This paper was published in World Faiths Encounter , 17 (1997), 4-13. ISSN 0968-7718
'Personal greetings are extended to Leicester University and in particular to the
History Department, wishing them all success in their endeavours to create better
understanding between cultures and religions.' HRH Crown Prince El Hassan bin Talal,
Crown Prince of Jordan.
A Double Inauguration at Leicester
Richard Bonney
On 28 May 1997, Professor Geza Vermes, one of the world's foremost scholars on the
Dead Sea Scrolls, delivered the inaugural lecture of the new Centre for the History
of Religions, Inter-Faith Dialogue and Pluralism at the University of Leicester to
an audience of over 250 people drawn from the different faith communities of Leicester.
On this occasion, Professor Vermes also inaugurated a series of annual lectures
named in his honour, the Geza Vermes Lectures in the History of Religions. The new
Centre, which is located in the Department of History, aims to discover, through the study
of theory and history, the relationship between religions, cultural identity, ethnicity,
state formation and national identity. Its purpose is to develop notions of citizenship and world citizenship through a proper understanding of pluralism. The activities
of the Centre are focused on the nature of the principal world religions and resulting
cultural distinctiveness, the history of interaction between these religions and
the opportunities and obstacles for dialogue between them. HRH the Crown Prince of
Jordan, under whose patronage the Royal Institute of Inter-Faith Studies was founded
at Amman, has enthusiastically welcomed Leicester's new Centre since its inception
and His Royal Highness's Personal Representative was present at the inauguration.
Professor Geza Vermes was born in Hungary in 1924, and studied first at Budapest and
then Louvain where he obtained his doctorate in theology in 1953 with a dissertation
on the historical framework of the Dead Sea Scrolls. His first article on the Dead
Sea Scrolls appeared in 1949 and his first book (in French) in 1953. Thus for almost
fifty years his publications have set the standard for others to follow in the many
specialisms that comprise the history of religions. He is also an authority on the
interaction between world religions, in his case Judaism in the age of Jesus and early
Christianity. His lecture was timed to coincide with the publication of The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English
(1997), his definitive translation and commentary of the Scrolls (see illustration).
Professor Vermes's forthcoming study, entitled Rediscovering the Qumran Community: the full evidence
, is the first commissioned work in the new Leicester Studies in the History of Religions: the Geza Vermes Lectures
which will be published under the Leicester University Press/Cassell Academic imprint.
Dr Julius Lipner, Director of the Dharam Hinduja Institute of Indic Research in the
Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological Studies of the University of Cambridge,
has agreed to deliver the 1998 lecture on 'The Limits of Hindu Nationalism'. The
Geza Vermes Lectures in the History of Religions in subsequent years will address important
issues in the history of other world religions. The aim is to provide a focus on
the history and interaction of world religions within the academic community and
to make a contribution to an area of history which is increasingly recognized as vital
to an understanding of some of the most pressing concerns of our time.
Fifty years ago the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by Bedouin shepherds. The discovery
proved to be the biggest single twentieth-century find of documentary evidence and
artefacts concerning any world religion. What follows is an extract from some of
Professor Vermes's concluding remarks about the light that has been shed on the Scrolls
after fifty years of research and controversy.
The Dead Sea Scrolls 50 Years on
Geza Vermes
Any attempt to deny a link between the scrolls and the Qumran site leaves the presence
of the manuscripts in the neighbourhood of the settlement unexplained. Why should
they be brought to this distant place, when perfectly suitable hiding places could
have been found closer to Jerusalem? In contrast, the connection between the site and
the manuscripts is supported (a) by the close proximity to the Qumran buildings of
Cave 4 (with its remains of 550 documents) and another six of the eleven caves; (b)
by the presence of the peculiar scroll jars in Cave 1 and at the Qumran which had its own
potter's workshop; and (c) by the discovery in 1996 in one of the Qumran walls of
two inscribed potsherds attesting the transfer by a man named Honi of his property
to the community or yahad
. Yahad
is the regular and distinctive designation borne by the sect in its writings. In
fact, Honi's action very likely represents the handover of goods imposed by the Community
Rule at the start of the second year of the initiation process. In short, the view
that the scroll remains found in the nearby caves belonged to the inhabitants of Qumran
seems today stronger than ever.
