1994 - shanks charlesworth eisenman & wise - desert storm

8/13/2019 1994 - Shanks Charlesworth Eisenman & Wise - Desert Storm

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self-ous about such codes, is that there

is no corresponding set-up for the way aspectator thinks. One person's classic isanother person's Classic Comic. When Ilooked at the spats on Morris, my brainsaid Fred Astaire. Kisselgoff, reviewingBaryshnikov, talked about MickeyMouse.*

e s e r t S t o r mB Y PAULA FREDRIKSEN

Understandingthe Dead Sea Scrolls:A Reader from the Biblical Archaeology Revieweditedby Hershel Shanks(Vintage,33 6 pp., 13 paper)

Jesusand the Dead Sea Scrollseditedby James H. CharlesworthIDoubleday,334 pp., 28)

T h e Dead Sea Scrolls Uncoveredb y Robert H. Eisenman and Michael Wise( P e n g u in , 3 0 4 p p . , $ 1 2 p a p e r

T he Jewish war againstRome, which ended in thedestruction of Jerusalemand the Temple in 70 C . E . a dramaThe extraordinary history that issued

century B.C.E.), was the first great

, aristocratic yet participatory; its

since one could become Greek

divine Sun. It was an age of many gods,and the reasonableness of its syncretismwas very seductive.Hellenism affected urban Jewish cul-ture profoundly, abroad and at home. Sothoroughly did the Western Diasporacommunities of Egypt, Asia Minor andItaly adopt Greek as their language thatJews in vVlexandria eventually producedthe first great vernacular translation ofthe Scriptures, known as the Septuagint.In the homeland, cosmopolitan Jeru-salemites sought to build a gymnasium,or a cultural center for the study of ath-letics, literature, music and philosophy;some even endured surgery to removethe signs of circumcision, considered amutilation by the Greeks. AntiochusEpiphanes, the post-Alexandrian rulerof Seleucid Syria, simply took this assimi-lationist program further by mandatingit; when protest surfaced, he pushedharder. Following through on the logicof Hellenistic ecumenicalism, he endedby erecting an altar to Olympian Zeus,reasonably enough, in the 'Temple of theJews'own high god in Jerusalem.All hell broke loose. By the time thefighting ended in 164 B.C.E., the Seleu-

cids had been routed, the Hasmoneanfamily, under Judah Maccabee and hisbrothers, had assumed national leader-

that had generated the confiictshouldJews sacrifice also to pagan gods? pub-licly fiout traditional practice? cease cir-cumcision?were settled by it. ExtremeHellenization was out. The easy part wasover.The triumphant Hasmoneans soonestablished an independent Jewishmonarchy. They also assumed the officeof high priest. This touched off consid-

erable controversy, since the high priest-hood had long been the hereditarydomain of the aristocratic family knownas the Zadokites, which traced its prerog-ative back to the days of Solomon. TheHasmoneans were priests, but they werenot Zadokites; and their usurpation ofoffice soured the liberation.The Maccabees' very success doomedany hope of a united front against lessaggressive forms of Hellenism on thepart of priestly aristocrats, the nation'snatural rulers. Any ruling class had tocommunicate and to cooperate with theelites of other nations, and for this pur-pose a comfortable command of Greeklanguage and culture went a long way.The large Zadokite family, meanwhile,splintered. One branch, which had fiedduring the troubles under Antiochus,established a new temple in Egypt; othersfound ways to continue the family voca-tion by setting up alternative temples inSamaria and in what is now Jordan. Stillothers remained in Jerusalem, lendingtheir prestige to the Hasmonean enter-prise. ( Sadducee, the term for the sac-erdotal aristocracy used by both the first-

century Jewish historian Josephus andhis contemporaries, the New Testamentwriters, may derive from Zadok. ) Has-monean power eventually waned; Hero-dians took over, then Roman procura-tors. But the Sadducees remained theprincipal mediators between the popu-lace and higher (especially foreign) gov-ernment. The lesson of Antiochus hadnot been forgotten: good relations withforeign rulers helped insure the reli-gious independence, and hence theintegrity, of t h e Temple.But in the early flush of freedom afterthe Maccabean revolt, another Zadokitedefied the upstart Hasmoneans openly.Spurning worship in the Temple he con-sidered insidiously defiled by his morepowerful rival, this man (had he servedformerly as high priest?) withdrew fromJerusalem but stayed close at hand.Around 150 B.C.E., he joined a group ofpietists and established his own commu-nity the keepers of the covenant ofthe sons of Zadok in the Judeandesert. We do not know his name, andwe know little else about his life. (Theabove is also conjecture.) In the DeadSea Scrolls, he appears as the Teacherof Righteousness. And herein lies theorigin of the Essenes.


