Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

Gen. 15:6's words, 'counted for him as Righteousness', concerning Abraham, were also applied in Ps.
106:31 to the high priest Phineas' act in fending off foreign pollution from the camp in the wilderness.
This must have been a matter of some excitement for 'Zealots'. Phineas' 'zeal for God' in killing
backsliders because of interaction with Gentiles (a subject too of the present letter) was, as we have
seen, an archetypical event for the Maccabean family (cf. Mattathias' farewell speech to his sons in 1
Macc. 2:54), as it was for the so-called 'Zealot' movement that followed. We say 'so-called', because
Ant. 18:23 never really calls it this - only 'the Fourth Philosophy' - and also because it was 'Messianic'.
The evocation of critical words such as these in the several various settings above further concretizes
the relationships of these movements.
Some of the positions enumerated in the recitation of legal minutiae before us, such as fluids
transmitting the impurity of their containers along the course of the poured liquid, have been
identified in the Talmud as 'Sadducean'. But the Talmud can hardly be considered historically precise.
By 'Sadduki', i.e. 'Sadducee' or 'Zadokite', it often means sectarian generally (min) - including even
Jewish Christians. The group responsible for these two letters could certainly not have been
'establishment Sadducees' of the Herodian period and group pictured in the New Testament. Josephus
describes these as 'dominated in all things by the Pharisees'. It could, however, have been the
Maccabean Sadducees of an earlier period, in so far as they - or their heirs - were not dominated by
the Pharisees or involved in the acceptance of foreign rule, foreign involvement in the affairs of the
society, or foreign gifts or sacrifices in the Temple.
Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians and Qumran: A New Hypothesis of Qumran Origins, Leiden, 1983,
set forth on the basis of Josephus' writings, the Qumran texts, and Talmudic materials a sitz IM leben
for these matters without benefit of either these letters or the Temple Scroll. It identified - at least in
the Herodian period - two groups of Sadducees, one 'establishment' and another 'opposition'. The latter
can also be called 'Messianic Sadducees'. In the Maccabean period they can be called 'Purist
Sadducees'. These last devolve into groups that are called 'Zealot', 'Essene', or even 'Jewish Christian',
depending on the vantage point of the observer, just so long as one understands their 'opposition'
nature and their nationalist, unbending and militant attachment to the Law (which Josephus calls
'national tradition'). This is exemplified in letters of attachment such as we present here. For instance,
if one wants to call attitudes such as these 'Essene', one would have to redefine to a certain extent
what one meant by that term.
The group responsible for this First Letter on 'those works of the Torah reckoned as good for you', or
to use the language of Paul, 'reckoned as Righteousness' or 'reckoned as justifying you', are very
interested in the Temple as per the parameters of the Damascus Document and the Temple Scroll,
with which it can be typologically grouped. They are particularly concerned with 'pollution of the
Temple'. This last, as we have seen, along with 'fornication' - a theme the letter also addresses -
constituted two out of the 'three nets' which 'Belial (Herod?) deceived Israel into considering as
Righteousness' (CD, iv-v).
The idea that the literature at Qumran was anti-Temple, which developed in the early days of Qumran
research from considering the Community Rule only and misunderstanding its splendid imagery, is
just not accurate. The 'zeal' shown for the Temple in these letters and other works is pivotal
throughout, but this Temple must be one 'purified' of all polluted works. It should be noted that this
'nationalistic' attachment to the Temple in Jerusalem, and a consonant xenophobia related to it, is