chapter two
The Essene theory of the origin of the manuscripts
The Jewish sect of the Essenes1
The Roman writer Pliny in his Natural History (5.15 §73) locates a Jewish sect that he knows as the Essenes on the western shore of the Dead Sea. This is probably a direct description of the Qumran community. Those who have the New Testament and the history of the relationship and contention between Jesus and the Jewish leaders are familiar with the two other major sects of Judaism at this time, the Pharisees and the Saducees. These are well known from the New Testament and from the first century Jewish historian, Josephus. Josephus, in his works, gives details on these two sects but he, like Pliny, also mentions another group, the Essenes. The Essenes will be examined from the aspect of the organization and makeup of their community, their theology in relation to the other Jewish sects of the time, and their eschatological expectations, particularly in regard to an expected Messiah. This examination will utilize the classical writings of Josephus, Philo, and Pliny as well as the Qumran and related documents in an effort to determine the degree of connectedness between the Essenes and the Qumran materials, particularly the biblical manuscripts of Cave 4.
There are a several ancient documents that serve to expand and illuminate the classical writers' description of this sect. These may be divided into two groups. The
first set is a group of documents that govern and regulate the entrance into and conduct of the community. Key among these documents are the Manual of Discipline (1QS) and the Damascus Document. Both documents apparently are rule books for the sect and its communities. The Manual of Discipline is one of the cave one documents and, according to paleographic evidence, was copied at about 100–75 BCE.2 As mentioned by Beall, although the dating of the production of this particular manuscript can be fairly certain, what is less certain is the date of the original composition of the source document of which this manuscript is an exemplar. The Manual of Discipline is apparently concerned with the community in the Qumran area. It consists in the main of a set of rules for the conduct of the community. It introduces itself in the following manner:
For the Instructor . . . book of the Rule of the Community: in order to seek God with all one's heart and with all one's soul; in order to do what is good and just in his presence, as commanded by mean of the hand of Moses and his servants the Prophets; in order to love everything which he selects and to hate everything that he rejects; in order to keep oneself at a distance from all evil, and to become attached to all good works; to bring about truth, justice and uprightness on earth . . .3
The other document is similar but concerns another group of the same sect. This is the Damascus Document. The first one discovered was recovered from "the genizah of the Synagogue of Ezra in Old Cairo in 1896 by Solomon Schechter."4 Two manuscripts of the Damascus Document were found which were dated to the tenth and twelfth centuries. The Qumran caves yielded several fragments of the same document, confirming the text of the Damascus Document and showing that the Medieval manuscripts are traceable to an ancient document.
Other documents are more specifically concerned with the theology of the community. These consists of the War Scroll (1QM), an instruction book for the conduct of a war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness; and the Hodayot or Thanksgiving Hymns (1QH), which are theological in nature. The Hymns resemble the Psalms of the Bible and are "valuable . . . not so much for the information they shed upon sectarian daily life and customs (which is minimal), but rather for their theological assertions."5 These documents will serve, with the classical writings, to help us understand the community of the Essenes and their relationship with the manuscripts found at Qumran.
The Jewish sect of the Essenes: their way of life
According to Josephus, the Essenes
are Jews by birth, and seem to have a greater affection for one another than the other sects have. These Essenes reject pleasures as an evil, but esteem continence, and the conquest over our passions, to be virtue. They neglect wedlock, but choose out other person's children, while they are pliable, and fit for learning, and esteem them to be of their kindred, and form them according to their own manners. They do not absolutely deny the fitness of marriage, and the succession of mankind thereby continued; but they guard against the lascivious behavior of women, and are persuaded that none of them preserve their fidelity to one man. (JW 119-121)6
Josephus goes on to describe a sect that, though they live in the various cities throughout Judea, keep to themselves and "Among one another they neither buy nor sell anything, but each one gives what he has to one in need and receives in turn what is useful for himself" (JW 124). This same sentiment is found in 1QS where the members are enjoined to "love all the sons of light (fellow members of the community)" and to be "in the community of truth, of virtuous humility, of affectionate love, and of righteous intention towards one another."7 The Damascus Document exhibits the same concern for communal affection in that it commands the members of the community to "love each man his brother as himself . . . and . . . seek each man the well-being of his brother."8 These rules serve to form a communal bond that is forged in mutual affection and in a mutual reverence of the sacred writ.
