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Christian and Essene Common Features 3

Scroll Language in Early Christian Documents
Christian Language in the Scrolls

Abstract

The Essenes held assemblies and congregations, words translated as “church”. Jesus says, “tell it to the church” (Matthew 18:17) before there was a Christian church. We infer that Jesus was an Essene. Essenes also had bishops, deacons, elders, priests, disciples, scriptures, gospels, epistles, psalms, hymns, mystery, allegory, and so on, long before Christianity. Both communities used the same phraseology. Christ and his apostles had nothing to originate with respect to doctrines, precepts, church polity, or ecclesiastical terms. The Essenes and Christians could not have existed at the same time as separate institutions, they were too similar. The latter must have emerged from the former. There are differences, particularly those indicated in Christian documents, though some were later changes by the gentile Church. Others are genuine because Nazarenes were a variety of Essenes. Notes on the common features between Essenes and Christians

Scroll Language in Early Christian Documents

We noted above that Jewish scholar, Geza Vermes, finds no parallels in traditional Jewish literature with the Qumran “Rules” but several with early Christian literature. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is a non-canonical work which in its philosophy and expression seems to be a bridge between Christianity and the community of Qumran. Dr R H Charles, who translated the Testaments and dated them as early as 100 BC, thought there were many echoes of the Testaments in the gospels and even more in the Epistles of Paul—over 70 words are common to Paul’s writings and the Testaments which do not appear anywhere else in the New Testament. The words “meekness” and “mercy” occur often.

At one point the Testaments speak of “a man who reneweth the Law in the power of the Most High” being called a deceiver and “not knowing his dignity” slain thereby “taking innocent blood through wickedness”. It goes on to say…

…your holy places shall be laid waste even to the ground because of him. And ye shall have no place that is clean, but ye shall be among the gentiles a curse and a dispersion until he shall again visit you and in pity shall receive you through faith and water.

These sound like references to Jesus, the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews in 70 AD but it could perhaps refer to the Teacher of Righteousness and the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 BC. The Testaments repeatedly uses the Greek word “Christos” which, of course, could refer to Jesus but equally could simply mean messiah. Particularly impressive is the similarity of Matthew 25:35-36 with a passage from the Testament of Joseph. The latter has lines like:

I was beset by hunger and the Lord himself nourished me. I was sick and the Lord visited me. I was alone and God comforted me…

While Matthew has:

I was hungry and you gave me food. I was sick and you visited me. I was a stranger and you welcomed me…
Matthew 25:34f

Passages of the Sermon on the Mount are also anticipated. It promises that the poor shall be made rich. The reader is urged to love God and “to love your neighbour as thyself”. This doctrine seems to have become popular around that time. It appears in the Book of Jubilees and in the Zadokite documents—The Damascus Document has:

They shall love each man his brother as himself. They shall succour the poor, the sick and the needy.

And it was was offered by Rabbi Hillel, when challenged to teach the Torah as succinctly as possible, in the form:

What is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow. This is the whole Law.

Another early work was the Two Ways which also was not included in the canon and subsequently was lost. Later scholars found a Greek manuscript called the Didache or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. It began “There are two ways…” and appeared to be the missing document. It was manifestly a Christian work, but portions of a Latin version were also found with scarcely any Christian references. Though Jesus is mentioned there is no indication of atonement indicating its early date. Besides doctrines like the Way of Light and the Way of Darkness and the sacrament of baptism, it refers to the sacred meal of bread and wine and looks very much like a Christian adaptation of an early, presumably Essene, work.

Interestingly, a work that was regarded as canonical in the first few centuries of the Christian era is the Shepherd of Hermas where a Son of God features but is never referred to as Jesus or Christ. Furthermore, the church spoken of by Hermas has a long history before the Son of God was sent to purify it and to recall it to God’s commandments—it was not founded by the Son of God. Hermas also mentions the Didache and the Two Ways confirming our deduction above. Atonement was by baptism. This sounds very much like a Nazarene or an Essene text.

The conclusion from the body of evidence presented here must be that the Nazarenes and the Essenes had almost everything in common. Certainly, there are differences, particularly those indicated in Christian documents. Some are differences that are phony because they have been introduced by the gentile Church. The others are genuine differences because the Nazarenes were a branch of the Essenes. Mainly, these all come to a relaxation of the exclusiveness of the Essenes. Yet even this might have been a part of the Essene philosophy in the sense that it allowed for the recruitment of the Simple of Ephraim to the Elect as described in the Nahum Peshar. When the diviners considered the time right a Nasi was sent out into the community to test the mettle of the Simple. This safeguarded the Essenes as a whole while allowing God to show whether the auguries were correct or not. John the Baptist was one such, Jesus was his heir. Jesus’s success led him to think God was with him but then he failed in the north. He concluded he had not been positive enough and captured Zion itself. He was mistaken or forsaken—but his effort did not pass unnoticed.