Neither have recent hypotheses shaken the common opinion that Qumran was a religious
establishment. All the counter-proposals are unconvincing. Whereas it is conceivable
that the Qumran buildings were constructed on the site of an earlier small rural
fortification, the large constructions subsequently erected lack two essential characteristics
of a fortress. The perimeter wall is flimsy and the crucial water conduits are unprotected.
As for the suggestion that Qumran was a wealthy man's country house, the site is scarcely
the right place for comfort and pleasure. Why not build a winter residence in the
nearby fertile plain of Jericho? Incidentally, the theory that the plaster table
identified by the archaeologists as a scriptorium
was a bed in a dining hall does not stand up to any serious examination. It is only
50cm wide, hardly a place for comfortable reclining. In a Hellenistic villa contemporaneous
with Qumran, discovered 7 km west of Hebron, the beds in the triclinium
are 1.8m wide. The hypothesis of a customs post next to a Qumran 'Hilton' (furnished
with a religious library) deserves no serious consideration. Such buildings were
situated on busy roads, not in the middle of the wilderness.
Without a doubt, Qumran was constructed with communal occupation in mind. It contains
a large meeting room cum
dining hall with more than 1,000 simple pots, plates and bowls stacked in an adjacent
room. The discovery of two inkpots, a rare commodity, indicates uncommon writing
activity. By contrast, Father Roland de Vaux's conjecture ó de Vaux led the original archaeological investigation ó that the Essenes used to write on the table found in the scriptorium
is to be discarded. Ancient scribes normally wrote on their knees. The table, on
the other hand, was necessary to prepare the leather which was lined horizontally
and the width of the columns was marked with vertical traces. The lines on the surviving
examples are absolutely straight, for which one must stipulate the flat surface of
a table and the use of a ruler. Finally, the unusual orientation and construction
of 1,100 tombs in the Qumran cemetery point to a special group, a sect. So also
do the numerous cisterns and the considerable water supply which were meant for frequent ritual
ablutions. The same conclusion may be drawn from the Qumran library itself. While
sectarian rules and calendars exist in ten or more copies, several Biblical books
are represented in much fewer exemplars, very strongly suggesting that the library belonged
to a separatist religious community.
Can the ancient occupants of Khirbet Qumran still be called Essenes? Hypothetically
yes. It may be argued that such a conjectural identification is superfluous. The
community can be studied without a historical label being attached to it. Analysis
of the Community Rule, the Damascus Document, the Rule of the Congregation and MMT (Miqsat
Ma'se Ha-Torah) or Some Observances of the Law invites us to distinguish two types
of Jewish religious movement in the various Qumran accounts. Both were directed
by priests, inspired by an expectation of the imminent end, and convinced that they
formed God's elect in the last days. Both were directed by a mebaqqer
or overseer, and both obeyed strict religious and moral regulations based on the
teaching of their priestly leaders. In both groups, transgressors were subjected
to a penal code, but the penalties differed. In both, new members went through a
system of initiation, but again the systems varied. The main difference between the two consisted
in the adoption of religious communism in the branch which followed the Community
Rule, whereas the other branch admitted private property with monthly contribution
towards charitable purposes. Above all, one of the branches consisted of married members
whose children were brought up according to the sect's laws, and formally initiated
at the age of twenty. The Community Rule, on the other hand, although supplying
a detailed way of life, makes no allusion to women, marriage, divorce, children or education.
Here the argument from silence speaks loud and clear. For instance, the Community
Rule (7:17), which is thought to have regulated the life of male celibates, imposes the penalty of expulsion on those who grumbled against the leadership. Compare
this with one of the Cave 4 copies of the Damascus Document (4Q270), intended for
both sexes. It irrevocably expels those who grumbled against the Fathers, but imposes
only a penalty of ten days on those who murmured against the Mothers.
The Qumran rules and the accounts about the Essenes display striking similarities,
first and foremost in their attitudes to private property and marriage. Both envisage
also a staged initiation process. But Josephus, the best informed ancient witness,
notes that in addition to the male celibate communities some Essene groups adopted the
married way of life, but permitted sex only for procreation. Intercourse with a
pregnant wife was outlawed, a point to which I will return presently.
