Christianity
Essenes as Militant Nationalists
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: 28 October 1998
The Zadokite Priesthood
The Macedonian Greek, Alexander the Great, conquered Palestine in the fourth century BC. After his death his empire was immediately split among his generals and Palestine became part of Egypt under the dynasty of the Ptolemies. In 200 BC however it became part of the Seleucid kingdom centred on Syria and Mesopotamia. All of these former Alexandrian territories were Greek in culture and the process of Greek cultural imperialism was called Hellenization. During his reign the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-163 BC), pressed ahead with an aggressive policy of Hellenization in Israel until 165 BC. Some Jews had had enough—they revolted.
The Zadokite line of Jewish priests in Jewish mythology had been founded by Solomon and had supposedly continued unbroken since. But the Greeks opposed an inherited priesthood: they wanted anyone to have a chance of being a priest. In 172 BC Antiochus IV Epiphanes murdered Onias III, the High Priest, breaking the line of traditional Zadokite priests in Jerusalem. He put the office up to the highest bidder.
At first the Zadokites retained the office by submitting the highest bid but later Jesus, the Zadokite High Priest, lost his bid to a non-Zadokite and civil war broke out. The Jews had little chance and many were massacred. The victorious Greeks desecrated the Temple, dedicating it to Zeus and sacrificing swine. Jerusalem became a Greek city. Baby boys went uncircumcised, priests exercised naked in the gymnasium and the king’s officers went around forcing Jews to make pagan sacrifices. But at one village the local priest, Mattathias Maccabaeus, refused. Another Jew stepped forward to offer the sacrifice. The story is continued in the apocryphal book of 1 Maccabee 2:24-28:
When Mattathias saw it he burned with zeal, and his heart was stirred. He gave vent to righteous anger; he ran and killed him upon the alter. At the same time he killed the king’s officer, as Phinehas did against Zimri the son of Salu. Then Mattathias cried out in the city with a loud voice, saying: “Let every one who is zealous for the Law and supports the Covenant come out with me!” And he and his sons fled to the hills and left all that they had in the city.
Nominally their platform was against the Hellenization of religion and they called for purity of worship. Despite the Maccabaean propaganda, there is a puzzle here because the Greeks were as universal in religous outlook as the Persians and were happy to recognize local cults as aspects of a greater universal god. They had shown no desire to suppress Judaism but the Maccabees claimed they did. The real protest was not against Greeks but against Jews who had adopted Greek culture, not against forced cultural imperialism but against the success of its voluntary adoption.
Eventually the Maccabaean rebellion, supported by the Egyptians and indirectly by the Romans, succeeded in undermining the Seleucid state, but unwittingly setup a lot of trouble and changed the history of the world as well as world religions. Judas Maccabaeus, son of Mattathias, proved a brilliant general and defeated the Greeks setting up the Jewish dynasty of the Hasmonaeans. Judas (165-160 BC) was followed by his brother Jonathan (160-143) and another brother Simon (143-134 BC). The victory of the Maccabees is still celebrated by Jews at Hanukkah.
These victories of the Maccabees induced Jews to come from their heartland in Mesopotamia including many who were zealous for the Law and were impressed by Mattathias’s stand against the Greeks. In Palestine they were doomed to disappointment. Hellenization had not ceased. The Hasmonaeans did not return to strict tradition. Judas was keen to secure Rome as an ally against the Seleucids and signed a treaty with the Roman senate. To effect this he made Hellenized Jews his diplomats.
Nor did the Hasmonaeans reinstate the Zadokites: Jonathan Maccabee claimed the High Priestly office for himself. It was possibly at this point that the sect which was to become the Community of Qumran was first founded largely by zealous returners from Babylon disappointed by the turn of events. Josephus first mentions the Essenes in his description of the reign of Jonathan Maccabaeus implying that they were founded then. However many Jews at this stage still supported Jonathan. He remained in conflict with the Seleucids throughout his reign and would have been given the benefit of the doubt while he was engaged in throwing off the foreigner.
