A First Look at Key Scrolls

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The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered: The First Complete Translation and Interpretation of 50 Key Documents Withheld for Over 35 Years

Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise

(Rockport, MA: Element Books, 1992) 286 pp., $24.95

This book is a major achievement. Eisenman and Wise here present us with approximately 50 previously unpublished scroll fragments (transcriptions and translations), together with a brief commentary regarding their significance. It is surely not the last word, but in many cases it is the first. Most scholars will appreciate the chance to look at these texts and to benefit from the fight that Eisenman and Wise fought in achieving access to them. I do have some trouble with their interpretations; nevertheless, to see this material at all is thrilling, and we owe Eisenman and Wise our thanks.

In all fairness, the most we can expect from this book is a well-informed preview of the upcoming scholarly editions. And no final judgment can be rendered on these texts until we have the entire Qumran corpus that will enable scholars to interpret these texts in context. In the end, we will still have to settle for some ambiguity.

Eisenman and Wise never specifically state the reasons why they chose the 50 texts contained in The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered. They say only that the texts were chosen because they seemed like the most dramatic ones. The texts they present may simply be the strongest ones to make their case linking the Dead Sea Scroll sect and early Christianity. For the authors, these texts “probably” give us “nothing less than a picture of the movement from which Christianity sprang in Palestine… [W]hat we have [in these texts] is a picture of what Christianity actually was in Palestine” (emphasis in original).

To make a more neutral evaluation, we will need an expert commentary on all the unpublished documents. But even at this point, some preliminary evaluations of these texts and the authors’ interpretations are possible.

The most significant information about ancient religious beliefs found in the Dead Sea Scrolls falls into four areas that provide convenient rubrics under which to discuss the texts in this book: (1) messianism, (2) life after death, (3) mysticism and (4) law and purity.

Because of their potential relationship to early Christianity, the fragments relating to messianism have received the most attention, as readers of BAR know.^a Eisenman and Wise use the term “messianic” somewhat misleadingly, however. Of the seven fragments they regard as messianic, only one actually contains the term “messiah” (fragment 4Q521).^b A second contains messianic imagery (4Q285); a third contains the phrase “anointed with oil” (4Q458), the verb from which the title messiah derives. This last text, probably apocalyptic, is so fragmentary that nothing much can be concluded from it. Most of the other texts the authors speak of as messianic contain apocalyptic references regarding the end of days or angelic mediators, but they do not mention a messiah. Apocalyptic texts are not ipso facto messianic. Eisenman and Wise could have avoided some confusion by using the terms messiah and messianic with more care.

The single text with messianic imagery (4Q285)—sometimes referred to as the “Pierced Messiah” text—speaks of a Nasi (Prince), the name given to the scion of David beginning in the Persian period (fifth century B.C.E.). There are some messianic terms in the passage, such as “the branch of David” and “staff of Jesse” (Jesse was David’s father). Unfortunately there are seven small fragments composing this text, and it is not clear how they relate to each other. Eisenman and Wise produce a text that talks of the prince’s (messiah’s) death by placing this particular fragment with another fragment that refers to a messianic victory. But the context also allows for a different reading in which the messiah could do the killing rather than be killed himself. Eisenman and Wise translate the passage both ways, recognizing the need to note the alternative hypothesis. Although many eschatological figures, including John the Baptist and Jesus, were killed in this period, we do not yet have any sure evidence that a Jewish community before the Easter event in Christianity expected a messianic figure to die. Eisenman and Wise are nevertheless correct that such a belief may have existed among some pre-Christian Jews during this period.