The word Christianity was not used until about 50 AD in Antioch (Acts 11:26). Subsequent to then, and during the earlier move from Palestine, the original movement mutated into the Christianity we now know, but the foundations in the manuscripts of Qumran seem clear. The change was from a narrowly Jewish, nationalistic, xenophobic and apocalyptic sect attached to the Mosaic Law, to one which was cosmopolitan, free of legal obligations, dependent only on faith and pacifist. It was not a simple change and required the talents of an exceptional man to effect it. But in the wider Empire the soil was fertile and ready to yield to a vigorous plant. The Nazarene movement became Paulinised.

Christian Language in the Scrolls

Some Scroll fragments are of hymns to the poor. The Qumran literature frequently refers to the Community as the Poor, the Meek and the Downtrodden, words all used frequently in the gospels. Like English, Hebrew has different words for them but in the scrolls they seem to be used interchangeably. One of the Community’s names for itself was the “Poor Ones”. The Star prophecy of the War Scroll reads that:

by the hand of the Poor Ones whom you have redeemed by Your Power and the peace of Your Mighty Wonders… by the hand of the Poor Ones and those bent in the dust, You will deliver the enemies of all the lands and humble the mighty of the peoples to bring upon their heads the reward of the Wicked and justify the Judgement of Your Truth on all the sons of men…

Can it be coincidence that the Poor Ones was a name of the followers of James in the Jerusalem Church (Gal 2:10 and Jas 2:3-5)? Paul claims the only condition James imposed upon him in his missions to the gentiles was to remember the poor. It sounds patronising, as though James is reminding Paul that motherhood is a good thing. In fact, he is reminding him to send money for the Poor Ones in Jerusalem, the Nazarenes who still had a lot of widows to support.

In his Ecclesiastical History written in the fourth century, Eusebius describes a deviant Christian sect, the Ebionites, who held the brother of Jesus, James the Just, in special regard. They refused to accept that Jesus was divine but thought of him as an ordinary man, naturally conceived and notable for his righteousness but having no divine aspects. They did not accept that faith was sufficient to save and were therefore careful to observe the Law in addition—”…they evinced great zeal to observe the literal sense of the Law”. They had no regard at all for Paul. Eusebius thought their name came from their “low and mean opinions” of Christ—Ebionites comes from the word Ebionim meaning the Poor Ones. They could have been none other than the remnants of the Jerusalem Church of James the Just perpetuating the name used by the Nazarenes, the Essenes and James himself.

The Scrolls also use the same curious expression that Jesus the Nazarene uses in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3) but has never before been found in any ancient work and was long thought to have been a mistranslation—”the poor in spirit”. It appears in the War Scroll and in the Community Rule.

Other Scroll fragments are replete with Christian imagery. One focuses on the Righteous, the Pious, the Meek and the Faithful, all synonyms for those who follow the Way of the Community. Echoing the Damascus Document, it says God visits the Meek and calls the Righteous by name. God’s spirit hovers over the Meek announcing to them “Glad tidings” and He makes the Root of Planting grow. The messiah “shepherds the holy ones” and he commands the “heavens and the earth” including the “Heavenly Host”. The fragments contain references to “making the blind see”, “raising up the downtrodden” and “resurrecting the dead”. The Pious (Hasidim) are glorified on the Throne of the Eternal Kingdom. In some of the fragments the bones passage of Ezekiel is used to promise resurrection for the Pious and the Righteous.

Jesus taught “love thy neighbour as thyself” (cf James 2:8) and “love the Lord thy God”. Josephus in Antiquities says John the Baptist taught “Righteousness toward men and Piety towards God” and also notes this as Essene practice. Scroll fragments tell us the Community’s notion of Piety meant “loving God’s name”. Thus Essene teaching and the teaching of Jesus amount to the same thing. Both the Epistle of James and the Qumran texts associate piety with poorness and meekness and they and the gospels declare that wealth is not compatible with righteousness.

Isaiah 11.2 has:

The Spirit of the Lord would settle on him

the origin of the imagery at Jesus’s baptism. The scrolls have the same but expressed even more explicitly:

The Holy Spirit settled on His Messiah.