As has been noted above, each of the canonical books of the Old Testament have been found in the Qumran caves (with the exception of Esther). According to the Manual of Discipline, "in the place where the ten are, there shall not lack a man who studies the Law day and night continually (1QS 6.6-8)." Josephus also notes that "They are extraordinarily zealous in the writings of the ancients, choosing especially those that profit soul and body (JW 2.2-13)." In accord with these two, the Damascus Document states that "a man will undertake to return to the Law of Moses, for by it all things are carefully taught. And the exact detail of the times of the blindness of Israel with regard to all these, this is what is carefully taught in the Book of the Divisions of the Times into their Jubilees and their Weeks (7.17)." This is a confirmation that the collection is a reflection of a community that was very interested and concerned with the sacred writings of the Jews.
The Messianic Expectation and the Essenes
As mentioned earlier, the archaeological evidence uncovered by de Vaux points to the fact that the occupiers of the sight at Khirbet Qumran and the individuals who deposited the cave manuscripts are in all probability the same individuals. With this in mind, we will evaluate the known philosophy and theology of the Essenes in relationship to the library collection left in the caves.
The word Messiah in the Hebrew language means "anointed one." It applies to those individual or items that YHVH has specially appointed to a task or function. In the Hebrew Bible, when referring to people, it can apply to both David the King and Cyrus the Persian (Isaiah 45.1).9 It also is used in the book of Daniel to refer to an individual who is coming, the "Messiah the Prince" of Daniel chapter 9. The Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah is Christ. J. J. Collins notes, however, that too much reliance should not be left to specific terminology. After a discussion of the relevant terms (messiah and christos specifically) he concludes that it is not the specific word that is important to the messianic concept but rather that "a messish is an eschatological figure who sometimes, but not necessarily always is designated as a jyvm [messiah] in the ancient sources."10
The anticipation of an "Anointed One of God" coming to save the Jews is called the "Messianic Expectation." It is clear that the New Testament writers considered Jesus to be the Messiah.11 Paul uses the word Christ 270 times in his works when referring to Jesus. It is also clear in the New Testament that there was an anticipation of a conquering Messiah. This is best shown in the passage in the gospel of Matthew where John the Baptist, from prison, sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he was the "Coming One." It seems clear that John was anticipating a Messiah along the lines of that depicted in Psalms 2 and 110. Jesus' response shows that he came as a Messiah different than what John had initially expected. Jesus told John's disciples to "Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them" (Matthew 11.4-5). The Messiah that Jesus understood himself to be and described to John was the Messiah of the Isaiah 29.18, 35.4-6, 61.1 passages. Though this is not what John had initially expected, it is clear that Jesus expected John to recognize that the Messiah would act in the same manner as Jesus. The question for the Qumran community and our evaluation of them is whether or not there was a wide spread Messianic Expectation during the time of the Essenes and their occupation of the Qumran site and whether or not they participated in this anticipation.
