Chapter III - Dead Sea Scrolls I: Early Christianity

 

Those among them [Roman historians] who condescend to mention the Christians consider them only as obstinate and perverse enthusiasts who exacted an implicit submission to their mysterious doctrines without being able to produce a single argument that could engage the attention of men of sense and learning.

Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

 

1. Holy Land to the First Century of Christianity

 

Christianity is the daughter of Judaism - of militant Judaism in fact. This is one of the principal facts to emerge from the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Early Christianity of Jerusalem, the movement that was later supplanted by Pauline Christianity was born in the cauldron of discontent that led to the First Jewish War. Early Christians are sometimes referred to as 'Jewish Christians', though its leader James the Just, known in modern Christianity as James the 'Lord's brother' never saw himself as anything but a devout Jew with 'zeal for the Law of Moses'. Jesus too, if historical, was no different. It is therefore of paramount importance to understand the Jewish historical and cultural milieu in the period leading to the birth of Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls are very much part of the same historical mosaic.

Throughout their troubled history, it has been the fate of the Jews and their various Jewish states to be surrounded by great empires. They were always struggling to maintain a precarious existence, generally at the mercy of the neighbouring great powers like Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, the Hittites, the Greeks and the Romans. To these pagan empires with their free-spirited approach to religion, the Jews with their rigidity, with religion controlling every facet of their life must have seemed like an oddity. It was this idea of religion as the regulator of secular life that later made its way into both Christianity and Islam. This is what we call theocracy.

In order to understand the growth of theocratic Christianity, it helps to recognize that the exercise of secular authority over people in the name of One God was largely a Jewish innovation that may be traced to Moses. It was Moses who demanded unquestioning obedience from his people in the name of One God of which he claimed to be the sole spokesman. He rested his claim, as we saw, on the word of the Biblical God Yahweh found in Deuteronomy (18.18): "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, ...and will put my word in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. "

As noted in the last chapter, this key feature - of a human medium as the unquestioned and sole spokesman of God and ultimate authority - was borrowed by both Christianity and Islam; it is for this reason that all three are known as Semitic religions. Also as we saw, these two are paurusheya - or 'man-originated' religions according to the Hindu way of looking at them.

Moses, the purusha or the human source of Jewish religion, claimed that he was the Prophet whom God had appointed to be his own spokesman. It was on this claim that Moses sought to exercise his authority over the people in the name of One God. This of course is what we now call theocracy. Whether the idea originated with Moses or if he simply took and gave shape to something that was already in the air is of little consequence for our purposes here. But it was their claim as a chosen people, appointed and led by God through a prophet chosen from among themselves, that seems to have brought the Jews repeatedly into conflict with their neighbours and overlords.[1]

Until the rise of Christianity and its subversion of the Roman Empire following Constantine's hospitality to it, all world empires were pagan in which an exclusivist ideology calling upon God as authority was seldom invoked in enforcing human laws.

The famous legal code of Hammurabi makes no claim to being the infallible word of God. And yet this is exactly the claim of the Decalogue - or the Ten Commandments. Moses claimed that he received them directly from God. Pagan religions with their pluralism make such claims impossible, while Judaism with its uncompromising monotheism was tailor-made for the evolution of theocracy. It was again for this reason that Prophet Muhammad had to drive away competing gods, keeping only Allah, while making himself the sole spokesman of the only God. This is something that may be characterised as authoritarian monotheism as opposed to monotheism of personal choice. This authoritarian doctrine was made to order for his theocratic imperialism called Islam.

One consequence of this blurring of the distinction between religious and secular authority was that to the rulers of the empires of the ancient world, these claims seemed like an encroachment on the authority of the state. This often placed religiously tolerant empires like Rome in a serious dilemma when Jewish leaders demanded secular powers in the name of religious freedom which Rome granted to all her subjects. As a result, there was always a fine line between what the Jews regarded as their religious right and what Roman authorities saw as sedition.

The problem of separating secular demands from religious rights was never satisfactorily solved by the Romans, and has not been solved in the succeeding two thousand years. Even today, similar demands continue to be made by Muslim politicians calling themselves religious leaders in countries like India and England. But in the pagan world - in the millennia that preceded it - the problem seems scarcely to have arisen.

This brings up another interesting point. Unlike the world in the last two thousand years or so, in the ancient world, religious freedom was the rule rather than the exception. Nonetheless, the history of Jews is fraught with great tragedy. One of the most traumatic episodes in their long history was the Babylonian Exile. When the Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezar conquered Jerusalem in 586 BC, he destroyed the sacred Temple (built by Solomon) and carried off many of the Jewish leaders into captivity in Babylon. In 539 BC, Babylon fell to the Persian king Cyrus the Great and became part of the Achaemenid empire. Cyrus freed the Jews, allowing them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple. The period 586-539 BC is known as the Babylonian Exile.[2]

For the next two centuries, the Jews of Palestine lived in relative peace as subjects of the great Achaemenid (Persian) empire. Then in 333 BC, the empire founded by Cyrus fell to the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great. After bringing down the Persian empire, Alexander went on to march into India. This proved to be an extremely costly venture in which the few military successes gained were scant compensation for the near complete loss of his army. This meant that he and his successors were in no position to consolidate their hold over the Persian empire which he had brought down. While modern historians have sought to romanticise his exploits, a careful study of the primary sources like Plutarch and Arrian shows that Alexander's march into India was not very different from Napoleon's march on Moscow.

It needs to be recognized that most modern history books were written during the period of European colonialism, and, naturally enough, they glorify Alexander's victories over the Asiatic peoples. This has given rise to a tendency to gloss over his failures; in at least one instance, his defeat has been presented as a victory, claiming that his magnanimity was responsible for the fact that his 'defeated' adversary ended up with more territory. They mention only his 'victory' over Porus in the Battle of Hydapses (the modern Jhelum river), but even this was an expensive tactical victory only - if that. The simple fact that he was forced to retreat through the difficult desert route in the south rather than return through the more hospitable regions that he had supposedly conquered shows his hold over them to have been tenuous at best. Trying to present all this as the result of Alexander's 'victorious' campaigns in the East has the effect of distorting the true state of affairs in West Asia at the time of Alexander's death. Marshal Zukov, the renowned Russian general and military thinker pointed out that the conduct of Alexander and his army during their Indian campaigns showed that he suffered a succession of defeats. His army was all but annihilated.

Recent research based on a critical study of Ethiopic texts as well as other primary sources indicates that Alexander in all probability suffered a defeat and handed over some of his own previously conquered territories to Porus. This, as just observed, has been romanticised by his admirers as evidence of Alexander's magnanimity towards his defeated foe! This is the explanation contrived to explain away the fact that territories under Porus increased after his battle with Alexander. It makes one wonder why he did not follow the same practice with any of his earlier foes like Darius.

