The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

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put forward the view that there was a coherent “Zadokite” movement that
included Ezra, Judas Maccabaeus, John the Baptist, Jesus, and his brother
James. So, Jesus with his followers and the Qumran group are regarded as
parts of that movement, which is also identified with Zealotism, the Jewish
protest against Rome. Eisenman’s starting point is the superficial similarity
between the designation “Righteous Teacher” and the later epithet for
“James the Just.” The similarity between both leads Eisenman to the identification
of both figures. So, he interprets 1QpHab 11.4–8 as a comment
on the persecution of “James the Just” by the high priest Ananus II, as
reported in Josephus (Ant. 20.200–203). Consequently, he identifies the
“Liar,” another figure mentioned in the Qumran texts as opposed to the
Righteous Teacher and his group, with Paul the apostle. So he sees the
Qumran documents as mirroring Jewish-Christian-Zealot polemic against
Paul, whom he views not only as an apostate from Judaism but also as an
agent of the Romans. This quite fantastic theory is based on the assumption
that the authors of the Qumran texts used a peculiar method of wordplay
to conceal the historical events behind allusions so that the modern
interpreter has to use his or her speculative fantasy in order to detect the
real meaning behind the words. 65
Another and even more fantastic model was developed by the
Australian Qumran scholar and novelist Barbara Thiering. Like
Eisenman, she defends a late Herodian date of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 66 but
identifies the Righteous Teacher with John the Baptist, whereas the
“Wicked Priest” and the “Liar” (who are most probably two different figures
in the Qumran texts) can be nobody else than Jesus himself. The
result is a bizarre novel of the “new” life of Jesus, from his birth near
Qumran, his education by the Essenes, and his initiation into the
Qumran community by John the Baptist—until his marriages with Mary
of Magdala and, later, with Lydia of Philippi, and his journey to Rome,
Literary Studies. (ed. Z. J. Kapera; Proceedings of the Second International Colloquium
on the Dead Sea Scrolls [Mogilany, Poland, 1989]; Qumranica Mogilanensia 3;
Kraków: Enigma, 1991), 177–96; idem, “Theory of Judeo-Christian Origins: The Last
Column of the Damascus Document,” in Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and
the Khirbet Qumran Site: Present Realities and Future Prospects (ed. M. O. Wise et al.; New
York: Academy of Sciences, 1994), 355–70; idem, James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to
Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Viking, 1996).
65. Cf. Eisenman, “Playing On and Transmuting Words.” See the critical assessment
of the method in Betz and Riesner, Jesus, Qumran und der Vatikan, 97–98; cf.
88–102, with an extensive criticism of Eisenman’s constructions.
66. Cf. Barbara E. Thiering’s early study Redating the Teacher of Righteousness (Sydney:
Theological Explorations, 1979). She develops her full story in Jesus and the Riddle of
the Dead Sea Scrolls: Unlocking the Secrets of His Life Story (San Francisco: Harper Collins,
1992). Cf. the criticism in Betz and Riesner, ibid., 121–38.