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T he Essenes were a sectarian move-ment within late Second Temple Juda-ism; by the first century they numbered,on Josephus's estimate, some 4,000members. Those of the larger branchmarried, lived in towns and still com-mu ned in Jeru salem . A smaller, all-malegrou p settled as a celibate comm unity bythe Dead Sea, at a site that archaeolo-gists claim never supported more than afew hundred people. Occupied on andoff for a period of some two centvxries,this setdement was finally destroyed bythe Roman legion on its march to crushthe Jewish rebels in Jerusalem in thespring of6 8 c.E.

In advance of the Roman destruction,these Essenes bid their books in thedesert caves of Qum ran. T heir librarywas vast and varied. It has yielded a trea-sure of ancient Hebrew manuscripts ofvirtually every book, in wbole or in part,in the Jewish Bible. T be Essenes pro-duced extensivecommentaries on these,as well as documents specific to thesectThe Manual ofDiscipline or the ommunity Rule (rules for tbe monasticgroup), the ovenant of Damascus (rulesfor the town-dwellers), the Temple Scroll(plans for a new or renewed T emp le, ofgigantic size, to be built once Good hadtriumphed over Evil) and the W arScroll(plans for tbe apocalyptic final ba tde ):

Tbis shallbe atime of salvation for the peo-ple ofGod, an age ofdominionfor all themembers of His company, and of everlast-ing destruction for all the company ofSatan T he dominion of the Kittim shallcome to an end and iniquity shall be van-quished, leaving no remnant: [for the sons]of darkness there shall be no escape Atthe season appointed by God, His exaltedgreatness shall shine eternally to the peace,blessing, glory, joy and long life of th e sonsof light.T hese long btiried texts reveal bow tbesepeople lived and what motivated them.T be Essenes saw themselves as the "sonsof light" living in the final days, at thevery edge of time before God decisivelyredeemed his people; and they dedi-cated every moment and every aspect of

The NarcissistsO w hat self-love their kindn ess shows,filling your glass before it has been emp tied,making their house your house. The pool.''Jum p in. T he boat? Go on, take a ride.Dinnertime? Agift at every plate,each one to remin d you how loving your host can be,how fortunate you are to be a guest.T heir co mrade ship speaks itself so warmlytbat you lose yourway: this is no t friendsh ip,no t love exactly: this is the way they knowto teach you to love them truly for themselves.

PETER DAVISON

life to prepa ring, with fierce and austerecommitment, for tbe coming Kingdomof God.Thanks to Hershel Shanks and otherswbo over the years bave contributed toh i s jou rna l , the Biblical ArchaeologyRniieiu,a superb popular introduction tothis amazing library is now available.Handsomely produced and generouslyillustrated with photographs, maps andchar t s . Understanding the Dead Sea Scrollsallows the reader to enter into two bewil-dering communities: the community oftbe Essenes and the community of thescholars wbo study them .Several essays review the riveting storyof tbe d iscovery of the Scrolls in 1948 . Inthe tension and the turmoil of a worldon fire the reb irth of the Jewish com-monwealtb, tbe partition vote in theUnited Nations, Jerusalem divided,invading Arab armiesE .L.Sukenik, anarchae ologist a t Hebrew University, shtit-tled back and forth across the GreenL ine, desperate to get his bands on thetextual treasures held by Arab andArmenian antiquities dealers. Some hesecured; more, be knew, lay beyond bisgrasp.

T he m ajority of texts rema ined on theJordanian side oi the city, monopolizedfor more than a generation in one of themost shameful demonstrations of arro-gance and avarice in tbe an nals of schol-arship, by a tiny team of scholars work-ing out of the Ecole Biblique in EastJertisalem. (T he team bad no Jewishmembers.) Meanwhile Sukenik's son,Yigael Yadin, surreptitiously purchasedfour more scrolls for bis country in 1955,by answering an ad in The WallS treet jour-nal. Twelve years later, by tben arenowned Israeli general, he securedalso the manuscript of the TempleScroll.T be monopoly at tbe Ecole Bibliquecontintied, however, tmtil John Strtig-nell, the chief editor, in a notoriotisinterview in 1990 in the Israeli newspa-pe rHa-aretz began tbe process that ulti-mately broke the cartel. Shanks reprintsthis interview, synopsizes tbe story of tbeScrolls' liberation and conclud es his vol-

