by Geza Vermes
Throughout this period of territorial expansion, the Hasmonaean rulers enjoyed the support of the Sadducees, one of the three religious parties first mentioned under Jonathan Maccabaeus (cf. Josephus, Antiquities XIII, 171) and regular allies of the government. They were opposed by the Pharisees, an essentially lay group formed from one of the branches of the Hasidim of the Maccabaean age. Already in the days of John Hyrcanus I there was Pharisaic objection to his usurpation of the High Priesthood, though they were willing to recognize him as national leader (Antiquities XIII, z 88-98), but on one other occasion, at least, their opposition was overcome by force. Accused of plotting against Alexander Jannaeus in 88 BCE in collusion with the Syrian Seleucid king Demetrius III Eucaerus, 800 Pharisees were condemned by Jannaeus to die on the cross (Antiquities xm, 380-83; War 1, 96-8).
After Pompey’s seizure of Jerusalem, the Hasmonaean High Priesthood continued for another three decades, but the political power formerly belonging to them passed to the Judaized Idumaean, Herod the Great, when he was promoted to the throne of Jerusalem by Rome in 37 BCE. It is to the last year or two of his reign - he died in 4 BCE - that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke date the birth of Jesus of Nazareth (Matth. ii, 1; Lk. i, 5).
After the ephemeral rule of the successor to Herod the Great, Herod Archelaus (4 BCE-6 CE), who was deposed by Augustus for his misgovernment of Jews and Samaritans alike, Galilee continued in semi-autonomy under the Herodian princes Antipas (4 BCE-39 CE) and Agrippa (39-41 CE), but Judaea was placed under the direct administration of Roman authority. In 6 CE, Coponius, the first Roman prefect of Judaea, arrived to take up his duties there. This prefectorial regime, whose most notorious representative was Pontius Pilate (26-36 CE), lasted for thirty-five years until 41, when the emperor Claudius appointed Agrippa I as king. He died, however, three years later, and in 44 CE the government of the province once more reverted to Roman officials, this time with the title of procurator. Their corrupt and unwise handling of Jewish affairs was one of the chief causes of the war of 66 which led to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, and to the subsequent decline of the Sadducees, the extinction of the Zealots in Masada in 74, the disappearance of the Essenes, and the survival and uncontested domination of the Pharisees and their rabbinic successors.
It is into this general course of events that the history of Qumran has to be inserted. Document by document the Scrolls will be scrutinized and the literary information combined, both with the findings of Qumran archaeology and with the incidental reports provided by Josephus. In the end it is hoped that the history of the Essene sect will begin to fall reliably into place.
2 THE HISTORY OF THE ESSENES
(a) Concealed References in the Scrolls
The search for clues to the origins and story of the movement begins with the Damascus Document because it is a writing particularly rich in such hints. Here, the birth of the Community is said to have occurred in the ‘age of wrath’, 390 years after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. At that time, a ‘root’ sprung ‘from Israel and Aaron’, i.e. a group of pious Jews, laymen and priests, came into being in a situation of general ungodliness. These people ‘groped for the way’ for twenty years, and then God sent them a ‘Teacher of Righteousness’ to guide them ‘in the way of His heart’ (1, 5-11). The Teacher did not meet with unanimous approval within the congregation, and a faction described as ‘seekers of smooth things’, ‘removers of the bounds’ and ‘builders of the wall’, all metaphors seeming to point to religious laxity and infidelity, turned against him and his followers. The leader of the breakaway party, though accorded a number of unflattering sobriquets, such as ‘Scoffer’, ‘Liar’ or ‘Spouter of Lies’, seems to be one and the same person. His associates erred in matters of ritual cleanness, justice, chastity, the dates of festivals and Temple worship; they were lovers of money and enemies of peace. In the ensuing fratricidal struggle, the Teacher and those who remained faithful to him went into exile in the ‘land of Damascus’ where they entered into a ‘new Covenant’. There, the Teacher of Righteousness was ‘gathered in’, meaning that he died. In the meantime, the wicked dominated over Jerusalem and the Temple, though not without experiencing God’s vengeance at the hands of the ‘Chief of the Kings of Greece’.