Such regard would not have been shown to his brother, Simon Maccabaeus, whose son in law killed him and his eldest and youngest sons while they were drunk on a visit to Jericho. Another son, John Hyrcanus, escaped. Meanwhile the Seleucid king, Antiochus VII Sidetes, took the chance to reassert Greek authority. One Qumran document apparently alludes to Joshua 6:26 where a ”Cursed One” loses his eldest and youngest sons. In the Habakkuk Peshar we read that this priest ”…walked in the ways of drunkenness …but the cup of God’s wrath will swallow him up… ” Other Qumran Testimonia seem to identify this priest with Simon Maccabee. Why then did the Qumran Community hate this man so much?
Simon Maccabee (142-135 BC) was the first independent king of the Jewish free state , whose rule was considered by his followers as a golden age, though he chose not to be called king merely accepting the title ethnarch. The lack of religious principle behind the revolution became immediately clear. In 140 BC, Simon was proclaimed High Priest by the Great Assembly of Priests and Elders (Pharisees) and his position was to be ”forever,” which is to say inherited ”until there should arise a faithful prophet (1 Maccabees 14:41).” The decree recognised its own illegality by making it sound only temporary through the phrase about the prophet, but it removed the Zadokites permanently from office in practice because the age of prophecy had ended—since it was mythical, it had never begun. Opposition was to be severely punished.
The Hasidim cannot have accepted such a proclamation and must have been even more horrified when Simon allied himself with the Romans. Of course, the Romans were all the time being diplomatically astute and had used the Hasmonaean family of rebels to weaken the Syrian Greeks, in preparation for the Roman annexation soon to come.
An American Jewish scholar, Lawrence Schiffman, believes that the Sadducees were the Zadokites who lost control of the Temple when the Maccabees refused to return the High Priesthood to them. Later some compromised accepting back their priestly positions but under a non-Zadokite High Priest. Others refused to compromise and joined the sectarians founded earlier by a Zadokite New Covenanter, the Teacher of Righteousness, who had retreated with his followers into the wilderness to lead ritually pure lives, observing the Law strictly and following the solar calendar. The Pharisees supported the Maccabees throughout.
Simon was murdered and his son, John Hyrcanus (135-105 BC), had himself anointed as High Priest and therefore ruler of the Jews. He attacked the Samaritan’s town of Shechem and destroyed their temple on Mount Gerizim, he attacked the Idumaeans and forced them to become Jews, setting up the prospect of having the Idumaean but Jewish king Herod a century later, and finally he actually attacked the Greek city of Samaria, populated with descendants of Alexander’s Macedonians, and seiged it into submission over a period of 4 years (110-107 BC. They then razed all traces of it from history.
In 105 BC John died and his son Aristobulus became leader and took the title king for the first time. Note that Jewish kings now begin to have Greek names, whether or not, often, they were pro or anti the Greeks! Aristobulus immediately went of and forcibly converted the Iturians, including Galilee, populated by Syrians and Greeks!
In 104 BC, Alexander Jannaeus (a Greek form of Jonathan) , brother of Aristobulus, succeeded him as king on his death. The Hasids had by this time split into two parties, the Essenes and the Pharisees (Josephus, Antiquities 13:13:5-7). The story Josephus gives while discussing the Pharisees is put in the context of their split from John Hyrcanus but in Rabbinic tradition it is attributed to a split with Alexander Jannaeus, which seems more appropriate. Alexander Jannaeus was a rough soldier with no pretensions of piety but seems to have been popular with the Essenes because he was thoroughly opposed to their enemies, the Pharisees and the Greeks. In a sense, this antagonism of the Pharisees and the Essenes is the true birth of Christianity. Alexander Jannaeus murdered 6000 people in the temple when they pelted him with lemons.