From the early days of Qumran research, opponents of the Essene identification emphasized
that comparison between the Scrolls' accounts relating to the Qumran community and
the classical notices about the Essenes which, while concurring in many respects,
showed also noticeable differences. For example, the Qumran sectaries swore an oath
at the first stage of their initiation, whereas the Essenes of Josephus did so at
the very end. The distinctive calendar, fundamental in the Qumran sect, is not mentioned
by Philo, Josephus or Pliny. However, it would be unreasonable to expect complete
accord between two such sets of documents. The authors of the Scrolls possessed
insider's knowledge of the Community, very different from that of the Gentile Pliny,
the Egyptian Jew Philo, or even that of the Jerusalem priest Josephus, who claims to have
received some Essene training in his youth. Also, the Scrolls were addressed to
initiates, the classical accounts to Graeco-Roman intellectuals.
Regarding celibacy versus
marriage, our present knowledge of the Qumran cemetery leads to uncertainty. Only
about 40 tombs have been opened. The skeletons dug out from the main graveyard consisting
of some 1,100 tombs are those of male subjects, but in the fringe cemeteries with
100 tombs the archaeologists found the remains of a handful of women and children.
On the whole, the balance of probabilities favours the Essene hypothesis. Josephus's
note about Essenes marrying is very helpful, and his allusion to sexual abstinence
demanded in this group during the months of pregnancy may be echoed by a Cave 4 copy
of the Damascus Document. According to this text, a husband was expelled from the
Community if he 'fornicated' with his wife (that is, probably slept with her while
she was expecting).
Turning to the history of the community, the communal occupation of the site from
the second half of the second century BCE to 70 CE provides us with a reliable chronological
framework. Datable artefacts, especially hundreds of Seleucid, Hasmonaean, Herodian, Roman and revolutionary coins, testify to a more or less continuous sectarian
presence from the late second century BCE to about 68 CE when the buildings were
destroyed by Vespasian's legions. None of the Qumran manuscripts includes continuous
historical narration. Most of the references to personalities are cryptic (for example,
the Teacher of Righteousness, Wicked Priest, last priests of Jerusalem). Since 1994
we know the names of a few real sectaries. Three of them, one called Yohanan and
the two others Hananiah appear on the register of transgressors (4Q477), and the ostracon
discovered in 1996 mentions a Honi, probably a 'novice', and an Eleazar son of Nahmani,
possibly a first century CE head of the community.
The foreign conquering power is alluded to as the Kittim, almost certainly the Romans.
The main sources for reconstructing the history of the community are the Damascus
Document, outlining in veiled language the sect's origins in the first half of the
second century BCE and naming a Hellenistic potentate as the foreign enemy ('the chief
of the kings of Greece'), and the various Biblical commentaries or pesharim
which claim that contemporary events are the fulfilment of prophetic predictions.
The Nahum Commentary gives actual names: its historical canvas stretches from the
Greek king Antiochus (no doubt Antiochus IV Epiphanes, 175ñ164 BCE) who set out to Hellenize Judaea, to the arrival of the rulers of the Kittim
(no doubt the Romans who appeared on the Jewish horizon when Pompey entered Jerusalem
in 63 BCE, and turned the Hasmonaean kingdom into a Roman province). A few further
historical names appear in a very fragmentary calendric text: Aemilius (Scaurus), one
of Pompey's generals, Shelamzion or Salome Alexandra, widow and successor of Jannaeus
(76ñ67 BCE), Hyrcanus and John, probably John Hyrcanus II, son of Shelamzion, and King
Jonathan referred to in a poem about whom more will be said later. According to
the War Rule and the Book of War (4Q285) the final battle at the end of time would
oppose the community to the king of the KittimñRomans.
The majority view concerning the history of the sect places the conflict between the
founder-organizer of the community, the priestly Teacher of Righteousness and his
chief opponent, the Wicked Priest, to the middle of the second century BCE. The
Wicked Priest described as good at the beginning of his career turned ungodly on becoming
the high priestly ruler of Israel. At the end he fell into the hands of his enemies
(not the Kittim) who inflicted vengeance on him. As far back as 1952, I concluded
in my doctoral thesis that the only Jewish high priest of the relevant period in whom all
these details can be verified was Jonathan Maccabeaus (152-143 BCE). Consequently, the last priests of Jerusalem who were finally defeated by the Kittim-Romans were Maccabaean-Hasmonaean priestly rulers.