A similar picture emerges from the Habakkuk Commentary with its explicit mention of desertion by disciples of the Teacher of Righteousness to the Liar, and also by members unfaithful to the ‘new Covenant’. The allusions to the protagonists of the conflict are sharper in this work than in the Damascus Document. We learn that the villain, known in this Scroll as the ‘Wicked Priest’ as well as the ‘Liar’ and ‘Spouter of Lies’, was ‘called by the name of truth’ before he became Israel’s ruler and was corrupted by wealth and power (VIII, 8-11) - the implication being that for a time he had met with the sect’s approval. Subsequently, however, he defiled Jerusalem and the Temple. He also sinned against the Teacher of Righteousness and his disciples, chastising him while the ‘House of Absalom’ looked silently on (v, 9-12), and confronting him in his place of exile on the sect’s Day of Atonement (xi, 6-8). He ‘vilified and outraged the elect of God’, ‘plotted to destroy the Poor’, i.e. the Community, and stole their riches. As a punishment, God delivered him ‘into the hand of his enemies’, who ‘took vengeance on his body of flesh’ (IX, 2). At the last judgement, predicts the Commentary, the Wicked Priest will empty ‘the cup of wrath of God’. His successors, the ‘last Priests of Jerusalem’, are also charged with amassing ‘money and wealth by plundering the peoples’, i.e. foreigners. But, so the commentator asserts, all their riches and booty will be snatched from them by the Kittim, the conquerors of the world commissioned by God to pay them their just deserts.
Because of lacunae, one cannot be quite sure from the Habakkuk Commentary that the Teacher was a priest. The Commentary on Psalms (Ps. xxxvii, 4Q171, 173), by contrast, makes this plain. Interpreting verses 23-4, it reads: ‘this concerns the Priest, the Teacher of [Righteousness]’. It further supplies a significant detail by assigning to ‘the violent of the nations’, that is to say to the Gentiles as opposed to the Jews, the execution of judgement on the Wicked Priest. Another point of interest is that the enemies of the sect are alluded to as ‘the wicked of Ephraim and Manasseh’, i.e. as of two distinct factions. They appear also in the Commentary on Nahum.
In the Messianic Anthology or Testimonia (4Q175), references appear in the final section, borrowed from a Joshua Apocryphon or Psalms of Joshua (4Q379 fr. 22 ii), to two ‘instruments of violence’ who ruled Jerusalem. They are cursed for making the city a ‘stronghold of ungodliness’ and for committing ‘an abomination’ in the land. They are also said to have shed blood ‘like water on the ramparts of the daughter of Zion’. The relationship of the two tyrants to one another cannot be established with certainty because of the fragmentary nature of the manuscript. They could be father and son. On the other hand, the expression ‘instruments of violence’ depends on Genesis xlix, 5 where it describes the brother murderers, Simeon and Levi, the destroyers of Shechem.
The Nahum Commentary moves on to an age following that of the Teacher of Righteousness and the Wicked Priest, as neither of them is mentioned. The principal character here is the ‘furious young lion’, a Jewish ruler of Jerusalem. He is said to have taken revenge on the ‘seekers of smooth things’, whom he reproached for having invited ‘Demetrius’ the king of Greece to Jerusalem. The attempt failed; no foreigner entered the city ‘from the time of Antiochus until the coming of the rulers of the Kittim’. The enemies of the ‘furious young lion’ were ‘hanged alive on the tree’, a familiar Hebrew circumlocution for crucifixion. As in the Commentary on Psalm xxxvii, the sobriquets ‘Ephraim’ and ‘Manasseh’ are attached to the Community’s opponents. ‘Ephraim’ is said to ‘walk in lies and falsehood’, but because of gaps in the manuscript, the description of ‘Manasseh’ is less clear. It seems nevertheless that this party included ‘great men’, ‘mighty men�
� and ‘men of dignity’.
The Nahum Commentary was the first of the Qumran Scrolls to disclose historical names: those of two Seleucid kings, Antiochus and Demetrius. But their identity has still to be determined because nine monarchs in all bore the first name, and three the second. Additional names figure in various Cave 4 manuscripts of a liturgical calendar (4Q331-3): ‘Shelamzion’, the Hebrew name of Queen Salome-Alexandra, widow of Alexander Jannaeus, who reigned from 76 to 67 BCE; ‘Hyrcanus’ and ‘John’, probably John Hyrcanus II, son of Alexandra and High Priest from 76 to 67 and again from 63 to 40; and ‘Emilius’, no doubt M. Aemilius Scaurus, the first Roman governor of Syria from 65 to 62 BCE, who is charged with killing people. Note also that the Balakros of 4Q243 may be the Seleucid usurper Alexander Balas.
