CHRISTIANITY: A JEWISH PERSPECTIVE
Rabbi Moshe Reiss
The Dead Sea Scroll Text of Isaiah
Also see:
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
A.
The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christianity:
There are a number of
ideas of the Essenes similar to those of the early Christians.
John the Baptist is a priest who lived in the desert of Judea;
Luke tells us that John
"grew and became strong in
spirit, and he was in the wilderness till the day of his
manifestation to Israel" (Luke 3:3)
Is it likely that
John the Baptist lived in the wilderness in Qumran?
The
Essenes had a social message, a belief in dualism, predestination, a
new covenant and baptism. They even called their ascetic
`Torah' the `way'.
1. Social Message:
The
Essenes believed in the Holiness of poverty. They were well known for
their strange idea of all property being held in common. The
term `poor in spirit' appears in the scrolls. John the Baptist
more clearly associated with the Essenes said "anyone who has
two tunics must share with the one who has none." 29
Jesus told his followers
" if you wish to be
perfect, go and sell your possessions and give the money to the poor,
... It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than
for someone rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."
30
The rich man is not stated as being evil just for being
rich. After Jesus' death, community property was introduced in
the Jerusalem church.
The Essenes were pacifists and believed
in returning good to evil.
"I will not return evil to
anybody, with good will I pursue man for with god rests the judgment
of every living being, and he is the one to repay man for his deeds."
31
It is hard to believe Paul did not read this when he
said
"bless your persecutors; never curse them, bless
them. ... Never pay back evil with evil, ... Never try to get
revenge: leave that, my dear friends, to the retributor.
As the scripture says; vengeance is mine, ... And more if
your enemy is hungry, give him something to eat; if thirsty,
something to drink. ... Do not be mastered by evil, but master
evil with good." 32
2. Dualism:
David Flusser
quotes the Dead Sea Scrolls as follows: ‘In the source of Light
are the origins of Truth and from the spring of Darkness the origins
of Evil’. And in the hand of the Prince of Lights is the rule
of all the Sons of Righteousness and in the ways of Light they do
walk, and in the hand of the Angel of Darkness is all the rule of the
Sons of Evil, and in the ways of Darkness they do walk. 33 He
then compares Paul’s words: ‘Be ye not unequally yoked
together with unbelievers: for what fellowship has with righteousness
with unrighteousness? And what in common has light with darkness? And
what concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has he that believe
with an unbeliever? (2 Cor. 6:14-16). Belial is used as the Devil
only in this text is common in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is clear from
this as well as other Christian texts (Gospel of John) that early
Christianity understood the world as divided into good and evil;
light and darkness.
It is clear from the scrolls that at
least the elect or leaders of the community were Sons of Light. Their
opponents were clearly Son of Darkness. In the Gospel of John the
same is true and perhaps in Paul’s theology. In John we have
‘that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is
born of the spirit is spirit’
(Jn. 3:6). The community was
ascetic and thus believed that evil was related to flesh and good to
spirit. Their concern was not only ritual impurity (from the dead and
from women) but was inherent in being earthly creatures. Purification
(baptism) and repentance was possible and if fact required. (Neither
the community not Christianity were alone in these believes; Greeks,
Indians and Buddhists had similar believe systems. 34)
The
manual of Discipline stated the need ‘to love the sons of
light’; this is meant to spread the Noahide laws to Gentiles.
Jesus said that he preached ‘that you may become sons of light
‘ (John 12:36) and Paul ‘walk, then, as children of the
light’ (Eph. 5:8). Hillel had stated ‘love mankind and
bring them to the Torah (Avot 1:12).
The Essene community
firmly believed in the Temple and its sacrificial and cultic
requirements. They believed that the Temple was architecturally
wrong, had the wrong priests and as a result was impure. They thus
created a spiritual Temple in the desert. The Christians picked up
this idea and created their Church as a spiritual Temple and a holy
priesthood. ‘He is the living stone, rejected by human beings
but chosen by God and precious to Him; set yourself close to him so
that you too may be living stones making a spiritual house as a holy
priesthood to offer the spiritual sacrifices made acceptable to God
through Jesus Christ’ (1 Pet. 2:4-5).
3.
Predestination:
The wonderful idea behind predestination is that
once chosen by God it is forever. Thus David is chosen as King of
Israel forever, his descendants will rule.
Aaron and his
first-born are chosen as High Priest forever. 35 This concept became
the Divine Right of Kings in the middle ages.
‘[F]rom
the God of knowledge [comes] all that is and shall be, and before
their being He established all their designs, and when they became
whatever they had been destined to become according to His glorious
design, they fulfill their task and nothing can be changed’. 36
This is divine predestination. The community calls its members ‘the
elect of God’. These terms was also used in Romans (8:33),
Colossians (3:12) and Titus (1:1). 37
Since God’s
knowledge is according to some believes is perfect, predestination is
inevitable. The people of Nineveh, much to Jonah’s disgust
repented, as he had predicted. It was predestined by God. This can,
of course, only be known after the fact.