ume with a calmassessment of thecontribution madeby greed, insecurityand anti-Semitismto the unconscion-able delay in thepublication of thislibrary.But what a pro-ject Paleographersnervously face an-cient mille feuillesof

crumbling leather.Editing is now arace against time , as

having survived nineteen centuriethe caves of Judea, literally disapbefore scbolars' eyes. (L ittle wo ndeone of the most wrenching photog rin tbe book, EatherJ.T. Milik sits, 1950, in a nimbus of L evantine sunburning cigarette in band, bent cfully over these fragile fragm ents.) essay details tbe small technologicalacles that ena ble historians to read new photographs what they canlonger see on the page itself; anessay shows how to organize theseous sheets, pieces, bits and crumbthat sometbing like connected prosemerge. The authors communicate excitement and their love of this wand it is hard not to cheer when mildly mention some ingeniou s andple solution to a problem that, one paragraph before, seemed insupera

Scarcely less messy than tbe physhape of this library is the whirl of mally excltisive, authoritatively arinterpretations tbat surrounds it. Shgives a nice sample of tbese, cbeejowl, and itis fun to overbear tbe prsors do one of the things that thewell, wbicb is argue. Somethingbroad academic consensus does seeexist on the place of the Essenes inhistory of late Second Temple JudaHighly fraught and sensationalist tions, however, continu e to ob scurerelation to another first-century,originally Jewish, apocalyptic move mWTiat, if anything, do tbe Scrolls bado with Christianity?

To consider tbis question, we reflect on how we know what we abo ut Cbristian origins, and most pularly abo ut Jestis ofNazareth.Ou r est and best evidence stands collectthe New T estament, thoug h "early""best" do not in all instances e"good." Otir earliest witness is Pauseven atithentic letters appear to been written midcentury, approximtwenty to tbirty years after Jesus's etion. Paul was an u rban Jew of the ern Diaspora; bis first languageGreek; bis bible was the Septuag int.puts him at several removescullinguistic, geographicalfrom themaic speaking, rural, prophetic mment begun by tbe Galilean Jestis.himself insists tba t he never knew Jand makes clear that be does not much ofhis othe r Jewish colleaguesdid. It was the risen Ghrist, noearthly Jesus, who was the objePaul's burning commitment. If alhad from this period w ere Paul's lewe would know precious little Jesusnot where he lived or whedied, nothing of what he did, littwhat he said.

Eor this we must ttirn to the gos


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T he gospels were written in Greek,where andbywhom (Gentiles? ChristianJews?) we do n't know. Originally anony-mous, the names we know them byMatthew, Mark, L uke, John wereascribed only in the second century. Agap of some forty to seventy yearsstretches between the de ath of Jesus andthese compositions, during which timethe Jews fought, and lost, the war withRom e. T he evang elists mix historicalmaterial from and abo ut Jesus with con-temporary polemic (especially againstJews), various theological agenda andtheir own particular read ings of the Sep-tuagint, which they mined for biographi-cal facts ab out Jesus. (T his is how theJesus of Matthew and Luke comes to bebo rn "of a virgin": the Greek translationof Isaiah 7:14 had parthenos, "virgin," forthe Hebrew almah, "young girl.") T hus,though they provide more on the topicthan Paul's letters, the gospels cann ot beapproached directly for informationabout Jesus any more than, for exam ple,Oliver Stone'sJFK can be used for JFK:both present a mix of fact, reasonableconjecture, creative filling-in-of-holesand flat-out fiction. As historians, wehave to sort through.T hese problems of language,location and historicitycomplicate any direct com-parison of the Scrolls andthe New T estament m aterial. One is thelush literature of a priestly, separatist,largely Hebrew and Aramaic speakingJudean sect, much of it for internal con-sumption; the other, spare and mobile,exclusively Greek, missionary in intentand effect, b uilt for the road. T he Scrollsare the MS-DOS to the New T estame nt'sMac, and the first century equivalent ofinterfacing softwarehumans who wentbetween both groupsis not in evi-dence.

T he several essays on C hristianity andthe Scrolls in Shanks's volume, the grea tmajority of those inJesus an dThe DeadSea Scrolls, edited by Jame s H. Charles-worth, and the whole of the interpretiveargum ent advanced by Robert H. Eisen-man and Michael Wise in The Dead SeaScrolls Uncovered proceed as if this werenot a pro blem. T he result is a one-from-column-A, one-from-column-B sort ofreading, noting similarities and com-menting on differences, without makinga case for the historical value of theseobservations. But mere synchrony can-not establish infiuence, and textualpointillism gives only the impression ofan argument; and,aswithitsvisual coun -terpart, the coherence dissolves thecloser one looks.