A remarkable piece of prayer-poetry (4Q448) refers to ‘King Jonathan’ in connection with Jerusalem and diaspora Jewry. A good case has been made out by E. and H. Eshel (IEJ 42, 1992, 199-229) for identifying him with Alexander Jannaeus, but in my opinion an even stronger argument points towards Jonathan Maccabaeus as ‘King Jonathan’ (cf. JJS44, 1993, 294-300). Also, one of the proposed readings of line 9 of the List of False Prophets (4Q339), ‘[John son of Sim]on’, would provide an allusion to John Hyrcanus I. Finally, the person called Potlaos - Ptollas - Peitholaos (4Q468e) may refer to one of two historical figures who lived either in the middle or the end of the first century BCE.
In the Commentaries on Habakkuk and Nahum, the Kittim are represented as instruments appointed by God to punish the ungodly priests of Jerusalem. The War Rule, however, testifies to a changed attitude towards them on the part of the sect by making the Kittim appear as the chief allies of Belial or Satan and the final foe to be subjugated by the hosts of the sons of Light. The Rule of War (4Q285), although very fragmentary, appears to point in the same direction.
Several Qumran Hymns reflect the career and sentiments of a teacher, possibly of the Teacher of Righteousness himself. According to them, he was opposed by ‘interpreters of error’, ‘traitors’, ‘deceivers’, and ‘those who seek smooth things’, all of whom were formerly his ‘friends’ and ‘members of [his] Covenant’, bearers of the ‘yoke of [his] testimony’. In one of them, the reference to a ‘devilish scheme’ is reminiscent of the allusion in the Habakkuk Commentary to the visit of the Wicked Priest to the Community’s place of exile in order to cause them ‘to stumble’:
Teachers of lies [have smoothed] Thy people [with words],
and [false prophets] have led them astray...
They have banished me from my land like a bird from its nest...
And they, teachers of lies and seers of falsehood,
have schemed against me a devilish scheme,
to exchange the Law engraved on my heart by Thee
for the smooth things (which they speak) to Thy people.
And they withhold from the thirsty the drink of Knowledge,
and assuage their thirst with vinegar,
that they may gaze on their straying,
on their folly concerning their feast-days,
on their fall into the snares.
(IQH XII [formerly IV], 7-12)
Another Hymn appears to hint at the Teacher’s withdrawal from society and to announce with confidence his eventual glorious justification:
For Thou, O God, hast sheltered me
from the children of men,
and hast hidden Thy Law [within me]
against the time when Thou shouldst reveal
Thy salvation to me.
(IQH XIII [formerly V], 11-12)
Some scholars consider these poems autobiographical, i.e. written by the Teacher, but this is mere speculation.
It would be unrealistic, taking into account the vagueness of all these statements, the cryptic nature of the symbolism and the entire lack of any systematic exposition of the sect’s history, to expect every detail to be identified. We can, however, attempt to define the chronological framework of the historical references and thus be in a position to place at least some of the key events and principal personalities within the context of Jewish history as we know it.
(b) The Chronological Framework
The chronological setting of Qumran history may be reconstructed from archaeological and literary evidence. The excavations of 1951-6 date the beginning, the terminus a quo, of the sectarian establishment to 150-140 BCE and its end, the terminus ad quem, to the middle of the first war against Rome, 68 CE.70 The literary allusions, particularly the identifiable historical names, confirm this general finding. It goes without saying, however, that the initial phases of the Community’s existence must have preceded by some years or decades the actual establishment of the sect at Qumran. The first task therefore is to examine the Scrolls for indications of its origins. The Nahum Commentary implies that a king by the name of Antiochus was alive at the beginning of the period with which the documents are concerned. This Antiochus, although one among several so called, can only have been Antiochus IV Epiphanes, notorious for his looting of Jerusalem and the profanation of the Temple in 169-168 BCE.
