Christian principle—If you like it, you can’t do it!

Menehem and the Son of God 2

The Two Martyrs
A Period in Favour

The Two Martyrs

The same indignity occurs in Revelation (Rev 11:3-6; 7-9; 11-12) where two witnesses perform the same miracles as the one true prophet of the Oracles of Hystaspes, are slain, lie for three days in the streets of “a great city, which is allegorically called Sodom and Egypt, where our Lord was crucified”. Is this a separate incident from either the death of Jesus or the one described in the Oracle of Hystaspes? It seems to be, for here were two witnesses, matching the Essene tradition of two messiahs, a princely one and a priestly one. The tradition of Zechariah (4:11,14) is of two messiahs, (“two anointed”) described as two olive trees, and Revelation 11:4 describes the two witnesses as two olive trees.

The two witnesses of Revelation were killed off by a beast from “abyssos”, meaning the depths of the sea or the depths of the earth. The second beast, Augustus, of Revelation 13 comes from the earth, but the first beast is from the sea. Again, it is not now Antony, but the empire, so either interpretation of “abyssos” suggests the witnesses were killed by Romans. The author of Revelation added, “where our Lord was crucified” to the earlier source, thereby making the great city “called Sodom and Egypt” into Jerusalem. Was Jerusalem ever regarded as Egypt, even if it was the metaphorical Sodom? Possibly the “great city” was the Essene camp at Qumran.

The situation of the story of the two witnesses in Revelation 11 is set in the first two verses, which mention the temple, its altar, worshippers and the outer court. The temple, its altar and worshippers were to be measured but not the outer court given over to the nations. Augustus’s soldiers went into Judaea when Herod died to quell a major revolt lasting five months and only put down in August. The soldiers entered the court of the nations, plundered the treasury and torched some administrative buildings or storerooms. They did not enter the Holy Places, perhaps under order from Herod’s son, Archelaus, against whom the revolt was directed. Even so, the damage done was was the basis of the allegation in the Oracle of Hystaspes that the false prophet would try to destroy the temple. Thus, this historical event matches the allusion in Revelation 11:1-2 to the spatial and temporal situation of the subsequent two-witness story.

R H Charles and other eminent scholars concluded long ago that Revelation made use of one or more earlier Jewish sources. Chunks of the book are full of Semiticisms suggesting a likely Aramaic source. It seems reasonable to imagine Jews escaping from the suppression of the revolt and fleeing to Asia Minor, where many Jews already lived, and Persian influence remained marked. There they harboured a hatred of Augustus and Rome. As A Yarbro Collins suggested, some devolted themselves to anti-Roman propaganda, and their hatred of Rome became a source of early Christian converts.

Quintillius Varus, the governor of Syria, took two legions into Judaea to suppress the uprising. Naturally, the governor and military leader stood for the emperor, which is why Augustus is said in the Oracle of Hystaspes to have come from Syria. Varus crucified 2000 rebels and others were enslaved. These events are mentioned in the pseudepigraph, the Assumption of Moses, where the mighty king of the west personally does every wicked deed, though it was really done by his lieutenants.

The tradition of two martyrs or messiahs seems emphatically Essene, as it is alluded to widely in the Qumran literature, so it does not seem outrageous to look for historical evidence of the death of two Essene leaders about this time. If they died in the uprising on Herod’s death, they must have been active in Herod’s reign. This is just when the messianic hymns were written according to palaeography, and they describe someone with the power of royalty rather than of ritual and the sacerdotal. But, Essene tradition necessitated a priestly twin.

The Book of Daniel has in it prophecies of beasts that sound similar to the ones in the Oracle of Hystaspes and in Revelation. Daniel was written about 165 BC and refers, under the guise of prophecies of beasts, to the Seleucid kings oppressing the Jews at the time. What is interesting is that it too has allusions that look directly to be to the Essenes, described as “saints”, the people who are perfectly holy. The fourth beast of Daniel “made war with the saints” and defeated them (Dan 7:21), and we also find:

He shall wear out the saints of the most high.
Dan 7:25

He shall destroy mighty men and the people of the saints.
Dan 8:24

The anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the city and the sanctuary shall be destroyed.
Dan 9:26

