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2. THE DAY OF JUDGMENT

A prototype of this new sort of prophecy is found in the book of Daniel, a sixth century B.C. exile who is mentioned in the Old Testament by his fellow exile, the prophet Ezekiel. The actual author of Daniel wrote three centuries later, at similar time of crisis but in a substantially different world. That world had been transformed by Alexander the Great, whose cultural conquests had been more sweeping and enduring than his military victories. When Alexander conquered Judea in 332 B.C., he brought with him the entire panoply of Greek culture: Greek city planning, Greek schools (called gymnasia), and Greek philosophy. The Greek language, the lingua franca of the Mediterranean world, became the intellectual "ornament" of wealthy Jews, men and women alike.

For more than a century and a half after Alexander's death the heirs to his overseas empire, the Seleucid Kingdom of Syria and the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, fought over Judea, the strategic corridor between the two kingdoms; the Seleucids at last won control at the beginning of the second century B.C. Several decades of stability and prosperity ended with reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanus, who began to sell the office of High Priest and then, in 167 B.C., suddenly banned Jewish religious rites and introduced pagan worship into the Jerusalem Temple. The Jews, led by Judah Maccabee, formed an irregular army and fought off repeated Seleucid attempts to reinforce their Jerusalem garrison. During this crisis, which had struck like a bolt from the blue, the author of Daniel wrote to reassure his fellow Jews of God's plan for their deliverance.

The first apocalyptic vision ascribed to Daniel is recorded in Daniel 7. This "vision of the night" began with the appearance by four enormous, fantastic beasts rising out of the sea, representing a succession of empires: Babylonian, Median, Persian, and Greek. These beasts were confronted by a blazing chariot-throne with fiery wheels (much like the fiery, spinning wheels, so beloved by UFO theorists, of the chariot-throne described in the prophetic book of Ezekiel, ). On the throne sat the Ancient of days -- God -- who stripped the beasts of their dominion and burned the body of the final beast. At this, Daniel writes, "I saw... one like the son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, and he came to the Ancient of days.... And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed" (Dan 7.13-14).

This passage is often cited as the most explicit messianic forecast in the Old Testament; Son of Man is frequently used in the New Testament as an equivalent for the Messiah, the anointed one of God. In Daniel's usage, however, son of man (bar enash, the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew ben-adam, or son of Adam), used in the phrase, "like a son of man," refers merely to the human appearance of an angelic being, and is not a title of any sort. In Daniel, this angelic figure is probably the metaphorical body politic of Israel, "the holy ones of the Most High; their kingdom is an everlasting kingdom...." (Dan 7.27).

Far more important to the Judaism of Jesus is the description of the final, apocalyptic battle between "the king of north" and the "king of the south" (certainly referring to the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kings), and the resurrection to follow: "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever" (Dan 12.2-3). For Daniel, this culmination can be specified in the near future: "Blessed is he that waits, and comes to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days. But go your way till the end: for you must rest, and stand with the chosen at the end of the days" (Dan 12.12-13).

As fully developed apocalyptic literature, Daniel stands alone among the books of the Old Testament; its closest parallel is the New Testament book of Revelations. But it is important to remember that the Old Testament canon wasn't determined until late in the first century A.D., under the aegis of conservative rabbis determined to steer their faith away from the kind of nationalistic beliefs embodied in the apocalypses. Daniel is in fact only the tip of a literary iceberg, a prodigious body of non-canonical apocalypses and other prophetic writings that vividly illustrate the intellectual richness of Judaism in the time of Jesus.

The dominant literary form of this "intertestamental" literature is the pseudepigraphon (pl. pseudepigrapha), a writing spuriously attributed to an Old Testament figure. The best known and most influential of the pseudepigrapha is 1 Enoch, an apocalyptic vision supposedly written by Enoch, the grandfather of the biblical Noah. We can get an idea of the importance of 1 Enoch to first century Judaism by the number of copies of the text found among the Dead Sea Scrolls; only five canonical books of the Old Testament have been found at Qumran in greater numbers than non-canonical 1 Enoch.

1 Enoch is a breathtaking sequence of visions even more ecstatic than those of Ezekiel; in a flurry of clouds, lightning, and wind "rushing me high up into heaven," the Old Testament patriarch tours the heavens and the underworld, learning "all the secrets of righteousness... all the secrets of the extreme ends of heaven and all the reservoirs of the stars and the luminaries...." He is ushered into the white marble palace of God, with its "ceiling like the path of the stars" and shown such sights as "the storerooms of all the winds" and the pillars of fire that descend into the limitless pit of hell, where sinners and even the stars that have crossed God are imprisoned. He is allowed to read "the tablets of heaven," on which are written "all the deeds of humanity... for all the generations of the world." And he is taken into the presence of the "antecedent of time," a white-faced, angelic being whose companion is "the son of man, to whom belongs righteousness... And he will open all the hidden storerooms; for the Lord of Spirits has chosen him.... This son of man... is the one who would remove the kings and the mighty ones from their couches and the powerful from their thrones." (Even in this decidedly messianic context, son of man refers to the human characteristics of the chosen one -- but here the designation may have begun to assume titular status.)