A civil war began once more and after several years the Pharisees invited Demetrius, king of the northern Greeks, to depose Alexander. This the Greek king did, but it only served to anger Jews like the Essenes who did not want anything to do with Greeks. So, even though Alexander had been unpopular among many, they rallied to him and the Greek had to withdraw leaving Alexander free to punish his Pharisaic enemies. He crucified 800 and exiled the rest. They had to wait until Alexandra, Alexander Jannaeus’s widow, reversed his policy toward the Pharisees after his death in 78 BC.
Another episode might also be important in the setting up of the Essene camp at Qumran-Damascus. Some scroll fragments mention three or possibly four historical people in a list of priestly courses—Æmilius Scaurus, Shelamzion (Salome Alexandra), Hyrcanus II and possibly Aristobulus II though only the beginning of the name can be read. The manuscript seems hostile to Scaurus and the gentiles, to Antipas, Hyrcanus and the Arabs and to Shelamzion. One deduces it favoured Aristobulus.
Alexander Jannaeus had appointed a local man as governor of Idumaea, now Jewish because John Hyrcanus had forced the Idumaeans to convert to Judaism. The son of the governor, a man called Antipater (Antipas) married to an Arab princess, noted with interest the rivalry between Aristobulus, the king, and his elder brother, Hyrcanus II, who was the High Priest. He persuaded Hyrcanus to get the help of Harith, king of the Nabataean Arabs to overthrow Aristobulus and seize the kingdom. Yet again civil war erupted.
Pompey, the Roman general, was nearby fighting to extend the empire to the river Euphrates and the two brothers each appealed to the Roman general’s lieutenant, Æmilius Scaurus. He ordered the Arabs to withdraw leaving Aristobulus back in power. In 63 BC, Pompey was in Damascus and emissaries from each of the brothers and the Pharisees approached him. The Pharisees wanted the Romans to take direct control to prevent the civil war, abolish the kingship of the Maccabees, and leave Jews free to worship Yehouah. Pompey naturally responded to the Pharisees, seiged Jerusalem to wrest it from the supporters of Aristobulus and took over. Scaurus was left as governor of Syria, which included Palestine, when he returned to Rome after his conquests.
The scroll fragment tells us, Scaurus helped Antipater in a campaign against the Arab King of Petra—Arabia to the Apostle Paul. Antipater had assisted Hyrcanus, who ”rebelled” against someone unknown, opposed Aristobulus and through his machinations and his Roman influence succeeded in securing the throne for Herod, his son, who executed Hyrcanus in 30 BC. Presumably the unknown person that Hyrcanus rebelled against was the person that he opposed, Aristobulus.
Hyrcanus was a collaborator willing to yield to the outside powers rather than take risks by opposing them. The Pharisees who supported him sided with Pompey and Scaurus. Hyrcanus and his mother Shelamzion were happy to allow the invaders to appoint the High Priests if it meant less trouble. Aristobulus on the other hand was a nationalist and gained the support of the ordinary people. The split between them allowed the Roman intervention and the eventual crowning of Herod through the cunning of his father, Antipas.
The Romans attacked Aristobulus’s men who, through zeal to resist foreign rule, held out against the Romans in the Temple. Onias, called the Just by Josephus, otherwise Honi the Circle Drawer or Honi the Rainmaker, refused to condemn the followers of Aristobulus. But he did condemn the Pharisees who supported Aristobulus’s brother, Hyrcanus, who welcomed the Romans and the dynasty of Herod they imposed. The defenders of the Temple astonished their attackers by continuing to carry out their Temple duties even as they were being cut down, such was their dedication.
Aristobulus finished up in chains in Pompey’s triumph in Rome and was eventually poisoned by Sadducees who supported Pompey in 49 BC. The following generation saw the two sons of Aristobulus, Alexander and Antigonus, defeated and beheaded by Mark Antony who put the priests in power under the patronage of the Herodians. From this time on, the Romans ruled Palestine, directly or through puppet monarchs. Scaurus was a close associate of the shrewd Idumaean, Antipater. The first governor was Antipater, and the first puppet ruler was his son, Herod.