This last reference to a messiah was not observed upon by Jewish commentators, a surprising fact unless it was not there. Jerome, however noticed it and took it to mean Jesus. It suggests it is a late interpolation, and, if so, then the less notable references to saints could also be. These then seem like first century interpolations acceptable to Christians as successors to the Essenes, in fact or in principle. The same might be true of the suffering servant passages of Isaiah 53:3-4, 9, 12. They are so closely similar to the descriptions of the author of the messianic hymns, it has to be considered whether scriptural passages were made to refer to him by interpolating verses. The Essenes of Qumran seemed to have had a copying industry, so after the death of the Essene leader, considered a notable man by his followers, references to him could have been written into the scriptures which thus seemed to prophesy him. Then other allusions in Daniel, notably the one like unto the son of man who sat on a throne in heaven and would come on the clouds would have been seen to refer to him, and in this form, he could mythically return to destroy the beast that had seemed to destroy him—Rome.

If these ideas of Knohl are right, then there was an Essene leader who died a generation before Jesus to whom similar legends had been attached. These legends and expectations could therefore have been attached to Jesus as a successor to the earlier hero by his own followers, or even by later Christians who knew of the earlier tradition. Maybe the two amount to the same thing, later Christians attributing the earlier traditions to Jesus in ignorance.

The gospel Jesus is a Galilean by upbringing though a Judaean by birth, yet the New Testament itself disparages the idea that a messiah could be a Galilean. Messiahs did not come from Galilee. It was not part of Judaea, had not been Jewish by religion until the people were forcibly converted in the previous century, just as the hated Idumaeans, of which Herod was an example, were, and Galileans were considered as unsophisticated yokels. The band of rebels founded by Judas the Galilean were not necessarily Galileans because the name came from the founder not from the place of birth of the membership. Judas might have began with a band of Galilean men, but he eventually operated in Judaea, and then it is fair to assume his bandits were not particularly Galilean. In any case, Galilean meant “provincial” generally and need not have meant the particular province called Province, Galilee. It was a pejorative word like heathen or pagan, implying yokel. It is possible Judas was involved in this rebellion against Archelaus, though he is not noted by Josephus for another ten years when Archelaus had to give up the monarchy. Anyway, Jesus was described as a Galilean, and had a messianic outlook from somewhere. Knohl’s evidence is that it was from the Essenes. As the Essenes were also rebels preparing for a holy war, the likelihood that the Galileans were linked with them cannot be escaped.

In many details, the gospels are inconsistent about Jesus’s own conception of his messiahood. In the fourth gospel, written last and many years into Christianity, Jesus is confident he is the messiah, and even God. This Jesus is much more like the author of the Self-Glorification hymn than the self-effacing man of the synoptic gospels. Matthew and Luke contrive, by adding their birth narratives, to announce the messiahship of Jesus long before he could have been aware of it personally—as a human being, that is—on the occasion of his entry into the world. By the time he is an adult begiining his mission, it is forgotten by everyone, including his mother. In Mark, which has no birth narrative, God personally announces who Jesus is when John baptized him, but no one else heard the divine voice, we have to believe, or they forgot about it instantly. Jesus has to remind his chief assistant, Peter (Mk 8:27, 29-31), but hereafter, if Jesus saw himself as the son of Man of Daniel, he never let on, always speaking of the son of Man in the third person, not the first.

If Jesus knew he was the messiah, the synoptic gospels suggest he wanted to keep it a secret. Scholars, even Christian ones like Rudolf Bultmann, have explained this by denying that Jesus knew he was the messiah. It was his burden, though he was not aware of it for most of his ministry, these Christian scholars thought. Yet keeping his messiahship secret in a country occupied by a hated and a ruthless enemy made sense. A messiah was a king, and the Romans could not tolerate any rival to Caesar, whether the Caesar was Augustus or Tiberius. Jesus and his disciples could have believed he was the messiah, but seen the sense of keeping it dark until the time was right to reveal it.

R Bultmann and G Vermes, to name but two top scholars, can see no tradition of a dying messiah in Judaism up to the first century BC. A prospective messiah could predict death and resurrection for himself and everyone alive at the End Time when God destroyed the wicked world, and when the wicked world did not go but the messiah did, memories could have adjusted the prophecy from the end of the world to his own end. Besides that, though, the Dead Sea Scrolls as elucidated historically by Knohl, testify to legends of death and resurrection, and the event can be traced to the death of Herod. The Essenes in the first century AD did have a tradition of messiahs who had died and been resurrected. They rationalized it by reference to the scriptures, possibly inserting verses appropriate to their own leader. One who was “despised and rejected by men” yet would be glorified to a throne in heaven was an Essene tradition.