The conflict between the Community and the Maccabees had a priestly inspiration. The sect is said to have originated ‘in the age of wrath’ of the Hellenistic crisis in the early second century BCE among conservative Jews. They were headed by traditionalist priests faithful to the Mosaic Law who accepted the leadership of the ‘sons of Zadok’, the members or associates of the ruling high priestly family. Over the years this Maccabaean historical reconstruction gained wide acceptance among Scrolls scholars. A minority view identified the Wicked Priest with the Hasmonaean priest-king Alexander Jannaeus (104-76 BCE), but my general thesis that the Qumran-Essene sect was deeply antagonistic to the Maccabaean-Hasmonaean cause remained unaffected.
Since the abolition of the secrecy rule which for the best part of forty years kept the unpublished Qumran material away from public scrutiny, two new elements entered the historical debate. One of these, MMT or Some Observances of the Law, is interpreted by its editors as a document written by the Teacher of Righteousness and addressed to the Wicked Priest, Jonathan Maccabaeus. If correct, such an exposition would reinforce the mainstream historical thesis. By contrast, another recently investigated fragment, the so-called King Jonathan poem (4Q448), has been used by some scholars as ammunition against the consensus: the anti-Hasmonaean attitude of the Essenes seems to be undermined on the grounds that the respected Jonathan is the Hasmonaean priest-king Alexander Jannaeus. However, in my 1993 study of this text, I arrived at the conclusion that the details of the poem point, not to the less than admirable Jannaeus, whose career started with fratricide and finished with the crucifixion of 800 Pharisees, but to Jonathan Maccabaeus, who, as mentioned earlier, was first admired by the Community, before being rejected as the Wicked Priest.
The Qumran community and Essenism as a whole left no recognizable traces in history after the late sixties of the first century CE. It is possible that after the destruction of their centre at Qumran they allowed themselves to be absorbed in mainstream rabbinic Judaism, but this explanation does not account for one important feature of the story. As there is no trace of a lasting Roman military presence at Qumran, why did not the original inhabitants return there, if necessary in the middle of the night as present day Beduin conduct their archaeological searches, and try to retrieve their eight hundred valuable manuscripts? Would it be then that Flavius Josephus’ gloomy portrayal of Essene martyrdom by the Romans might relate the fate of the last inhabitants of Qumran?
To conclude this survey, let us glance at the doctrinal contents of the Scrolls in order to determine their contribution to our knowledge of contemporaneous Judaism and of nascent Christianity. Firstly, let it be unequivocally stated that the Scrolls, the bulk of which originated in the second and first centuries BCE, are Jewish and in no way Christian documents. They are permeated by the fundamental characteristic of the Jewish religion, the search for God through faithful obedience to the Torah or Law of Moses. The Essenes observed this Law more strictly than most of their Jewish neighbours. Some Observances of the Law lists over two dozen specific cases where the sectarian understanding of religious practice was more demanding than that of their contemporaries. The Temple Scroll lays down the rules and the Damascus Document offers theological justification for the sect’s particularly severe matrimonial laws which prohibit polygamy even to the king, and do not allow an uncle to marry his niece.
Another important feature differentiating the members of the sect from mainstream Judaism was their withdrawal from the Temple of Jerusalem. Not that they were opposed in principle to sacrificial worship; they rather disagreed with the conduct of ceremonies by the Jerusalem priests. They expected to resume Temple service at the end of time, when Jerusalem would be under their control. The calendar, which according to the sectaries reflected the eternal law of time issued from the mouth of God, was another particular cause of conflict. Those for whom the subject looks trivial need only to recall the Easter dispute which nearly resulted in a schism between Rome and the churches of Syria and Asia Minor in the late second century, and that the eastern Orthodox churches continue to resist up to this day the reform of the calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.