Classical sources also suggest that Alexander's march on India was less than successful. According to Plutarch, Alexander left behind "many deceptive memorials of his expedition to exaggerate the glory of his expedition and conquests in India." Plutarch also tells us that Alexander suffered a heavy defeat at Mallianas - the modern Multan - and barely escaped with his life. He was saved by the bravery and loyalty of his Macedonian companion Pucestes who sacrificed his own life to protect his leader.

His Indian expedition had cost him fully three quarters of his army, and he also had a mutiny on his hands - hardly the record of a victorious campaign. Upon returning from India, Alexander, now a spent force, died in Babylon in 323 BC. His 'empire' in the east collapsed like a house of cards. The Indian garrisons he had left behind were annihilated, and the hastily appointed Greek Satrap Philip was also killed. When Alexander's successor Seleucus Nicator tried to establish himself in the east, he suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of Sandracottus[3] to whom he was forced to cede a large part of the eastern domains conquered by Alexander; a good part of these territories lay beyond the Indus in Central and West Asia. All this is clear evidence of the ephemeral nature of Alexander's exploits in the east. It is necessary to recognize this fact to follow the course of the history of West Asia in the succeeding three centuries leading to the birth of Christianity. Where Alexander's interest lay mainly in Persia, the field of action of the Seleucids, including their Hellenising efforts were confined to Egypt and the Levant. This was a major contributor to the Jewish rebellions that were a constant feature in Palestine.

This loss of control over the east was hastened by the swift rise of the Parthian empire in Iran under the Arsacids. This further undermined the position of Alexander's Seleucid successors who found themselves pushed further west, and confined mainly to Egypt, Syria and Palestine. At first, the Jews of Palestine came under the Ptolemies of Egypt, and later, under the Syriac Seleucids based in Antioch. Both these kingdoms were tolerant, and the Jews continued to prosper. Since these rulers happened also to be pagan, there was always a hard-core element within the Jewish population that sought to replace the essentially secular government institutions with ones ruled by the Law of Moses. This led to frequent clashes between the authorities and some extremist elements. The Hellenising influence under the Seleucid rule was resented by these orthodox elements.

Things took a turn for the worse during the rule of the Seleucid Antiochus IV who sought to abolish Judaism from his kingdom. Whether this uncharacteristic burst of intolerance was provoked by any overtly hostile acts on the part of some Jewish leaders is not entirely clear. In any event, one of his acts particularly offensive to the Jews was a decree forcing the subjects of the Seleucid kingdom to recognize their king as a god. To this the Jews could never consent; to them it constituted blasphemy of the worst kind to acknowledge any human as God. The Seleucid persecution of the Jews was at its height in the years following the death of Onias III - from about 171 to 165 BC. This has been expressed in the form of a prophecy in the Bible.

 

And the people of the prince that shall come, shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.

And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the over-spreading abominations he shall make it desolate, even until consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

Daniel, 26-7

 

Those who believe in Biblical prophecies hold that the 'prince that shall come' refers to Antiochus the IV who succeeded Onias III, and let loose the persecution of the Jews. It is also held that the 'middle of the week' refers to 168 BC when Antiochus IV took and pillaged Jerusalem, outlawed Judaism and ordered the Temple to be desecrated and dedicated to Jupiter. Fortunately, this persecution was short lived; the Temple was cleansed and rededicated in 165 BC. Antiochus died in 163 BC.

According to the Bible, matters had actually come to a head when the Jewish priest Mattathias Maccabaeus was ordered by a Greek soldier to sacrifice in a pagan temple. He of course refused, but some other Jews were prepared to be more accommodating and complied. This infuriated Mattathias, who killed the offending Jew as well as the Greek soldier who had ordered the unforgivable act. Mattathias, the Bible says 'burned with zeal for the Law' and had done what the Law of Moses commanded. He and others like him were known as Zealots; we would today call them fundamentalists.

                                                    The centuries following the fall of the Persian Empire in 333 BC constitute a period of great changes in Palestine where Hellenistic influence and Greek language came to permeate all aspects of life. It was a period probably not unlike our own when English language and Westernising ways - especially American culture - have come to influence many parts of the world. Similarly, Greek language and culture made deep inroads among the people of Palestine. Even the New Testament was written originally in Greek. All this, naturally enough, gave rise to a conservative reaction within the Jewish community concerned about preserving their ancient traditions and religious practices. The Zealots were essentially those that consciously set themselves up as preservers of age-long Iewish tradition and practices.

Mattathias Maccabaeus, the man who 'burned with zeal for the Law' may be seen as the founder of the Zealots, though that undoubtedly represents an oversimplification. In any event, the Maccabeans - Mattathias and his descendants - kept the torch of the Zealots burning for nearly a century. It is known that the remote settlement of Qumran where the Scrolls were found was built mainly during the Maccabean period to serve as a stronghold. It gave its inhabitants - the Qumranians - an excellent base from which to launch their operations against the aliens who ruled over Palestine. After a series of guerrilla operations that culminated in a full scale war, the Maccabeans became masters of Holy Land including Jerusalem in 152 BC. They ruled it with a firm hand controlling both religious and secular affairs of the state - that is to say, as theocrats. Palestine under the Maccabeans was probably not much different from Iran under Khomeini's rule. The Maccabeans attached far more importance to their priestly than kingly authority. As Baigent and Leigh observe:

 

It is significant that though the Maccabeans were simultaneously de facto kings and priests, the latter office was more important to them. They hastened to regularize their status in the priesthood, as custodians of the Law. They did not bother to call themselves kings until the fourth generation of their dynasty, between 103 and 76 BC.

                  From the bastion of the priesthood, the Maccabeans promulgated the Law with fundamentalist ferocity...

                  Whether the Maccabeans could claim a literal pedigree from Aaron and from David is not certain.[4]

                                                  Probably they couldn't. But their 'zeal for the Law' served to legitimize them. During their dynasty, therefore, Israel could claim both a priesthood and a monarchy that conformed more or less to the stringent criteria of Old Testament authority. (op. cit. pp. 202-203)

 

All this again brings to mind Khomeini's Iran. The formation of the Qumran sect itself can probably be assigned to the period of Alexander Jannaeus who had proclaimed himself both king and high priest. This was unacceptable to some of the orthodox Jews who held that he had no right to the priestly office as he was born of a slave woman. It is again interesting to see how greater importance was attached to the office of the priest than that of the king. This soon led to a major riot in which the protesters were set upon by Alexander's mercenaries and thousands were killed. The Scrolls contain a text expressing hope for the day when 'bastards and sons of strangers' should never again set foot in the restored Temple of Jerusalem.