Here the Spirit of the Lord becomes the Holy Spirit and the recipient of it, His Messiah, is explicit.

Other fragmentary texts convey to us that “Perfection” language is important to the Community. Thus the scrolls and fragments have “the Perfect of the Way”, “Perfection of the Way”, “walking in Perfection” and “perfect Holiness” (cf 2 Corinthians 7:1). This may be compared with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:48):

Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.

”The Way” terminology also illustrated in these expressions and very common in the scrolls is similarly echoed in Acts (see 16:16, 18:24f, 24:22). The Epistle of Barnabas is a second century Christian but non-canonical work full of Qumran expressions such as The Way of Light, the Way of Darkness, the Way of Holiness, the Way of Death, keeping the Law, Righteousness, the Last Judgement, Uncircumcised Heart, Dark Lord and such.

Paul is very fond of Essene words. 2 Corinthians 6:14-15 is purely Essene even to the use of the word Belial, the Essene word for Satan, the only place it ever appears in the New Testament.

The “many” or the “majority” are common New Testament expressions usually for groups of Christians. An equivalent expression occurs in the sectarian documents and is often translated “congregation”. Equally the Essene documents refer to people in some sort of official role translated as “overseer” or “guardian”. It is the word which was rendered into Greek as “bishop”.

In Daniel 2:44 (possibly related to Luke 21:20) Daniel prophesies that God will set up a kingdom which will last forever. Qumran scroll fragments speak of an Eternal Kingdom ruled by a messiah, the Son of God or the Son of the Most High, whose “rule will be an eternal rule”. Compare this with Luke 1:32-35:

He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give him the Throne of his father David… for that reason the Holy offspring will be called the Son of God.

We have seen that, in the bible, Son of God is a designation of a great king like David (Ps 2:7, Ps 89:27 and 2 Sam 7:14 and also Heb 1:5 and 5:5). From some scroll fragments, we find the Eternal Kingdom will be an earthly one and that the Son of God will judge the earth and bring peace by subjugating all other kingdom’s and peoples. The people of God will make “everyone to rest from the sword” so there will be peace on earth. The “sword of God” is a phrase met in the War Scroll. This imagery recalls that of Matthew,

I come not to send peace but a sword.

Besides the sword of war there is also the sword of judgement but here its contrast with peace makes the meaning clear. The sword of war is necessary to initiate the kingdom which then brings the sword of judgement and finally peace.

In parts of another document, there is a set of beatitudes like those of the Sermon on the Mount. Indeed, the Sermon on the Mount is remarkably reminiscent of Qumran. Some similarities have been noted. Remarkable also is the set of assertions in the Sermon on the Mount introduced by “You have heard it was said—” and linked to their rebuttal by “…but I say to you…” One Qumran document, apparently a letter, lays out a set of 22 false interpretations of Law and their rebuttal. The interesting thing about it is that it uses almost the same language as the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. A series of assertions are prefaced “You say…” and are answered by arguments preceded by “But we think—” in essence the same as Jesus does on the Mount.

We have seen the concern of the community for truth. Jesus teaches that oaths are unnecessary because no one should ever tell lies (Matthew 5:33-37). The Community Rule calls the group “the community of Truth”. They rail against “The lie”. Josephus says they refused to swear on oath and were excused from taking the oath of loyalty to Herod. The Sermon on the Mount includes the duty to turn the other cheek towards an aggressor and this too is an Essene precept, as we have noted.

These are not cranky or irreligious observations. James C Vanderkam, a Catholic scholar, has seen these similarities too in The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, where he writes almost identically:

Another section that offers several Qumran-sounding words and phrases is the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. One of these expressions is “poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3; War Rule 14.7). Among the attitudes encouraged in the Sermon are avoiding the use of oaths (5:33-37), which, according to Josephus in Antiquities was an Essene trait, and the duty to turn the other cheek (5:38-39, Manual of Discipline 10.17-18). Moreover, the antitheses in the Sermon (“you have heard that it was said… but I say to you…”) remind one of the way in which the still-unpublished legal “letter” (Some of the Works of the Torah = 4QMMT) introduces disagreements between the sect and its opponents—“you know… we think/say”.

Page Tags: Christians, Essenes, Proto-Christians, Scroll Language, Early Christian Documents, Zadokite, Gentiles, Jesus, Common Features, Christianity, Christians, Qumran, Messiah, Apocalypticism, Kingdom, Scrolls, Righteous, Righteousness, Teacher, Righteous One

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.