The Dead Sea Scrolls

Changed Religion Forever

 
Grand Rapids, Michigan March 9, 2003 

 © The Reverend Doctor Brent A. Smith 

 
Lenten Sermon Series Preface 

 

This Sunday, and for the succeeding Sundays until Easter, except for March 23 when I will be out of the pulpit, we will take an extraordinary journey together. It begins with a question: Can any religion survive maintaining beliefs about human beings, the universe, and God conceived centuries ago? Or, to ask a slightly different question, shouldn’t the spiritual life be about more than defending antiquated beliefs against new knowledge? Modern physics, anthropology, psychology, and modern political movements like democracy have changed our view of our world and ourselves; of human nature, the universe, God, and the spiritual life. This is called modernism. If religion insists on defending and promoting views that can no longer be held because the fruits of modernism have destroyed them, it will die of irrelevance and intellectual, moral, and spiritual bankruptcy. We propose a different response: Constructing a new religious perspective. 

 

The response Christianity and other religions have given to the flowering of modernism has been a fundamentalist return to centuries-old beliefs. This is the direct response of one aspect of religion to modernism: out and out spiritual warfare and a return to an imagined golden past. The response of other, more mainline parts of Christianity and other religions have been an acknowledgement of modernism, and yet a theological posture of “business as usual.“ Modernism is accepted, but requires no change of fundamental theological and religious insights forged in the three and four hundreds ACE. This ignoring is as repulsive to the mind as outright spiritual warfare. Traditional religious liberalism has proposed a third way, and that is to take the secular aspects of modernism and try to make a religion out of rejecting traditional religion; that is, a religion of secularism and irreligion. But that has become bankrupt as well; yielding a political ideology that is adhered to with as much strictness and rigidity as any religious orthodoxy! We propose a different response entirely: Constructing a new religious perspective. So we begin our Lenten enterprise with one discovery that should have revolutionized theology and views of religion, but hasn’t: The Dead Sea Scrolls. 

 
 

Readings 

 

The Dead Sea Scrolls, John Allegro, 1956, pp 13ff 

 

Muhammad Adh-Dhib had lost a goat. The lad was a member of the Ta’amireh tribe of semi-Bedouin who range the wilderness between Bethlehem and the Dead Sea, and he had been out all this summer’s day tending the animals entrusted to his care. Now one of them had wandered, skipping into the craggy rocks above. Muhammad pulled himself wearily up the limestone cliffs, calling the animal as it went higher and higher in search of food. The sun became hotter, and finally the lad threw himself into the shade of an overhanging rag to rest awhile. His eye wandered listlessly over the glaring rocks and was suddenly arrested by a rather queerly placed hole in the cliff face, hardly larger than a man’s head. It appeared to lead inwards to a cave, and yet was too high for an ordinary cave entrance, of which there were hundred round about. Muhammad picked up a stone and threw it through the hole, listening for the sound as it struck home. What he heard brought him sharply to his feet. Instead of the expected thud against solid rock, his sharp ears had detected the metallic ring of pottery. He listened a moment, and then tried again, and again there could be no doubt that his stone had crashed among potsherds. A little fearfully the Bedouin youth pulled himself up to the hole, and peered in. His eyes were hardly becoming used to the gloom when he had to let himself drop to the ground. But what he had seen in those few moments made him catch his breath in amazement. On the floor of the cave, which curved back in a natural fault in the rock, there were several large, cylindrical objects standing in rows. The boy pulled himself up again to the hole, and holding on until his arms and fingers were numb, saw, more clearly this time, that they were large, wide-necked jars, with broken pieces strewn all about them. He waited no longer, but dropped to the ground and was off like a hare, his goat and flock forgotten in a frantic desire to put as much distance between himself and this jinn-ridden cave as possible. For who else but a desert spirit could be living in such a place with an entrance too small for a man? 

 

“Palestinian Jewish Beatitudes: A Cave Four Fragmentary Hebrew Text from Qumran” from The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, 2000

[This is an example of a beatitude, a distinctive form of religious pronouncement characterized by the preface, “Blessed is the one.” We previously and mistakenly thought it was unique to the New Testament account of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.] 

 

Blessed is the one who speaks truth with a pure heart and slanders not with his tongue.

Blessed are those who cling to the statutes of wisdom and cling not to the paths of iniquity.

Blessed are those who rejoice in wisdom and babble not about paths of foolishness.

