From ralphw@thebox.rain.com Sun Jun 16 02:16:26 1991 From: ralphw@thebox.rain.com (Ralph Winston) Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.mideast,alt.activism,soc.history,soc.misc Subject: Whatever Happened to the Dead Sea Scrolls? [part 1] Date: 12 Jun 91 08:57:28 GMT Organization: TheBox - Public Access Xenix *** Whatever Happened to the Dead Sea Scrolls? *** By Martin A. Larson, Ph.D. _____________________________________________________________________ Dr. Martin A. Larson is the author of 25 books dealing with religious history, church-state issues and taxation, and is also a financial columnist. This text is taken from Dr. Larson's lecture at the 1981 International Revisionist Conference, in Los Angeles. Dr. Larson gave an update on the Scrolls at the 1987 Revisionist Conference. There has been no change in the situation as described in this pamphlet by Dr. Larson. _____________________________________________________________________ Let us first summarize some of the known facts concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls and their authors, the religious organization known as the Essenes, which existed in Judaea and the nearby desert from about 192 B.C. to the date of their extinction and destruction in 69 or 70 A.D., when the Roman armies marched through Palestine and finally destroyed Jerusalem. Throughout its existence, the Essene sect was opposed to the Jewish authorities. Although it accepted the Scriptures which constitute the Old Testament, it revised, rewrote, or completely reinterpreted them. Also, what is even more significant and important, the Essenes gradually absorbed various elements from other sources, such as Zoroastrianism and Pythagoreanism. As a result, they prepared an entire corpus of original scripture which was not only a definite departure from official Judaism, but in basic contradiction to, and a repudiation of, this system of doctrine and ritual. By 143 B.C., as we learn from Josephus, three distinct groups had been fully developed in the Jewish population: they were the Essenes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees, of whom the last represented the wealthy, upper-class Jews, who had embraced Epicureanism as their philosophy. Original Cultic Scriptures During the period from 192 to 60 B.C., the Essenes produced a great corpus of literature under the inspiration of leaders known from generation to generation as The Teacher of Righteousness. He was also called the Holy Great One, and was given other titles signifying revelatory powers as direct conduits of messages from the Supreme God of the Universe, who, by the way, was something quite different from Jehovah, the tribal god of the Jews. Extremely interesting is the fact that two very important documents - _The Book of Enoch_ and _The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs _ were well known among the early Christians and accepted by them as sacred literature of their own. Scholars had no suspicion that these, although widely used in later periods, were produced by the Essenes until the Scrolls were discovered near the Dead Sea in 1947. Since hundreds of fragments of these documents were found in the caves, it became obvious that they were among the very important scriptures composed and used by the Essenes themselves. Persecution and Separation Whatever else we may consider as firmly established, it is certain that under the reign of Hyrcanus, who was affiliated with the Pharisees previous to 104 B.C., there was persistent persecution of the Essenes, partly because of doctrinal deviations but perhaps even more because of their condemnations of the Jewish authorities, who frequently invaded neighboring territories and forced people there to accept Judaism and circumcision on pain of persecution and even death. Thus it was that about 104 B.C., as we learn from Josephus, the Essenes became an esoteric mystery-cult with its own communes, its own code of laws, discipline, and organization, which included a total withdrawal and separation from all public activity. As a result, it became the depository of total religious comitment, living in expectation of the day, not very far in the future, when an all-powerful divine personage would appear, send all of their Jewish persecutors into everlasting torture in hellish dungeons under the surface of the earth, and establish the kingdom of the saints, (the Sons of Light) with its capital in Jerusalem. Under Alexander Jannaeus, who ruled from 103-78 B.C., this hostility and persecution intensified. The Essene documents written during this period are filled with the fiercest denunciations of the Jewish priests and authorities, who not only raided the communes of the Holy Ones and decimated their membership, but were also guilty of constant acts of aggression against their innocent and unoffending neighbors. The documents in our posession which contain this material are _The Habakkuk Commentary_, Parts IV and V of the _Book of Enoch_, and various statements found in _The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs_, the original portions of which were composed while Hyrcanus was king. The Essenes became a secret brotherhood in 104 in order to avoid total extermination; in spite of this, however, their persecution continued; with their members under solemn vows of secrecy, their organization survived and, in time, grew, especially under the comparatively mild regimen which followed the conquest of Judaea by Pompey in 64. The Execution and Deification of the Teacher The climactic event in Essene history occurred in 70 or 69 B.C. At that time, the Teacher of Righteousness - that is, the Essene leader - went boldy into Jerusalem and there, in the very temple itself, he proclaimed and condemned the lawless corruption and aggressions of the priests and authorities who ruled in Israel. He was therefore seized and executed, by what means is not certain, but some scholars believe that he was crucified. Shortly thereafter, the persuasion developed among his followers - until it became actual dogma - that he was the Most High God of the Universe Himself who had appeared for a time as a man among men; that he died a sacrifical death for the redemption of sinners; that he had risen from the grave on the third day; that he had returned to his throne in heaven; and that, before the end of the then existing generation, he would send a representative to the earth. The Essene Revelations Completed Except for a few original documents written after 69 B.C., and the final interpolations added to _The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs_ at the same time, the cult seems at this point to have considered its corpus of literature and revelation complete. The members studied their scriptures in the various communes scattered about Palestine. The Secret Esoteric Order Between 60 B.C. and 69 A.D., the communes, which increased to 4,000 male members, continued with