It is plain in the Self-Glorification hymn, and the Oracle of Hystaspes says the great prophet of God arose “after the third day”. In Revelation, the two martyrs arose after three and a half days, a reflexion of the time, two times and half a time of Daniel, but the original tradition must have pertained to the time the spirit remained with the body, which was three days, a Persian tradition. So, the Oracle of Hystaspes, with its three days, was original. In the case of the two martyrs of Revelation, they too were left for three days in the street, no doubt because the tradion of three days was widespread. The spirit had the ignominy of being attached to a body open to decay, savaging by carion dogs and birds, and to the inquisitive eyes of curious onlookers, before it could depart. It is possible, once Jesus realized that he must die that he likened himself to the earlier two Essene martyrs, or his disciples did subsequently.

Christians, devoid of honesty because they think what they have been told by other Christians in their lives is sufficient for truth, will always disparage any attempts to get historical explanations for the events recorded, or misrecorded, in their holy books. Israel Knohl is aware of it and firmly points out that whether or not Christians accept plausible reconstructions of the history surrounding the foundation of Christianity, there is simply no getting away from the plain evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls that Christian language and beliefs in such contradictions as simultaneosu glorification and suffering already existed among the Essenes in the decades preceding the initial Easter events of the Christian religion. Except for Christian struthiomimic behaviour, the fact that much of what was believed to have been singularly Christian is not is easily demonstrable. It is only not now well known because believers in religions are not to be offended, even when they believe what is demonstrably false, so false religious belief cannot be plainly exposed in public and especially not in schools. So when Christians allege that this or that historical detail pertaining to the Essenes and Christian origins is wrong or unproven, they might sometimes be right, but that does not dispose of the indisputable similarities between Essene and Christian beliefs even if Christians will never accept any dependency. Historical reconstructions at this distance can never be precise, but we can be certain we are trying to build them from the proper material rather than ignoring it for fireside stories given us when we we children, albeit with the empty reassurance that they carry God’s imprint of verification.

A Period in Favour

The author of the Self-Glorification hymn portrays himself, as he is writing in the first person, as the “beloved of the king” where the context is clear that God is king, and His angels are his sons. The ancient practice was to regard the local god as the tribe or city’s true king, the human king simply being the god’s regent on earth. God in the Jewish scriptures sometimes is called king but “beloved of the king” does not appear, though “beloved of God” does. Similarly, angels in the scriptures are sons of God but never sons of the king. It suggests a deliberate ambiguity in the writing of the Self-Glorification hymn, and Knohl suggests that, while God was intended as the king, the verses were meant to be read as if they meant the local king on earth, and his sons too. The local king was Herod. Here was an Essene leader favoured by Herod, and treated as a courtier being on a par with the king’s sons, the royal princes. Josephus has Herod favouring the Essenes, but some of the Qumran archaeology indicates they fell out of favour before Herod died. What could have been the cause of this apparent change of fortune?

Well, the temple was being constructed from about 20 BC, and Herod needed Essenes, who were skilled, hard working and above all priests, to build the Holy Places of the temple. When this work was done, ordinary labourers would have sufficed. Moreover, the Essenes secretly hated Herod, and the king’s spies might have had some intelligence about this, putting the notoriously paranoid Herod on his guard. So, Essenes had a reputation as builders while Herod was building the temple. Curious then that Jesus was allegedly a builder, the Greek tekton (compare “architect”, “chief builder”) of the New Testament meaning builder rather than carpenter, though carpenters were also builders, of course.

So, what was Herod’s court like? Persian customs were still followed. The king’s court consisted of a core of senior counsellors called “the friends of the king” or “the king’s beloved”. It came from the practice introduced by Darius the Great of having six special counsellors or princes called “king’s friends”. Alexander’s generals accepted the same habit in Hellenistic courts like Herod’s. The king’s friends were also the senior court of law, so king’s friends were usually judges too. The author of the Self-Glorification hymn writes:

Who associates with me, and thus compares with my judgement?

Here was a man who knew the earthly court of the local king, and pictured himself in the same seat in God’s court in heaven.

