click <here>.
The Pharisees are widely regarded as the spiritual
founders of rabbinic Judaism, the basis of the Orthodox stream
of Judaism we know today. Their name seems to draw from the
Hebrew "perushim," meaning "separatists." They may well have
taken this names from their opponent groups in early Judaism.
They accepted and helped to produce the growing body of wisdom
we know today as the Oral Torah, the opinions of sages and
rabbis that explain the laws of the Torah to succeeding generations.
This put them on a collision course with the "strict constructionist"
Sadducees who apparently held to the letter of Torah Law,
and nothing more. Josephus describes the Pharisees as probably
the most popular of the Jewish sects or "philosophies," with
a core membership of 6,000, while thousands more were sympathetic
to their views. Hillel the Elder, Shammai, and Gamaliel, who
all lived into the First Century CE, rank among the Pharisees'
great leaders and thinkers. The Pharisees fully embraced the
popular belief in resurrection and immortality of the soul.
Josephus claims that the Pharisees felt that both free will
and divine providence determined the fate of each individual,
opposing the Sadducees, who argued that human free will was
the only determinant. Josephus also considers himself a Pharisee,
although he is more than willing to criticize their political
program. Although the Sadducees and Pharisees were often at
each other's throats, they would sometimes also cooperate
to keep public order.
The Essenes are easily the most mysterious of the
three major Jewish sects of the First Centuries BCE-CE. Their
name may derive from an Aramaic term meaning either "pious"
or "healers," but few scholars today can agree on its original
meaning, let alone its significance. After 50 years of Dead
Sea Scrolls research, the majority still agree that a group
of Essenes were the primary residents at Qumran (the area
where the scrolls were discovered), but a vociferous minority
object. The Essenes, or allied groups, also maintained communities
in Jerusalem and other towns in ancient Palestine, and probably
elsewhere. If the Essenes are the group that populated Qumran,
then we can say quite a bit about their beliefs and customs,
at least as they were practiced in Qumran. Possibly derived
from the earlier "Hasidim" (as were the Pharisees), the Essenes,
according to Josephus, accepted the concepts of resurrection
and immortality of the soul, but believed that God determined
the fate of men, with human free will playing little or no
role. If Essenes controlled Qumran, we can add that
they apparently were celibate, they maintained communal control
of wealth and income, rather than private property, and ran
their village under a strict hierarchy of rules that focused
on absolute ritual purity. Their founder and original leader
was known as the "moreh hatsedek" or "Teacher of Righteousness."
He and his successors maintained the community within the
strict limits established in one of the key Dead Sea Scrolls
texts: The Rule of the Community. Their theology apparently
had a distinctly dualistic flavor, suggestive of influences
from the Persian royal cult of Zoroastrianism (see the final
section of this course: The Devil and the Dead Sea Scrolls).
Its theme: an end time was approaching in which the pure
forces of light and good would engage in a final cosmic and
earthly battle with the forces of darkness and evil. If this
reminds you of the Armageddon theme in the Christian book
of Revelation, you're not far off the mark. The Dead Sea Scroll
text known as the Battle of the Sons of Light Against the
Sons of Darkness contains many ideas that would later
find their way into the apocalyptic thinking of early Christianity.
As you can see, early Judaism in the First Century BCE-CE
was even richer in the variety and passion of its sects than
modern Judaism is today!
But that's not the whole story. For this period, we know
of other Jewish sects thriving here and there throughout the
Mediterranean world. Perhaps the oldest is a group that still
exists in small numbers today: the Samaritans. Claiming
descent from the ancient Israelities themselves, they claim
the ancient Israelite capital of Samaria as their original
center. When Samaria was destroyed by the Greeks in the late
Fourth Century BCE, the Samaritans established a new center
and temple near Shechem on Mt. Gerizim. This did not sit well
with the Jerusalem priesthood, but a reluctant peace was maintained
between the two parties. When Antiochus IV Epiphanes demanded
full hellenization of the Mt. Gerizim and Jerusalem temples,
the Samaritans agreed while Jerusalem rebelled. As discussed
above, the Jerusalem rebellion led to the independent Hasmonean
Jewish state. Under the leadership of the Hasmonean John Hyrcanus,
Jewish forces destroyed the Samaritan Temple in 128 BCE (the
site of this temple was recently discovered by Israeli archaeologists
and is currently under excavation). From here on out, mutual
hostility ruled the relationship between Jews and Samaritans,
as is evident in the story of the Good Samaritan in the Christian
Testament. The Samaritans, like the Sadducees, were quite
strict in following the letter of the law of their Torah,
but apparently did look forward to a redemptive end time when
the Mt. Gerizim temple would be restored as the true temple
of the God of Israel.
Another group, possibly parallel in outlook to the Essenes
was known as the Therapeutae. Their name means "healers"
or "attendants," and the best known group was based in Egypt
rather than Judea (a Roman name for the land of Israel). The
Therapeutae lived as a group of Jewish men and women
in a communal environment, practicing celibacy, self discipline
and self mastery. But there were distinct differences with
the Essenes. The Therapeutae avoided wine and meat, the Essenes
did not. The Therapeutae engaged in a daily fast period, while
the Essenes apparently preferred (putting this politely as
possible) not to engage in the process of elimination during
their Sabbath. Needless to say, the latter custom presented
a real challenge to both faith and stamina.