We end with factoids. T hus o ne essaynotes that the community at Qumran

with his disciples at the L ast Supper.T rue. Th e Gospel of Joh n contrasts theSons of L ight w ith the Sons of Darknessas ethical designations (the Sons of L ightare the good guys, and so on); both atQum ran and in Joh n, these realms are inconflict. Oh. T he Qum ran com munityexpected two messiahs; Christiansclaimed Jesus to be the messiah. Right.Both Jesus and the Essenes thoug ht theBible, the T emple and the p oor were im-portant. And so on, especially throughthe 334 pages oi Jesus and the Dead SeaScrolls (a good third of which is notes,most of them lost on a popular audi-ence) Most of the essays in this volumeconcludeand I agree with the conclu-sionthat there seems to be little or noevidence of infiuence between theEssenes and Jesus in eith er d irection. Butthen , whence the book? W hence its title?Whence the blurb, promising that theScrolls revolutionize our und erstand ingof Jesus of Nazareth?

Eisenman and Wise promise an inter-pretive revolution. They provide it byreading the Scrolls in relation not toJesus himself so much as to supposedevents in the history of the (authentic?)Christian movement under his brother,James the Just. T he library at Qu mran ,they argue , represe nts the views ofapro-Maccabean priesthood, anti-gentile, vio-lently xenopho bic and nationalistic, tem-peramentally if not actually identical tothe Zealots of the disastrous anti-Romancampaign in 66 C.E. To make their case,Eisenman and Wise date some Scrollsmaterial at least a century later thanmost scholars would. They also providemodern Hebrew transcriptions of someScrolls fragments, which they then trans-late to support their hypothesis. Butsince these transcriptions are themselvesquestionable or contestedand a glanc-ing comparison with the tattered origi-nals shown in the plates inspires littleconfidencethey ultimately serve anaesthetic purpose rather than a scientificone. Finally, matching some Scrollsmaterial to snippets of much later GreekChristian traditions, the authors createwhat they call "Jamesian Christianity" (aterm that for me persistently evokednineteenth-century Boston rather thanfirst-centuryjudea). Pro-law, pro-patria,anti-Paul, this James would have beenmore at home in the twentieth century'sEaster Rising than in the first century 's.

Eisenman and Wise construct a coher-ent revisionist picture of the Qumrancommunity. They do so by completelyobscuring the relation of the earlyPauline and later Christian evidence tothe Jewish Jesus a nd the earliest com mu-nity gathered in his name. Do all thesedifferent people, groups and movementsreally have so little to do with each

useful about Jesus, Paul, ChristianT he answer is yes on bo th counts. Jof Nazareth and the community at Qran are two points on an arc that pafrom the Maccabees through Paul, fthe later books of the classical phetsIsaiah, Jere mia h, EzekielinJewish canon to the Book of Revelawhich con cludes the New T estamenis the arc of a biblical perspectivGod and history that scholars "apocalyptic eschatology," "the retion of the Endtime": the convictionGod is good; that he is in control oftory; that he will not countenanceindefinitely; and that, accordinglythings are bad, God must be aboubring them to an end, before he eslishes his Kingdom. In the brief remaining, one should prepare.

Certain key eleme nts ap pea r varioand in various combinations, in Jeand later Christian apocalypses. Smention a cosmic battle between GandEviljust before, the E nd; othe rsresurrection of the dead, or peronly of the righteous. Some attribumajor role to a messiah or (as at Qran) several messiahs; in the Chrisversion we find a messiah who cotwice, his more military role, andestablishment of the Kingdom, relegto his Second Coming. More frequearchangels or God himself directsEndtime scenario. Jerusalem is restand made beautiful; the T emplrebuilt, renewed or enlarged; the twtribes are gathered in from Exile; tiles cease worshiping their iacknowledge the God of Israel and ship with Israel in the New Jerusarighteousness pours down like wasocial and natural harmo ny perv ade

In the meantime, however, thingsterrible: this is how one knows what it is on h istory's clock. Happy p eop lno t write apocalypses, and th e ge nre attests to a measure of alienation , reme nt and powerlessness. In the culand religious confusion of the H ellenand early Roman period, some found comfort in their convictionGod would not let things drift; thatexample, he did not want idols inTemple and if one were placed therwas a sign that times had becomeminably terrible. T he worse thingsthe better theywereabout to becomT he T eacher of Righteousness felsame way: if the Ealse Priest controthe Temple, the End must be at hAlmost two centuries later, in a wwith Herodians and Romans in chaJesus went to his cross proclaimingimminent arrival of God's Kingdom

generation after that, Paul confidepreach ed the same message, now linto Jesus's S econd Com ing as co


