Philo's guide to decoding the Hebrew Bible

[Ishtar]

In Antiquities, Book XVIII, Chapter 5, 1 Josephus says:

yet is their course of life better than that of other men; and they entirely addict themselves to husbandry.

Yes, by posting the quote I did, I wasn't meaning that they weren't into animal husbandy. Just that the fact that they were addicted to animal husbandry would not mean ruling out all other forms of work, including pottery. After all, they would have needed pots.

Pliny the Elder never went to Judaea and his source for his writings on the area seems to be Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Octavian's most trusted lieutenant. Agrippa served as governor of Syria as late as 17 BC and died in 12 BC. So, Pliny's data about the Essenes was somewhat dated as compared to Josephus who was living with them in the first century AD.

Well, it's all dated, Min... it's history after all!

I think the earlier the better in this case, because it gives us an earlier attestation than Josephus. It doesn't make it of less value than Josephus's. And it also gets us behind the 1 CE magic marker line - always a plus in my book - and it gets us a few miles down the road from where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

[Ishtar]

What I'm suggesting is that the Essenes weren't involved at all. The Sadducees were a kind of revolutionary party either created by the Maccabees or perhaps just a ruling elite and were primarily writing to create a Jewish bible that justified the Sadducees as righteous leaders.

The problem they would have run into is that the Pharisees were still too authoritative over doctrinal matters to completely push aside so the Zadokite documents stayed out of the OT. i still think that the Essenes Zealots etc more likely grew out of the Pharisee side of the equation. They were disaffected minority groups while the Sadducees were quite happy with the status quo what with them having all the money and being in charge.

I see your point, but given Pliny's evidence, I don't think we can rule out the Essenes just yet ... and also the Sadducees were pushed out, weren't they? I'm going by Acharya's account ...

Also, Origen connected the Zealots to the Essenes, and the Zealots, I think, are very similar to the Zadokites.

[Minimalist]

Yes, by posting the quote I did, I wasn't meaning that they weren't into animal husbandy. Just that the fact that they were addicted to animal husbandry would not mean ruling out all other forms of work, including pottery. After all, they would have needed pots.

Reasonable...but speculative since neither Josephus nor anyone else gives any hint of it. More to the point is that Josephus does not indicate any communal activity dedicated to the copying of texts. When you think about it, the reason for medieval christian monks to copy old texts was that they were preserving the scribal traditions which had created those works in the first place.

In the first century AD there would have been no need. There would have been enough scribes in the society to meet the needs of the society.

Magen and Peleg note that Qumran was at various times a fort and a pottery factory. That is not to say that a group of squatters could not have come along and occupied the site later on...especially if the water flow was not interrupted it almost makes sense. But this whole construction of a Qumran Essene monastery flows from the single fact that the scrolls were found nearby. It could simply be a coincidence because the very fact that the scrolls were not found until 1947 validates the decision of whoever wanted to hide them that he had indeed found a good hiding spot.

[Minimalist]

I don't think we can rule out the Essenes just yet

Rule them out as what?

[seeker]

The Sadducees were the party favored by the Greeks and Romans, they were never really fully out of power. Even the Zadokite documents show their heroes interacting comfortably with their Greek rulers, its always the Pharisees who are the villains.

From an Essene point of view the association with the Dead Sea Scrolls doesn't make a lot of sense. The portrait Josephus paints of the Essenes was of a group whose leanings were communal and monastic, completely the opposite of the Sadducees who were hedonistic and tended to be wealthy. The Essenes would never have presented Sadducees as righteous ir capable of producing a 'Teacher of Righteousness'.

A very telling line in the Zadokite Document: And the sons of Zadok are the elect of Israel called by 3 the name, that are holding office in the end of the days.

It is that notion that the Sons of Zadok would be holding office that excludes the Essenes in my mind. The Sadducees were the office holders.

[Ishtar]

I don't think we can rule out the Essenes just yet

Rule them out as what?

As the owners, if not the writers, of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Josephus tells us that:

They also take great pains in studying the writings of the ancients, and choose out of them what is most for the advantage of their soul and body; and they inquire after such roots and medicinal stones as may cure their distempers....

Moreover, he swears to communicate their doctrines to no one any otherwise than as he received them himself; that he will abstain from robbery, and will equally preserve the books belonging to their sect, and the names of the angels (5) [or messengers]....

2. There are also those among them who undertake to foretell things to come, (7) by reading the holy books, and using several sorts of purifications, and being perpetually conversant in the discourses of the prophets; and it is but seldom that they miss in their predictions....

[Minimalist]

Also, Origen connected the Zealots to the Essenes, and the Zealots, I think, are very similar to the Zadokites.

Origen also wrote:

For in the 18th book of his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus bears witness to John as having been a Baptist, and as promising purification to those who underwent the rite. Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet, says nevertheless--being, although against his will, not far from the truth--that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus (called Christ),--the Jews having put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for his justice.

Actually.....Josephus says no such thing. The net result of the death of "James" is that the high priest is removed from office by Herod Agrippa II. Josephus, in The Jewish War, states that the reason for the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem was the desecration of the temple precincts by the Zealots murdering their enemies there.

Origen makes shit up, too.

[Minimalist]

Ish, do you sit down and copy every book you read?

So they have a library. So do I. I haven't felt the need to copy any of them out!

[Ishtar]

It is that notion that the Sons of Zadok would be holding office that excludes the Essenes in my mind. The Sadducees were the office holders.

Yes, I can see your point ...

[Minimalist]

Since things have quieted down, here's another comment from Doherty.

