The relationship of the Dead Sea Scrolls to early Christianity has absorbed scholars since the dramatic discovery more than 30 years ago. Early, exaggerated commentaries which, for example, stated that the Teacher of Righteousness was Jesus of Nazareth1 or that Jesus was a veritable “reincarnation” of the Teacher of Righteousness,2 have now fallen by the wayside. Left with the less sensational, but more soundly based connections, scholars continue to explore the relationships between the Qumran community and the early Christian church. One such line of connection—infrequently noticed—focuses on the “crosses” in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the sign of the cross in early Christianity.
Formed by the intersection of two lines, written as either + or X, the cross is a very elemental mark. Such a mark appears as early as the Chalcolithic Age (fourth millennium B.C.) on stones at Tell Abu Matar (near Beersheba), and is known widely in the history of religions before the Christian era. It often appears to have a magical or mystical significance. As we shall see, it frequently appears as a mark of protection.
When alphabets were invented in about 1700 B.C., a variety of signs were devised to signify different letters. The cross-mark naturally lent itself for this purpose. It is found in alphabets used to write a number of ancient languages, including Canaanite, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Hebrew. In proto-Sinaitic inscriptions at Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai Desert, the sign is written as +; in a Phoenician inscription at Byblos it is written as X. In ancient Hebrew (prior to the adoption of the square Arabic characters still used 042today) the last letter of the alphabet was written interchangeably as + or X. The Hebrew name of this letter—Taw (pronounced Tov) may also be translated as the Hebrew word for “mark.”3 Job, in lamenting his woes, exclaims, “Here is my mark, let the Almighty answer me.”
The Semitic name Taw became Tau in the Greek alphabet and “T” in the Latin alphabet. But as the last character in the Hebrew alphabet, the Semitic Taw was sometimes considered the equivalent of Omega, the last letter in the Greek alphabet. Because of its form, as either + or X, the Semitic Taw was also considered equivalent to the Greek Chi, which was written over the centuries both as + and X. The later and now more usual form of the Greek Chi was X, like the Latin X.
The significance of some of these relationships is illustrated in passages from the Talmud, a compendium of post-Biblical Jewish lore and law. For example, one passage speaks of “the men who fulfilled the Torah from Aleph to Taw” (Abodah Zarah 4a) in the same way that the Lord does in Revelation 1:8 and 21:6 and Jesus in Revelation 22:13, where the text speaks of “alpha and omega.” Another Talmudic passage remarks that “God blessed Israel with twenty-two letters” (Baba Bathra 88b), that is, the list of blessings begins with the first letter, Aleph, and closes with the last, Taw. The Talmud (Menahoth 74b) describes the anointing “in the form of Chi,” referring to the Greek letter in the shape of a cross. In a final Talmudic passage (Kerioth 5b), we read: “In anointing kings one draws the figure of a crown (i.e., a circle around the head), and with priests in the shape of the letter Chi. Said Rabbi Menashia: ‘The Greek (letter) chi is meant.”4 In other words, priests are anointed with a cross.
At Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found,—as in early 043Christianity—the Book of Isaiah was of special interest and importance. Several copies or fragments of Isaiah were found in the Dead Sea caves. Much of the special interest in Isaiah both at Qumran and in early Christianity is attributable to its many eschatological passages referring to the end of time and the ultimate fulfillment of the divine plan. For example, in Isaiah 40:3 the people are urged “To prepare in the wilderness the way of the Lord, [to] make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” This same passage is quoted in the Qumran Scroll known as the Order of the Community (1QS 8.12–15) as an analog to the Qumran community, which has gone into the wilderness of Judea so that its members may devote their lives to the study of the Law which God commanded through Moses. The same passage from Isaiah 40:3 is quoted in Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:2–3; Luke 3:2–6; and John 1:23 with respect to John the Baptist who was living in the desert of Jordan just before Jesus came to him to be baptized.
