the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

JAMES H. CHARLESWORTH 109
Acts 6:7 refers to Sadducees. In stark contrast to the Essenes, 45 the
Sadducees rejected the concept of a resurrection (see esp. Acts 4:1–4),
actively persecuted Jesus’ group (Acts 1–12, see, e.g., 5:17), and probably
had no patience with messianism and apocalypticism (both characteristic
of the Essenes and Jesus’ followers). Although Acts surely reflects Luke’s
own tendencies and is theologically slanted to prove that the Spirit has
broken forth again in history, we should not dismiss as unthinkable
Luke’s report that priests joined the Palestinian Jesus Movement in the
30s and 40s. It is also conceivable that Luke was wrong chronologically
and was thinking about the Essenes, who joined the Jesus group after the
destruction of 70 C.E.
The book of Acts also refers to the Palestinian Jesus Movement as “the
Way.” According to the author of Acts 22:4, Paul reports, “I persecuted
this Way to the death.” “Way” is a technical term, as becomes clear when
studying Acts 9:2. According to this passage, the high priest commissions
Paul to bring bound to Jerusalem “any belonging to the Way.”
Where is the origin of this technical term? It—the Way—is not typical
of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), the Septuagint, the
Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, or the Jewish magical
papyri. It is, however, the self-designation of the Qumran sect: “These are
to the norms of the Way (krdh [N.B. medial consonant in final position],
for the Master in these times” (1QS 9.21; see also 1QS 9.19; 11.11; 1Q30
line 2; 1Q22 2.8; 1Q28a [= 1QS a ] 1.28; 11Q19 [= 11QTemple a ] 54.17).
The most likely reconstruction of Christian origins thus leads us to
postulate that members of Jesus’ group were called “the Way,” because of
the terminology developed within the Qumran sect and perhaps also
within the larger group of the Essenes. How did that term move from
Essenism to Jesus’ group? Possibly numerous Qumranites or Essenes
joined Jesus’ group by the time Luke wrote Acts, or even earlier. While
this scenario helps us catch another insight into the presence of former
Essenes within early Christianity, it does not permit us to see Essene
influence in such Johannine phrases as Jesus proclamation, “I am the
way” (14:6).
In light of the favorable interest in the Levites in many of the Qumran
Scrolls, 46 and the evidence of Essenes probably living in the southwestern
45. This statement does not mean that in their own sectarian writings the Essenes
affirmed belief in a resurrection. They did not reject it, and they used books in which
it was clearly present, such as Daniel 12, 1 Enoch, and On Resurrection (4Q521).
46. Richard C. Stallman, “Levi and the Levites in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” JSP 10
(1992): 163–89.