Probably during this uprising, Alexander Jannaeus introduced a decidedly non-Jewish innovation - crucifixion of rebel leaders. Some Qumran texts mention this non-Jewish punishment of rebels meted out by Alexander more than a century before the birth of Jesus. The memory of this was probably in the minds of the Gospel authors writing in the Roman Empire centuries later. In the resulting confusion, they tried to evoke a long bygone era by making Jesus a victim of crucifixion by the Romans for violating Jewish Law. The result, as many historians have pointed out, is a historically incongruous account of the trial and death of Jesus: he was accused by the Jews of violation of Jewish Law, but was given a Roman punishment.

The Maccabeans' brief period of glory ended with the rise of Republican Rome, later to come under the triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. In 63 BC, Pompey overran the Near East and ended the Maccabean rule. By 62 BC, Palestine had been reduced to the status of an insignificant Roman province under the name of Judaea, administered by a 'procurator' or governor appointed by Rome.

Like the Greeks and the Persians before them, Romans were also pagans and tolerated all religions. (The brief period of persecution under the Seleucid Antiochus IV had been an aberration.) But the essentially theocratic character of the Jewish religion and state, and the turbulent nature of its inhabitants brought them repeatedly into conflict with the secular rule of the Romans. This is a recurring theme in the history of the Middle East and the Levant: conflict between theocracy and secular rule. To help control them, the Romans looked around for someone who knew the people and would be acceptable to them. This they found - or at least thought they found - in Herod, a Nabataean from what is now Jordan. He was installed by the Romans to rule as king of Palestine in 37 BC.

 

 

2. Herod and the Herodians

 

Herod, though a practising Jew, was of Arab descent from both his parents. Being as concerned about his dynastic legitimacy as any of his Jewish subjects, he married a Maccabean princess in order to strengthen his position as their ruler. But once he felt secure enough, he murdered his wife along with her brother and others of their line, effectively extinguishing the Maccabean line. He then proceeded to remove the priesthood from the hold of the old families and replaced them with his own favorites.

Through these effective if ruthless methods, Herod created a new privileged class loyal to himself and to his Roman masters. This upstart elite, enjoying the luxuries of their new-found positions had no concept of the sanctity of the Law nor much sensitivity to the feelings of the traditional Jewish subjects. In place of the Maccabeans with their uncompromising 'zeal for the Law', the Jews of Palestine had come under the rule of a pleasure-loving monarch and a corrupt and indolent priesthood ultimately beholden to the pagan rulers of Rome. And towards the end of his life Herod went mad.

Following Herod's death in 4 BC, his kingdom was divided between his son and grandsons known collectively as the Herodians. His actual successor in Palestine was his son Herod Antipas who was given a somewhat reduced portion of his father's kingdom. A crisis of sorts erupted when Antipas divorced his Nabataean wife and married Herodias - the former wife of his half brother. This further alienated his Jewish subjects, already opposed to the rule of Herod and his successors. When John the Baptist harshly censured Antipas for what was perceived in orthodox circles as an incestuous marriage, Herodias and her daughter Salome prevailed upon Antipas to have John imprisoned and later executed. According to the Bible, when Jesus was arrested in Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator of Judaea, sent him first to Antipas because Jesus came from territory under his jurisdiction. But Antipas, with the blood of the Baptist already on his hands, was reluctant to alienate his Jewish subjects further and sent Jesus back to Pilate.

This has an interesting connection with one of the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls known as the Temple Scroll. The Jewish Law, as is well known, rests on the first five books of the Old Testament - namely, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Temple Scroll is closely related to these law books and forms almost an appendix to them. Interestingly, it forbids marriage between a Jewish king and his niece - something not found in the five books of the Old Testament.

The same prohibition is found however in another of the Scrolls texts known as the 'Damascus Document'. As Eisenman and Wise observe (p 188):

 

The second [proscription], most probably to the Herodian family, as no other group before them can be demonstrably so identified. Niece marriage was a practice the Herodians indulged in habitually as a matter seemingly of family policy.

 

This is highly significant for this prohibition seems to have been directed specifically against Herod and his dynasty. Uncle-niece marriages were common among them. Herodias married two of her uncles in succession. It was this practice that was condemned by John the Baptist which led to his imprisonment and execution at Salome's instigation. From all this we may conclude that some parts at least of both the Temple Scroll and the Damascus Document date from the period of Herod and the Herodians, that is to say, the beginning of Christianity. This contradicts the position of the International Team and the Church which place all the Scrolls at least a century earlier. Through this device they have sought to negate the Qumranian innuence on early Christianity.[5]

The fast and loose lifestyle under Herod and his successors again provoked the inevitable orthodox reaction among the Jews of Palestine - those with 'zeal for the Law'. The priests installed by Herod are commonly known as the Sadducees; their orthodox adversaries are called Zealots by the great first century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. In the Qumran literature, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, they are often referred to as Zadokites. The Bible refers to them as the Nazorenes or Nazoreans. These, as we shall see later, were the early Christians - who saw themselves as the pristinely pure upholders of the age-old Law of Moses against the corrupting innuences of Herod and Rome.

Jesus Christ was one of them - a Nazorene.[6] That is to say, he saw himself as an orthodox Jew sworn to uphold 'the Law and the prophets' against the corrupting Roman and Herodian influences. For this reason, it would be reasonable to hold the followers of Mattathias Maccabaeus and not Jesus to be the founders of early Christianity; the two sects, the Zealots and the early Christians were practically one and the same. 'Christian' simply means 'Messianic' which applies to the Qumranians who awaited the arrival of a Messiah. This predates Jesus by more than a century.

This is a necessarily simplified description of the bewilderingly complex sectarian world at the time of the birth of Christianity. To see the problem, within the Saducees themselves, scholars identify two groups in the Herodian period - the 'establishment' Saducees and their opponents, the 'Messianic' Saducees. To these we must also add the 'purist' or the Hasmonean Saducees. And we have not yet begun to enumerate the Pharisees. The need for simplification is obvious.

The Scrolls, as we shall see later, tell us the same story - that the early Church to which Jesus belonged was an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect. This is one of the great discoveries to come out of the Dead Sea Scrolls, one that the Church and its institutions like the Ecole Biblique are trying desperately to negate. Seen in this light, Jesus was an orthodox Jew and not any reformer or radical who led a revolution against the orthodoxy. This is also consistent with much of what is found attributed to him in the Gospels. Otherwise what could possibly make a supposed revolutionary like Jesus want to say:

 

                  Think not that I am come to destroy the Law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.

For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled.

Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew, 5. 17-19.

 

These are the words of a traditionalist - not a revolutionary. Jesus saw himself as one in a line bent on upholding the Law and the prophets. Once we recognize these as the words of a man concerned with preserving traditions from corrupting influences, the passage becomes entirely coherent. As we shall see later, the words and style are strikingly similar to those found in the Qumran literature, again indicating that Jesus was part of a long tradition and not a break from it. They also tell us that the authors of the Gospels borrowed heavily from the Qumran texts.