In the great Isaiah Scroll from Cave 1 at Qumran (1QSIsa), we find a number of different marks or signs scattered throughout the scroll, including some cross-marks. These different marks can clearly be seen both in the black and white and in the color photographs by John C. Trever.5
The marks in the margin of the great Isaiah Scroll are apparently intended to call attention to a variety of matters in the Hebrew text. For example, the first line of Column 17 has a circular mark over a word which does not appear at this point in the Masoretic text (the Jewish textus receptus) of Isaiah 21:16. This mark was probably designed to point out the discrepancy. In Column 27 a similar mark appears over a word in Line 21 (from Isaiah 33:19) where a word appears in the plural which, in the Masoretic text, appears in the singular.
Seven more complex signs are scattered throughout the great Isaiah scroll, sometimes above a line and sometimes in a margin. One of these occurs twice,6 others only once.7 The purpose of these signs is not evident.
Another sign consists essentially of a loop which is on top of a straight line and which usually extends in a single stroke below that line. It looks like this: . If the vertical stroke extended further downward it would look like the ankh sign of “life” in ancient Egypt.8
A sign which appears identical with the cross-mark 044(X), described above as a way of writing the Hebrew Taw and the Greek Chi, occurs more frequently, however, than any one of the other signs—eleven times.9
If we look at the passages opposite these cross-marks10 (X), all of them have a peculiarly eschatological context.
Beyond this general observation, is it possible to learn anything more specific about the nature and import of the signs in question, especially of the cross-mark?
Some information of direct relevance comes from Epiphanius on early Christian writing.a
Near the beginning of his work “On Weights and Measures,”b Epiphanius lists a number of signs which are employed, he says, in manuscripts of the prophetic writings of the Bible. One of these signs is a cross-mark and appears in the Greek manuscripts of Epiphanius as +, and in the Syriac manuscripts of Epiphanius as X. In other words, it is precisely the cross-mark which we have described above, and which appears in the Isaiah Scroll from Qumran in the X-form, marking the passages listed. This sign, Epiphanius says, stands for the Messiah, the Christ, and is used to mark passages of messianic import. As we have noted, the content of the passages indicated by this sign in the Isaiah Scroll are indeed of such import, or can be understood as connected in one way or another with messianic expectation.11
We may reasonably conclude, therefore, that the later custom of Christian scribes, described by Epiphanius, had its antecedent in the markings used by Jewish scribes. The cross signs in the Isaiah Scroll represents a continuous tradition also described in Epiphanius. In both cases, the cross-mark was used to single out passages of messianic import. (Another sign, possibly related to the Egyptian sign of “life” (ankh), was used to mark other passages of eschatological significance.)
The word taw (“mark”) occurs in two passages in the Old Testament. The first passage, mentioned above, is in Job 31:35, where Job says “Here is my signature!” (RSV): the Hebrew is literally, “Here is my mark (taw).” Thus Job probably made his mark, at least figuratively, in the form of a cross-mark, just as an X may be accepted today as a legal signature.
The second passage is in Ezekiel 9:4–6. In this vision of Ezekiel a man clothed in linen is instructed to go through Jerusalem and put a mark (taw) on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over the abominations that are committed in the city. Those whom God has called upon to destroy the city are then told to proceed, but to touch no one with this mark (taw) on his forehead. Evidently this mark (taw) designates those who are faithful to the Lord. The mark (taw) puts them under His protection for deliverance in the time to come. As for the place of the mark on the forehead, this was often a preferred location for ritual marks, as the history of religions abundantly shows. (Remember the mark of Cain—on the forehead—in Genesis 4:15?c). The form of the mark in Ezekiel was probably the cross-mark, the alphabetic letter Taw.
This passage from Ezekiel is also quoted in a document known to scholars as the Zadokite Document or Cairo Document. The Cairo Document was found in the famous Cairo Genizahd at the end of the last century. It dates from about the tenth century A.D. but from the time of its discovery scholars suspected that the original composition was far earlier. And, indeed, small fragments of this same document were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Clearly, the Cairo Document and the Dead Sea Scrolls belong to the same general movement.