The one explicitly messianic passage (4Q521) in the book describes a single messiah. It is at odds with the view previously expressed by scholars that two messiahs were expected at Qumran—one a priest descended from Aaron and one a king descended from David—an idea found in a few Qumran texts (for example, 1QM 11.6–10; 1QS9.18–11; CD12:22–23). Eisenman and Wise make a great deal of 4Q521, admittedly a very interesting fragment, because it calls into question the hypothesis that the Qumran community believed in two messiahs. But one fragment cannot clinch the case either for a single or a double messiah, especially since most scholars believe in an evolution of Qumranic beliefs. One must also remember that these texts evidently used the term “messiah” in a variety of ways, all based on scriptural precedent. Since the term “messiah” literally means “anointed,” and since the community could, on the basis of the Biblical model, call anyone who had been anointed a messiah, their messianic ideas do not necessarily fit the post-Christian concept of a single office-holder.

In addition to a reference to the messiah, 4Q521 contains a reference to life after death—the first undoubted reference to this important concept in any published material from Qumran. Although most scholars have for a long time suspected that the Qumran community must have believed in life after death, some scholars challenged that view because there was no absolute proof for it. Here, in this text, resurrection is baldly stated in a context of healing the sick and of announcing glad tidings to the meek that seems to suggest the Shmoneh Esreh (Amidah) (a central prayer of Judaism), as well as Matthew 11:5 and Luke 7:23 (“The blind receive their sight… the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them”). The Qumran fragment does not use exactly the same wording as the Jewish prayer or the New Testament, but the context and order of God’s actions is quite similar in both. Eisenman and Wise suggest that the messiah in the Qumran passage could be the one to raise the dead; but this is a forced reading that they sagely do not emphasize.

This book also contains interesting material on mysticism in Judaism. The secret knowledge believed to have been imparted to Enoch, Noah and Daniel figures prominently in these texts. Eisenman and Wise sometimes refer to this material as “kabbalistic,” a popular but inaccurate term as applied to this material. Better adjectives would be visionary, mystical, apocalyptic or merkabah.^c Even their short foray into the mystical texts shows that there is an enormous body of visionary and apocalyptic literature in the Qumran corpus; it must now be carefully evaluated against our 061growing knowledge of the pseudepigrapha that contain similar material.^d Among the mystical texts from Qumran we find fragments known from other sources, as well as previously unknown texts that place the beginnings of Jewish mysticism squarely in the pre-Christian period. Of special note is the material about Ezekiel, which clearly shows the interest that the chariot vision of Ezekiel 1 has had throughout Israelite history.

The third group of texts presented by Eisenman and Wise contains some very complex legal material. The legal material from Qumran has been the slowest to yield its secrets; it has been perhaps even more recalcitrant than the esoteric visionary material. The reasons seem clear enough. The scholarly team originally assigned to publish the Dead Sea Scrolls had no real specialists in Jewish law because the scrolls were viewed—erroneously—as more interesting to the rise of Christianity than to the rise of rabbinic Judaism. Scholars of rabbinic Judaism as well as of early Christianity need to be intimately involved in unraveling the Qumran texts.

However, the interpretation of the legal materials from Qumran demands not only familiarity with rabbinic traditions but also a comparative legal perspective; the Qumran texts continually contrast the beliefs of their community with that of others.

Eisenman and Wise’s brief treatment of 4QMMT,^e thought to be a letter from the Qumran group’s leader explaining why the group was formed, can be at most only a preview of coming attractions. Eisenman and Wise have divided the fragments supposedly composing the single letter known as MMT into two letters that are, they say, related in much the same way as 1 and 2 Corinthians or 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

In previous publications, Eisenman has suggested that the Qumran material is not Essene but rather the literary remains of the first Christian church, the church of James the Just. Wise, for his part, has been interested in the links between the Qumran texts and the Zealots. In The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, Eisenman’s thinking predominates. Eisenman does, however, moderate his earlier view in which he argued that the early church not only shared the beliefs of the Qumran community, but was identical with it. Here he argues, more moderately, that the early church was a successor to Qumran rather than identical with it. In his view, the Jewish-Christian church of James picked up the ideas of Qumran, as if Qumran gave Christianity its “playbook” and Christianity merely provided a new quarterback.

