Archaeologica.org

First off, by 66 AD the term "Israel" is meaningless. Antipas was Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. Herod the Great was king of Judaea but the kingdom was partitioned at his death.
"Israel" as a political entity had ceased with the Assyrian attack.

The only evidence (whether or not it is "enough" is subjective) is Josephus' statement. You know, "Luke" (or whoever) makes the mistake of forgetting that in 6 AD Galilee and Judaea were separate countries so he has "Joseph" and "Mary" (alleged citizens of "Nazareth" in Galilee journeying to "Bethlehem" in Judaea to take part in a census that did not concern them in the least. Luke doubtlessly read Josephus so perhaps his mistake is derived from this passage which seems to indicate some political affinity between Galilee and Judaea which did not exist.

Josephus has obvious motives behind some of his writing... either to excuse his own conduct in defecting to the Romans or praising Titus and Vespasian, his patrons. I just don't think that it is above Josephus to try to clear his own faction by blaming others for the start of the troubles which led to the destruction of the country.

Finally, let's not forget that there were two major cities in Galilee: Sepphoris and Tiberias. Sepphoris locked its gates against Josephus and his rebels and Tiberias surrendered to the Romans without a fight. How dedicated to the cause does that sound to you?

Ishtar wrote:After getting my knuckles rapped by Min over the Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls and also being exhorted by John to “get my ass in gear over the gnostics”, I’ve decided to look into that subject area a bit further and I’ve found some interesting stuff.

In her book, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, Acharya S has a whole chapter on this subject. And if she is right, the actual authors (or at least original owners) of the Dead Sea Scrolls were not the Essenes, but the Zealots (or a thinking one, Min - i.e. a son of Zadok!). And then when you look into where the Zealots and the sons of Zadok sprang from and what they believed, you can almost see an embryonic mythical idea developing that could have culminated in the story of a historical Jesus that ended up being propagated by Iranaeus and chums around 200 years or so later.

One small problem. Zadok was the biblical rabbi after whom the Sadducees were named, The Zealots were a group in opposition to the 'sons of Zadok' who called themselves Sadducees (Zadokim in Hebrew). She is conflating the name of one of the founders of the Zealots known as Zadok the Pharisee, the other being Judas of Galalee (also call Judas of Gamala).

Judas of Gamala appears around 6AD leading a revolt against Quirinius which means his cult would have existed around that time.

Ishtar wrote:Anyway, first of all, let’s make the case for that:

Pliny says that the Essenes did live by the Dead Sea, but that their settlement was near En Gedi which was dozens of kilometres from Qumran.

Golb believes that the Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection from libraries in Jerusalem secreted in caves throughout eastern Palestine by Jews fleeing the Roman armies during the revolt of 70 CE.

However, if they were deposited in 70 CE, they contain no mention of a Jesus and his followers just 40 years after the purported crucifixion. In fact, according to Dr Alan Snow: “Some modern Biblical scholars and archaeologists believe that the scrolls (the oldest dating to around 200 BC) could have been hidden in the caves as late as the Jewish revolt of 132-135 CE.”

The trouble is, there were so many uprisings/revolts/changes of power in that region over hundreds of years, it is difficult to know after which one they were hidden [that’s my idea, not Acharya’s]. And who wrote them, who originally owned them and who buried them could be a diverse bunch of people.

However, we can tell quite a lot from what's in them.

So - the texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls contain no variant of the term “Essene” and actually contain non-Essenic ideas – rather a fervent tone and warrior stance - as well as Hellenised elements that could only have been produced by Hellenised Jews.

But the tone and contents could well fit the Zealots and the Zadokites who according to Josephus, was “the fourth sect of Jewish philosophy.”

This is confirmed by the presence of the scroll “Song for the Holocaust of the Sabbath” found both at Qumran and at the Zealots’ fortress at Masada.

Dr Alan Snow says: “The authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls were Zealots and believed in the God-ordained destiny of the people of Israel.”

I’ll go on in the next post to explain how the stories and sentiments expressed within the scrolls of the Zealots could represent the feint beginnings of the Jesus story.

All possible. I've always maintained that the beginnings of the NT are non-Jewish. In my scenario the Dead Sea Scrolls are scraps of writings from a Gnostic sect living in the region

One of the reasons I don't think the NT was written by anyone who actually lived in Judea was the point that Min made above, the fact that political realities in the region weren't as they are portrayed in the NT. That's also the reason I see the Dead Sea Scrolls as being similar to but not related to the NT. While they were both attempts to create a Christian messiah the Dead Sea Scrolls version was actually Jewish.