Some groups were more focused on the physical and often violent
political realities of the "here and now" than on the cosmic
mysteries of God and His plan for the world and the universe.
These groups sought to restore Israel by booting the Romans
out of Judea. One such sect was known as the Sicarii. Josephus
may be describing the forerunners of the Sicarii when he refers
to a group founded by Judas of Galilee who organized a rebellion
against Rome in 6 CE. For a full generation after the Romans
crushed this flare-up, Judea was fairly quiet. In the 40's
and 50's of the First Century, the Sicarii earn the meaning
of their name (Latin for "knife wielders") by wandering through
the streets of Jerusalem, murdering Jewish aristocrats who
supported the Romans. A separate group known as the Zealots
fought hard to expel the Romans during the First Jewish
Revolt (ca. 66-74 CE), but also brawled with other revolutionary
Jewish groups of the time.
Finally, there are the Notzrim, whom we know better
today as the Christians. If you were to put the Christians
and the Essenes side by side in the First Century CE, you'd
see a number of striking similarities. They were both small,
tightly organized sects, technically within Judaism, but which
separated themselves from the dogma and community of normative
Judaism (if there was such a thing as "normative" Judaism
at the time!). Property was held in common, they prayed and
ate together, and sought to create utopian communities that
would prepare themselves for the "end of days." Their theologies
had a strongly dualistic flavor, pitting the forces of absolute
good against absolute evil. By the end of the First Century
CE, Christianity had made a clean break with Judaism, affirming
the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, rejecting the Covenant
of Circumcision and kosher dietary laws, among other definitive
Jewish features. Ironically, this break was spearheaded by
a formerly zealous Jew named Saul, whom we all know as the
apostle Paul.
In all honesty, this brief view of the sects of early Judaism
only scratches the surface. But it does bring home one key
point: there were many offshoots of Judaism thriving in the
era of the Dead Sea scrolls. It is likely that the corpus
of scroll material hidden in the caves represents the views
of not just one Jewish group at Qumran, but perhaps several
different sects from different regions.
The Collapse of the Status Quo: The Last Days of the Temple
and the Jewish Revolts
 As
we enter the second half of the First Century CE, tensions
between Roman and Jew are growing rapidly. Zealots and Sicarii
are cutting Roman (and Jewish) throats for God; mystic revolutionaries
are forecasting an 'end of days' and a cosmic battle of good
against evil; others are praying and working for accommodation
with the Romans, while the Romans themselves rule Judea with
harsh and corrupt leaders. Something has to give.
A complex matrix of factors came together in 66 CE to produce
the First Jewish Revolt. The corruption-plagued rule of Nero
was nearing its end and Roman stability would be sorely tested
when, in 68 CE, the Empire would see the throne pass from
Nero to Galba to Vespasian in the space of a year. The violence
of Jewish terrorists, the potential for Parthian Persian intervention,
plus a fairly strong public desire to be rid of the Romans
provided the impetus for war. Aside from killing tens of thousands
of Jews between 66 and 73/4 CE, the Romans did the unthinkable:
they destroyed the Jerusalem Temple. Having stood for 1,000
years with only brief breaks, the Temple's obliteration should
have meant the end of Judaism.
In a sense, it did. Judaism would no longer be defined as
a cult in which three worship services with animal sacrifices
were offered every day. The age of the Sadducees and the Temple
Cult was over. In 68 CE, the Romans occupied the already battered
site of Qumran, effectively ending the life of the Dead Sea
scroll community. Other minor sects of either a mystic or
military character were also wiped out or effectively outlawed.
The First Jewish Revolt eliminated all but a few of the players
in the dramatic struggle of sectarian Judaism.
The Pharisees survived, and laid the groundwork for Rabbinic
Judaism and Orthodoxy. The Christians survived, and their
texts began to reflect an accommodation with Roman power that
would ultimately assure their survival in an otherwise hostile
Roman environment. Miraculously, the Samaritans would survive
as well, only to endure a slow fade through history that may
well end in their disappearance in the 21st Century.
Between 132-135 CE, there would be one last episode that
would briefly disturb the peace of the scrolls already resting
in the hidden caves near Qumran. Simon Bar-Kokhba, a charismatic
Jewish leader, led a nearly successful revolt against Rome
which led to the enemy's expulsion from Jerusalem, and a brief
period of independence during Jews may have begun the rebuilding
of the Temple. However, by 135 the Emperor Hadrian was able
to send an effective fighting force to quell the revolt. One
Roman historian claims there were one-half million Jewish
casualties during the Bar-Kokhba Revolt. In the end, we know
only that the Jewish spirit to force out alien rulers was
permanently crushed by 135. This year also marks the date
of the last deposit of scrolls and other artifacts in the
caves. From then until 1947, only a few caves would be disturbed,
the bulk of their contents waiting to be discovered and begin
a new revolution. . . .
Continue to
Part III of this course.
|
