Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 31, 1994 TAG: 9403310175
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NEIL ALTMAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Hailed as the archaeological find of the century, the scrolls supposedly are the oldest copies of most of the Old Testament and some sectarian writings. Scholars have theorized that they were written by the "Essenes," an ascetic brotherhood of bishops and laymen who existed long before the time of Christ.
Now there is evidence that the Essenes evolved only after the time of Christ. If the scrolls are pre-Christian, the Essenes couldn't have written them.
Long before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, those who were critical of the Bible developed the Essene theory to account for the origins of Christianity. They theorized the existence of a sect of pre-Christian and first-century Jews from whom Christianity evolved. These scholars assumed that John the Baptist and even Jesus were Essenes. Yet nowhere in the New Testament is this sect mentioned, though other groups such as Zealots, Herodians, Sadducees and Pharisees are described.
The historical records of Pliny and Philo, who wrote in the first century, include sketchy details about sects. Dead Sea scroll scholars combined several of those sects into one, which they inferred to be the Essenes, to account for the authorship of the scrolls.
Josephus was another prominent historian of the same period who wrote about such a sect. He wrote that they were urban dwellers who lived in "every town in Israel." They didn't live in the desert or wilderness, like the Dead Sea region.
But people called "Ossaeans" did live along the northern shores of the Dead Sea after A.D. 68. Some scroll scholars believe they were Essenes.
Epiphanius, a church father of the third and fourth centuries, wrote that the "so-called heresy of the Ossaeans . . . originated from the regions of Nabataea and Ituraea, Moabitis and Arlelitis, from the regions that are situated at the other side of the lake that in Holy Scripture is called the Dead Sea." The fact that Epiphanius calls them a "heresy" suggests that they had a Christian background.
Other groups lived not far away in the Golan Heights region. The Jerusalem Post reported that Claudine Dauphin, a French archaeologist, found that Judeo-Christian sects emerged after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and continued into the medieval period. Dauphin said, "At two of the sites, we started finding bizarre stuff - Christian symbols intertwined with Jewish symbols . . . like a menorah covered by a ship, representing the church, whose mast was a cross, or a `lulay' [palm branch] whose top branches formed a cross."
This may explain why I found "lameds" - the Hebrew "L" - with the top part turned into a cross in the Dead Sea Scroll known as the Copper Scroll. Or why there are X's in the margins of messianic passages that speak of Jesus on the Isaiah scroll. Or why a cross is inserted into the the divine name on the Psalm scroll. Orthodox Jewish scholar Ruth Felder wrote about this scroll, "There are places where the name of God is used. An extra letter has be inserted and then crossed, the symbol of Christianity."
Another important clue in the search for the Essenes is offered by Athanase Negoitsa in "Revue de Qumran." He writes of a document by Nilus the Ascetic of the fourth century that indicates the Essenes lived then. Nilus praises their "meditative and lofty moral life." But he regrets that the Essenes do not follow the true philosophy of the gospel of Christ. This implies that they were a heretical Christian group.
We know from the writings of the church fathers that the Jews who believed in Jesus were called "Nazarenes" and that they kept the laws of Moses and customs of the Jewish people.
For example the church father Honorius Augustondunensis, stated "The Nazorenas are so-called after the village of Nazareth. These confess that Christ is the son of God, but they observed everything in the old law."
This dispels the medieval myth that the Jewish people rejected Jesus as messiah. The NT clearly states not only did a large number of Pharisees but also a "great company of priests [sadducees] turned to the Lord."
Also, entire Jewish cities such as Lydia and Sharon turned to Jesus as the Messiah.
One scholar of that period of history has stated that there is a good evidence that the vast majority of Jews had accepted Jesus as Messiah by the time of the start of the Roman war against jewry in 66 A.D.
It is clear from early church writings that even in later centuries, such as the 4th and 5th AD, Jewish followers of the Messiah still existed and did not deny their heritage. And we read in Acts (11:26) that the gentiles who believed in Jesus were called "Christians."
But between the time that the first gentile (Cornelius) believed and the time that large numbers of gentiles in Antioch were converted, what name differentiated gentiles?
I found the following statement in Epiphanius: "All Christians were called Nazoreanes [Nazarenes] once. For a short time they were given also the name Iessaeans, before the disciples in Antioch began to be called Christians."
Philip Comfort, professor of Greek and New Testament at Wheaton (Ill.) College and senior Bible editor at Tyndale Publishing House, says "the word `Iessaeans/Essenes' comes from `Iessalos' or Jesse, the father of David. The early Christians may have called themselves this because the Messiah was called the Son of Jesse." (Isaiah 11:10, Romans 15:12)
How then could the Essenes be the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which supposedly date as far back as 300 B.C.?
The discovery of the scrolls "merely revived [this] old, long-discarded theory" of a pre-Christian Essene society, writes Millar Burrows in "More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls."
Scroll scholar A. Dupont-Sommer says the Essene theory was a product of 18th-century biblical criticism. It speculated that Jesus "was imbued with Essene ethics, which in their turn, owe much to Zeno," a Greek philosopher of the fifth century B.C.
In fact, the Essene theory had become a scholarly attack on Jesus - the uniqueness of his teachings, his Jewishness, his early years and his divinity.
Though rebutted in the 19th century, the Essene theory began gaining acceptance again in the 1950s. Jewish scholars Solomon Zeitlin and H.E. DelMedico were among a growing number who challenged the early dating of the scrolls, as well as the theory that the Essenes wrote them. They believed the scrolls dated from the medieval period, rather than 300 B.C. to 60 A.D.
Zeitlin claimed that "ascribing . . . the scrolls to the pre-Christian period [was] theologically motivated." The scrolls were being used as propaganda against Christianity, he said, by back-dating them to the pre-Christian era. Many scholars who no longer held to historic Christian doctrinal beliefs revived the Essene theory to attack the Judeo-Christian heritage. Ironically, it was the Jewish scholars who defended Christianity.
Curiosity about the Dead Sea Scrolls continues as new pieces to the puzzle of their origin are put into place and as access to the scrolls is less restricted.
This latest evidence strongly indicates that the Essenes couldn't have written the scrolls. But scholars must now search for the identity of those who did write them and carefully stored them in the Qumran caves.
Neil Altman is a Philadelphia-based free-lance writer who specializes in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
by CNB