Jesus went further, threatening civil war pitting father against son, but this too was part of the same tradition; he was being no different from Mattathias who had waged war against the occupiers and their collaborators. This again becomes perfectly understandable when we recognize that both Jesus and John the Baptist had repeatedly inveighed against the corrupting innuences of the Romans and the Herodians - innuences that had no doubt come to cast a spell on many of their people. All this stemmed from their concerns about preserving the purity of the Jewish religion and its practices. Here is the famous passage from Matthew:

 

                  Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

                  For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

                  And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

                  And he that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

  Matthew 10. 34-37. (emphasis added)

 

This can certainly be read to mean incitement to rebellion. The most logical explanation is that Jesus, who was a conservative in tradition with 'zeal for the Law', was exhorting his followers to be ready to rise up and fight in defence of the Law and the prophets. The same idea - of rebellion against the ruling authority is found in the last book of the Bible known as the Revelations of Jesus Christ, sometimes called the Apocalypse. In other words he was a militant Zealot prepared to instigate rebellion and civil war. (And this too receives support from the Scrolls as we shall see later.)

The Qumran settlement where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered was part of the Zealot stronghold. Its occupants exerted considerable influence over the affairs of Jerusalem and the Temple. This is the historical background supplied by the Scrolls which has helped Biblical scholars arrive at a picture of the first century of Christianity - a picture that is at once more vivid and coherent. It is also a picture that is quite different from the one which followers of Christianity are familiar with.

This is not altogether a new idea - that there is wide difference between the Christ of Christianity and Jesus of history. More than one scholar has found the two to be so divergent leading some to deny the existence of a historical Jesus. This may not be entirely warranted; what is needed is a change in perspective regarding the origins of Christianity and the message and personality of Jesus. It will become increasingly apparent that, if Jesus is historical, he and the sect to which he belonged were nothing like what the Church has been telling its followers.

The main point is: the picture of the origins of Christianity emerging from a combined study of the Bible and the Qumran literature is contrary to the orthodox view which holds the Qumran people - often referred to as the Essenes - to have been pacifists and recluses having little to do with the rise of Christianity. The Scrolls on the other hand tell us that they were militant Zealots. This is not merely an academic issue as we shall soon see: it changes the whole character of Christianity as a religious movement. It makes it no less a militant political movement than a religious one. The Jewish Wars were very much a part of the early history of Christianity.

The picture of the Qumran people as recluses uninvolved in worldly affairs is the one propagated by Church authorities and the International Team led by Father de Vaux; it is of course part of the official Catholic position. The Catholic Encyclopaedia says of the Essenes:

 

There have been many unsubstantiated hypotheses about their [the Essenes'] influence on Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls, however, show grounds for suspecting considerable indirect influence, which does nothing to destroy the originality of Christianity.

 

The Catholic Encyclopaedia could hardly say otherwise; it could hardly go on to admit that the Scrolls do cast doubts on the originality of Christianity, not to mention the uniqueness of Jesus. This too should be seen as part of the effort to render the Scrolls harmless and preserve the orthodox Christian position now being seriously shaken by new discoveries. But the Scrolls do not permit such a simple, not to say simplistic interpretation of the Qumranians; they cannot be banished from the scene as a community peripheral to the evolution of Christianity. Recognizing this, the International Team of the Ecole Biblique has gone to great lengths to suppress most of this information. Their first line of defence has been the denial of access to the Scrolls. This of course has been rendered moot - thanks to the efforts of Eisenman.

When examined against the background of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the picture we get is quite different from the official version. The Scrolls tell us that the Qumran people played a major role in the Jewish War of AD 66-74, and may even have been the cause of it. Far from being pacifists, these men were militant Zealots - 'who burned with zeal for the Law', and prepared to fight in its defence.

This, of course upsets the orthodox view, which treats them as pacifist recluses - not militant warriors involved in secular affairs of the state. This is what the Vatican and its related institutions like the Ecole Biblique have tried to keep under the lid. We shall be taking a more detailed look at the Qumranians in due course, but first it is necessary to understand what the Dead Sea Scrolls do have to say about early Christianity.

 

 

3. Dead Sea Scrolls on Early Christianity

 

Qumran literature poses two major challenges to the official position of the Church. The first is doctrinal, and the second historical. But the two are not so easily disentangled. To the lay person, and even the Biblical scholar, Christian religion and Biblical history are all but inseparable; to the believing Christian they are indistinguishable. This is further complicated by the fact that most scholars working with the Scrolls happen to come from a Catholic background. The Ecole Biblique is a Dominican institution controlled by the Pontifical Biblical Commission - a Vatican office; its members have a strong vested interest in preserving the 'truth' of Christianity as both religion and history. As a result, whenever there has been a conflict between faith and scholarship, scholarship has invariably lost. That is to say, doctrine has dictated the agenda of Father de Vaux and his colleagues.

The Scrolls themselves do not necessarily give us different versions of the books of the Old Testament or invalidate existing ones. What they do provide however is a new historical setting that relates early Christianity to the Jewish Wars; they also shed new light on the origins of Christianity that have been suppressed by Church fathers to protect their own official version about the origins. Their impact on the New Testament, and therefore on Christianity is far greater than on Judaism or the Old Testament. Of course, part of the reason for this is that the Jews have not indulged in forgery and fabrication of their texts the way the Christians have. Greeks and other pagans called the Christians the kings of forgers, and Rome the home of forgeries. We shall be taking a look them in the next chapter.

This happens to be one of the major problems facing the Church today: thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of the claims of Christianity are shown to be later fabrications. The Scrolls virtually overthrow the Church version of early Christianity as derived from the Gospels. By and large, they support the picture of early Christianity that one can dimly perceive in the writings of early historians like Tacitus, Suetonius and Josephus, as opposed to the 'orthodox' version propagated by the Church. The Gospels in particular are seen to be little more than fairy tale fabrications that owe everything to the Scrolls. Allegro, for one, saw the Gospels as little more than fictional accounts describing the attributes and the acts of the expected Messiah.

Upon studying the Scrolls one can see that the authors of the Gospels have borrowed heavily from Qumran texts in arriving at their picturesque imagery and language. It is not just the literary borrowings that we find in the Gospels; a whole messianic Jewish tradition has been appropriated and presented as the unique and original gift of Christianity. Many of the practices that we think of as Christian innovations - like the Lord's Supper and the Lord's Prayer - can now be traced to Qumran texts going back at least a hundred years before the birth of Christ. These seriously undermine any claim for originality on behalf of Christianity. As we shall see later, this extends even to the personality of Jesus Christ and his teachings.

Even the so-called Doctrine of the Faith - the bedrock of Christianity - was lifted by Paul from a Qumran text known as the Habakkuk Commentary .