Blessed are those who search for her with clean hands and seek not after her with a deceitful heart.

lessed is the man who has attained wisdom and walks by the law of the Most High and fixes his hearts on her ways, gives heed to her admonishments, delights constantly in her chastisements, and forsakes her not in the stress of his troubles; who in time of distress abandons her not and forgets her not in the days of fear, and in the affliction of his soul rejects her not.

For on wisdom he meditates constantly, and in his anguish he ponders the law, and in all his existence he considers her and puts her before his eyes… 

 
 

Sermon 

 

In 1947 a young Bedouin shepherd, wandering away from his flock, came upon the cliffs near the Dead Sea, and like any boy of any culture, picked up a rock to see if he could hurl it into one of the cave openings down the cliff. Not only was his aim good, but so was his hearing as he heard the rock break what he found, upon investigation, to be a vase containing part of what we call now the Dead Sea Scrolls. From that happenstance, or act of providence, and through the early 1950’s, caves in the surrounding area were investigated, yielding over 900 texts and 100,000 fragments, a puzzle of Biblical proportions! Other caves near the Qumran caves of the Dead Sea Scrolls were also investigated, and yielded additional finds. The Dead Sea Scrolls were dated as the oldest of all these, first by paleography, the study of writing, and then by the more scientific method of radiocarbon dating, and were determined to have been produced (either copied or created) from 250BCE to 68 ACE. 

 

Archeologists descended upon the area, called Qumran, and excavated it and found remnants of a small community large enough for 150-200 people. Who were they? Jewish and Roman historians of the first century ACE told of a Jewish sect, the Essenes, with a colony near the Dead Sea. These historians, Josephus, Pliny the Elder, and Philo, told of the beliefs and practices of a sect that matched the beliefs and practices described in the scrolls, within acceptable scholarly deviations. The Judaism of the last two centuries before the Common Era and the first century of it, contained numerous distinct sects of which we are generally aware (and how many others we still don’t know about?): the Sadducees, who were of the priestly, aristocratic class; the Pharisees of the layman class which shaped the Rabbinic Judaism we know today; the Zealots, radical Jewish religious nationalists; the Hasidim, the Sicarii, and the Boethusians; the early Christians, and now the Essenes. 

 

The Essenes were separatists who claimed that Jewish Temple worship in Jerusalem was defiled by the influences from Greece and later Rome, and claimed they were the true remnant of Israel. Of course, so did the other sects. The Qumran community was composed of radicals from the Essene movement who gathered in monastic isolation to await what they thought was the imminent destruction of the earth, a belief we now know to be not uncommon among the other Jewish groups of these three centuries-long period of social, political, and religious upheaval. The Essenes were wiped off the face of the earth by Roman legions who crushed a Jewish revolt in 70 ACE by completely destroying Jerusalem, the Jewish Temple there, and the surrounding communities including Qumran and Masada. Were it not for the aim of a Bedouin boy the world’s knowledge of the Essenes might have remained an insignificant footnote buried in the far reaches of human memory. 

 

Apparently these Essenes had kept a library at Qumran, which was hidden away in the caves as the Dead Sea Scrolls when their destruction by Roman legions was imminent. Of the scrolls found, they were of three general kinds: first, there were books of what we know as the Hebrew Bible, although the Hebrew Bible as a single, unchanging collection of books with exclusive religious authority wasn’t conceived of until 200-300 ACE. The Christian Bible as we know it wouldn’t come about until 400 ACE, well over 300 years after the Qumran community was destroyed in 68 ACE. Secondly, collections of “extra-Biblical” texts like the Apocrypha. And, thirdly, there were sectarian books, that is, books that told about the theology and practice of the Essenes at Qumran, which could be compared to our own church community by-laws, policies and practices, and our ROOTS and BRANCHES booklets. The first collection, books of what we now call the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, and the third collection, the sectarian books telling the beliefs and practices of the Essenes, are most germane to our discussions today because they tell a story that is quite at odds with what was commonly held as Christianity for over 1700 years, from the establishment of Christian orthodoxy in the 300 and 400’s ACE, to our own day. In other words, these texts challenge long-held beliefs about what orthodox Christianity declares theologically. 

 

It was first thought the Dead Sea Scrolls would “prove or disprove” Christianity. Skeptics swooned and believers trembled! Although I am not sure what “proving or disproving Christianity” means, it was widely feared or anticipated! But, I think the real significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for Christianity is something that is so nuanced and implicit as to be unnoticed. It is an impact that the Scrolls have on Christianity that mirrors the impact modernism has on all religions. 