This change in Eisenman’s hypothesis is probably due to the results of the carbon-14 testing of the material,^f which strongly agree with the dating estimates based on scribal writing styles (paleography)—namely, that a good many of the documents were prepared a century or more before the Christian era. Therefore, Eisenman cannot so easily maintain that the Dead Sea Scroll community is the same as the community of James the Just. Eisenman only mentions the carbon-14 test results vaguely in two brief paragraphs, suggesting that the tests are not reliable. That may be so, but the burden of proof is on Eisenman to show why.

Even Eisenman’s amended hypothesis—that the Qumran community was the immediate precursor of Christianity—requires clarification, however. No one would seriously challenge the idea that the Qumran writings help us understand much that later appears in Christianity. But there were too many varieties of Judaism and too many varieties of Christianity to draw a direct line of contact and descent, as Eisenman and Wise do.

This issue brings into sharp relief Eisenman and Wise’s policy of translating terminology in the fragments with such explicitly Christian terms as “bishop,” “Holy spirit” and “justification by works.” These translations tend to give the nonspecialist the wrong impression. It would be better to ban theological terms entirely from scholarly translations.

To argue for a single line of development from Qumran to Christianity misrepresents what we know of Christianity and also of Qumran. In my judgment, the texts from Qumran do not reflect the views of only a single sect, whether Essene, Sadducean or Zealot. The first undoubted reference to resurrection in these texts, mentioned above, is the best evidence for the Essene hypothesis, because the Essenes believed in life after death while the Sadduccees did not.^g Either the writings from Qumran represent a library broader than merely a sectarian one or more than one group was burying its material in the desert caves. In either case, to resolve some of the quandaries, we need to know a great deal more about sectarian life in first-century Judea before we make the kind of misleadingly specific guesses made by Eisenman and Wise.

In the end, as I noted earlier, we will have to settle for some ambiguity not only about Qumran, but about early Christianity as well. After all, the hypothesis that Christianity originated in a Zealot group and was subsequently, to use Eisenman and Wise’s word, “Paulinized” can neither be established nor entirely discounted.

Eisenman and Wise offer us the hypothesis that early Christianity was, in their words, “zealot, nationalistic, engagé, xenophobic, and apocalyptic.” Later, when the “overseas” group under Paul’s leadership prevailed, it became “cosmopolitan, antinomian, pacifistic.” Matters are rarely this simple or this clear cut. There are many other possibilities and variations. We may even have to live with the gnawing possibility that some people who could be called proto-Zealots were attracted to the message of Jesus—even if Jesus himself was pacifist and even though these Zealot activists did not play a major role in the immediate post-Easter church. So too we may have to live with the ambiguity that the ideology found in the Dead Sea Scrolls seems like Essene thinking in some ways and Zealot thinking in other ways—and that some apocalyptic works found at Qumran were also found at the Zealot stronghold on Masada.

Another problem with the texts that Eisenman and Wise present is that they never tell us precisely why they have grouped certain fragments together. Was there something about the way the fragments were discovered that made them group the fragments as they have or is the order a reflection merely of Eisenman and Wise’s taste?

The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered must be treated as one opinion among many. Clearly it is not the definitive statement. It should be thought of as a quick way to get a look at long-awaited fragments. But that does not prevent us from being grateful to Eisenman and Wise. They deserve our thanks for their efforts on our behalf.

Quote of the Week

“Just as war is too serious a matter to be left to the generals, so the Dead Sea Scrolls are really too important to be left to the historians and theologians.”

—Casimir Bernas, O.C.S.O., Holy Trinity Abbey, Huntsville, Utah, in a review of Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., Dead Sea Scrolls: Major Publications and Tools for Study (Revised Edition), Catholic Biblical Quarterly, July 1992, pp. 560–561.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered: The First Complete Translation and Interpretation of 50 Key Documents Withheld for Over 35 Years

Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise

(Rockport, MA: Element Books, 1992) 286 pp., $24.95