This, of course, is something the Church can never afford to concede. To protect the orthodox position, Father de Vaux and his team evolved what has been called the consensus position - a position on the contents of the Scrolls that was seen to be least damaging to the Christian doctrine as laid down by the Catholic Church. Part of this involved dismissing the Qumran people as recluses having no influence on the evolution of Christianity. But this position could not be maintained for long. When some early scroll material became available, Biblical scholars noted that they described a man known as the 'Teacher of Righteousness'. He was the leader of a sect calling itself the Sect of New Covenant, which is also the term used by the early Christians to describe themselves (Acts of the Apostles).

What were these people like? How did the Qumranians view themselves? Geza Vermes of Oxford, one of the world's best known authors on the Dead Sea Scrolls gives us the following picture:

 

In their own eyes they constituted the one and true Israel, the Church of God's elect. The revelation of all truth had been granted to their Teacher, finally and definitively, and they themselves were the minority chosen by God to inherit the Covenant, the Promise, and ultimate Salvation... they believed that they would, during their lifetime, participate in the great battles of Light against Darkness, and that they would see and share with the triumphant Messiah the fruits of his victory .

(Vermes, 1973, p.16)

 

In other words, the Qumranians were a people of apocalyptic vision and messianic expectations. A Biblical scholar of note, Andre Dupont-Sommer of the Sorbonne, remarked that in some Qumran texts, the Teacher of Righteousness was regarded as a Messiah who was persecuted and martyred. His conclusion was that this Teacher of Righteousness must be seen as a precursor to Jesus Christ. This at once challenged the position of the Church, suggesting that there was probably nothing unique about Jesus; there were other orthodox Jewish teachers who were similarly regarded. More seriously, it raised questions about the existence of Jesus as a historical person. Unwittingly, Dupont-Sommer had opened a Pandora's Box.

The reaction from the Church was predictably furious though Dupont-Sommer seems to have been taken by surprise by its intensity. This was in 1950, when only a small portion of the Scrolls material had trickled out and made its way into scholarly circles. For the International Team at the Ecole Biblique, and their superiors at the Vatican, the whole episode had been a traumatic experience. It had shown them how potentially explosive was the material they held in their hands. They slammed the lid shut and for the next forty years did everything possible to keep probing eyes away from the Scrolls.

Before long many observers began to notice a concerted effort on the part of Father de Vaux and his Catholic colleagues to separate the Qumran finds from both Judaism and Christianity of the first century AD. American critic Edmund Wilson gave public expression to what some others had been privately saying - that there was a conflict of interest between doctrine and scholarship as far as de Vaux and his colleagues were concerned. Wilson saw great similarities between the Scrolls and orthodox Judaism and its connection with early Christianity. In an article that appeared in the magazine New Yorker,

he wrote:[7]

 

One would like to see these problems discussed; and in the meantime, one cannot but ask oneself whether the scholars who have been working on the scrolls - so many of whom have taken Christian orders or have been trained in the rabbinical tradition may not have been inhibited in dealing with such questions as these by their various religious commitments...

If, in any case, we now look at Jesus in the perspective supplied by the scrolls, we can trace a new community and, at last get some sense of the drama that culminated in Christianity...

 

Father de Vaux reportedly tried to reassure Wilson, telling him: My faith has nothing to fear from my scholarship." This was being disingenuous; the real question was whether his scholarship had anything to fear from his faith. (Baigent and Leigh, ibid.)

To return to Wilson, he went on to observe that the cradle of Christianity should be placed in Qumran rather than Nazareth or Bethlehem. This was a remarkably astute observation, though, to the lay person, or even the average Christian, it matters little whether the cradle of Christianity was Bethlehem or Qumran. Church authorities however saw it differently; to them it was only a matter of time before their whole position would be undermined. They felt the ground disappearing from under them. But the genie was out of the bottle, there was little they could do about it. In any event Wilson was not a Biblical scholar, and his views could be dismissed on the grounds that he was unqualified. The respite thus obtained proved short-lived, for soon the members of the International Team had to contend with a far more formidable adversary than Edmund Wilson. This was John Marco Allegro who fired his first salvo in 1956. He was an Englishman, then still a member of the International Team, but a free-thinking man and an agnostic to boot. Unlike Wilson, Allegro was very much a Biblical scholar - at least as good as any other member of the International Team and better than most. His views therefore were not so easy to dismiss as Wilson's. He gave a series of three radio talks explaining how radically the Scrolls could change the picture of Christianity. The New York Times reported:[8]

 

The origins of some Christian rituals and doctrines can be seen in the documents of an extremist Jewish sect that existed for more than 100 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. This is the interpretation placed on the 'fabulous' Dead Sea Scrolls by one of an International Team of Scholars. ... John Allegro said last night in a broadcast that the historical basis of the Lord's Supper and part at least of the Lord's prayer and the New Testament teaching of Jesus were attributable to the Qumranians. (Emphasis added.)

 

This is a bombshell as anyone with even a superficial knowledge of Christianity will not fail to note. So, what we now call Christianity, as well as its teachings - which generations of faithful have been told to be the sacred word of the Only Son of God - happened to grow out of an extremist Jewish sect that had existed for more than a century before the birth of Jesus Christ. And this extremist Jewish sect, as we already saw goes back at least to Mattathias Maccabaeus and his successors who ruled the Holy Land from 152 BC to 63 BC. In summary, both the message and the actions attributed to Jesus can be traced at least to Mattathias and his followers as part of the whole Zealot tradition.

Allegro later went on to point out that there exists a Qumran text in which the term 'Son of God' has actually been used. (We now know that the phrase occurs at many places as we shall see in the next chapter.) In a letter to Father de Vaux he emphasised that it was used by the Qumran people who also referred to the coming of a Davidic Messiah whom they called 'Son of God'. This shatters the last shred of any claim for the uniqueness of Jesus, who, according to orthodox Christians, is descended from the line of David as the Only Son of God.[9] Many more revelations are forthcoming, now that the monopoly of the International Team has been broken.

Allegro was to pay a heavy price for this revelation - that Jesus Christ was not unique; and as a distinguished Biblical scholar with first hand knowledge of the Scrolls, his views were not easy to dismiss. As an agnostic and a rationalist Allegro probably never realized how close he had come to shattering the foundations of the Church. He was expelled from the International Team, hounded by de Vaux who set out to ruin his career. For a man of the Church, Father de Vaux certainly was not distinguished by any forgiving spirit. He was a ruthless and bigoted man with more than a streak of anti-Semitism in him. I will get to the story of the persecution of John Allegro later on in the book. It is a worthy successor to the Inquisition.

This is not the whole story however. As it now seems certain, if the Qumran community was destroyed during the Jewish War of AD 66-74, some of the Qumran texts must come from the time of the life and ministry of Jesus and even later. This, as Robert Eisemnan points out, is what the internal evidence of some of the Scrolls also tell us. More to the point, while the Qumran literature refers to the Teacher of Righteousness, and has also many connections with the New Testament, there is not even a hint of him as being divine. This is supported by several early sources among which we shall only note a few.