Robert Eisenman identifies Aristobulus as a Sadducaean nationalist and Hyrcanus II as a Pharisaic collaborationist and believes the split in the Sadducees which led to the setting up of a priesthood in exile based on Qumran occurred at this point and not in the earlier period of Simon Maccabaeus. The pro-intervention Sadducees became the Herodian Boethusians of the Talmud, the Sadducees of the New Testament; the anti-interventionist, zealous Sadducees became the Qumran Essenes.
Whatever their origins, the Essenes of Qumran scorned the illegal priests of Jerusalem. Josephus says they rejected the Temple as unclean and ”offered their sacrifices by themselves”. The Communities of the Essenes were the True Israel and the priesthood they maintained at Qumran the true Zadokite priesthood. Following Isaiah they had gone into the wilderness to ”prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness”. God’s Covenant with Israel in the desert brought down by Moses had been replaced by the New Covenant with God’s Elect in the desert. The military preparations the Children of Israel made to enter the promised land were now being made by God’s Elect to enter the kingdom of God. God’s soldiers had to be pure, whence the celibate regime, baptism and exemplary lifestyle. Josephus says the Essenes were pacifists but many Qumran sectarian documents are warlike in their phraseology and content. Josephus himself mentions a John the Essene who was a general in the Jewish war.
Hate your Enemies!
A Jewish scholar, Yigael Yadin, thinks he detects a reference to the Essenes in the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says: ”Ye have heard it said… hate thine enemy. But I say to you love your enemies.” Yadin assures us that there is nothing in Rabbinic Jewish tradition which urges hatred of enemies. The Essene Manual of Discipline on the other hand says new members have to swear to hate the Sons of Darkness for all eternity:
that they may love all the sons of light, each according to his lot in God’s design, and hate all the sons of darkness, each according to his guilt in God’s vengeance.
Nonetheless initiates were to pray:
I will pay no man the reward of evil; I will pursue him with goodness. For judgement of all the living is with God and it is he who will render to man his reward.
In practice this is turning the other cheek. Hatred of the Ungodly was required but no one could judge another man with a view to handing out punishment. He had to pursue him with goodness. All this sounds odd in the light of the War Scroll and many other texts but it was a command which would be lifted when God set about purging the world. And it was a rule which would not have applied to gentiles in any case once the End Time began. The net effect was that initiates of the Essene order had to hate the Sons of Darkness but could do nothing about it until God indicated that the end was near.
The Essenes hated foreigners. The writer of one fragment urges his readers not to give their inheritance to foreigners for ”they will come to dwell among you and become your masters…” Another fragment includes the sentence ”The Lord is ruler… to Him alone belongs sovereignty” which recalls Josephus who wrote of the followers of Judas of Galilee, they call no man Lord but God, thus allowing no recognition of rulers other than God. A High Priest, Joezar, son of Boethus, the Egyptian that Herod made Priest, had persuaded the Jews to pay tax to Rome which the Herodians collected. This was not popular, nor were tax collectors. An opponent of Herod, Sadduc, joined Judas of Galilee in revolt against the tax. Josephus also explains in the Jewish War that the acceptance of gifts, which was an innovation introduced by the Boethusians, helped spark the War. The Zealots were so incensed by foreign gifts to the Temple that they wanted them banned. It was the eventual refusal of the junior priests to offer foreign sacrifices that helped trigger the war.
The attitude of the Qumran Community exactly matched this. The Community was not anti-Temple but it was anti-the polluted Temple. It was zealous for a pure Temple and that was an important symbol of Jewish nationalism. The Temple was at least in part polluted by foreigners and their unclean contributions presented in ”skins” of animals which had been ”sacrificed to idols”. These problems are unlikely to have applied at the earlier period of the Maccabees implying that they pertain to the time of Barabbas.
Dogs were also banned from the Temple as unclean flesh eaters. The Elect referred to gentiles as dogs along with the deaf and the blind, metaphors for their opponents. (Those who were really crippled or infirm were considered to be under the protection of the Angels of Holiness). In this respect the Herodians were equally foreign as collaborators and in the war the rebels torched their palaces and those of the Boethusian High Priests.
