It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error. It is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

Supreme Court Justice, Robert H Jackson (1950)

Essene Life and Beliefs 2

The New Covenant
The Master

Abstract

Each year, at the annual renewal of the covenant held at Pentacost, the wilderness chaste brotherhood (called priests and levites) and the village Essenes (called people and Israelites) congregated in the desert for a covenant renewal ceremony. New members were admitted to be instructed by the Master, when they would hear the Essene interpretation of the law of Moses and commit themselves to it. They were taught they were living in the last days (End Time) and that strict adherence to the law was essential to enter God’s kingdom or, as the Scrolls more often called it, “house” or “sanctuary”. Those who were saved were those who held fast to the community’s rules, followed the law, listened to the righteous teacher and confessed before God. The life and beliefs of the Essenes.

The New Covenant

The Qumranites and the early Christians, both of whom considered themselves members of a New Covenant (2 Cor 3:6; CD 20:2), were children of a common parent tradition in Judaism.
J C VanderKam

It was with those who had gone out of the land of Judah into the land of Damascus that God established his covenant with Israel forever, revealing to them the hidden things in which all Israel had strayed, where all Israel—meaning the whole nation—is deliberately distinguished from Israel—meaning the remnant who were pure enough and observant enough, the sectarians themselves. The new covenanters had returned from exile in about 160 BC expecting the purity of the temple to be restored by the Maccabees, the rebellious family of Jewish nationalists. When it was not, they decided to withdraw into the wilderness, to set up a pure people ready for the judgement of God.

A group of Jews went with their righteous teacher to a place in the wilderness to uphold the law. The Community Rule, following Isaiah, commands:

They shall be separated from the midst of the gatherings of the men of wrongs to go to the wilderness to prepare there the way of the Lord, as it is written: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a high way for God. This is the study of the Law, as he commanded them through Moses to do all that has been revealed from age to age, and, by his Holy Spirit, as the prophets revealed.

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, because of the backsliding of the children. 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. Many Qumran sectarian documents are aggressive in their phraseology and content. When Josephus wrote that the Essenes were pacifists, it must have been for Roman consumption. He himself tells us of a John the Essene who was a general in the Jewish war. God’s soldiers had to be pure, whence the Essene’s celibate regime, baptism and exemplary lifestyle.

Oddly, nowhere in the scrolls are their owners called Essenes but, since the Qumran caves and ruins are just where Pliny said they were, there is no doubt who they are. The source of the word “Essene” is a mystery. Scroll scholar, Dupont-Sommer, proposed that the word comes from the word “’esah” meaning “council” or “party” and the phrase “esath ha yahad”, meaning “the council of the community”, which occurs often in the scrolls. Philo derived his word for Essene from “hosio”, which he thought was a Greek version of the Hebrew word, for holiness, “hesed”, often translated as “piety”, “grace” or “saintliness”. In fact, “hosio” seems more likely to be from the semitic root, “os”, meaning “a place of refuge” and therefore “salvation”, the meaning of the name of the prophet, Hosea. Then “Essenoi” or “Essaioi” is from the Semitic, “osim”, meaning the “saviours”!

The Hebrew word “hozeh” means “seer” or “prophet”, from the word for a vision. Essenes were noted prophets and evidently considered themselves to be prophets. If this were the root of the word Essene then its occurence in the prophetic books of the Jewish scriptures—Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Amos, Micah and Habakkuk—would tie in with their fondness of these scriptures. Prophecy was less the ability to see the future, as simple Christians think, but more interpreting God’s law. For Essenes, this was its real purpose, though they were interested in judging the signs of the times to anticipate the End Time too.

These derivations of the word Essene and more are probably all true. Just as Christians are fond of pious lying, the Essenes were fond of pious punning. John Allegro explains in The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reappraisal that the Qumran sectaries knew themselves as the Covenant (berith), and particularly the New Covenant (berith ha dashah), the Congregation (edah), the Assembly (qahal), the Party or Council (’esah), the Community (yahad) and the Party of the Community (esath ha yahad). They were the Keepers of the Covenant, Joiners for War, Holy Ones or Saints, the New Covenanters, the Perfect of the Way, the Sons of Zadok, the Sons of Light, the Poor Men, the Righteous and the Doers of the Law. They loved multiple names especially if they sounded similar. We find exactly the same in the meaning of the word Nazarene.

The word “yahad”, which is central to the Scroll writers, though translated “community” is more emphatic of “unity” than our word. The community meant by “yahad” is better rendered as the “United Ones”. Unity was vitally important to the Essenes as it must be to any subversive or revolutionary organisation. The way such movements are broken today is to infiltrate them and create disunity—divide and rule. The Romans knew all about this principle and so did Herod the Great. Both had extensive networks of spies and provocateurs. In the gospels, Jesus has trouble keeping his flock united. After his death, it is even more difficult and up pops Paul the apostle promoting disunity in the church. He has every characteristic of a provocateur.