Eusebius, who lived in the fourth century tells us that the Ebionites (meaning the 'Poor' as the early Christians called themselves) did not regard Jesus as divine. And Origen writing in the century before Eusebius also tells us - quoting Josephus as authority - that Jesus was not regarded as divine. The portrayal of the Teacher of Righteousness strongly suggests that it might refer to a Jesus-like figure as Dupont-Sommer and many others have noted. That is to say, if Jesus was a historical person, there is no indication at all that his contemporaries regarded him as divine.

We can see therefore that early Church historians knew that Jesus was not regarded as divine by early Christians. Eusebius, the key figure involved in the conversion of Constantine's mother Helena to Christianity, was an extreme partisan of Pauline Christianity. He was not above tampering texts including passages from Josephus, but even he acknowledges that the Ebionites (early Christians) did not regard Jesus as divine. Origen, (writing in the century before Eusebius) mentions a reference to James in the work of Josephus but is silent about Jesus. Even if it did contain a reference to Jesus, it can only be a fleeting one, as incidental to James who was the more important figure. There was much dispute about the divine nature of the Messiah which was finally resolved only at the Council of Nicea held in AD 325. This was mainly a political decision - a compromise reached between Constantine and Christian leaders. (See Chapter 8.)

The sum total of all this is: if Jesus Christ was a historical person, he was neither unique nor was he regarded as important - let alone divine - by his contemporaries. He was simply one in a line of several leaders and teachers of an extremist Jewish sect dominated by messianic ideas - and not even the most important of them. We shall see later that this is confirmed by classical historians like Tacitus, Suetonius and even Josephus. This may be seen as one of the great dilemmas posed by the Dead Sea Scrolls.

 

 

4. Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible: Qumranian Heritage

 

A study of the Qumran texts alongside the Gospels and the Acts shows how closely they are related, and derived from the same source. Considering how little time has passed since the Qumran material has been made available to the public, the similarities found so far between the Scrolls and the New Testament must be seen as remarkable. To take just one example, according to the Acts of the Apostles, the leadership of the early Church resided in twelve apostles; the most important among these were three - Peter, John and James the 'Lord's brother'. Similarly, according to the governing rules given in a Qumran text known as the 'Community Rule', Qumran was governed by a council of twelve and three priests who wielded the greatest authority.

Further, the early Church and the Qumran community were both messianic in spirit and awaited the arrival of a Messiah. In Christianity this is seen to have been fulfilled by Jesus - the Only Son of God. In the Qumran texts, as we already saw, we find Teacher of Righteousness whose description parallels that of Jesus, and may in fact be seen as his prototype. We may therefore conclude that the authors of the Gospels have taken the messianic spirit that pervades the Qumran texts and presented Jesus as the fulfillment of those expectations. This is exactly what several Biblical scholars beginning with Dupont-Sommer have contended.

This indebtedness of the New Testament to the Qumran literature is particularly striking in the modes of literary expression and imagery used by the two, and this extends even to the famous Sermon on the Mount. "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth" says Jesus in Matthew 5.5. This is borrowed from the Psalm 37.11 "But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace." The Qumran texts contain a commentary on the same Psalm pointing out: "Interpreted, this concerns the Congregation of the Poor …” The 'Congregation of the Poor' was how the Qumran people - the ones called Ebionites by early authors - referred to their community. This is the one that we recognize as the early Church. (The Vatican still calls itself the 'Congregation of the Poor' - no matter how absurd it may seem to outside observers.) As far as the Ebionites are concerned, Eisenman and Wise point out:

 

It is important to see the extent to which the terminology Ebionim ('the Poor') and its synonyms penetrated Qumran literature. Early commentators were aware of the significance of this usage, though later ones have been mostly insensitive to it. The use of this terminology, and its ideological parallels, 'Ani ('Meek') and Dal ('Downtrodden'), as interchangeable terms of self-designation at Qumran, is of the utmost importance. There are even examples in crucial contexts of the published corpus of an allusion like 'the Poor in Spirit', known from Matthew's Sermon on the Mount in both the War Scroll, xi. 10 and the Community Rule, iv.3. (Eisenman and Wise, p. 233)

As tradition proceeds, it becomes clear that the Ebionim (the so-called Ebionites) or 'the Poor' is the name by which the community descending from James' Jerusalem Community from Palestine goes. In all likelihood, it descends from the one we are studying in these materials [Qumran texts] as well. (ibid.)

 

This unequivocally ties the early Church of Jerusalem to Qumran. We shall soon see that its leader was James, not Jesus. No less interestingly, some of the best known passages in the Sermon on the Mount owe their importance not to Jesus, but to the Qumranian Orthodox Jewish sect that called itself the 'Congregation of the Poor (or the Meek)' - the one that we can recognize as the early Church. This gives a completely different sense to the famous line: The meek shall inherit the earth. This was appropriated by the compilers of the Gospels who went on to attribute it to their Jesus Christ.

Nor are these by any means the only examples. Allegro's book on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the more recent book by Eisenman and Wise contain numerous examples showing the New Testament's indebtedness to Qumran. Allegro observed long ago:

 

My own opinion is that the scrolls prompt us increasingly to seek an eschatological meaning for most of Jesus' reported sayings: more and more become intelligible when viewed in the light of the imminent cataclysm of Qumran expectations, and the inner conflicts in men's hearts as the time grew near.

(Allegro 1990, p. 175.)

 

That is to say, Jesus became the embodiment of people's messianic expectations. In the circumstances, it is only natural that Christian propagandists should have used all available materials in propagating their new faith, while at the same time claiming originality for it. This also meant concealing its Qumranian heritage, for, without originality a message cannot be a revelation. Along the same lines, there is now overwhelming evidence to show that even the Bible has been tampered with from the earliest times in order to erase all traces of its Qumranian ancestry. The Qumran texts establish that its followers treasured a book called the Book of Enoch. The Acts shows that the early Christians too treasured the same work. But in the third century of Christianity, the Fathers and Apologists of the Church decided to remove it from the Bible. All copies of it disappeared and it was not seen again until a British explorer found an Ethiopian version of it in that country in 1773. With its messianic tone, the work is Qumranian in language and spirit.

Nor is this the full story - for there is now evidence suggesting that the story of the crucifixion of Christ may have been borrowed from it. The Book of Enoch contains a remarkable final part written between 95 BC and 65 BC - describing the expectation of the coming of a Messiah. Amazingly, it even has a lament about the slaying of the 'Righteous' - written fully a century before the date assigned to the crucifixion of Christ! Based on this discovery, some scholars now hold that the story of the crucifixion of Christ, which forms the main part of the Gospels, is no more than a later concoction that combines this with the Roman execution of a Zealot rebel leader made to look like this story of the 'slaying of the Righteous' - a messianic figure! This goes to explain why the early Church fathers wanted to destroy all copies of the Book of Enoch and almost succeeded. The Jews were later made to bear the weight of this imaginary murder.

