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

108 A STUDY IN SHARED SYMBOLISM AND LANGUAGE
1QS 3–4 to quote from it. As novitiates they had studied it for a period
of at least two years. All Qumranites had been examined in its teachings
by leaders of the sect (1QS 6.14–20). 41 This section of the Rule of the
Community was also probably recited in various cultic settings.
After the burning of their buildings, those Qumranites who survived
the attack by Roman soldiers would have been dispersed with cherished
memories, including the secrets that had been revealed only to them
through the Righteous Teacher (see 1QpHab 7). If they entered any
other Jewish group, they would have surely influenced its members with
their special insights and developed terminology. If, indeed, Qumranites
or the wider group of which they were members (the Essenes) 42 joined a
new group within Second Temple Judaism (i.e., the Palestinian Jesus
Movement), they would have influenced it with their special vocabulary,
“knowledge” (t(d), and insight into the secret mystery (zr).
As some scholars have suggested since the 1950s, Acts possibly
records the movement of some Essene priests into this group: “And the
word of God increased; and the number of the disciples in Jerusalem
multiplied greatly, and a great crowd of the priests followed in the faith”
(6:7). 43 This statement occurs in one of Luke’s little summaries, easily
dismissed as devoid of historical worth; but it is never wise to discard
data that, in the light of other sources, may preserve vestiges of history.
We know of two major priestly groups in first-century Jerusalem, the
Sadducees and the Essenes. 44 It is practically impossible to imagine that
41. See Edward P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (London:
SCM, 1992), 349.
42. Despite the dissent of a few authors, a consensus still exists among the best
Qumran specialists on the identification of the Qumranites with the Essenes. L. H.
Schiffman challenges the Essene origins of the Qumran group, but he has affirmed (at
least to me on several occasions) that the Qumran group in the first century C.E. is to
be identified as Essenes. After almost thirty years of teaching and publishing on the
Qumran Scrolls, I have concluded that the Qumran group was Essene and a sect (deliberately
removing itself, sociologically and theologically, from other Jews and, indeed, persecuted
by the powerful Temple group). Also, we should think about Qumran Essenes,
Jerusalem Essenes, and other Essene and Essene-related groups living on the outskirts of
most of the Jewish cities, as Philo and Josephus reported. See Lawrence H. Schiffman,
Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost
Library of Qumran (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994); and idem, “The
Qumran Scrolls and Rabbinic Judaism,”in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A
Comprehensive Assessment (ed. P. W. Flint, J. C. VanderKam, and A. E. Alvarez; 2 vols.;
Leiden: Brill, 1998–1999), 2:552—71. In “Identity and History of the Community,”
James C. VanderKam shows why the Qumranites were most likely Essenes; his chapter
appears in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (ed. P. W. Flint,
J. C. VanderKam, and A. E. Alvarez; 2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1998–1999), 2:487—533.
43. The verb u(ph&kouon (followed) with the dative case denotes full surrender.
44. For evidence of Essenes living in Jerusalem, see the pertinent chapters in James H.
Charlesworth, ed., Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1992).