The believers refer to themselves as “the church” over 100 times in the New Testament but never in Mark, Luke or John, and only three times in Matthew! Any or all of the Aramaic words edah, “qahal”, “’esah”, and “yahad” might have been translated into the Greek as “church” (ekklesia). Indeed in translating “ekklesia” into English from the Greek, the words “assembly” and “congregation” are used as well as “church” according to the context or the whim of the translator. Incidentally, the root of the Greek word “ekklesia” means to “shut out” or to “break off”, echoing exactly the exclusive and separatist nature of the Essenes and indeed the converts of Paul the apostle if Romans is to be believed—the emphasis on separation in the first seven verses is striking.

Many of the scrolls are holy orders for the various classes of Essene initiates. Among the complete scrolls found by the Dead Sea were four books of regulations for Essene communities—the Community Rule, the Damascus Rule, the War Scroll and the Rule of the Congregation. The Damascus Rule refers to marriage and children and to other affiliated communities in Palestine, showing that the Qumran Community was not the only Essene settlement. They were organised into at least two branches—celibate monks at Qumran and lay members in all the villages and towns, just as Josephus said.

Two Cave 4 manuscripts of the Damascus Document (4Q266/4QDa and 4Q270/4QDe), include a penal code which is clearly based on the same text as the one in 1QS 7. Either the writers of the Community Rule and those of the Damascus Document used the same source, or one of the codes is directly dependent on the other. The point is the two rule books were connected somehow, and were not quite independent works as some have suggested. J Baumgarten comments:

It thus appears that the penal code, which in the Community Rule seems to reflect the discipline of an all male order, was capable of being also applied to a society in which both men and women took part in communal life.

Each different rule book provided for different circumstances and therefore differed in many ways from others but the underlying common values remained and they are plainly rules for a single organization.

Geza Vermes in the 1960s when Reader in Jewish Studies at Oxford University. His parents were Hungarian Jewish converts to Christianity who died in Auschwitz. He is an eminent scholar of the Scrolls and the interface of Judaism and Christianity.

Books like the Community Rule were common in Christian communities of the early centuries as exemplified by the Didache. Geza Vermes, an Emeritus Professor of Jewish Studies, assures us that there are no precedents in ancient Jewish literature for the lists of social rules given in the Qumran documents—the law of Moses sufficed. This cannot be coincidence and adds to the proof that Christianity stemmed from one particular type of Judaism, the Essenes, and not Judaism in general. The Qumran books reveal the tap root of Christianity in Palestine.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are clear that the purpose of the Essenes was to keep themselves spiritually and ritually pure because they were expecting the apocalypse when God would endow a messiah to purge and judge the world. Josephus said the Essenes 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 in the wilderness, the true Zadokite priesthood. Not that they could have restored the hereditary line of priests but they expected to restore purity in sacerdotal practice. They objected to the debasement of the temple and the venality of the Sadducees. They scorned the illegal priests of Jerusalem, and had rejected them to adopt a largely frugal and monastic life uncorrupted by the scandal of pollution and collaboration.

They were opposed to foreign invaders, and their expected war between good and evil was largely a conflict between the Jews and the gentiles. Despite Philo and Josephus, they were not peace-loving monks. Hyppolytus, writing about 230 AD, said Zealots were a branch of the Essenes.

The Essenes saw the history of the chosen people as a sucession of God’s covenants with respectively Noah, Abraham, Moses and Joshua. Jews were the Chosen People with whom God had made his Covenant. In the covenant God made with Abraham, if a male Jew was circumcised at eight days old, then he became one of the Chosen, and this was considered sufficient by most Jews. The sect of the scrolls however was exclusive. They believed, following God’s announcement in Jeremiah 31:31,33 in a new covenant between God and the remnant of Israel that was righteous.

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Only the Essenes were writing the law in their hearts and only they—the remnant of Israel—were God’s people. It was with the remnant of Israel that God made his new covenant—it excluded all but those who, after the age of twenty, undertook the solemn vows of the sect not to depart from any command of God. Most Jews were not righteous and were excluded but herein lies the distinction of the Nazarenes from the Essenes. Nazarenes were Essenes who regarded the new covenant as the saviour of the old covenant of Abraham. The Essenes kept perfect so that they could bring back into the flock the lost sheep of the house of Israel in the last days before the end time when God would right the wrongs of the world.