When Josephus explained why Herod favoured the Essenes, it was not because he wanted builder priests to build Holy Places but because an Essene called Menehem had prophesied his future success though he was yet still a boy. If true, it must have been in the sixties BC, but stories like this were de rigeur for great men in the Hellenistic world. What is important is that Josephus tells us that Menehem had a reputation as a prophet, and the Essenes did indeed claim to continue the Jewish prophetic tradition. Menehem indicated his prophecy to Herod by addressing him, a private citizen, as “king of the Jews”. The young Herod was confused, but Menehem explained his vision, leaving Herod, who had had no such thoughts until then, unimpressed. Later when Herod had power over Palestine, he called Menehem to him to ask how long he would reign. The Essene refused to be other than vague, saying twenty to thirty years, which left Herod happy enough, so he kept Menehem among his circle of friends, and held Essenes generally in esteem (Josephus, Antiquities 15).

Herod was seventy when he died, and Menehem must have been over ten years older, and must have been already about sixty when Herod began to rebuild the temple. Essenes retired at sixty, according to their own customs, and the Nasi retired at fifty—the reason why people could say to Jesus “You are not yet fifty” (Jn 8:57). It seems safe therefore to reject the prophetic tale as Hellenistic romance and accept that Menehem, the king’s friend, was a younger man, and even younger than Herod himself. Unless there were two—or more—Menehems!

Why wouldn’t Herod have trained the official class of priests, the Sadducees, to build the holy places? Well, it is unlikely that the noble families who were the Sadducees would have wanted to be trained as common working men, but, more important, the Sadducees were loyal to the royal family of Hasmonaeans whom Herod had displaced. He had married into the old royal family, but was still loathed by their supporters, and Herod could not trust them. The Essenes were sons of toil whom he could win over by a few favours and use to his own advantage. As far as the Essenes were concerned, the Hasmonaeans had persecuted them, as they had most people at some time or another, so they were glad to be shot of them. Knohl sees the second of the messianic hymns to be a eulogy of the period of peace and propsperity that Herod brought about. Herod was a hard man who had stopped the civil wars in Palestine that had been raging on and off for a century, and had brought in a type of “New Deal” under which the landless could be employed on grand public projects, building castles, palaces, cities and ultimately the temple itself.

The hymn speaks of “casting down the lofty assemblies of the eternally proud”, and “casting down the haughty spirit”, broad sentiments no doubt, but with a particular reference to the Hasmonaeans and their Sadducaean supporters whom the Essenes loathed. In contrast, it praises God for lifting up those who stumble, those who are poor and in the dust, thanking Him that “wickedness perishes”, “oppression ceases”, “deceit ends”, “light appears”, “joy pours forth”, “grief disappears and groaning flees, peace appears, terror ceases”, “iniquity ends”, “affliction ceases”, “injustice is removed”, and there is “guilt no more”. Perhaps this is an idealized vision, but it is paired with the Self-Glorification hymn suggesting a unity, plausibly meant to reflect the prosperity of the Herodian era after centuries of calamities, especially, so the Essenes thought, for them.

Yet what is curious about the whole scene, if it is correct, is that the Dead Sea Scrolls show that the Essenes hated the Romans, and were convinced they would be the agents of Roman destruction. Herod was a Roman puppet who ostentatiously demonstrated his loyalty to Rome by building modern cities like Caesarea and Tiberias, named after Roman emperors, Augustus Caesar and Tiberius, Augustus’s successor. Yet the Essene leader, Menehem was a “friend” of Herod. Odd? Not really because the Essenes were a secret organization. Menehem was effectively a mole awaiting the day of God’s vengeance:

These are the rules for the teacher in those times with respect to his loving and hating. Everlasting hatred for the men of perdition in spirit of secrecy… and meekness before him who lords it over him to be a man zealous for the law and its time, the day of vengeance.
1QS 9:21-23

The pacifism of the Essenes was only a provisional pacifism which would end on the day of vengeance.
Israel Knohl, The Messiah Before Jesus, 2000

Like modern born-again Christians, the Essenes were patiently working and waiting, ready for the signs which would signify the arrival of the day of God’s vengeance—transmuted by Paul into the absurd Rapture. On the day of God’s vengeance, Essenes would rise up in holy war against God’s adversaries who were, of course, theirs too, then they would be joined by the hosts of heaven, arriving at the last minute like the cavalry, to secure the world against evil. It is obviously what Jesus himself was expecting in the Garden of Gethsemane. Until that day, Essenes were pious monks simply evangelizing and recruiting devotees with the promise of everlasting bliss in heaven, but otherwise scratching a living from the parched land and from trade.