The Cairo Document describes the visitation of the Lord at the Last Judgment when the destruction of Jerusalem will be repeated, just as it was prophesied in the vision of Ezekiel. The Cairo Document then 047quotes Ezekiel 9:4 as follows: “These [people] shall escape in the time of the visitation, but they that hesitate shall be given over to the sword when the Messiah of Aaron and Israel shall come. As it happened in the epoch of the visitation of the forefathers, which He said by the hand of Ezekiel (9:4) ‘to set the mark upon the foreheads of such as sigh and groan.’”12 In other words, only those who have received the mark (taw) upon their foreheads will be saved.
There is one difference, however, between Ezekiel 9:4 as quoted in the Cairo Document and the same passage as it appears in the Masoretic text of the Bible. The Masoretic text of Ezekiel 9:4 used the simple word taw which is translated “a mark.” In the Cairo Document the definite article is used before the taw, which must be translated as “the mark.” This suggests that the passage in the Cairo Document does not speak figuratively only, but instead reflects a practice of literally putting a mark upon the forehead of the faithful. This mark was presumably the cross-mark, the alphabetic character which was at the same time the word “mark,” that is, the Taw.
That the taw in Ezekiel 9:4 was understood at the beginning of the Christian era as the actual cross-mark, is also supported by some of the Greek translations of the passage. The Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation of the Bible, translates the Hebrew taw with the Greek word meaning generally “sign.” But in a work on the Book of Ezekiel by Origen, an early Church father, he states that Aquila and Theodotion (each of whom also translated the Bible into Greek) translated the Ezekiel passage to read that the mark of “the Tau” was to be put upon the foreheads of the faithful. Tertullian (a Latin Church father of the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries) quotes the Ezekiel passage in the same form: “Go through the gate, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set the mark (Tau) upon the foreheads of the men.”13
In a 12th-century Latin Bible in the Lambeth Palace Library a miniature painting pictures the event in Ezekiel with a man in white making the mark of the taw, the cross-mark, on the foreheads of three men. In a 15th-century Spanish Bible at Casa de Alba, Madrid, a miniature painting pictures soldiers slaying unfaithful Israelites, while five men marked with the taw (+) on their foreheads stand at one side untouched. Early Christian Old Testament art has been shown to have Jewish artistic predecessors, and this may well be the case with the depictions from these scenes of Ezekiel 9:4. This is especially likely here because the Casa de Alba miniature contains other iconographic features with a remarkable similarity to the Ezekiel paintings from the 3rd century A.D. synagogue at Dura-Europos.14
In another passage from his book on Ezekiel, 048Origen tells how he inquired of the Jews about the teachings which had been handed down to them on the subject of the Taw (which he spells thau in Greek):
“Upon inquiring of the Jews whether they can relate any traditional teaching regarding the Taw, I heard the following. One of them said that in the order of the Hebrew letters the Taw is the last of the twenty-two consonantal sounds. The last consonant is therefore taken as proof of the perfection of those who, because of their virtue, moan and groan over the sinners among the people and suffer together with the transgressors. Another said that the Taw symbolizes the observers of the Law. Since the Law, which is called Torah by the Jews, begins with the consonant Taw, it is a symbol of those who live according to the Law. A third (Jew), one of those who believe in Christ, said the form of the Taw in the old Hebrew script, resembles the cross (stauros), and it predicts the mark which is to be placed on the foreheads of the Christians.”
How far back in time the protective nature of the Taw or cross-mark was recognized is unsure. Certainly the passage from Ezekiel suggests it goes back at least to the time of the prophet. Whatever doubt we may have that the “mark” referred to in Ezekiel was a cross-mark, clearly, by the early Christian Period, the Jews understood it to be just that. At the beginning of the Christian era the Jewish people believed the cross-mark stood for faithfulness and for protection and salvation at the end of time. The people of Qumran, then, used the cross-mark to single out passages of eschatological and messianic import in the Scriptures.