Then there are the famed geographical screw-ups in Mark.

http://www.bismikaallahuma.org/archives ... testament/

In fact, one of the reasons why many scholars doubt that the anonymous author of Mark was a Jewish individual and a native of Palestine is precisely due to the presence of a number of geographical errors, mistakes and confusions in this gospel. If the author was a native of Palestine and a Jew, then how was he so ignorant regarding the region’s geography?

Essentially, the arguments against John Mark, a Jewish resident of Jerusalem and later the companion of Paul and also of Peter, writing this Gospel are that he does not appear to be familiar with the geography of Palestine in the first century (Mark 7:31; 11:1) or with Jewish customs, overgeneralizes about the Jews (7:3-4), from whom he seems to distance himself, and does not reflect the theology of either Paul or Peter as a companion might (Phlm 23; cf. Col. 4:10; 2 Tim 4:11).2

OK. You guys know tons more than me about the political history of the area. But one thing I think you’ll agree with me on is that, in many cases, there just isn’t enough firm evidence to go on to make a clear decision about anything.

I take your point about the Zealots, Seeker, and thanks for pointing that out. But Zealot literature (or literature common to there and the Zealot fort) was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Waite is also of the opinion that Jesus is depicted as a Zealot:

Not only was Jesus surrounded by Zealots, but he was himself a Zealot. It is in execution of a Jewish law, called ‘the law of the Zealots” that, with a whip made of small cords, he scourged the money changers and drove them from the temple.

Also, according to my research fwiw, the sons of the Zadok must have been the authors if not the hiders of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, not least the Zadokite Document. Am I right that neither of you are disagreeing on that?

So then, the question is, were they Samaritans and were they Sadducees? And is Josephus our only reference to the Sadducees possibly being in Israel? (Min, I know it wasn’t called Israel by 60 CE, but for the purposes of this conversation, we need to use the label to differentiate it from the southern kingdom, at least in terms of different religious practices before the invasion of Aristobolus.)

FWIW, this is on Wiki:

Lawrence H. Schiffman, 'The Sadducean Origins of the Dead Sea Scroll Sect', in Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. H. Shanks, New York: Random House, 1993, pp. 35-49. It is widely known that the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls never recognizably refer to themselves as "Essenes"—possibly due to the fact that they wrote mainly in Hebrew and Aramaic, whereas we have the term "Essenes" from Greek—but they do refer to themselves in various places as the "Zadokites"/"Sons of Zadok", which term is apparently identical to that by which the Sadducees identified themselves. Among other arguments for a Sadducean Essene origin, Schiffman also cites interpretations of the purity regulations which closely parallel Sadducean views recorded by the spiritual heirs of the Pharisees, who authored the Talmud.

This would make sense if, as Origen says, the Zealots were a branch of the Essenes, and/or vice versa.

So that gives us the Essenes associated with the Sadducees associated with the Zadokites.

Also Douglas Lockhart in Jesus the Heretic says:

“...the early ‘Penitents of Israel’ composed of the purist Sadducees from the Temple in Jerusalem, left Judea and made their headquarters in the land of Damascus. Many sectaries founded settlements in northern districts, and these “Elect of Israel” of the latter days interacted with like-minded spirits among the groups devoted to the old Nazarite way of life.”

By “Nazerite way of life”, he means the way of life of the Gnostic Nazerenes.

Min, you are saying that the only reference to the Sadducees being in Samaria/Damascus is a Josephus one? There are others but, I guess they could have copied Josephus:

According to Reinhard Pommer in his Early Christian Authors on Samaritans and Samaritanism says:

“The close connection between the Sadducees and the Samaritans is common to Hipploytus and also Pseudo-Tertulian, although both may have drawn on a common source....Jerome (para-phrasing Tertulian and the Pseudo Clementine Recognitiones 54, also link Dositheus to the Sadducees. It should be noted that, with the exception of Epiphanius, the early Christian tradition assumed there was only kind one kind of Samaritan, i.e. the orthodx Samaritans who beliefs were those of the Sadducees and Dositheus was among them.”

Linking Dositheus to the Essenes is interesting and brings us back to Simon the Magus, who was a Samaritan Gnostic leader.

According to Freke and Gandy, Simon is said to have been the most outstanding disciple of John the Baptist (who, Josephus says, was an Essene).

The story goes that when John the Baptist died, Simon was supposed to succeed him, but he couldn’t because he was away being trained in Alexandria at that time (that seed bed of Gnosticism). So another Samaritan Gnostic, Dositheus, became John’s successor.

Anyway, that gives us Samaritans associated with Gnostics associated with the Essenes. Also Dositheus is the name the Zadokites use for the expected Messiah.