 

When and how was the first time that you heard about Jesus? I don’t expect anyone to remember exactly when and how, but it would be surprising were you not to have heard of him, and equally surprising not to have heard about him as though he were totally unique. In fact, that is the nature of orthodox, creedal Christianity’s claim about him. It was a claim made into church doctrine in the three and four hundreds ACE, three and four hundred years after Jesus’ death and up to 650 years after the copying of the oldest Dead Sea Scroll. The claim of Christian orthodoxy when it arose in three and four hundred ACE was that the “person” of Jesus was unique. His “person” uniquely possessed fully both the characteristics of humanity and divinity. This claim of Christian orthodoxy came about after a four hundred year evolution from a splinter Jewish group, like the Essenes, became an exclusively Gentile religion. Thus, Christian orthodoxy’s claim, encased within the Church’s creeds devised at the same time as were the doctrines and the New Testament itself, was that in Jesus history had witnessed the appearance of a “person” so unique as to have sprung forth out of nothing. The center of history, was what one theologian proclaimed. Jesus was not a “person” of his time, but a God for all time. He was not a “person” of his culture, but a God for all culture. A “person” of three persons! It was why he was said to have been born of a virgin. He did not possess the stain of mortality, which would make him human like you and me. Virginity is symbolic of purity, of something unlike anything previous or hence, a unique phenomenon that has absolutely no parallel anywhere. In fact, that word, “absolutely,” characterized the whole of the orthodox Christian, Gentile view of Jesus, and through the centuries has become the only view of Jesus recognized as authoritative by and within institutional Christianity itself. Jesus was an absolutely unique “person.” Indisputably, unconditionally, unquestionably, categorically, absolutely both fully human and divine. Absolutely to be believed, this doctrine: undeniable, conclusive, indubitable, truthfully, then, absolute. 

 

But the Dead Sea Scrolls now tell us another story. It’s like discovering that the man or woman whom you believed was the unique, original, one-of-a-kind origin of your family, wasn’t. But that this person was a person of a particular time and culture, subject to the imaginings and fantasies and mistaken understanding of the time, and the narrow views of right and wrong rooted in culture! It’s like discovering the ways that person was connected to the men and women of the age! It begs the question not of the distinctiveness of the person, which is like the others of the time; but the power of what he or she stood for! 

 

Previously we thought the ritualized baptism, the cleansing of Jesus by John the Baptist, was a unique act that conferred a unique title upon Jesus: Son of God. Now we know the Qumran Essenes employed ritualized cleansings, too. Now we know the Qumran Essenes also used the title Son of God to designate and identify their “original and unique” personalities. The “person” of Jesus was not unique! Previously we thought Jesus instituted the sacramental meal called the Last Supper. Now we know the Qumran Essenes ate in a similar, sacramental fashion. One of the claims of Christian orthodoxy was that Jesus was uniquely the Savior, the Messiah, and those surrounding him, as depicted in the Gospels, were unaware of that. But, what the Dead Sea Scrolls show us is that the Qumran Essenes, and most of the Judaism of their time and Jesus’, were looking for Messiahs, and each group believed different things about what the Savior would be like and who he was. The “person” of Jesus was not unique! One of the claims of Gentile Christianity over the centuries has been that Jesus was the only one who recognized and rebuked the lifeless legalism of Judaism in favor of a new religion that claimed all the commandments could be dispensed with save for the love of God and neighbor. Gentile Christianity’s claim of Jesus’ uniqueness was that he was the only one to call down prophetic judgment on the Judaism of his day, and in doing that and being that, created a new religion. But, what the Dead Sea Scrolls show us is that the Qumran Essenes, and most of Judaism of their time and Jesus’, pronounced judgment upon the inadequacies of the religion of the day, with an equal claim to being the path of light. The “person” of Jesus was not unique! What the Dead Sea Scrolls show us is how pronounced the view was in that time that the world was coming to an end. Like many others of his day Jesus thought the world was coming to an end. But, Jesus was wrong! They were all wrong, but it might go far towards understanding why he and the Qumran Essenes were so insistent that the religion of their day be changed. The “person” of Jesus was not unique! 

 

The differences between the religion of the Essenes and of that ascribed to Jesus are enough to surmise for now that Jesus was not an Essene. But, he was a man of his time and culture. He was influenced by the thoughts, ideas, beliefs, opinions, and preferences of his day. He carried with him the wisdom and the mistaken assumptions of his day. The “person” of Jesus was not unique! We cannot read the New Testament in the same way again! We cannot read it to find a “person” unlike any who lived in his time and culture or ours! Modernism and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls requires us to read deeper, into the sacred texts of Western civilization and deeper, even, than the human desire to latch onto a Messiah who will save us from ourselves. Modernism sounds a new age with startling clarity: The saving power of the person Jesus can no longer be in beliefs about his unique “person.” 