The Qumran use of the word ”fornication” is also relevant to the question of foreigners. It was applied to those who married outside Jewry. The essential aim was to keep Israel, a Holy People, separate from others. The command in the Manual of Discipline was to ”separate yourselves” to prepare a way in the wilderness. Thus another theme arose—how to recognise purity and separateness. Separateness extended to crops in the field and fibres in a cloth—no mixing was allowed in either. In the Damascus Document the separateness of pure and impure in the Temple is considered inadequate because ”they” sleep with women during their periods and ”they” marry their nieces. Who are ”they”? Those who sleep with women during their periods are the gentiles because Jews considered this grossly impure. Those who marry their nieces are, of course, the Herodians for whom marriage of nieces was common. The Temple was therefore itself grossly impure.
Jesus had nothing to do with foreigners. He was interested only in Jews. Even the Syro-Phoenician woman only won him over through her humbleness. Several of Jesus’s remarks show disdain if not hatred for foreigners. Jesus in saying ”love your enemies” spoke to Jews and knew they understood him to mean only Jews. He wanted Jews to love each other so that God’s kingdom could begin. Partly this involved uniting them against the foreigner because God helped only those who help themselves. It was necessary to rid the land of the pollution of the foreigner to bring in the kingdom of God.
The Qumran sectarian documents refer to some of their enemies as “Ephraim”, builders of the wall and spouters of false things, the latter a play on the words “halakhot” (religious laws) and “halaqot” (false things or falsehoods). These are the Pharisees who according to the Talmud held dominance under the Maccabees when they refused to allow the priesthood to return to the Sons of Zadok. The sectarian documents refer to the Sadducees as “Manasseh”.
Manasseh and Ephraim were the names of the two sons of Joseph blessed by Jacob. Ephraim signifies fertility and Manasseh signifies forgetfulness. The Pharisees’ fertility was in creating new, but to the Essene false and spurious, laws and the Sadducees’ forgetfulness was over the promise of Solomon to Zadok of the priesthood forever. Furthermore king Manasseh was a reformed idolater and Manasseh in Ezra signified those who had married foreign women, strong hints of Hellenization of the official Priesthood.
The Pharisees were not entirely the men of the people depicted by later rabbinic tradition, though they doubtless had the best interests of the people at heart. The Pharisees had a reputation as surrenderers. In the Qumran writings they were the seekers after smooth things because they took the path of least resistance so that the people would suffer least. Josephus writes that two prominent rabbis, Pollio and Sameas—probably pseudonyms for Hillel and Shammai—convinced the people to surrender to Herod and the Romans in 37 BC. Herod remained forever in the Pharisees’ debt.
At a later period Josephus says that it was the principal men of the Pharisees, the Chief Priests (Herodian Sadducees) and the men of power (the Herodians) whose intermediary was a mystery man called Saul, who invited the Romans into Jerusalem to put down the uprising in 66 AD. The Pharisees, Josephus himself and Tiberius Alexander, Philo’s nephew, supervised the destruction of the city. Pharisees were pragmatists but did not endear themselves to the Essenes who were nationalists, nor most of the people who wanted rid of the invaders.
Yigael Yadin, thinks Jesus was an Essene who advocated revision of the Manual of Discipline. Here may be a distinction between the Essenes and the Nazarenes—the Nazarenes were less exclusive. They felt that all Jews should be warned that their time was nearly up, and that they should repent if they wanted to enter the kingdom. Barabbas does not regard any Jew as lost to Belial forever. His objective was to recruit Jews as soldiers of the Sons of Light for the imminent battle. Any Jew had the chance of repentance and a favourable outcome when the kingdom of God arrived no matter what sins they had committed. In this belief he was the successor of John the Baptist. His message was addressed to Jews and only Jews were included in the enemies you should love, not foreigners. The Jews were God’s Chosen People. The New Covenant made with the Elect was a Covenant to guard the Old Covenant. In short the duty of the Elect was to try to carry as many of the Chosen as possible into the coming battle. The Essenes, Barabbas believed were the vanguard which had to mobilise the rank and file.