Both
Paul and the Gospel of John accept parts of this theology. John has
Jesus state “Whoever comes from God listens to the words of
God; the reason you do not listen is that you are not from God’
(Jn. 8:47). According to the author of John Jesus is talking to ‘the
Jews’, who Jesus had already said were ‘from your father,
the Devil’ (Jn. 8:44). Paul’s Letter to the Ephesus
states ‘It is in Him that we have received our heritage, marked
out beforehand as we were, under the plan of the One who guides all
things as He decides by His own will, chosen to be, for the praise of
His glory, the people who would put their hopes in Christ before he
came’ (Eph. 1:11). ‘We too were all among them once,
living only by our natural inclinations, obeying the demands of human
self-indulgence and our own whim; our nature made us no less liable
to God’s retribution than the rest of the world. But God being
rich in faithful love, through the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead in our sins, brought us to life with Christ –
it is through grace that you have been saved - and raised us up with
him and gave us a place with him in heaven, in Christ Jesus’
Eph. 2:3-6). Romans is more explicit ‘He decided beforehand who
were the ones destined to be molded to the pattern of His son so that
he should be the eldest of many brothers. It was those so destined
that he called; those that he called, he justified, and those that he
has justified he has brought to glory’ (Rom. 8:29-30). It
should not be surprising that some Christian denominations following
Luther follower the predestination theory.
4. New
Covenant:
Christians believe they are the new Israel with a new
Covenant. So did the Essene sect. 38 Of course this comes originally
from Jeremiah and secondarily from Ezekiel. Both communities believed
they were the ‘remnants’ prophesized in Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel as well as other prophets. The remainder of the community had
sinned and were consequently cut off. They alone remained with their
own halakhically interpreted law. Their new covenant was different
than Jeremiah’s where the heart was circumcised, thus the new
one was inward. Jeremiah did not expect people to choose life he
wanted them to no longer be able to the choose freedom to sin. 39
In Paul’s concept of the two covenants; the old one was based
on flesh, the new one of the spirit (Gal. 4:24-31; 2 Cor. 3:6).
Paul’s new covenant brought to the new Israel Christian
freedom. It is unclear to what extent this correlates with Jeremiah’s
new covenant.
|
5.
Baptism: |
6.
Holy Spirit:
The term `Holy Spirit' never appearing in the
Bible and only three times in Jewish apocryphal works, was uses
extensively by the Essenes, appears often in the Dead Sea Scrolls and
in the Gospels. 40 Both the elect of the community and of the
Church had the Holy Spirit bestowed on them in various degrees (Heb.
2:4 and DSD IV 15-16). 41 Paul write ‘Each received his
manifestation of the Spirit . one man is granted words of
wisdom by the Spirit, another words of knowledge; one man has the
gift of faith, another the gift of healing; one has miraculous powers
another the gift of interpreting tongues. But all these effects are
produced by one and the same Spirit’ (1 Cor. 12:7-11; Rom.
12:3-8; Eph. 4:3-16).
D. Dual Messiahs
The
Essenes had a clear belief in a dual Messiah; a Messiah of Israel and
a Messiah of Aaron. The Christians called Jesus the Messiah.
Christ is his primary title in the letters of Paul. The Essenes
emphasis on redemption and salvation was unique in Judaism at that
time, the end of the Second Century BCE and into the First Century
CE.