Enoch's apocalypse targets not only tyrannical kings for eternal punishment, but also lesser officials and, significantly, economic oppressors: "On the day of judgment, all the kings, the governors, the high officials, and the landlords shall see and recognize... the son of man sitting on [the] throne of his glory... he will deliver them to the angels for punishment.... The righteous and the elect ones shall be saved on that day; and from thenceforth they shall never see the faces of the sinners and the oppressors...." (1En 62.3-12). "Woe unto you, O rich people!... In the days of your affluence you committed oppression, you have become ready for death, and for the day of darkness and great judgment" (1En 94.7-9). Thus it is no longer sufficient for God merely to intervene against the idolatrous tyrant or the foreign despot. He must also rescue the righteous from the landlord and the banker.

1 Enoch is only the best-known of an enormous body of pseudepigraphic texts; space does not permit even a cursory survey of their astonishing cultural and theological diversity. Some of the pseudepigrapha, such as the Treatise of Shem, an astrological text written near the end of the first century B.C., explore subjects that strike the uninitiated as alien to devout Judaism. Many other texts include striking parallels to early Christian doctrine. The Apocryphon of Ezekiel, probably composed around the time of Jesus' birth, was enormously important to later Christian writers as an authority on the resurrection of the body: "And the judgment becomes final for the both body and soul, for the works they have done whether good or evil." The Psalms of Solomon, written in the second half of the first century B.C., include an extremely detailed messianic forecast: "Their king shall be Lord Messiah... he shall be compassionate to all nations who reverently stand before him. He will strike the world with the word of his mouth forever.... And he himself will be free of sin... He will expose officials and drive out sinners by the strength of his word. And he shall not weaken... for God made him powerful in the holy spirit" (PssSol 17.32-37).

This remarkable literary florescence was the product of the tribulations and, paradoxically, the triumphs of the Jewish nation in the last two centuries B.C. For twenty-five years after the uprising against Antiochus IV, the Jews struggled with the Seleucids for control of Judea. Finally, in 141 B.C., Judah Maccabee's brother Simon drove the last Seleucid troops out of Jerusalem and began a century of Hasmonean family rule (Hasmon was an ancestral name of the Maccabees, later adopted as a family title signifying their authority -- much like the almost titular use of the family name Caesar to refer to the first Roman emperors). The Hasmoneans restored much of the Jewish empire once held by Solomon and enlarged Jerusalem to five times its size under the Seleucid regime, with a proportionate increase in population.

The striking growth of Jerusalem reflected the emergence of the Jerusalem Temple as Jewish state's leading industry -- the result of concerted Hasmonean policy. The Hasmoneans combined the office of High Priest (which had become the hereditary possession of the Hasmonean family) with that of the king, uniting secular and religious administration into a burgeoning priestly bureaucracy. Hasmonean-sponsored propaganda like 2 Maccabees, found in the Old Testament Apocrypha, glorified the Temple cult and the Hasmonean role in purifying it of foreign corruption. The Hasmoneans vigorously promoted the annual pilgrimages to the Temple festivals and encouraged the payment of the Temple tax and tithes; during the Hasmonean dynasty these obligations became central to Jewish religious life, significantly increasing the wealth of the Temple and its Hasmonean proprietors. It is not surprising, then, that the triumph of Jewish nationalism represented by the Hasmonean dynasty soon inspired the same sort of resentment once directed against foreign oppressors.

Many scholars believe that the first important opponents of the Hasmonean priesthood were the Essenes, the Jewish sect usually associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls (as more of the scrolls are translated, some scholars are beginning to suggest that the Qumran documents pertain to several different Jewish sects, and are not exclusively Essene literature). The Essenes (Greek Essenoi, derived from hosios, or holy; possibly from the Aramaic hasayya, "the pious") are mentioned by three separate contemporary sources: The first-century Jewish writers Philo Judaeus of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus, and the Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder. Pliny's brief account tells us little about the Essenes, except that they lived in isolation and gave up sex and money, but he does supply the important evidence that their refuge was located "on the west side of the Dead Sea, but out of range of the exhalations of the coast," and was above the town of En Gad; this location conforms exactly to the complex of buildings found at Qumran.