All men were formed at birth with fixed amounts of good and ill in their dispositions. Only perfectly good people would be saved at the judgement day—evil people would be scourged for eternity. The Essenes could assay the degree of goodness of a person from his characteristics, but all was not lost for those who were not born perfectly good. All men had free will to be good despite their disposition at birth and could benefit from the grace of God. Even men born evil could submit themselves humbly to the precepts of God, and through self-discipline offer their souls for salvation, but the final decision was God’s.

Like Paul, the sectaries made salvation depend ultimately on the grace of God, but the sectaries saw a clear role for works. For them a life devoted to achieving perfection—or alternatively sincere repentance of sins—was a necessary condition for salvation, but it was not sufficient because God had the final say. But God was not whimsical, he was just—so Essenes believed that their own righteous deeds submitted humbly to God could gain them salvation. What they did not know was how God considered their various iniquities in coming to His judgement, and this uncertainty kept them constantly striving for humility and perfect holiness in all respects.

The Master

The monks of the headquarters at Qumran were the men of perfect holiness also known as saints, the word used of Christians by Paul in his epistles and often in Revelation. The practical head of the monastery and of the movement as a whole was the Mebaqqer, the Guardian or Bishop, also called the Master (Maskil). There was also a bursar and a titular head, nominally above the Mebaqqer. Each of the camps of village Essenes had a Mebaqqer as well. Jesus was called master in the gospels and Judas was the bursar of the Nazarenes, showing that they organized on Essene lines.

The Master or Mebaqqer was a Righteous Teacher to whom the community listened to as a prophet, an interpreter of the prophets (QpHab 2:7). The Community Rule, an instruction manual for the Master, directs him to teach the saints the ways of perfection and it agrees remarkably with Josephus. The Master had to instruct the community in the dualistic theology of the Essenes and show them how to interpret the scriptures correctly, not just the law but the prophets also, and to act in judgement over infringements of the rules.

The Master shall teach the saints:
To seek God with a whole heart and soul, and do what is good and right before him as he commanded through Moses and through all his servants, the prophets.
To love all that he has chosen and hate all that he has rejected.
To put away all evil and hold fast to all good.
To practise truth, righteousness and justice upon earth.
To walk no longer in the stubbornness of a wicked heart and eyes of fornication, doing all evil.
To bring all those that have offered themselves to do God’s precepts into a covenant of lovingkindness.
To be joined to God’s scheme of things.
To walk before him perfectly according to all the things that have been revealed of the appointed times of their testimonies.
To love all the sons of light, each according to his lot in God’s scheme of things.
And to hate all the sons of Darkness, each according to his guilt in the vengeance of God.
1QS 1:1

Whoever disobeyed his “word” were unfaithful and were condemned. Matthew depicts the word of Jesus as having the same effects (Mt 7:24-27) where the reference is to a “house”—an Essene metaphor for the kingdom of God.

In the Damascus Rule the Master instructs everyone in the congregation, examines them in counsel with the assembly to assess and grade them and inscribes them each year in their rank. The Damascus Rule specifically orders, “He shall not rebuke the men of the pit nor dispute with them”, meaning those outside the community, especially the wealthy—the Sadducees—and orders him not to give them any doctrine:

He shall conceal the teaching of the law from men of deceit, but shall impart a knowledge of truth and righteous judgement to those who have chosen the way.

These restrictions are qualified by the Master’s song of blessing to God which contains the line, “I will not grapple with the men of perdition until the day of vengeance”, evidently permitting disputation on that day if no other. The scenes in the gospels of Jesus disputing with Sadducees and Pharisees are false except those in the temple after he has captured it. Jesus then thought the day of vengeance had come and that he was allowed to tell the men of the pit what he thought of them. Previous disputes featured in the gospels arose within the Nazarene community, with Jesus in his role as Master instructing novitiates, except those where he taught in parables which were intended to enlighten those who had ears to hear but, as Mark says, conceal doctrine from others, and so must have been spoken in public.

The Master is the one who had to keep God’s appointed times and watch for the signs of the coming visitation by God:

He shall be zealous for God’s appointed time for His Day of Vengeance… He shall constantly watch for the judgement of god.

The sectaries took literally God’s prescription in Joshua 1:8:

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.

The oft mentioned “Book of Meditations” of the scroll texts is revealed as the books of Moses, the Pentateuch or Torah. The Essenes had to recite from the book of the law continuously, by day and by night. To keep the recitations going by night, the congregation had to watch together in a rosta for a third of every night of the year, and the Master had to lead prayers:

at dawn and at dusk and at the various watches of the night and the days of the new moon.

And, finally:

He shall perform the will of God in all his works and shall freely delight in ought that befalls him.

Jesus warned that the day of vengeance was nigh. When he decided it had arrived he entered Jerusalem as a king. He watched and prayed throughout the night for God’s judgement in the Garden of Gethsemane. At the end he admitted he was a failed prophet and stoically accepted his fate.