Paul took this extension of the Elect of God further still. He wanted to give everyone the chance to join God’s Elect and enter God’s kingdom, even if they were gentiles. Paul identified with the Essenes because they had split from the Jerusalem Temple. The Essenes contrasted themselves with the Temple hierarchy in the Damascus Document. Quoting Proverbs (15:8) it says:
The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord but the prayer of the righteous is his delight,
which reminds us of Jesus’s discussion with the Pharisee. For the Essenes the split with the Temple was of no further consequence. They were God’s Elect and the dawn of the kingdom was nigh when all the wicked and their polluted Temple would be destroyed. The kingdom never came but the Temple was destroyed by the Romans leaving the two traditions: the Pharisaic and the Essene. The one became Judaism and the other became Christianity.
Gentiles
Essenes hated gentiles. The Damascus Rule forbids a man to shed the blood of a gentile for riches or gain, implying he could do so for other reasons, presumably religious or political. The writer of one fragment urges his readers not to give their inheritance to foreigners for they will come to dwell among you and become your masters. Another fragment includes the sentence: “The Lord is ruler… to Him alone belongs sovereignty”, which recalls Josephus who wrote of the followers of Judas of Galilee founder of the Zealots: “They call no man Lord but God”, allowing no recognition of rulers other than God and proving that they must have opposed Roman rule in Judaea.
A High Priest, Joezar, son of Boethus, the Egyptian that Herod made priest, had persuaded the Jews to pay tax to Rome which the Herodians collected. This was not popular, nor were tax collectors. Josephus explains in the Jewish War that the acceptance of unclean foreign gifts, which was an innovation introduced by the Boethusians, helped spark the War. The Zealots were so incensed by foreign gifts to the temple that they wanted them banned. It was the eventual refusal of the junior priests to offer foreign sacrifices that helped trigger the war.
The attitude of the Qumran community exactly matched this. The community was not anti-temple but it was anti-the polluted temple. It was zealous for a pure temple and that was an important symbol of Jewish nationalism. The temple was at least in part polluted by foreigners and their unclean contributions presented in skins of animals which had been sacrificed to idols. These problems are unlikely to have applied at the earlier period of the Maccabees implying that they pertained to the time of Jesus. Dogs were also banned from the temple as unclean flesh eaters. The elect referred to gentiles as dogs, metaphors for their opponents along with the deaf and the blind. Herodians were equally foreign as collaborators and in the war the rebels torched their palaces and those of the Boethusian High Priests.
The Qumran use of the word “fornication” is also relevant to the question of foreigners. It was applied to those who married outside Jewry. The essential aim was to keep Israel, a holy people, separate from others. The command in the Community Rule was to separate themselves to prepare a way in the wilderness. Thus another theme arose—how to recognize purity and separateness. Separateness extended to crops in the field and fibres in a cloth—no mixing was allowed in either. In the Damascus Rule the separateness of pure and impure in the temple is considered inadequate because: they sleep with women during their periods and they marry their nieces. Who are they? Those who sleep with women during their periods are the gentiles because Jews considered this grossly impure. Those who marry their nieces are, of course, the Herodians for whom marriage of nieces was common. The temple was therefore itself grossly impure.
Jesus had nothing to do with foreigners. He was interested only in Jews. Even the Syro-Phoenician woman only won him over through her humbleness. Several of Jesus’s remarks show disdain if not hatred for foreigners. Jesus in saying love your enemies spoke to Jews and knew they understood him to mean only Jews. He wanted Jews to love each other so that God’s kingdom could begin. Partly this involved uniting them against the foreigner because God helped only those who help themselves. It was necessary to atone for the land, to rid the land of the pollution of the foreigner to bring in the kingdom of God.
Essene Revolutionary Activity
The evidence from coins found during the excavations of the ruins at Qumran are revealing. It gives us a good idea of when the buildings were occupied and to what degree people were coming and going. The camp seems to have been hyperactive during periods of insurrection!