In removing from the Bible and then destroying all copies of the Book of Enoch, the Christian Fathers of the third century AD sought to eliminate every trace of its influence on the Bible. Also banned was a companion work known as the Book of the Secrets of Enoch. Not a single copy of it was known for nearly fifteen centuries. A few copies have now been recovered from Russia and other eastern European countries. Dated to between 30 BC and AD 70, it is even more strongly messianic in spirit and language than the Book of Enoch.

Some of this was confirmed, albeit unwittingly, by a present member of the International Team. Despite continuing attempts at stonewalling, members of the International Team have been known on occasion to drop their guard. Father Emile Puech, a young French monk now a member of the International Team, revealed to Michael Baigent in November 1989 that he had found overlaps between the Scrolls and the Sermon on the Mount. He had also found that some of the early Christian writers from the first and second centuries had drawn their material directly from the Qumran texts. It is not hard to see that the creators of the Gospels also based their works on the Qumranian texts and traditions that were available to them - including possibly the crucifixion itself. This is precisely what the Church had been trying desperately to keep under the lid by denying access to the Scrolls.

Some of this was confirmed by Father Puech himself, who also revealed that there are overlaps between Luke's Gospel and a Qumran document. They both speak of a 'Son of God' and 'Son of the Most High'. None of these Qumran texts that Puech was talking about had been made public at the time he revealed this. (They may be among the fifty texts published by Eisenman and Wise in their Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered.)

To sum up: there cannot be the slightest doubt that the New Testament and the Qumran texts are intimately related with the former, drawing heavily upon the latter. It remains only to assess the extent to which the New Testament - the Gospels in particular - is based on Qumran texts. Full details will be known only after Biblical scholars have had the time to study and analyse the transcripts of the Scrolls. There is however no denying its indebtedness to Qumran literature; this is now a certainty. Allegro and Puech - two men with first hand knowledge of the Scrolls have confirmed it; and now Eisenman and Wise have confirmed it in every detail. The conclusion therefore is inescapable: Qumranians and the early Christians were one and the same. And the more we learn about them from the primary sources like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the more this gains in strength. As Eisenman and Wise observe in their recent book:

 

By the fourth century, the high Church historian Eusebius, previously Bishop of Caesarea, is willing to tell us about these Ebionites. Of Palestinian origin and one of the people primarily responsible for the Christian take-over of Rome, he clearly regards the Ebionites he describes as sectarian - sectarian, of course, in contradistinction to that form of Pauline Christianity that he helped promote in Constantine's time.

(pp. 233-4)

 

These Ebionites as we saw were the early Christians of Qumran. The next question is: who exactly were the Qumranians? Pacifists or militants?

 

5. Qumranians: Essenes or Zealots?

 

Before we can say anything more about the origins of orthodox Christianity, or Pauline Christianity (which Eusebius helped promote in the time of Constantine), we must identify the people whom we have been calling 'Qumranians', and learn of their fate in the turbulent century that saw the birth of Christianity. The orthodox view - the view of the International Team that is - holds the inhabitants of the Qumran ruins to have been a people known as the Essenes mentioned in the works of classical historians like Josephus, Philo and Pliny. According to this view, they were recluses uninvolved in the religious and secular affairs of Jerusalem and the Temple. The picture we obtain from the primary sources, however, is entirely different.

The Essenes, according to Josephus, were living in every part of Palestine; there is nothing in the literature to warrant the position that they were confined to the Qumran settlements. Josephus also tells us that there were four thousand Essenes living all over Palestine including Jerusalem itself; and this was based on his personal knowledge, there were probably many more. In fact, there was even a 'Gate of Essenes' in the walled city of Jerusalem, before it was destroyed with the rest of the city in AD 70.

Then there is another point: if the 'pacific' Essenes were the sole inhabitants of Qumran, where was the need for the Romans to send some fifty thousand soldiers under Titus - their ablest general - who went on to destroy most of the settlement? Also, the Qumranians had at first inflicted a crushing defeat on a smaller Roman force - hardly possible had they been nothing but pacifists.

Similarly, there is nothing also to suggest that the Qumranians were isolated from the affairs of the state and the Temple; in fact there exist Qumran texts suggesting that they were indeed closely involved. One text in particular - known as the 'Temple Scroll' - shows that the Qumranians were involved in the daily affairs of the Temple. This contradicts the position taken by scholars of the International Team (and the Catholic Encyclopaedia) who continue to insist that they were totally dissociated from the Temple and its officers. Further, the International Team claims the Temple Scroll to be pre-Christian; but as we saw earlier. it contains references to practices like uncle-niece marriages that make sense only in the context of the Herodians - that is to say, the period of early Christianity.

The main point is: there is now ample evidence to conclude that the Qumranians, far from being pacific hermits, were militant warriors belonging to an extremist Jewish sect. To begin with, the character of the Qumran texts themselves - uncompromising in orthodoxy and militant in tone - is completely at variance with the pacific picture of the Essenes given by classical authors and now propagated by the International Team. So too is the language _ Hebrew and Aramaic rather than Greek - attesting to their orthodoxy. Some Essenes may have lived in Qumran settlements, but were by no means the sole inhabitants of Qumran; nor were they confined to il. Josephus for one tells us that they lived all over Palestine.

There has been much etymological speculation around the word Essene, about its origin and meaning. Most of it strikes one as idle ingenuity. It is difficult to avoid the sense that the Essenes are relatively unimportant people of whom much has been made, especially as regards their supposedly pacific nature. Despite a great deal of etymological juggling, no convincing reference to Essenes can be traced to the Qumran texts.[10] Thus the assertion of the International Team, that the Dead Sea Scrolls are of Essene authorship, is seen to rest on no support whatsoever; it is simply the position least damaging to Church dogma and doctrine. It is difficult to avoid the feeling that all the feverish activity surrounding the efforts to tie the Essenes to the Qumran settlements is only a red herring - part of a concerted effort by the International Team to divert attention away from the true nature of the Qumranians and their significance. We must therefore look elsewhere to learn who they were, beginning with what they had to say about themselves.

The theologically conservative nature of the Qumranians is confirmed by the fact that they called themselves Nozrei ha-Brit which is Hebrew for 'Keepers of the Covenant'. This is more significant than it may appear at first sight, for Nozrim derived from Nozrei ha-Brit is probably the earliest Hebrew term for the sect that came to be known as the Christians. So the early Christians saw themselves as 'Keepers of the Covenant' or preservers of orthodoxy. From the same source, as scholars have noted, derive Nasrani - Arabic for Christian - as well as Nazarone and Nazorean used by the early Christians to describe themselves in the New Testament. By a slip of the tongue or the pen, 'Jesus the Nazorean' became Jesus of Nazareth, bringing sanctity to a town that may not have existed at the time.