Since matters of faithfulness, protection, and salvation at the end of time were all of great concern to the early Church it was natural for the Church to use the same cross-sign which the Jews had already invested with this meaning. Presumably the first Christians to use the cross-sign in this way were Jewish Christians.
Later the cross-sign became associated with the cross of the crucifixion and assumed an even greater significance for Christians. As noted above, Epiphanius describes how Christian scribes drew cross-marks in their Bible manuscripts next to passages of messianic import from the Prophets, just as the scribes did at Qumran.
The Book of Revelation speaks of setting “the seal of our God on the foreheads of his servants.” Surely 049this practice of placing a seal on the heads of the servants of God for protection in the end time draws on Ezekiel 9:4. Both Revelation 14:1 and 22:3–4 indicate that this mark on the forehead was understood as standing for the name of God and of Christ. This makes it probable that already among the Jews, the Taw, being the last letter of the alphabet and therefore, as Origen reported, a symbol of perfection (comparable to Omega in Greek), was a sign for the name of God. Written as X it was also equivalent to Greek Chi, and this was the initial letter of the Greek word Christos, meaning “Christ.”
In the second-century Gospel of Truth, a Gnostic work with strong elements of Jewish-Christian theology, we find a passage stating that “the name of the Father is the Son.” Accordingly, one sign could well stand for both, as the Book of Revelation seems to say. As noted above, Origen reports that Jewish Christians recognized the Taw (evidently when written as +) as resembling the stauros, i.e., the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Origen reports (cited above) one Jew as saying that this crucifix cross “predicts the [shape of] the mark” which will be “placed on the foreheads of the Christians.” Thus the forehead mark not only symbolized the shape of the Greek Chi (the x-form) which stood for the initial letter of Christ’s name, but also the shape of the crucifix.
Written in either the one form or the other, this sign has now been found on various ossuaries and at various places in Palestine, as well as in the Christian catacombs of Rome, and elsewhere. In some cases it may be a Jewish sign of protection and salvation. In many other instances, particularly if other associated signs or inscriptions of recognizable Christian import accompany it, or if the places are of known sacred significance to the early Christians, the sign most probably reflects an expression of the Christian faith.
In the long run the cross-form, reminiscent of the crucifixion of Jesus, prevailed, and was depicted not only in the so-called Greek form with equal-length arms, but also in the Latin form with the longer vertical member. Nevertheless through this symbol lurks the remembrance of the ancient Jewish sign of protection and salvation. Thus, the crosses in the Dead Sea Scrolls may indeed by seen as a waystation on the road to the Christian Cross.
(For further details, see Jack Finegan, The Archaeology of the New Testament, The Life of Jesus and the Beginning of the Early Church, pages 220–260 (Princeton Paperback, 1978).)
043
Photo from Reader
The beautiful color photograph of the Dead Sea Scroll caves at Qumran was made not by a professional photographer but by a BAR reader, Ron Erickson. Erickson submitted many fine slides to BAR in response to a request to readers to help us supplement our photo archives.
The relationship of the Dead Sea Scrolls to early Christianity has absorbed scholars since the dramatic discovery more than 30 years ago. Early, exaggerated commentaries which, for example, stated that the Teacher of Righteousness was Jesus of Nazareth1 or that Jesus was a veritable “reincarnation” of the Teacher of Righteousness,2 have now fallen by the wayside. Left with the less sensational, but more soundly based connections, scholars continue to explore the relationships between the Qumran community and the early Christian church. One such line of connection—infrequently noticed—focuses on the “crosses” in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the sign of […]
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Epiphanius, born (c. 315) in the vicinity of Eleutheropolis near Gaza, founded a monastery at Eleutheropolis and headed it for thirty years. He later (in 367) became bishop of Salamis on the island of Cyprus, but still kept in close touch with Palestine personally and through correspondance. In his Haereses (written in 374–377) he told much about the Jewish-Christian sects; in his De Mensuris et Ponderibus (“On Weights and Measures,” written in 392) he compiled a Bible dictionary dealing with the canon and versions of the Old Testament, measures and weights in the Bible, and the geography of Palestine.