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his final letter, "salvation is nearerbelieved. Jose-c Jewish proph ets of the E nd,f whom m et their death at Ro me'sd. At roughly the same time, durin g a of anti-Christian p ersecu tion, of Patmos wasprompted by an to voice the same conviction:time is near."

two more rebellionsone in theDiasporainone ledby Bar K ochbainC.E. Some continuedtobutmilitant messian- had discredited itself as a viable ofJewish piety. Asgentilehes increasingly claimed the Septu-of the second century, by the col- ofspecifically Ch ristian writingsas th eNew TestamentJudaism

of prayer and learning.Nopro-a Latin vernacular translationof. T o the degree that Hellenismonand the dominant politi- culture on the o ther, Jews learnedto

and. Yet the peoplethe religion survived, one of the twoWestern antiquity.T he o ther great survivor, also born of of Jewish andRom an political

to Hel- on thesyna- and itslanguage andscriptures itshomeland theWesterns culture deliberately intern a-

the church became a centralIt though for different reasons,ced a vivid hope in the im minentahistorical Kingdom of God.Yet the great h ope is there , in the B ibletheconviction th at God controlsthat he will make good on hisofredemptio n. Plagues, perse-s, earthquake, triumph or dis-

s of the End. Predictions of the apoc-areconstandy disconfirmed,butlastingly discredited .Wesee acrestin the wave now. The of theforthe first time since T itus's theTemple , of aJewish

itsbiblical hom eland; th e theol- ofozone d epleti on, ecological AIDSas signsofdivine pun-

ishmentall have createdakind of lunarhigh tide in popular apocalyptic. Readcarefully, then, the stories that come outof Waco, o r Seoul, or Crown H eights. Youwillglimpse, between the lines, the shapeof the hope that motivated both the Mac-cabees and theT eacher of Righteous-ness, Jesus of Nazareth and the e mb attleddefenders ofjerusalem.PAULA FREDRIKSENis the William Good-win Aurelio Professor of the Apprecia-tion ofScripture at Boston tJniversityand the au thor of From Jesus toChrist: Th eOrigins ofthe N ew TestamentIm ages of Jesus(Yale University P ress) .

TR B continued from page6group should be given pause by theWhite House's demonstration that evenone year's balanced bu dget is impossibleunder cu rrent arrangements. T he night-mare scenarios show that balancingthebudget is, inde ed, politically u nthin k-able. The merit of a constitutionalamendment is that itwill,ofnecessity,chang e w hat is politically th inkable.T he nightmare scenarios unintention -ally demolish one argument in particu-lar against a balanced bud get am end-me nt. T hat is the fiscal policy argum ent:we need the flexibility to runadeficit inslow times, to stimulate the economy.T he ideaoffiscal policyissupposedtobe that the government budget can beadamping mechanism on swings in theeconomy. You runadeficit in ba d timesand a balanceorevenasurplus in goodtimes.If it is now politically unth inka bleto achieve a balanced budget, let aloneasurplus, even in thebest of times,themechanism is seriously broken. It hasgotto be fixed before itcanbe ofuseagain.

(The current version of the amend-ment would allow deficit spending onathree-fifths voteofboth housesofGon-gress.So themec hanism rema ins avail-able for emerge ncies in any event.)A columnis t in The W ashington Postsneers that only the "policy elites"arestill fixated on thedeficit, wh ile "m ostpeople" are more conc erned withachieving and enjoying economic pros-perityand what's more, "they're right."No, they're not right. Of course whatreally matters isactual econom ic pros-perity, and not some bookkeeping num-ber called the federal deficit. But weunhappy few, if few we are, cannotbebullied outof our belief that the deficitimperils America's long-term prosperity.In thecourage of our unhappiness, wedefy weapon-w ords like "elites"Anyway, both sides of the balancedbudget amendment debate play the tire-

some gameof populist one-upmanship.T he pro-a me ndm ent forces also claimtorepresent "the people" whoare furiousat "Beltway elites" running the nationinto debt.Polls suggest that the pro-amendmentforces are right about what "the people"are thinking. T he people wantaconsti-tutional amendment mandating a bal-anced federal budget, even though mostof them haveno idea what accomplish-ing this would really involve.Therealeffect ofsuchanamen dmen t wouldbeto protect "the people" from their ownappetites. But the people want a bal-anced budget amendment, and the peo-ple should get what they want. T heydeserve it. May their dreams come true.MICHAEL KINSLEY

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1994 - shanks charlesworth eisenman & wise - desert storm

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