So all of this a bit of mish/mash. But then isn’t that exactly what Baigent and Leigh said it was like? I’ll remind you of their quote:

Of this confusion between sects, Baigent and Leigh said that in their search for the ‘historical’ Jesus, they found themselves “confronted by an apparently bewildering spectrum of Judaic cults, sects and sub-sects, of political and religious organisations and institutions, which seemed sometimes to be militantly at odds with one another, and sometimes to overlap. It quickly became apparent to us that the labels used to differentiate between the groups — Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, Nazorenes — were neither accurate or useful.”

So maybe we’re falling into the same ‘bewildering spectrum’ and getting hung upon these terms that are ‘neither accurate or useful’. Well, I feel like I am, anyway! I guess you guys will be seeing things much more clearly, and will soon put me right!

seeker wrote:One of the reasons I don't think the NT was written by anyone who actually lived in Judea was the point that Min made above, the fact that political realities in the region weren't as they are portrayed in the NT. That's also the reason I see the Dead Sea Scrolls as being similar to but not related to the NT. While they were both attempts to create a Christian messiah the Dead Sea Scrolls version was actually Jewish.

Yes, I also made that same point a week or so back - but the point being made here now is that they were Jewish, but not from Judaea - they were from the more cosmpolitan northern kingdom, which had its own rites and rules and was influenced by Damascus and Syria.

Also, if they were deliberately constructing a story, it could be in any kind of Never Never Land political scenario - it wouldn't have to match the political reality of the time, or any time.

Min, you are saying that the only reference to the Sadducees being in Samaria/Damascus is a Josephus one?

No. Josephus cites Judas the Galilean as the founder of the Zealots. He didn't like the Sadduccees but his comment about them in Antiquities:

But the doctrine of the Sadducees is this: That souls die with the bodies; nor do they regard the observation of any thing besides what the law enjoins them; for they think it an instance of virtue to dispute with those teachers of philosophy whom they frequent: but this doctrine is received but by a few, yet by those still of the greatest dignity. But they are able to do almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them.

Gives no indication of a geographic locale.

His comment about them in The Jewish War:

But the Sadducees are those that compose the second order, and take away fate entirely, and suppose that God is not concerned in our doing or not doing what is evil; and they say, that to act what is good, or what is evil, is at men's own choice, and that the one or the other belongs so to every one, that they may act as they please. They also take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades. Moreover, the Pharisees are friendly to one another, and are for the exercise of concord, and regard for the public; but the behavior of the Sadducees one towards another is in some degree wild, and their conversation with those that are of their own party is as barbarous as if they were strangers to them. And this is what I had to say concerning the philosophic sects among the Jews.

is even less specific. I suspect there may be a confusion between Judas the Galilean's alleged co-conspirator Zadok ( or Sadduc) and the Saduccee Party.

But Zealot literature (or literature common to there and the Zealot fort) was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Argues more for some librarian looking out his window, seeing the Roman army approaching, saying "Holy Shit" and scooping up whatever he could to spirit away to safety before the Romans invested the city with their customary siege works. Zealots aside, there had to be some sane people in the city who knew what the inevitable outcome of this "battle" would be.

Ishtar wrote:OK. You guys know tons more than me about the political history of the area. But one thing I think you’ll agree with me on is that, in many cases, there just isn’t enough firm evidence to go on to make a clear decision about anything.

I take your point about the Zealots, Seeker, and thanks for pointing that out. But Zealot literature (or literature common to there and the Zealot fort) was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Waite is also of the opinion that Jesus is depicted as a Zealot:

Not only was Jesus surrounded by Zealots, but he was himself a Zealot. It is in execution of a Jewish law, called ‘the law of the Zealots” that, with a whip made of small cords, he scourged the money changers and drove them from the temple.

I have no problem with that

Ishtar wrote:Also, according to my research fwiw, the sons of the Zadok must have been the authors if not the hiders of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, not least the Zadokite Document. Am I right that neither of you are disagreeing on that?

So then, the question is, were they Samaritans and were they Sadducees? And is Josephus our only reference to the Sadducees possibly being in Israel? (Min, I know it wasn’t called Israel by 60 CE, but for the purposes of this conversation, we need to use the label to differentiate it from the southern kingdom, at least in terms of different religious practices before the invasion of Aristobolus.)

