Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

. (5) Your Holiness . . . (6) you have abandoned...
Fragment 3 (1) s[ou]l. . . (2) that . . . (3) for You as a p[use] people . . . (4) also, I am . . . (5) the day
when . . . (6) in the appointed times of purification . . . (7) of the Community. . . (8) in the purity of
[I]srael, for . . . (9) [and] they [will] dwell . . . (10) And it will come to pass in the day . . . (11) a
Jewish woman . . .
Fragment 4 (1) for You have made . . . (2) Your . . . to be purified befo[re . . .] (3) for Him, a Law of
Glory . . . (4) and to be in the purity of Ri[ghteousness . . .] (5) and w[ash]ing in water, and he will be .
. . (6) You will . . . And after he returns . . . (7) purifying his people with cleansing water . . . (8) the
second one in his place will sta[nd . . .] (9) Your purification] in the Glory of ... (10) . . . in the da[y . .
.]
43. Hymns Of The Poor (4Q434, 436)
These texts are appropriately titled. It is important to see the extent to which the terminology Ebionim
('the Poor') and its synonyms penetrated Qumran literature. Early commentators were aware of the
significance of this usage, though later ones have been mostly insensitive to it. The use of this
terminology, and its ideological parallels, 'Am ('Meek') and Dal ('Downtrodden'), as interchangeable
terms of self-designation at Qumran, is of the utmost importance. There are even examples in crucial
contexts of the published corpus of an allusion like 'the Poor in Spirit', known from Matthew's Sermon
on the Mount in both the War Scroll, xi.10 and the Community Rule, iv.3.
It is clear from the Pauline corpus that in some sense the community following the leadership of James
the just (known in the literature as 'the brother of Jesus', whatever is meant by that designation) - the socalled
Jerusalem Church or Jerusalem Community - were called 'the Poor' (Gal. 2:10; also Jas. 2:3-5).
Remembering 'the Poor', meaning in some sense bringing a proper amount of monetary contributions
back to Jerusalem, is all Paul is willing to say in Galatians above about the conditions laid down on his
activities by his ideological opposite James.
As tradition proceeds, it becomes clear that the Ebionim (the so-called Ebionites) or 'the Poor' is the
name by which the community descending from James' Jerusalem Community in Palestine goes. In all
likelihood, it descends from the one we are studying in these materials as well. This movement, called
by some 'Jewish Christianity' - the appellation is defective, but we have no other - honoured the person
and teaching of this James, otherwise known as 'the Righteous' or 'Just One'. By the fourth century, the
high Church historian Eusebius, previously Bishop of Caesarea, is willing to tell us about these
Ebionites. Of Palestinian origin and one of the people primarily responsible for the Christian takeover
in Rome, he clearly regards the Ebionites he describes as sectarian - sectarian, of course, in
contradistinction to that form of Pauline Christianity that he helped promote in Constantine's time.
He tells us in Ecclesiastical History, 3.27 that they were 'called Ebionites by the ancients (i.e. a long
time before his own era) because of the low and mean opinions they held about Christ'. By this
statement he means that the Ebionites do not regard Jesus as divine. He does so, using the 'Wicked
Demon', 'Devil' and 'net' language that is so much a cornerstone of the presentation of the charges in
the Damascus Document against them. Knowing that Ebionite means 'Poor Man in Hebrew', he