Dr. William Lasor, the eminent American Bible scholar and student of the Dead Sea Scrolls writes in his book -The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Faith”: “What did Christians do before the discovery of archaeology? How is it that only in the last hundred years we have suddenly required props for our faith? I am grateful for every discovery that has helped me to understand the Bible better. I realize that human beings need to have their faith strengthened. I, too, have felt this need. But long before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered men believed their Bibles and trusted their Lord. Surely we can wait patiently while the scholars work through the maze of complexities, without damage to our faith. The Bible is the same, and the Lord is the same. Is our faith in archaeology—or in Him?”
In 1947 two Bedouin goatherds discovered several parchments stored in jars in a cave high up in the cliffs near the western shore of the Dead Sea, about seven and a half miles south of Jericho.
These valuable finds sparked off an intense investigation by some of the world’s leading Bible scholars. The scrolls discovered in this cave, and afterwards in other caves, included parchment copies of Isaiah (almost complete), and parts of all the books of the Bible except Esther. Some of these manuscripts are dated by the radiocarbon method as early at 150 years B.C. A number of copies of apocryphal books, and copies of commentaries upon books of the Bible, were also found.
It is said that the copies of Old Testament manuscripts will require further years of close study so that textual variations between them and extant versions may be analytically compared.
A few of the manuscripts have been revealed as books of the religious community who occupied the monastery site near the caves, known by the local name of Qumran. There parchments comprise The Manual of Discipline, The Damascus Document, The Habakkuk Commentary, The War Scroll (The War of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness), and Psalms of Thanksgiving.
The manuscripts that form the religious books of the Qumran community give an interesting insight into the beliefs and way of life of the group, who were a Jewish sect.
There is a weight of opinion for believing that the occupants of the Qumran site were the Essenes, an assumption based upon descriptive information given by Josephus, Philo and Pliny, and yet it has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt that the community were the Essenes.
Dr. H. Millar Burrows, a leading authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls, has reservations upon this matter and he says so in his highly rated book, “The Dead Sea Scrolls”. He writes: “One must still, however, protest against the current tendency to use together what Josephus and Philo say of the Essenes and what the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal concerning the sect of Qumran on the assumption that both bodies of data apply to one and the same group. To some it may seem pedantic to maintain this distinction, but for the purpose of accurate historical knowledge it is essential.”
Other possible identifications of the Qumran group are Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots and Ebionites. However, in this regard we are handicapped by inconclusive evidence, which gives rise to some conjecture in the matter.
Josephus points out that the Essenes had a severer discipline than either the Pharisees or Sadducees. They were of Jewish birth and exhibited a greater fraternal affection than did the other sects. They spurned pleasure and placed great merit on virtue and high character. They avoided marriage (except for one group), and reared outside children in the Essene faith. The sect repudiated riches and shared their possessions, and were known for their hospitality to one another.
Josephus says that they said prayers be scrolls fore sunrise in sessions that appeared to resemble sun-worship. Then they worked until the fifth hour, when they bathed in cold water before donning white garments for the communal meal.
They were opposed to the taking of oaths, except in the case of new members, who had to take tremendous oaths before admission to the sect.
There were four classes of Essenes, and so keenly was status and seniority felt that if a junior touched a senior, the latter would wash himself to be cleansed of the contact.
We shall follow the policy of the scholars in referring to the Dead Sea Sect as the Qumran community, and not specifically as the Essenes because of a degree of uncertainty in the matter.
One of the Qumran books, the Manual of Discipline, at chapter 8. 22-23, gives evidence of total and permanent excommunication for the one who “transgresses a word of the Torah of Moses highhanded or in fraud”. The expulsion was complete, and we make this point because this severity will be compared with Christian forgiveness later in the discussion.
It will be observed from Josephus that the Essenes believed in the immortality of the soul and in hell, which led him to suggest Greek influences in some of their doctrines. He also says that of the Jewish sects the Essenes were the most commendable as regards morality and character. He mentions that he was himself an Essene novitiate.
He states that the Essene sect avoided Temple ceremonials in Jerusalem because they had “more pure lustrations of their own”. Josephus says that on account of this they were excluded from the common court of the Temple. Here we find a parallel with Qumran as we shall see later.
While it is true that there were similarities between the Essenes and the Qumran sect it is also true that there were differences in their practices. They differed in the matter of baptism. The maximum punishment among the Essenes was total expulsion even unto death, whereas the Qumran sect were less extreme. Then again, the Essenes had no private possessions, whereas the Qumran members had limited property rights. Some of the Qumran manuscripts relating to the practices of the sect appear to be at variance with one another, giving rise to conflicting evidence. It has been suggested that this might have been due to the progressive development of the sect. However, there are difficulties in the matter of correlation.