FWIW, this is on Wiki:

Lawrence H. Schiffman, 'The Sadducean Origins of the Dead Sea Scroll Sect', in Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. H. Shanks, New York: Random House, 1993, pp. 35-49. It is widely known that the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls never recognizably refer to themselves as "Essenes"—possibly due to the fact that they wrote mainly in Hebrew and Aramaic, whereas we have the term "Essenes" from Greek—but they do refer to themselves in various places as the "Zadokites"/"Sons of Zadok", which term is apparently identical to that by which the Sadducees identified themselves. Among other arguments for a Sadducean Essene origin, Schiffman also cites interpretations of the purity regulations which closely parallel Sadducean views recorded by the spiritual heirs of the Pharisees, who authored the Talmud.

Its pretty unlikely they were Sadducees. The Sadducees were wealthy and ran even under Roman rule had more power than most. They wouldn't have needed to hide anything in caves. The only way it would make sense is if you suppose that the Dead Sea scrolls were written after 70AD after Rome destroyed Jerusalem, certainly possible.

The biggest problem is that Sadducees were Jewish literalists. Their whole basis was that if it wasn't in the Torah then it didn't matter.

Ishtar wrote:This would make sense if, as Origen says, the Zealots were a branch of the Essenes, and/or vice versa.

So that gives us the Essenes associated with the Sadducees associated with the Zadokites.

Also Douglas Lockhart in Jesus the Heretic says:

“...the early ‘Penitents of Israel’ composed of the purist Sadducees from the Temple in Jerusalem, left Judea and made their headquarters in the land of Damascus. Many sectaries founded settlements in northern districts, and these “Elect of Israel” of the latter days interacted with like-minded spirits among the groups devoted to the old Nazarite way of life.”

By “Nazerite way of life”, he means the way of life of the Gnostic Nazerenes.

Major problems here Ish. The Sadducees were the ruling class of the Jews. The big schism between them and the Pharisees was that the Pharisee rejected material wealth in favor of spiritual wealth, the Nazrites, Essenes and Zealots were all, similar to the Pharisees in that they rejected material wealth in favor of spiritual wealth. Only the wealthy Sadducees held material wealth as a good thing.

It was the Pharisees who tended to be puritanical. The Sadducees were more hedonistic.

Ishtar wrote:Min, you are saying that the only reference to the Sadducees being in Samaria/Damascus is a Josephus one? There are others but, I guess they could have copied Josephus:

According to Reinhard Pommer in his Early Christian Authors on Samaritans and Samaritanism says:

“The close connection between the Sadducees and the Samaritans is common to Hipploytus and also Pseudo-Tertulian, although both may have drawn on a common source....Jerome (para-phrasing Tertulian and the Pseudo Clementine Recognitiones 54, also link Dositheus to the Sadducees. It should be noted that, with the exception of Epiphanius, the early Christian tradition assumed there was only kind one kind of Samaritan, i.e. the orthodx Samaritans who beliefs were those of the Sadducees and Dositheus was among them.”

Linking Dositheus to the Essenes is interesting and brings us back to Simon the Magus, who was a Samaritan Gnostic leader.

According to Freke and Gandy, Simon is said to have been the most outstanding disciple of John the Baptist (who, Josephus says, was an Essene).

The story goes that when John the Baptist died, Simon was supposed to succeed him, but he couldn’t because he was away being trained in Alexandria at that time (that seed bed of Gnosticism). So another Samaritan Gnostic, Dositheus, became John’s successor.

Anyway, that gives us Samaritans associated with Gnostics associated with the Essenes. Also Dositheus is the name the Zadokites use for the expected Messiah.

So all of this a bit of mish/mash. But then isn’t that exactly what Baigent and Leigh said it was like? I’ll remind you of their quote:

Of this confusion between sects, Baigent and Leigh said that in their search for the ‘historical’ Jesus, they found themselves “confronted by an apparently bewildering spectrum of Judaic cults, sects and sub-sects, of political and religious organisations and institutions, which seemed sometimes to be militantly at odds with one another, and sometimes to overlap. It quickly became apparent to us that the labels used to differentiate between the groups — Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, Nazorenes — were neither accurate or useful.”

So maybe we’re falling into the same ‘bewildering spectrum’ and getting hung upon these terms that are ‘neither accurate or useful’. Well, I feel like I am, anyway! I guess you guys will be seeing things much more clearly, and will soon put me right!

I think the thing to remember here is that all of this is happening in a very compressed time period. These factions were still sorting themselves out when Rome stepped in. Its very likely that the people at the time didn't really think of themselves in those terms at all but that they were simply imposed by Josephus as a literary device.

Ishtar wrote:

seeker wrote:One of the reasons I don't think the NT was written by anyone who actually lived in Judea was the point that Min made above, the fact that political realities in the region weren't as they are portrayed in the NT. That's also the reason I see the Dead Sea Scrolls as being similar to but not related to the NT. While they were both attempts to create a Christian messiah the Dead Sea Scrolls version was actually Jewish.