Josephus and Philo are almost entirely in agreement on the broad range of Essene practices. Both give the figure of about four thousand Essenes, living in villages and cities throughout Judea. They make their living as farmers, shepherds, or artisans, or day laborers. They live and dine communally, and all wages are placed in a single fund for the entire community to share. Even clothing is held in common; Josephus adds that they dress entirely in white, and wear their clothes until they hang in tatters. When not engaged in manual labor, they spend their time interpreting prophetic literature and discussing moral law. They performed all their healing within the community; Josephus comments that "they study medicinal roots and the healing properties of stones" -- the "stones" are probably magical amulets (War 2.136).

Josephus adds considerable detail about the formal rituals and beliefs of the Essenes. There is a three year period of probation before a novice is admitted to the sect; the new initiate must swear to "always hate the wicked and battle on the side of the righteous;" he must not practice banditry; he must "preserve the books of the sect and the names of the angels," the last referring to the use of the secret names of angels in healing rituals (War 2.139-142). In all things the Essene must be guided by the laws of Moses.

Philosophically the Essenes seem to have been akin to extreme Stoics; believing in the absolute rule of fate, they are "wont to leave everything in the hands of God" (Ant 18.18). They believe "That bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that souls are immortal... they come out of the finest ether and come into their bodies as into a prison..." (War 2.154). Josephus was convinced that the Essenes were particularly skilled in interpreting dreams and prophesying. "There are also among them who undertake to foretell the future, by reading holy books, and using several sorts of purifications, and being skilled in the discourses of the prophets; and it is but seldom that they miss in their predictions" (War 2.159).

Against these detailed ancient descriptions, we now have the hundreds of documents and thousands of fragments from the Qumran area, many of them translated only in the last fifteen years. These documents give a picture similar in many particulars to Josephus' and Philo's. The scroll know as the Manual of Discipline recites an insistence on Mosaic law and ritual purity; it describes a probationary period before admittance to the sect, and strict adherence to the principal of community ownership. The Damascus Document, which was first discovered in the genizah (a repository for worn-out sacred texts) of the Cairo synagogue a half-century before its re-discovery at Qumran, gives instructions for the formation of the communes and proscribes various practices -- such as wearing perfume, armed robbery -- identical to those mentioned by Josephus. As Josephus and Philo suggest, prophecy assumed a paramount role in the Qumran sect; the founder of the desert community, the so-called Teacher of Righteousness, was regarded as a seer "to whom God made known all the mysteries of His servants the prophets" (1QpHab 7).

Nothing in Josephus or Philo, however, prepares us for the militant apocalypticism of the so-called War Scroll. This document describes in vivid detail the final battle against the "Kittim" -- almost certainly a code word for the Romans. But the Kittim are more than an earthly enemy; they are the "sons of darkness," "the company of Satan," whose diabolical master will join them at the last the battle against "the company of God," "the sons of light." Angels will fight beside the righteous -- "Valiant warriors of the angelic host are among our numbered men" -- and all heaven and earth will join in the final conflict: "That shall be the day appointed from ancient times for the battle of destruction of the sons of darkness.... On the day of calamity, the sons of light shall battle with the company of darkness amid the shouts of a mighty multitude and the clamor of gods and men..." (1QM 1). The battle will also have an economic dimension: "For You will deliver into the hands of the poor the enemies from all the lands, to humble the mighty... by the hand of those bent to the dust..." (1QM 11). The instructions for the battle are explicit; among the issues covered are battle formations and tactics, design of the shields, the precise length and width of the sword blade, and placement of the camp latrines.

The leaders of the army of light will be a High Priest and his deputies, but these priests are "the exiles in the desert," not the reigning priests in Jerusalem. This priestly opposition party is consistent with the story of the origin of the sect given in the Damascus document, which describes the struggle of a "Teacher of Righteousness" against a "Man of Scoffing," also known as the "Wicked Priest." According to the Commentary on Habakkuk, a scroll closely related to the Damascus Document, "The Wicked Priest...plotted the destruction of the poor.... The Wicked Priest committed abominable deeds and defiled the Temple of God... he robbed the poor of their possessions" (1QPHab 12). By contrast, the followers of the Teacher of Righteousness "Shall keep away from the unclean riches of wickedness acquired from the Temple treasure; they shall not rob the poor of His people" (CD 6). These priestly disciples of the Teacher of Righteousness were called B'nai-Zadok -- the sons of Zadok: "The sons of Zadok are the elect of Israel, the men called by name who shall stand at the end of days" (CD 4).