E. The Lord's Supper
| The
Essenes even held a sacred meal, at which they awaited the coming of
the two Messiahs. This meal was required every time ten of the
members would eat; thus their anticipation of the Messiah was almost
constant. This is not very different than the "our bread for
tomorrow give us today" the version of the Lord's prayer in the
apocryphal Gospel to the Hebrews. 42 The main foods
referred in the manual of discipline are bread and wine. Each
Messiah will first bless the bread then the wine. "When they solemnly unite at the communion table or to drink wine, and the communion table is arranged and the wine [mixed] for drinking, no one shall stretch out his hand on the first portion of the bread or wine before the [Messiah] priest, for he shall first bless the first portion of the bread and wine, and [stretch out] his hand on the bread for all;" 43 Note that the order of bread and then wine as in the Eucharist, as opposed to the order of other Jews. And it is only in a Messianic Banquet. Jesus said "And as they were eating he took the bread, and when he had said the blessing he broke it and gave it to them. `Take it,' he said, `this is my body.' Then he took a cup, and when he gave thanks he handed it to them, and all drank from it, and he said to them, `this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, poured out for the many. In truth I tell you, I shall never drink wine any more until the day I drink the new wine in the kingdom of God.'". 44 Jesus said at the `Last Supper' when he was in a foreboding mood. He expected to be arrested and crucified by the Romans. He believed that he was the eschatological Messiah, but still he expected to be tortured and suffer a painful death. This is indeed his last supper, a Passover seder. He breaks the matzoh, a symbol of Jewish suffering but also of escape from exile. The order of the Eucharist, bread before wine, was established by the church. The Essenes were the only Jews who typically reversed the order making the blessing of bread before wine. And they considered that an ordering that they would follow in the Messianic age. But none of above makes the Eucharist a magical or mystical event; the transubstantiation of the bread into Jesus' body and the wine into his blood, rather it is a redemptive event. It became so for Paul. "For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed. The Lord Jesus took some bread, after he had given thanks broke it, and he said, `this is my body, which is for you, do this in remembrance of me,' and in the same way, with the cup after supper, saying, `thus cup is the new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink this cup, you are proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. Therefore anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily is answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone is to examine himself and only then eat of the bread or drink from the cup; because a person who eats and drinks without recognizing the body is eating and drinking his own condemnation. That is why many of you are weak and ill and a good number have died." 45 The new covenant can be found only in Luke, not in Mark or Matthew. The idea that drinking the blood is a proclamation of the death and salvation is clearly new as is the `magical' power to destroy those who eat and drink but do not believe in the death and salvation of Jesus. In fact, in the early church, the symbol of Christianity is bread and fish, not bread and wine. Richard Hiers and Charles Kennedy in a study of early Christian art say it is; "fairly certain... That either for Jesus himself or for quite early, and probably, Jewish Christians, the meal of bread and fish, of which we learn in the Gospels, was understood as a Eucharistic anticipation in not epiphanic participation in the blessed life of table-fellowship in the kingdom of God." 46 |
Paul developing his own
ideology of the final cosmic drama picked up from the Essenes the
method of preparing themselves for the final cosmic drama.
Since it would start with a war against Gog of Magog they prepared to
fight evil. Christianity became a religion of salvation.
It seems clear that the Essenes influenced John the Baptist, Jesus,
Paul and John, the author of the gospel. In an article James H.
Charlesworth claims that some remaining members of the Essenes joined
the Johannine community after the great revolt. 47
And
it is equally true that Jesus differed from the Essenes in at least
two significant ways: one his willingness and in fact desire to
associate with impure persons and secondly the Hillelite liberal view
of the Halakha. But the comparison of the similarities between
Christianity and the doctrines of the Essenes is remarkable. Thus
perhaps the Jewish background (Essene) of Christianity is closer than
had previously been understood. So states David Flusser.
"The
world is divided into the realms of good and evil; mankind consists
of two large camps: the Sons of Light - actually the community itself
- and those who are of the Devil. The division is preordained
by the sovereign will of God (double predestination). The Sons
of Light are the elect of Divine grace and were granted the Spirit
which frees them from the sins of flesh. Baptism functions as a
means of atonement. The company of the Elect is a kind of
spiritual temple; this company is constituted by a new covenant with
God; this covenant is eschatological and addition to the old covenant
made with Israel." 48
As he further writes
"The
material was not only collected, but fused, refashioned and enriched
by the impact of the personality and teaching of Jesus and the
tremendous creative forces unleashed by the new faith."
49
Flusser though believes that the synoptic Gospels (as
opposed to the Gospel of John and to the letters of Paul) are in fact
closer to Pharisaical Judaism than to the Essenes. He is
distinguishing as we will between the Jerusalem church and Pauline
and Johannine Christianity. 50
While there are
similarities there are also differences. 51 The Essenes were
extremely legalistic and priestly, to the extent of leaving the
Temple community; Jesus was not. They were particularly
obsessed with ritual purity, Jesus associated with underdog classes,
and particularly with women. The Essenes were, at least,
textually violent, Jesus emphasized the importance of love.
Jesus and John the Baptist before him, emphasized repentance making
people equal before God and missionizing that ideal ; the Essenes
were elitists. The Essenes wrote, Jesus told parables. As a
result the Gospels were meant for commoners, the scrolls were not.
There are many other implications of a group of elitists and a group
of commoners; whom they associated with, issues of purity and
legalism, a missionary open society versus a closed society with a
clear hierarchy, asceticism, the use of simple oral parables versus
complicated symbolic texts and the use of angelology, the use of
miracles, formal training and initiation. And as we seen the Essenes
used a different calendar; it would have been difficult for Jesus
living in the Jewish community to use a solar calendar.