2.
This work is extant in its first part in late Greek manuscripts, and in whole in Syriac translation in two manuscripts of the seventh and ninth centuries.
3.
The Bible does not specify where the mark was placed, but most probably it was on his forehead. The Hebrew word translated “mark” (ot) in Genesis means letter. Which letter? A cross-mark taw?
4.
In Hebrew the word Genizah means “hiding” or “storage place;” it refers to a depository for worn manuscripts which Jews did not want to profane by destroying them.
Endnotes
1.
J. L. Teicher in Journal of Jewish Studies 5 (1954), pp. 53f.
2.
A. Dupont-Sommer, The Jewish Sect of Qumran and the Essenes (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1955), pp. 160f.
Further on the equivalence of the Taw and Chi see Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (New York: P. Feldheim, 2nd edition 1965).
5.
Scrolls from Qumran Cave I, The Great Isaiah Scroll, The Order of the Community, The Pesher to Habakkuk (Jerusalem: The Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and The Shrine of the Book, 1972).
6.
In Columns 27 and 33.
7.
In Columns 5, 7, 8, 21, 22, and 32, tabulated in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR) III, p. 9. Three similarly complex signs occur in the Order of the Community (in Columns 5, 7, and 9).
8.
This sign occurs six times. As to its placement, in Columns 28, 32, 38, 43, and 49 it appears to be in the right margin and to refer to the text at the left. In one case where it is in the space between Columns 34 and 35 it is so close to the line at the right that it may he considered to be in the left margin of Column 34 and refer to the text at its right.
9.
In Columns 26, 35 (twice), 36, 38, 41, 45, 46 (twice), 48, and 53. As in the case of the “ankh” sign, the placement of the present sign appears also to he in the right margin, with reference to the text at the left. The sign which is at Line 6 from the bottom in the margin between Columns 45 and 46 constitutes the one possible exception to this. It is so close to the end of the line in Column 45 that it can be interpreted as positioned in the left margin and as referring to the text at its right. In the Habakkuk Commentary (1QpHab) a similar but smaller mark occurs frequently, but its position is regularly at the end of a line which does not reach the margin, and it may he omitted from the present consideration.
In addition to the above signs, there are numerous short horizontal lines, some with a slight downward band on the left, which are usually found on the right edge of the columns, and appear to be used to set off passages of a few lines each. These are found in columns 7, 8, 10, 11, 16, 19, 23, 24, 34, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, and 54.
10.
Each cross mark seems to refer to the text at its left to which it is adjacent in the right column (with the possible exception between Columns 45 and 46).
11.
Epiphanius also lists signs very similar to those appearing in the Dead Sea Scrolls and resembling the ankh. In the Greek manuscripts of Epiphanius’ work the ankh sign does not appear but a different sign which occurs earlier in the list does appear. Perhaps the original sign was reproduced incorrectly. In the Syriac manuscripts the ankh sign does occur except that the loop is formed in a rectangular manner. In both the Greek and the Syriac texts Epiphanius says that the significance of the ankh is that it marks passages that foretell future events. This explanation agrees with the content of the passages so marked in the Isaiah Scroll and listed above. Almost all are plainly of eschatological import, and even the first one (in Column 28), which is historical, may be supposed to have had some eschatological interpretation.
12.
Solomon Schechter, Documents of Jewish Sectaries (Ktav Publishing House, 1970), Hebrew Text B, p. 19, Line 12.
13.
Against Marcion III, 22.
14.
Jacob Leveen, The Hebrew Bible in Art (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1944), pp. 49f; Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (Bollingen Series 37, Pantheon Books, 1964), 10, p. 190.
. If the vertical stroke extended further downward it would look like the ankh sign of “life” in ancient Egypt.