J. J. Collins traces the scholarship that argued for years for the idea that there was a widespread Jewish anticipation of a messiah during the second temple period (~539 BCE to 70 CE). He points out that scholarship at one time "proceeded on the assumption that there was a uniform system of messianic expectation in ancient Judaism."12 He then notes that this assumption was based on a texts that dated to the later part of the intertestamental period and so could not be relied upon as evidence for the earlier period. Because of this recognition, scholarship had swung to the position expressed by Burton Mack, who, as recorded by Collins, stated "that it is wrong 'to think of Judaism in general as determined by messianism, the desire for a king.'"13 Recently, however, this position, too, is reversing. A "reassessment of Jewish messianism" is warranted due to "new evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls."14
Among the scrolls found in the Qumran caves were several pesherim.15 The pesherim found in the caves provided insight to any expectations that the community had for a messiah. One of the Cave 4 manuscripts is a pesher of the book of Isaiah. Referring to this manuscript, Collins writes
While the extant text is very fragmentary, the context is clear. There are several parallels to the Rule of the sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness (1QM, 4QM), which gives instructions for a final battle against Belial and the Kittim, or Westerners (usually in reference to the Romans). One passage in the pesher fragments 2-6, column 2, line 18 reads "when they return from the wilderness of the p[eopl]es," recalling 1QM 1:3. The following line mentions "the Prince of the Congregation." This passage gives little information about him, except that "afterward he will depart from [them]." Another fragment refers to the battle of the Kittim, and there are several other mentions of the Kittim in the context of battle. Fragment 7 goes onto cite Isa 11:1-5. The interpretation is fragmentary. Only two-and-a-half words are preserved on the first line: (The interpretation of the matter concerns the Branch of] David, who will arise at the en[d of days. . . )16
He qualifies this by stating that "Whatever the precise wording, there can be little doubt that the reference is to an eschatological Davidic King."17 He sees the same Davidic messiah in the War Rule (1QM) and a related fragment, 4Q285. These two he notes are "a part of a tradition about the eschatological war."18 Noting other fragments of pesherim and their contents he concludes that among the pesherim "there is a remarkable degree of consistency in the way different messianic titles are combined and associated in different texts among the Scrolls" making it clear that there was a strong element of messianic thought in these writings. The messianic passages depict one who "is the scepter who will smite the nations, slay the wicked with the breath of his lips, and restore the Davidic dynasty" but who also "will usher in an era of peace and justice" and that this is done by a "human figure" who is "endowed with the spirit of the Lord."19
This is a necessarily brief survey of the material in the Qumran scrolls that depict and consider a messianic figure. It has considered only a few of the scrolls among hundreds of manuscripts and documents but it is enough to establish the fact that there was a messianic expectation among the Essenes. This, along with the information we have about there life and community will give us enough information to say something about the collection of materials that they gathered into their library.
2
F. M. Cross, "The Development of the Jewish Script," The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of William Foxwell Albright, ed. G. E. Wright (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 198. 3
Translation is from Martinéz, 3. 4
Todd S. Beall, Josephus' Description of the Essenes Illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 8. A genizah is a room attached to a synagogue for the storage of damaged or discarded books. 5
Beall, 9. 6
The text used for Josephus is the English translation provided in H. St J. Thackeray, R. Marcus, A. Wikgren, and L. H. Feldman, Josephus, Loeb Classical Library, 10 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926-65. The corpus consists of four works; his Life, an autobiography; Contra Apion (CA), an apologetical work; Wars of the Jews (JW), an account of the final destruction of the Jewish nation by the Romans; and Antiquities of the Jews (AJ), a retelling of the history of the Jews, in Greek, for a Roman audience. 7
Beall, 37. Beall gives and extended comparison and contrast of the writings of Josephus concerning the Essenses and the evidence derived from the archaeology and writings of the Qumran materials. Only those portions that deal with our topic will be dealt with. 8
Ibid.
9
These two were chosen as examples to show that the term was applied to both Jews and non-Jews. It is interesting to note, however, that the cult leader in Waco, Texas, David Koresh, derived his name form these two, David and Cyrus (Koresh is a transliteration of Cyrus). 10
J. J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Ancient Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 12. 11
Biblical usage of the terms Messiah and Christ occur both articular and anarthrous. The New Testament always uses the term with the definite article when referring to Jesus. 12
Collins, 3. 13
Ibid., 4. 14
Ibid. 15
Pesherim are commentaries on biblical texts. Walter Kaiser, Toward and Exegetical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), 55-56. 16
Collins, 57. 17
Ibid. 18
Ibid., 59. 19
Ibid., 67.
1
The etymology of the name Essenes is not solidly known. There is fair evidence to believe that it is from the Syrian hassayyâ meaning pious ones. Beall, 35.