Yes, I also made that same point a week or so back - but the point being made here now is that they were Jewish, but not from Judaea - they were from the more cosmpolitan northern kingdom, which had its own rites and rules and was influenced by Damascus and Syria.

Also, if they were deliberately constructing a story, it could be in any kind of Never Never Land political scenario - it wouldn't have to match the political reality of the time, or any time.

Its not a bad scenario but why hide them in Qumran? There would have been no need for someone in Samaria to go to Qumran and hide out. as Min pointed out, they were not a part of the fray at all.

Another consideration, Ish, is that Qumran is important only because the scrolls were found. How do we know that there weren't other troves hidden away? It actually makes sense not to put all ones eggs in one basket.

Some could have been found and used for toilet paper in the middle ages. Others might still be out there. Let's not forget that some of the Nag Hamadi find was thrown into a fire by the peasants who found them.

Ishtar wrote:I guess you guys will be seeing things much more clearly, and will soon put me right!

So thanks for that, guys.

I take on board and see the sense of all your points - especially the really sensible ones!

But can I at least have the Sons of Zadok as the authors of the so-called Dead Sea Scroll called the Zadokite Document (aka Damascas Rule) - because there are some interesting things to say about that?

I'd say make the case and let's see what becomes of it. Here, I'll even contribute a translation of the Zadokite document.

Just because I tend to pick at theories doesn't mean that I completely discount them. The strength of a theory, IMO is its ability to stand up to inquiry.

If memory serves there is a line in that about the 390 years since delivering the country into the hands of the Babylonians. 390 from 538 brings us down to 148 BC which thus seems to be talking about the Maccabees....(again.)

I'll have to go look it up.

[Edit added afterwards] Seems like we were posting at the same time, Min, and I beat you to it on the Maccabees. :)

OK, well most people agree that these scrolls (known as the Zadokite Document or Damascus Rule) are the work of the Sons of Zadok, and that they discuss a "Righteous Teacher" who will lead the Sons of Zadok back to their rightful place.

According to the Damascus Document, God raised up the Righteous Teacher 390 years after the exile in order to restore Israel from its period of disobedience. This would be achieved through a faithful remnant to whom God had revealed his purposes. The majority of Israel will continue to disobey the law, but the Teacher will - through the priests and Levites who left their roles in the Jerusalem Temple and its establishment - restore the true sons of Zadok, the elect of Israel. The Damascus Document builds on the imagery of Yahweh's instruction to Moses at Beer (Num 21:18): the well from which they are to draw is the law; the stave is the interpreter of the law, and the nobles of the people are the faithful remnant (CD 7).

Howard C. Kee, "Membership in the Covenant People at Qumran and in the Teaching of Jesus" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 109

Soooo....the date for the so-called Teacher of Righteousness is 187 BCE. The Jesus who led the charge on the temple on behalf of Antiochus was referred to as "a sage of Jerusalem" - could this not be the same guy 20 years later? Or could we be using the wrong dates for the exile - because there was more than one, it was staged, I believe, over a period?

http://www.mystae.com/restricted/reflec ... l#Teacher2

Scholars date the beginnings of the Babylonian exile to 597 BCE. If we calculate 390 years after the exile for the "period of wrath" and add the 20 years the sect was "groping on the road", we arrive at 187 B.C.E. for the advent of the Teacher of Righteousness. There were no significant historical events in Palestine during this time, although twenty years later the Jews revolted against their despotic Seleucid Greek ruler. Historians usually date the Teacher of Righteousness to around the beginning of the first century B.C.E., after the Maccabean victory against the Seuclid Greeks.

Anyway - Teacher of Righteousness aside - there is an even more interesting nugget to come from the Zadokite Document. Remember, whoever wrote it, it is definitely dated to well before the 1st century CE, when Jesus's life was supposed to have inspired a group of apostles, who had previously been fishermen, to establish churches in his honour.

This is from Theodore Gaster's The Dead Sea Scriptures:

[There] are the many parallels which these texts afford with the organisation of the primitive Christian Church. The community calls itself by the same name ('edah) as was used by the early Christians of Palestine to designate an assembly to denote the council of the Church. There are 12 'men of holiness' who act as general guides of the community - a remarkable correspondence with the Twelve Apostles. These men have three superiors answering to the designation of John, Peter and James as the three pillars of the church.

.

So again, we can see the embryo of an idea forming there that they or others could use as a basis for a story purporting to be historical fact later on.