The literature of the Qumran sect referred to the community in exclusive terms. The Manual of Discipline contains allusions to the “Community of God”, and “His true community”. Similarly, there are references to the sect as “the Council of God”, and the “House of Truth in Israel”. There is also the phrase -an institution of holy spirit of eternal truth to atone for the spirit of transgression”. Self-righteous and extravagant claims we might think! Their priests are described as “Sons of Aaron”, and “Sons of Zadoc”.
In the Habakkuk Commentary there is bitter criticism of the priests in Jerusalem, especially in regard to a “Wicked Priest”. Later priests receive the same condemnation. The Commentary says that the “Wicked Priest” persecuted the “Teacher of Righteousness”, and used the “resting of the Day of Atonement” as the occasion to cause the people to stumble.
The Qumran sect thereafter avoided the Temple, and their literature is highly critical of the Jerusalem priesthood, and several references forbid any relations with them.
Those outside of the Qumran faith were referred to in the Manual of Discipline as “sons of darkness” and “sons of perversion”. They are also described as “unclean”, and there are scathing references to “priests of Jerusalem”.
The sect made very little reference to sacrifices in their literature, and Dr. La Sor says that it is not conclusive that the group practised ritual sacrifice of animals. They believed that the practices of the sect had value “more than flesh of burnt offerings and than fats of sacrifice”. They held that a “perfect way of living is like giving an acceptable oblation”. The quotations from the Manual of Discipline are contained in the book by Dr. La Sor.
Dr. La Sor makes a statement which reveals an incongruity in their self-styled title “House of Truth in Israel”. He writes: “The sect seems to have followed the more spiritual teachings of the prophets rather than the sacrificial Levitical code. Even circumcision is mentioned in spiritualized aspect”.
The reference in the Qumran literature to the “Teacher of Righteousness” is interesting because he is a central figure in the whole Qumran picture. According to the Damascus Document it was the duty of the Teacher to speak and the responsibility of the community to listen.
Returning to La Sor’s book we have the crucial question that has puzzled scholars of the scrolls. To quote: “Thus we see the complexity of this problem. Was the Teacher of Righteousness an historical character in the past, when the Qumran writings were produced (as many have suggested) ; or was he an eschatalogical character to come; or was he at once, a historical figure who was killed and was to return (as Dupont Sommer holds) ; or was he just an ideal toward which every teacher, and indeed the whole community, was to strive?”
Edmund Wilson, author of the book, “The Scrolls from the Dead Sea”, considers that the “Teacher of Righteousness” may have been a general title given to a succession of “Teachers”, while some scholars think that the “Wicked Priest” may refer to either Menelaus, Alexander Jannaeus, Aristobulus II, or Hyrcanus II. Interpretative possibilities here are wide and varied.
From the point of view of the Scrolls this aspect is such an important one that it might be helpful to turn to another authority on the scrolls. A. R. C. Leaney in his book, “A Guide to the Scrolls”, writes: “The great difficulty is that what could be termed historical references are hardly more than general allusions, fitting personages and circumstances at more than one period. Even the more specific terms like “Teacher of Righteousness” or “Wicked Priest” can be understood to refer to certain offices and their occupants without referring to a particular person”.
Scholars are in agreement that the Scrolls date from about 150 B.C. to A.D. 68. when the Community vacated Qumran because of the Roman conquest.
Bearing in mind that the Gospel records were written from about A.D. 60 onwards, it will be realized that the Scrolls antedate these documents, possibly by decades.
This fact has given rise to a lot of unfounded suggestions that Christianity has been \guilty of indiscriminalte borrowings from the Qumran theology. Dr. La Sor says: “More recently we have seen the appearance of pulp works that seem to ridicule Christian ministers and belittle Jesus Christ—all in the name of the Dead Sea Scrolls. If it were not for the fact that tens of thousands of persons, chiefly young people, are taking them seriously, I would take no notice of them. They have no claim to Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship whatever, and their arguments against New Testament Christianity are at least forty years old and have been answered many times.”
An instance of unscholarly extravagance is manifest in the words of Edmund Wilson, whose book “The Scrolls from the Dead Sea” has been reprinted six times, emphasising the relish with which people seize upon any work that seems to discredit the Bible. He writes: “The monastery, this structure of stone that endures, between the bitter waters and precipitous cliffs, with its oven and its inkwells, its well and its cesspool, its constellation of sacred fonts and the unadorned graves of its dead, is perhaps, more than Bethlehem or Nazareth, the cradle of Christianity.”
This kind of assessment makes no contribution whatever to the study of the Scrolls, and is dismissed by the serious scholars of the Scrolls as unbalanced and insignificant.