Ignatius in the first decade of the second century believes in a Jesus born of Mary, baptized by John, executed by Pilate in the days of Herod. He does not seem to be familiar with a written Gospel, for he does not point to one to support his claims. Does anyone before him, outside of the early Gospel writers, possess this biographical data about Jesus? To judge by all the surviving Christian correspondence, the answer is no. (The one reference in the epistles to Pilate, in 1 Timothy 6:13, if authentic, probably comes slightly later than Ignatius.

Non-Gospel Christian writings before Ignatius have nothing to say about Mary: her name is never mentioned. Nor does Joseph, Jesus reputed father, ever appear. The author of 1 Peter fails to offer Mary as a model in 3: 1-6 where he is advising women to be chaste, submissive in ther behavior, and reverent like those "who fixed their hopes on (God.)" Instead he offers the Old Testament figure of Sarah.

1 Peter, written in an urbane style of Greek, is generally dated to 70 - 90 AD although some argue for an even later date and, of course the fundies swear that Peter the urbane Greek fisherman wrote it before his alleged death in 64.

So...why would Peter have never heard of "Mary?"

[Ishtar]

Ish, do you sit down and copy every book you read?

So they have a library. So do I. I haven't felt the need to copy any of them out!

No, I don't feel the need to copy out my books, because ever since that wonderful Mr Caxton invented the printing press, I am able to have beautifully bound books on tough, resilient paper - and even if they wear out, I can get cheap paperbacks from Amazon, or even get e-books online now.

BUT the reason these scribes, at this time in the Middle East, were continually copying and recopying their manuscripts was because they didn't have this luxury. The writings were on thin and flimsy bits of papyrus and vellum that fell apart very quickly, particularly in that sort of climate, and the more they were used, the more quickly they degraded. So they continually needed to be copying and recopying their written works. That's what scribes did in those days. That was their job.

But secondly, and more importantly, the Essenes didn't need to have written them or even to have copied them to have been the guys who buried them ... and this is the main point I'm trying to make. That's why I quoted Josephus's references to them having sacred books - of course, he didn't mean leatherbound ones with gold-embossed spines. He meant something like the scrolls found at the Dead Sea.

A colony of Essenes, according to Pliny, lived a few miles down the road from where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found so there's another connection. Of course, it could just be coincidence... but it cannot be ruled out.

Well ... it could be ruled out, of course. But my point is, nothing you have said or your article says rules it out.

[Ishtar]

Seeker

I take all your points. But the Zadokite Document was just one of many Dead Sea Scrolls. Norman Golb says that scrolls were so varied in how they are written that they appear to be a library of different works or various Jewish sects rather than the work of one person or group of people.

The Essenes who we know from Josephus, studied the writings of the ancients, kept 'books' and 'holy books', could well have had had the Zadokite Document and these others in their library.

I'm not saying they definitely did. I'm saying that nothing I've seen so far rules it out. I'm also not sure how important it is. Maybe it's more important to find the authors of the Z doc, given that it has a Teacher of Rightteousness and a Jesus who was a sage of Jerusalem who ended up being executed because of a battle in the temple he lost with a Judas. And this is where you going with it .. I think?

[seeker]

Ish - That's a good point. The question that occurs to me though is 'why'? Why be an Essene if you think that the Sadducees will be the ones in charge and have a claim to righteousness? Further, if you don't think the Sadducees have that claim why preserve a document that says they do?

[seeker]

Since things have quieted down, here's another comment from Doherty.

Ignatius in the first decade of the second century believes in a Jesus born of Mary, baptized by John, executed by Pilate in the days of Herod. He does not seem to be familiar with a written Gospel, for he does not point to one to support his claims. Does anyone before him, outside of the early Gospel writers, possess this biographical data about Jesus? To judge by all the surviving Christian correspondence, the answer is no. (The one reference in the epistles to Pilate, in 1 Timothy 6:13, if authentic, probably comes slightly later than Ignatius.

Non-Gospel Christian writings before Ignatius have nothing to say about Mary: her name is never mentioned. Nor does Joseph, Jesus reputed father, ever appear. The author of 1 Peter fails to offer Mary as a model in 3: 1-6 where he is advising women to be chaste, submissive in ther behavior, and reverent like those "who fixed their hopes on (God.)" Instead he offers the Old Testament figure of Sarah.

1 Peter, written in an urbane style of Greek, is generally dated to 70 - 90 AD although some argue for an even later date and, of course the fundies swear that Peter the urbane Greek fisherman wrote it before his alleged death in 64.

So...why would Peter have never heard of "Mary?"

This is why its so hard to trust any dating of the gospels. Even references to them are spurious because we just can't know whether the documents referred to even remotely resemble the documents we have now.

[Ishtar]

Ish - That's a good point. The question that occurs to me though is 'why'? Why be an Essene if you think that the Sadducees will be the ones in charge and have a claim to righteousness? Further, if you don't think the Sadducees have that claim why preserve a document that says they do?

Well, I have a King James Bible in my collection. But I don't believe it's true.

There's also something about knowing what the other side is thinking.

Another book I have in my extensive collection is The Art of War written in the 6th century BC. by Sun Tzu. I think he recommends that ... keep your friends close, but your enemies closer!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War

The Art of War (Chinese: 孫子兵法; pinyin: Sūn Zǐ Bīng Fǎ) is a Chinese military treatise that was written during the 6th century BC by Sun Tzu. Composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare, it has long been praised as the definitive work on military strategies and tactics of its time.

The Art of War is one of the oldest books on military strategy in the world. It is the first and one of the most successful works on strategy and has had a huge influence on Eastern and Western military thinking, business tactics, and beyond. Sun Tzu was the first to recognize the importance of positioning in strategy and that position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of competitive actors in that environment. He taught that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through a to-do list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions. Planning works in a controlled environment, but in a competitive environment, competing plans collide, creating unexpected situation.