More significant as a chronological pointer is the dating, in the Damascus Document, of the sect’s beginnings to the ‘age of wrath’, 390 years after the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE. This should bring us to 196 BCE but, as is well known, Jewish historians are not very reliable in their time-reckoning for the post-exilic era. They do not seem to have had a clear idea of the length of the Persian domination, and they were in addition not free of the theological influence of the Book of Daniel, where a period of seventy weeks of years, i.e. 490 years, is given as separating the epoch of Nebuchadnezzar from that of the Messiah. As it happens, if to this figure of 390 years is added, firstly twenty (during which the ancestors of the Community ‘groped’ for their way until the entry on the scene of the Teacher of Righteousness), then another forty (the time span between the death of the Teacher and the dawn of the messianic epoch), the total stretch of years arrived at is 450. And if to this total is added the duration of the Teacher’s ministry of, say, forty years - a customary round figure—the final result is the classic seventy times seven years.
Yet even if the literal figure of 390 is rejected, there are still compelling reasons for placing the ‘age of wrath’ in the opening decades of the second pre-Christian century. Only the Hellenistic crisis which occurred at that time, and which is recalled in various Jewish literary sources from the last two centuries BCE, provides a fitting context for the historical allusions made in the sectarian writings (cf. Daniel ix-xi; Enoch xc, 6-7; Jubilees XXIII, 14-19; Testament of Levi XVII; Assumption of Moses IV-V). Also, it is the Hasidim of the pre-Maccabaean and early Maccabaean era who best correspond to the earlier but unorganized group as it is described there (cf. pp. 51-2).
As for the terminus ad quem of Qumran history, as this is linked to the appearance of the Kittim, we have to determine who these people were. In its primitive sense, the word ‘Kittim’ described the inhabitants of Kition, a Phoenician colony in Cyprus. Later the name tended to be applied indiscriminately to those living in ‘all islands and most maritime countries’ (Josephus, Antiquities 1, 128). But from the second century BCE, Jewish writers also used ‘Kittim’ more precisely to denote the greatest world power of the day. In Maccabees (i, 1; viii, 5) they are Greeks; Alexander the Great and Perseus are called kings of the ‘Kittim’. In Daniel xi, 30 on the other hand, the ‘Kittim’ are Romans; it was the ambassador of the Roman senate, Poppilius Laenas, brought to Alexandria by ‘ships of Kittim’, i.e. the Roman fleet, who instructed the ‘king of the North’, the Seleucid monarch Antiochus Epiphanes, to withdraw at once from Egypt. The term ‘Romans’ is substituted for ‘Kittim’ already in the old Greek or Septuagint version of Daniel xi, 30. None of these texts is critical of the ‘Kittim’. They are seen as the ruling force of the time, but not as hostile to Israel. In fact, in Daniel they humiliate the enemy of the Jews. It is not till a later stage, especially after 70
CE, that they come to symbolize oppression and tyranny.
In the Habakkuk Commentary, the portrait of the Kittim is neutral, as in Maccabees and Daniel. (In the Damascus Document they play no part; the alien adversary there is the ‘Chief of the Kings of Greece’.) Feared and admired by all, they are seen to be on the point of defeating the ‘last Priests of Jerusalem’ and confiscating their wealth, as they have done to many others before. Such a representation of a victorious and advancing might would hardly apply to the Greek Seleucids of Syria, who by the second half of the second century BCE were in grave decline. But it does correspond to the Romans, whose thrust to the east in the first century BCE resulted in their triumphs over Pontus, Armenia and Seleucid Syria, and finally, with the arrival of Pompey in Jerusalem in 63 BCE, in the transformation of the Hasmonaean state into Judaea, a province of the Roman republic.
Since the identification of the ‘Kittim’ as Romans is nowadays generally accepted, it will suffice to cite a single, but very striking, feature in the Habakkuk Commentary to support it. Interpreting Hab. 1, 14-16 as referring to the ‘Kittim’, the commentator writes: ‘This means that they sacrifice to their standards and worship their weapons of war’ (IQpHab. VI, 3-5). Now this custom of worshipping the signa was a characteristic of the religion of the Roman armies both in republican and in imperial times, as Josephus testifies in his report of the capture of the Temple of Jerusalem by the legionaries of Titus in 70.