 

In other words, it can be said about the Christianity we know today, that professes things about Jesus that were conceived of during the rise of Christian orthodoxy in the three and four hundreds ACE, long after it had lost its Jewish roots and knowledge of the time and culture of Jesus: It may be a religion created about Jesus, but it is not, and now we know has never been, the religion of Jesus. The Dead Sea Scrolls confirm that for 1700 years there has been two religions at work, where once we thought there was only one; one truth, absolutely, uniquely, indisputably, unconditionally, unquestionably, categorically. Absolutely to be believed. The Jesus of the creeds and doctrines, the unique and only Son of God, who professed beliefs no others had held, who saw things unique to his time and culture, and to any and all times and cultures, and died because of that uniqueness, is a phantasm. But, the religion of Jesus, influenced by his culture, swayed and informed by other religious movements around him, a product of his time not ours, is real, and a priceless, eternal guide in our current spiritual search. It is his religious vision that the Dead Sea Scrolls help us to see, and construct, and ponder, and marvel at: God is ever present through the love we give to all neighbors, all souls. He was willing to die living out of the power of that vision. But its saving power is not in beliefs about him, but in living like him. 

 

This is what modernism has done. It has given us a broader, deeper, wider view of the enormous diversity that has made up the past evidences of the human religious impulse. Any attempt to standardize, compartmentalize, or make singular and absolute and complete a view of the human religious impulse is a charade! It’s like putting together pieces of a puzzle. The old religious view is that each thing we learn from the past is another piece of a puzzle that depicts a certain, absolute picture of the meaning of human existence, and with each piece the puzzle picture, determined before the puzzle was put together, becomes clearer. But now a new view has come about; a new way to envision the spiritual search. The evidences from history inform it! Not one, single truth. Not one single version of the past. Not one family ancestor from whom you were descended and who was unconnected to others and to the place from which that ancestor came. Not the unique “person” of Jesus. Truth is like a growing organism, and each piece of the past we encounter enlarges our understanding of a still growing thing. The evidence of history is clear. Human being is a creature of beliefs. So, to know human being is not to search for, find, and know the one unambiguous and unquestionable truth, as it is to compile all the ways the human creature believes and say that compilation, growing even as we speak, as new babes are being born, that growing corpus of human religious experience tells us about human nature, God, the universe, about ultimate things. Each piece of the puzzle proves the puzzle is not a definite and contained portrait of truth, but a peculiar paradox that our mind struggles to conceive of: The puzzle itself expands even as the next piece is put into place and the picture itself, because it grows, too, is both more discernible at the center even as it is grows fuzzier at the expanding fringes! Truth, our universe, God, and humanity’s relationship to any and all, then, is like a living organism, not a frozen, inanimate object! 

 

And if that’s true, then life is not the attempt to find truth and wrap yourself up secure in it. It is to be lived as an adventure, as a journey, as a walk as it were, with other human beings. 

 

Friend and colleague Earl Holt, minister at one of our oldest Unitarian churches, King’s Chapel in the heart of downtown Boston, once wrote, “To believe that life is a journey is to have a religious view of life, while to be non-religious is to believe that there is no journey to take.” (“The Hero’s Journey”, Earl K. Holt, III, 1994) That’s what the Lenten Season is about. You’re supposed to take a journey, and like all journeys you are to discover new things and discard old things along the way. And, perhaps, the hardest thing to discard is the thought that truth is somehow complete, that I don’t possess it, and that there is someone or something far away in the past that will save me if only I give myself away to it. And maybe the only thing harder than discarding this, is gathering in the idea that Jesus and history’s many great spiritual witnesses gave their lives to and for: God’s presence is here and now, and that presence is evident and created anew when we love each, every, and all souls as ourselves. As we grow in this way of living, so grows God and truth. Truth is not about believing that one right thing, and neither is religion. They’re both about living a life of love. And when we take the risk of departing upon that journey, life also becomes about a hundredfold reward that even the ravages of time will bow down in tribute! 

 

Blessed are those who rejoice in wisdom and babble not about paths of foolishness.

Blessed is the man who has attained wisdom and walks by the law of the Most High and fixes his hearts on her ways, gives heed to her admonishments, delights constantly in her chastisements, and forsakes her not in the stress of his troubles; who in time of distress abandons her not and forgets her not in the days of fear, and in the affliction of his soul rejects her not.

For on wisdom he meditates constantly, and in all his existence he considers her and puts her before his eyes.

AMEN