little alteration, while awaiting the coming of the Redeemer. However, as the Romans subjugated Galilee on their southward march toward Jerusalem, they came across various Essene communes and, suspecting the cultists of being a secret and conspiratorial society planning the overthrow of Roman rule, tortured members under interrogation to reveal their secret doctrines. However, as Josephus tells us, they died, smiling, rather than violate their sacred oaths to never, no never, reveal their beliefs to anyone, no matter what the provocation might be. Secreting the Scrolls Then an extraordinary event occurred. As the Romans approached the Dead Sea headquarters at Qumran, the Essenes placed their sacred writings in hundreds of earthen jars, sealed them carefully, and secreted them in various caves located in the rugged terrain. We believe that they expected to return in the not-too-distant future to resume their long-practiced way of life. But, of course, they never did. Was Jesus an Essene? The existence of the Essene cult has long been known from the extensive references to, and descriptions of, them in Josephus, Pliny, and Philo Judaeus. Interestingly enough, Thomas De Quincey, a famous English essayist, declared about 1825 that there never was a separate Essene organization; that the so-called Essenes were simply Christians gone underground; that otherwise we would have to accept the blasphemous conclusion that there were two independent, yet almost identical, revelations at the same time and in the same place. There are scholars who believe that Jesus had been a full-fledged member of the Order; that he was persuaded that He was the personage foretold in their scriptures who would be empowered to establish the Kingdom of Righteousness, and that, therefore, he broke his vow of secrecy and preached the doctrines of the Order in the highways and byways of Galilee. Some scholars are also convinced that not only John the Baptist but also the original core of men who established Christianity had been members of the Order. Some believe in addition that when their communes and headquarters were destroyed by the Romans, many of the Essenes became an integral and decisive element in the formation of the Christian movement. There was, in particular, one segment known as the Ebionites, or the Poor Men, who recreated in detail in their own literature, the doctrines, teachings, and discipline of the Essene communities. Actually, the three Synoptic Gospels, and especially Luke, are studded with statements in complete harmony with the cultic teachings, as is the so-called Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew. The more we study the Dead Sea Scrolls and the early canonical Christian Scriptures, the more striking are the parallels which become evident. We have alredy noted that two important Essene documents were widely accepted by the early Christian converts as genuine scriptures of their own. Perhaps these converts had previously been Essenes. The Great Discovery In 1947, an event of world-shaking significance occured. An Arab shepherd-boy, following a stray goat, entered an aperture on the side of a cliff and stumbled into a cave where the Essenes had secreted a number of jars containing Scrolls. However, few of these were intact; most had been broken, and their contents scattered about the floor, much of the material torn into shreds. Obviously, the caves had been invaded, perhaps several times, with damage which cannot easily be assessed. After the Arabs had recovered two virtually complete manuscripts of _Isaiah_, a copy of the _Manual of Discipline_, _The Thanksgiving Psalms_, _The Habakkuk Commentary_, the _Damascus Document_, and the _War_ Scroll, they sold these to a group in New York; and, in a short time, they were made available to the world in translations by Millar Burrows, Dupont-Sommer, Gaza Vermes, and Theodore Gaster. Many More Scrolls Discovered Then began an archeological search without parallel in religious history. One expedition after another went to the Dead Sea area in search of more Scrolls. One team was headed by Millar Burrows, who states in his _Dead Sea Scrolls_ that material sufficient to fill three large volumes was found in a single cave, cave four, in which two-thirds was original Essene scripture and the remainder consisted of Jewish canonical books. After these were placed in the Jordanian Museum in Jerusalem, an international team of eight scholars was selected to collect, piece together, and prepare for publication this incomparable treasure of source material; of these, four were Roman Catholics; three had Protestant affiliations; and only one, John Marco Allegro, was without personal religious commitment. Without much delay, Allegro translated and published everything committed to him, including the delicate _Copper Scroll_, which listed precious metals and jewels worth millions of dollars secreted somewhere in the desert - where they still remain. However, after he declared in an interview that the Teacher of Righteousness may have been crucified in 70 or 69 B.C., by the Jewish authorities, he was thereafter denied all access to the Scrolls and was not even permitted to visit the Jordanian Museum in which they were kept. He complained bitterly that after years of delay not one line of the Scrolls, in addition to his, were translated and published; and this in spite of the fact that no less than 400 separate documents had been pieced together by 1965 and could just as easily have been given to the world, as were the four or five published shortly after the original discovery. _The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs_ contained a great many passages which had always been considered of Christian origin because they depict a personage in many respects similar to, or almost identical with, the character and mission attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. However, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, this theory became untenable as fragments of the _Testaments_ written nearly a century before the emergence of Christianity were found scattered about the caves which contained the very statements which had always been believed to be Christian interpolations. The Fate of the Scrolls Over the years, until his death, I corresponded with Millar Burrows, who had written a sympathetic review of my book, _The Essene Heritage_, published in 1967. He refused to admit that there was any attempt to delay or prevent the publication of the Scrolls. Once he even declared that the Oxford Press was on the verge of releasing a large volume of this material; but the publishers stated to me in a letter that they had no such project under consideration. Thus, year after year, I kept prodding Burrows on the subject, and his replies became more and more evasive until they ceased altogether. [Continued...] -- TheBox Public Access Xenix - Gresham OR +1 503-669-7291 +1 503-669-7395