Wilson carries on in the same strain. Consider this statement: “The ‘Teacher of Righteousness’ died about 65-53 B.C.; Jesus the Nazarene died about 30 A.D. In every case in which the resemblance compels or invites us to think of a borrowing, this was on the part of Christianity.” It is not surprising that these outlandish statements are repudiated by the serious scholars of the Scrolls.
Raymond Brown, author of “The Qumran Scrolls and the Johannine Gospel and Epistles”, is constructive in his conclusion: “There remains a tremendous chasm between Qumran thought and Christianity. No matter how impressive the terminological and ideological similarities are, the difference that Jesus Christ makes between the two cannot be minimized.”
Where slight affinities do appear to exist between the Qumran literature and the New Testament, they are traceable back to the Old Testament, for it is true that the Qumran sect referred copiously to the Old Scriptures in their writings, and, similarly, a number of Old Testament quotations are to be found in the books of the New Testament.
The similarities that might appear to exist between the two disappear upon analysis of the things that divide them. A. R. C. Leaney in his book, “A Guide to the S’crolls”, writes: “This discussion has been scrolls necessary in order to make clear, in opposition to Allegro, the very important differences between the conception of the Messiah at Qumran and that of the New Testament. It is undisputed that there is no dual Messiahship in the New Testament as there is in Qumran, and that subordination of Messiah to Priest would be unthinkable anywhere in the New Testament. What must be opposed is the suggestion that a Davidic Messiah, conceived of only as a warrior Messiah, is the essence of the New Testament claim.”
Dr. La Sor makes an important point in connection with the Qumran messianism concept: “One of the most important facts to note is the absence from the Qumran literature of the apocalyptic ‘Son of man’ concept. In my opinion it is becoming increasingly clearer that the teachings and claims of Jesus can in no way be traced to Qumran (or, as it is often called, ‘Essene’) origin.”
The Qumran expectation of a priestly ‘Teacher of Righteousness” certainly did not correspond with the Isaiah conception of the Suffering-Messiah. Theodor Gaster puts it well: “The religious brotherhood represented by the Scrolls did not believe, as has been supposed, in a martyred Messianic ‘Teacher of Righteousness’ who reappeared posthumously to his disciples and whose Second Coming was awaited. The title ‘Teacher of Righteousness (more correctly, ‘true exponent of the Law’) designates an office, not a particular person. The passage of the texts on which the sensational theory has been based has been misunderstood. The Brotherhood indeed looked forward to the advent of a prophetic and priestly ‘Teacher’ before the Final Era, but this was not the Second Coming of a martyred Christ.”
R. C. Leaney exposes differences in internal arrangements between the Qumran sect and the first-century church. He says: “There is no evidence that committees of presbyters in the early church were confined to twelve in number, and there is no evidence that the early Christians divided their members into ‘laymen’ and ‘clergy or ministers at all.”
This is a major point of difference between the Qumran community and the early Christian church, showing that Qumran was not a whit behind the Pharisees and Sad ducees in ecclesiastical formalism.
Another vital distinction, not to be lost sight of, is that Qumran practised ritual baptism in the form of continual cold water cleansings, whereas Christian baptism was initiatory, or once-for-all, and clearly based upon repentance and correct belief. The marked difference between the two theologies will commend itself instantly to the serious student of Scripture.
R. C. Leaney, whose approach to the Scrolls is constructive and balanced, gives his summing up which is endorsed by some of the leading scholars: “We must bear in mind always, if we are to be fair in comparing the two communities, the striking dissimilarities. In short, it seems to me wholly impossible to identify the Qumran community with the Christian church, or even to see the one as the ancestor of the other, and highly precarious to recognize in the form and structure of the Christian church any significant borrowings from the Qumran community. On this particular point it seems to me that too many writers have been afflicted with a dewy-eyed susceptibility to dubious points of resemblance.”
The purpose in quoting these authorities is to present a constructive comparison between the Qumran theology and Christianity. The former was ascetic, austere, unforgiving, and saw only itself in the plan of salvation. It was an unrelenting iconoclasm that turned its back on the world, hoping to save itself. Christianity on the other hand was born of God, and is, therefore, eternal, because it was in the purpose of God from the beginning. Its field is the world, and in the name of Christ Jesus it reaches forward and outward, calling all men to repentance and salvation.
Christianity has outlived the three main Jewish sects of the first-century because it was founded by the Son of God, and was the visible manifestation of God’s Love for the world:
“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Christianity has God’s Love for its foundation, and, for that reason, its purpose can never fail. Qumran failed because it loved its own and hated the world. It sought salvation in monastic seclusion, which is not the way with God.
Appended hereunder is a schedule showing comparisons between the Qumran beliefs and Christianity. It will be seen that the differences are irreconcilable.
A Perspective on how Archaeology can help us understand the Bible