If the community were self contained, it would have had little use for coins. But a degree of commerce with the world beyond the wilderness, particularly the village Essenes, occurred and, since wealth was held in common, new coins would be added to the exchequer as new converts arrived. Father de Vaux who excavated the site at Qumran discovered some 486 coins datable between 135 BC and 136 AD. The incidence of lost coins must conflate occupation of the site, level of commercial activity and number of proselytes arriving—in short the degree of activity. When the community was active, the incidence of coins would be high.
But coins are also found corresponding to known periods of abandonment. These must have been dropped by those seeking temporary shelter or casual passers by—or they were coins still in circulation when they were dropped at a later period of activity. From this a crude analysis can be made of the periods when the site was active and inactive.
The Qumran site seems to have been destroyed by fire near the beginning of the reign of Herod the Great (37 AD) and was not re-occupied until after the end of Herod’s reign in 4 BC. De Vaux attributes this to an earthquake but it could suggest that the Community was unpopular with Herod and was suppressed by him, possibly violently. Yet ten coins were found which were minted in that period.
As a crude guide we can take the ten coins in the reign of Herod as the average coinage incidence corresponding to unoccupation. This is an incidence of 0.3 coins per year. So if the annual incidence of coins for any period falls below 0.3, assume the site is effectively abandoned. Then allocate the coins found in the abandoned period to the next occupied period on the assumption that the coins are likely to be old currency lost in a period when the Community was occupied. Thus in inactive periods the Coin Index is reduced to zero.
This method reveals that before 104 BC the site was unoccupied or inactive. The Community might have been based on booths in the nearby wilderness. Thereafter we find:
- Coin Index 5.4—The initial period of activity corresponding to the founding of the permanent site between 104 and 76 BC.
Inactivity 76-40 BC.
- Coin Index 3.3—A short spurt of activity is apparent around 40 to 37 BC corresponding to the time when the Romans were establishing Herod as their puppet ruler.
Inactivity in the reign of Herod 37-4 BC.
- Coin Index 2.6 in 4 BC rising to 11.1 around 44 AD. A long period of activity (embracing the lifetime of Jesus) from 4 BC to 44 AD and peaking around 37 to 41 AD. This is the period of Roman rule under the Prefects and Agrippa’s short reign.
Inactivity 44 AD to 67 AD.
- Coin index 54.5—apparently frenetic activity occurring in 67 and 68 AD when the Jewish war was in progress.
Inactivity 68 AD to 132 AD.
- Coin activity 4.3—a final short bust of activity in 132-136AD during the revolt of Bar Kosiba.
The correspondence with periods of rebel activity in Palestine is remarkable. The Community by the Dead Sea became particularly active at times of trouble. They seem not to be simply pacifist monks but actively engaging in the rebellions. If the coins of Qumran are anything to go by, the longest period of occupation from 4 BC to 44 AD, the very period of the gospels, was a period of constant agitation falling only just short of perpetual insurrection.
From the Hasmonaean period to the intertestamental period two powerful tendencies sundered Judaism; one was Hellenization and the other was Apocalypticism. In a way they were opposites because the Hellenizers saw a future in the Greco-Roman world whereas the Apocalypticists saw no future at all without a divine intervention. The pursuit of Hellenization was loosening the ties of the Laws of Moses to permit Jews more freedom within the Empire whereas the pursuit of Apocalyticism was cleaving rigidly to the Jewish Law, separating from the gentiles and preparing for the coming kingdom of God on earth.
The outcome was paradoxical. The victory of the Hasmonaeans supported by the pragmatism of the Pharisees kept Hellenization within bounds ultimately leading to modern Rabbinic Judaism. The Apocalyptic trend led to repeated rebellions and eventually to the destruction of the Temple and with it the priestly parties. But one apocalyptic sect—the Essenes—was to divide, break loose from the bounds of Judaism, become thoroughly Hellenized and eventually form a new world religion based on Jewish tradition and using the Jewish Holy Books.