Then there is also the evidence of the Habakkuk Commentary - one of the Qumran texts. It tells us that the governing council of Qumran was at that time actually in Jerusalem. They both referred to themselves as the 'Followers of the Way' - and these were the early Christians. The early Church of Jerusalem was, therefore a Qumranian institution. But then a deliberate distortion was introduced in the New Testament aimed at reducing the importance of James, the brother of Jesus. The Qumran texts when studied alongside the Acts of the Apostles suggest that James was the leader of the early Church presumably following the death of Jesus; more likely, James was its real leader even while Jesus was alive. This is something that will become increasingly clear as we examine other ancient sources: there is ample evidence for James, but Jesus grows shadowy.

(The Habakkuk Commentary seems to have been a major source for early, and even later Christianity. Some of the most important ideas of Christianity including its Doctrine of the Faith can be traced to it.)

So, all paths of investigation lead us to a single destination - to wit, the conclusion that the Qumranians were the early Christians. And all the new evidence as it keeps coming in is only adding strength to this conclusion.

Then there is something else also of interest: the Qumranians were not only militant in defence of their religion, but also warriors in the more literal sense. This too is suggested by the Gospels - recall the statement from Matthew, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." A careful study of the archaeology of Qumran shows it to have contained defensive towers, foundries for forging weapons and other features designed to withstand prolonged sieges. Of one thing we can now be quite certain: Qumran was destroyed during the Jewish War of AD 66-74 when Jerusalem was also destroyed. But Pliny tells us that the Essenes were still flourishing in the region, long after the destruction of Qumran. So they were little the worse for it. The Zealots on the other hand were not so fortunate as we shall soon see.

Just as the rebellion of Mattathias Maccabaeus was waged as a struggle to preserve the purity of Judaism against the Hellenising influences of the Seleucids, the Jewish War of AD 66-74 was fought by an orthodoxy against what were seen as the corrupting influence of Rome and its puppets - the Herodians and the upstart priesthood installed by Herod. As one might expect, the battle on behalf of orthodox Judaism was led by the Zealots. This was not a sudden outburst, but one that had been preceded by earlier uprisings. In 4 BC, immediately following the death of Herod, a Zealot known as Judas of Galilee led a revolt against Rome and its puppets. Judas and his Zealot band left a trail of destruction across the Holy Land, plundering a royal armoury and eventually setting fire to Herod's palace in Jericho, not far from Qumran. The cause of the uprising is revealing: Josephus tells us that it was for the replacement of the High Priest by another one more acceptable to the Zealots. Then, as now, the Holy Land was always in a state of political and social turmoil in the name of religion.

One can readily understand that the Romans must have been heartily tired of their turbulent subjects of Palestine with their hypersensitivity about religious matters. It mattered little to Rome whether or not the High Priest was a Levite who could claim descent from Aaron as long he could maintain peace. Palestine - or Judaea - had relatively low priority in Roman eyes. Rome's main concern was the great Parthian Empire in the east, making Armenia and the Pomic regions far more crucial. In 53 BC, the Persian commander Surenas had inflicted a crushing defeat on a Roman army under Crassus at Carrhae in southern Anatolia. Seven Roman legions had been destroyed by Surenas' brilliant victory, placing the Roman hold over the east in jeopardy. Not long after, Amony and Cleopatra had been up to their intrigues in the east, taxing both Roman diplomacy and military power to the utmost. And now Parthia was on the move again, repeatedly frustrating Roman ambitions in Pontus. The last thing Rome wanted was further distraction in Palestine pinning her legions down. But this is exactly what happened when Menahem led a revolt in AD 66 that was soon to erupt into a full scale war.

Basically, the problem was again a difference of outlook in matters relating to religion. Rome demanded that the subjects recognize the divine nature of the emperor - Rome was now an empire - while to the Jews this was blasphemy. A compromise could probably have been worked out if the Zealots, or at least their leaders like Menahem had been willing, but compromise was not in their nature. Menahem took the fortress of Masada and shut himself in. Rome did not desire war and had no intention of destroying Jerusalem or Qumran, but her hands were forced by leaders like Menahem. When a Roman army marched against him and laid siege to the fortress, he and seven hundred of his followers committed suicide rather than fall into the hands of the Romans. And this was to be repeated at several other places where the Zealots fought to the last man or committed mass suicide, after first dispatching their women and children to death.

In all this the goal of the Zealots was the same: ridding their land of the pagan Romans and the restoration of their legitimate royal and priestly line - a pipe dream seen from our present vantage position. The historian Josephus who fought on the side of the Jews (but later went over to the Romans) has left us a vivid account in his great work Wars of the Jews.

The Romans put down the rebellion with a heavy hand. At first they seem to have underestimated their adversary and suffered some early reverses. The campaign was probably botched, and the Roman twelfth legion was put to rout by the Zealots (which goes to show that the Qumranians could not have been pacifists). Eventually, both Qumran and Jerusalem were destroyed, with a powerful army led by Titus (better known as Vespasian, the future emperor) making a thorough job of it. A good part of the Qumran community disappeared under the onslaught. As already noted, several Zealot communities committed mass suicide along with their wives and children rather than fall into the hands of the hated Romans.

        But this still did not end all resistance. Palestine was never entirely peaceful. Sporadic fighting continued until it erupted again sixty years later under Simeon bar Kochba - a descendant of the Zealots in spirit if not by blood. This was a well-planned and tough challenge to Rome that required a major effort by the Romans to quell. In the end, however, Roman military might proved too great. Julius Severus, later followed by Hadrian himself advanced from Syria at the head of an army of nearly a hundred thousand men, and laid waste to the land. Simeon held out in Qumran for a while, and later at Battir near Jerusalem, until the last vestige of Zealot resistance was wiped out. The Zealots, the creators of the early Church, disappeared from history around AD 135. The field was now left free for the followers of St Paul to spread his version of Christianity, while the early Christians and the faith they followed were both casualties of the Jewish Wars.

 

 

6. Jewish Wars and the Birth of Christianity

 

From all this it becomes evident that the Jewish Wars - more particularly the First Jewish War of AD 66-74 - occupy a pivotal position in the history of early Christianity. The question is: what caused it? It is not possible to give a definitive answer to that question yet, though the Dead Sea Scrolls when studied alongside the Bible and other sources allow us to shed a good deal of light. In order to understand this, it is necessary to go to several works that are not widely known outside the narrow circle of Biblical scholars. A surprising fact that emerges from these sources is: where the Church makes Jesus a major figure and his brother James peripheral to early Christianity, these early sources make James an important leader without even mentioning Jesus.

To return to the cause of the Jewish War, Robert Eisenman suggests that it was the killing of James the 'Righteous' c. AD 64 that ignited it. Early Church historians like Eusebius, as well as a work known as the 'Recognitions of Clement' tell us that James, while preaching, was attacked by a band of intruders and clubbed to death.

The two accounts differ slightly, and also as to where exactly he died: the Recognitions