A few scholars have proposed that John the Baptist was the Righteous Teacher of Qumran, though it is more likely that the Righteous Teacher split from the Wicked Priest-led establishment in the middle of the second century B.C. -- long before John's time. Of more serious merit is the suggestion that John the Baptist was a member of the Qumran community, which evidently thrived until its destruction by the Romans in 68 A.D. The Qumran Manual of Discipline (1QS 8) gives the same instruction, borrowed from Isaiah 40.3, that Mark 1.3 provides to John the Baptist: "Prepare in the wilderness the way of [the Lord}, make straight in the desert a path for our God." John's camel-hair shirt and natural diet -- he lived on honey and locusts -- suggest an extreme form of Qumranite asceticism. His rite of baptism, which was offered to those who had cleansed themselves of sin in preparation for the last day, is much like the Qumran ritual of purification, which required total immersion, and was denied those who remained wicked: "They shall not enter the water... for they shall not be cleansed unless they turn from wickedness..." (1QS 5.13-14).

On the other hand, the accounts of John the Baptist's ministry describe a solitary preacher who brought great crowds into the desert and baptized his followers en masse, with no formal probationary period required. The German scholar Otto Betz offers the most reasonable solution to this apparent conflict: John the Baptist was a Qumranite who split from the sect to offer a more accessible version of its rites and precepts. As the great popularizer of Qumranite doctrine, John may have felt that the end was too close for a waiting period and fussy rituals.

While John was very possibly a Qumranite, the notion that Jesus was also a member of the desert community is more of a stretch. However, the parallels between the Qumran sect and the early Christian church are striking: Both waited for an imminent eschatological event in which the poor would be redeemed and the rich punished, an apotheosis both sects regarded as fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy; both practiced magical healing; both were hostile to the Temple establishment; both urged an ascetic lifestyle and were organized around communal living, dining, and sharing of property. The publication of additional Qumran material has only strengthened this Qumran-Christian connection. Robert Eisenman, one of the scholars who helped force the release of the Qumran documents, has published some of this new material in his book The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, and the connections he draws to the theological language of early Christianity and its nationalistic, messianic expectations are particularly strong.

Eisenman's conclusion that Jesus was a member of the Qumran sect has as yet won few converts, but the direct link he is looking for isn't necessary in order to establish the almost exclusive influence of such Jewish sectarian beliefs on early Christianity. Apocalypticism was the dominant theme in Jewish literature in the time of Jesus, and the monastic lifestyle at Qumran may also have been relatively common. Philo tells of a contemporary Egyptian Jewish sect called the Theraputae, or healers, whose members also lived in isolation, eating only bread and salt, and devoted themselves to reading and contemplating the law of Moses and the ancient prophets. Judging from a pseudepigraphic text called the Testament of Job, thought to have been authored by the Theraputae, the Theraputae may have allowed women to participate in their magical rituals. In short, the language, theology, organizational structure, nationalist politics, and perhaps even the unusual sexual politics that characterized early Christianity were simply in the air at the time of Jesus; a sojourn at Qumran was hardly a requirement for borrowing them.

Regardless of the exact nature of Jesus' relationship to the Qumran sect, in the light of the Dead Sea Scrolls we must finally discard the popular notion -- however deeply held by Christian culture and institutions -- that Jesus was the quintessential outsider opposed to a monolithic and uncomprehending Jewish faith. He is, rather, the best-known representative of an intertestamental Judaism rooted in the egalitarian traditions of Mosaic law and the fervent, mystical nationalism of the ancient prophets -- a Judaism so diverse and theologically rich that it is difficult to distinguish anything in Jesus' teaching or in early Christianity (and little in later Christianity) that was not directly borrowed from it. The powerful political mythology of intertestamental Judaism, purged of its nationalistic elements, has become the spiritual mythology of the New Testament, giving us such essential Christian doctrines as the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, a heaven populated by angels, and a fiery hell.

Similarly purged of its patriotic fervor, intertestamental Judaism was overhauled by the rabbis in the wake of the disastrous uprising against Rome in 66 A.D.; it became a substantially more conservative faith, rabbinic Judaism. But the defeat of intertestamental Judaism by Caesar's legions does not presume the historical failure of that faith. It was held with sufficient conviction that hundreds of thousands of first-century Jews were willing to die for it. And the legacy of intertestamental Judaism is nothing less than the sum of its twin heirs, rabbinic Judaism and Christianity: The vast modern cultural complex we so blithely call -- usually with very little understanding of its true origins -- Judeo-Christian.

It is unlikely, however, that Jesus anticipated his legacy. Paradoxically, for a man whose words have so shaped the generations that followed his death, his eye was probably on the past. Like so many intertestamental reformers, Jesus didn't seek an unprecedented new faith. Instead he looked to the old-time religion, the egalitarian faith of Moses and the prophets, and risked his life for the fulfillment of its promises.

Next: PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES

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