Religious ideas contained in the Scrolls have shed fresh light on primitive Christianity, too. Qumran and the early church represented ‘sectarian’ trends which considered themselves as the true Israel. They both were organized on Biblical patterns, symbolically dividing their communities into twelve tribes led by twelve chiefs, or apostles. They both considered themselves sole heirs of the divine promises recorded in the Bible. They both believed that the prophecies of Scripture were fulfilled in their respective communities. Qumran Bible exegesis or pesher expounds the books of Isaiah, Nahum or Habakkuk as prophetic announcements of the history of the community, and those familiar with the Gospels will recall the many passages in which Biblical quotations are introduced with the words ‘For so is it written by the prophet’; ‘Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah’, or ‘For this is he [John the Baptist] who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said’.
Both the Essenes and the primitive church were animated by an intense eschatological expectation of the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God, and after the tragic death of Jesus the early Christians anxiously waited for his impending glorious return. Since the hopes of both communities failed to materialize, both soon attempted to explain away this delay. At Qumran it was argued that the last age was longer than had been envisaged by the prophets, but that nevertheless one must patiently wait because ‘all the ages of God will reach their appointed end’ (1QpHab 7:13). In turn, the Second Letter of Peter sees in the delay of the Parousia a divine act of grace, a prolongation of the period granted for repentance (3:3-9).
Messianic expectation flourished in both groups, but with notable differences. Thus in the Scrolls the idea of the Messiah is less pervasive than in the New Testament. Moreover, at Qumran two and even possibly three messianic figures were expected. In addition to the royal Messiah of traditional Judaism, one who was to defeat the final enemy and inaugurate God’s Kingdom, the sectaries knew also of a priestly Messiah, and less clearly of a Prophet, either a messianic prophet like John the Baptist in the Gospels, or a prophetic Messiah. In mainstream Judaism and in the New Testament these various figures coalesced into a single person. The 1991 media rumpus about a ‘pierced’ or crucified Messiah at Qumran was shown by me to be just a lot of hot air.
In my study of the historical Jesus, I found the charismatic and eschatological aspects of the Qumran writings particularly useful. For instance the Cave 4 Prayer of Nabonidus reports that a Jewish exorcist cured the Babylonian king Nabonidus through forgiving his sins. This is a most illuminating parallel to the Gospel account of Jesus healing a paralyzed man by declaring his sins to be pardoned. However, all these shared concepts may be attributable more to the religious ideology and language current during the first century CE in the Jewish world than any direct influence of Qumran on the New Testament.
On the other hand, organizational similarities, for example, the monarchic leadership under a mebaqqer or overseer in the sect, or under a bishop in the church, are likely to be due to Christian borrowings from the Essenes, and so may also be the temporary adoption in the Jerusalem church of the practice of religious communism for which the Essenes were universally praised. But the extant evidence does not favour a close direct connection between Essenes and Christians despite some whimsical (though vociferous) claims heard from Australia and California. Neither does the theory that a few minute Greek papyrus scraps found in Qumran Cave 7 represent the earliest New Testament texts require another rebuttal. This conjecture is not just not proven, as the most influential New Testament papyrologists have demonstrated, but is fundamentally unlikely, indeed unprovable.
To sum up, in the course of fifty years of intense enquiry our understanding of a remarkable Jewish religious community has been clarified and enriched. Unlike any other, the Essene sect is now accessible from its own writings preserved in their original languages. Their study is supported by the undisturbed archaeological remains of Qumran. The lifting of the veil of secrecy in 1991 has allowed many a gap to be filled and numerous obscurities to be clarified. However, contrary to the rash claims of a few misguided enthusiasts, the full evidence which is now at our disposal discloses nothing that might alter the basic understanding of the Qumran manuscripts reached already in the 1950s, and their relation to ancient Judaism or the New Testament.
In short, half-a-century of research into the Qumran discoveries has substantially advanced our grasp of pre-rabbinic Judaism at the turn of the era. It has also improved our understanding of that other Galilean movement which arose under the impact of Jesus the Jew, and developed from the second century onwards on Graeco-Roman soil into the religion called Christianity. Further Scroll discoveries in the Judaean desert may still shed fresh light on Jewish and Christian religious history, but our present gains are already inestimable and for this undreamt-of blessing we should be humbly and truly thankful.
* Professor Geza Vermes FBA is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford and Director of the Forum for Qumran Research at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. The Reverend Professor Richard Bonney is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Centre for the History of Religions, Inter-Faith Dialogue and Pluralism at the University of Leicester.
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