Just
as Gershom Scholem has documented that the theological basis for
Sabbatai Zevi's Messianic movement; there had to be a theological
basis for Jesus' eschatological Messianism. It is likely to
have been developed in the Essene community which we know now had in
its library parts of the Books of Enoch. As we have just seen,
many of the doctrines of Christianity were originally Essene
doctrines. The other factor in Sabbateanism was the crisis generated
by the expulsion from Spain and the massacres in the Ukraine. The
downfall of the Hasmoneum Kingdom and the growing power of a
Hellenized Rome, were the crisis in Judaism in the First Century.
52 I am not suggesting that Jesus was a closet follower of the
Essenes, only that he was influenced by them. He was more
influenced by Hillel, but Christianity itself was more influenced by
the Essenes.
Notes
1 Jewish Encyclopedia 5:224.
2 BT Kiddushin 71a, see Falk, pg. 40.
3 Quoted in Flusser, D., Jesus, (Herder & Herder, NY, 1969) P. 53, from BT Sota 22b and BT Berachot 14b.
4 And yet despite the importance of this difference, after the end of the Hasmonuem Kingdom in 60 BCE, the two groups lived separate but peacefully until their destruction at the Great Revolt.
5 It is also possible that each leader was called a ‘Teacher of Righteousness”.
6 See article by S. Talmon in Charlesworth, Messiah.
7 The Wicked priest may have been King Alexander Janneus (a latter Maccabean King) or his earlier ancestors Jonathan or perhaps his brother Simon, the High Priest. See Charlesworth, Jesus and Dead Sea Scrolls, Pg. 144.
8Vermes, G., Dead Sea Scrolls, Forty Years On (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987).
9 Matt. 7:28-29, Also Mk. 1:22
10 Damascus Fragment 8:10
11Stegman, H., Jesus and the Teacher of Righteousness, Bible Review, February 1994, Pg. 44.
12 Charlesworth, J.H., Jesus and Dead Sea Scrolls, (Doubleday, N.Y., 1992) P. 146.
13 From Josephus, BJ 2:136; in Vermes, Jesus the Jew P. 63.
14 Josephus, Antiquities, 8:46-47
15 QI DSD, in Davies, A.A., Christian Origins and Judaism p. 115
16 Dennis Smith, The Messianic Banquet, in Pearson, B.A., The Future of Early Christianity, (Fortress Press, Minn., 1991) pg. 72.
17 L.H.Schiffman, L.H., ed. Archeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls (JSOT/ASOR, Sheffield, 1990). Article by Morton Smith, Ascent to the Heavens in 4Qma, pg. 184-185.
18 Knohl, Israel, The Messiah before Jesus, (University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000) pg. 15-18
19 Flusser, D., Jesus, pg. 129-130.
20 I Enoch 46:3.
21 Fuller, R.H., New Testament Christology, (Fontana Library, London, 1969) Page 39-40.
22 The Bible puts Daniel in the `writings' not in the prophets, suggesting that Daniel was a wisdom writer and that the canonizers knew that at least part of the book was written after the Jews considered the age of prophecy over. The church put him in the prophet section thus making the Son of Man creator a prophet predicting Jesus as an eschatological figure.
23Enoch 38:1.
24 Casey, pg. 23.
25 Fuller, New Testament Christology, Page 232.
26 PT Hag. 2:2
27 Falk pg. 49.
28 Falk pg. 49. -50
29 Luke 3:11
30 Matt 19:21,24
31 Flusser, Judaism, P 198.
32 Romans 12:14-21
33 Quoted by David Flusser in Cohen, J., Essential Papers of Judaism and Christianity in Conflict, (N.Y. Press, N.Y., 1991) pg. 41.
34 Flusser, David, The Spiritual History of the Dead Sea Sect, (MOD Books, Tel Aviv, 1989) pg. 54.
35 The problem with hereditary descent is obvious. David’s descendants quickly lost the Northern Kingdom, David descendants lost Judea, the High Priesthood went to the Hasmonuem’s when the original family went ‘Greek’ and the Hasmonuems then adopted Greek initiatives.
36 Quoted in Flusser, in Cohen, pg. 43.
37 Flusser, Cohen, pg. 45.
38 Flusser, Cohen, pg. 54.
39 See chapter on Jeremiah in ‘Messengers of God’ – ‘moshereiss.org’.
40 Charlesworth, Jesus and DSS, P. 20-21.
41 Flusser, Cohen, pg. 63.
42 Stendhal, The Srolls, Pg. 10-11.
43 Vermes, DSD 9:11
44 Mark 14:22-25
45 I Corin 11:23-30, my underline
46 In Crossan, Historical, P 398.
47 Biblical Archeological Review, February 1993
48 Quoted in Jeremy Cohen, Essential Papers On Judaism And Christianity In Conflict, P 76 from David Flusser.
49 ibid p 6
50 ibid p 40
51 Charlesworth, James, Ed. Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, (Doubleday, N.Y., 1992) pgs. 7-40.
52 Davis in Bloom, Scholem