When/what is the End of Days?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
John2
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Re: When/what is the End of Days?

Post by John2 »

So to me the DSS sect seem similar to the Pharisees, but a harder core version of it, similar to the Fourth Philosophy. One of the founders of the latter was a Pharisee named Zadok, and as Jossa (for example) notes regarding the other founder, Judas the Galilean:
Judas is not a doctor with nothing in common with the others, but someone close to the Pharisees, to the school Josephus considered the most influential. The movement Judas founded is similar to that of the Pharisees...

https://books.google.com/books?id=jIpVP ... ee&f=false
And Josephus says in Ant. 18.1.6. "But of the fourth sect of Jewish philosophy, Judas the Galilean was the author. These men agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions..."

The big difference was that the Fourth Philosophy was more militant and unwilling to compromise with foreign rule, and the DSS exhibit a similar point of view. This difference is arguably an element in the term "seekers of smooth things" in the DSS, which many see as a reference to the Pharisees and their Oral Law (halakot) and, as VanderKam notes:
..."smooth things" regularly has a negative connotation when it is connected to words and speaking. The term occurs in Prov 26:28 where it is a parallel of a lying tongue ("A lying tongue hates its victims, and a flattering mouth works ruin"), and Dan 11:32 attributes it to the enemy king who flatters with smooth words ...

https://books.google.com/books?id=i2i5h ... ls&f=false
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/2514.htm

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/proverbs/26-28.htm

This type of "flattery" was typical of Pharisees, who generally supported the Herodians (e.g., M. Sot. 7:8: http://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Sotah.7.8?lang=en) and the Roman occupation (e.g., Vespasian being proclaimed Messiah by Josephus and by Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, the founder of post-70 CE Rabbinic Judaism. https://books.google.com/books?id=Cr4eA ... ai&f=false).

Paul too is presented as being friendly with the Herodians Agrippa and Berenice in Acts and he mentions being associated with "those in the household of Caesar" in Php. 4:22 and possibly Herodians as well, as Stowers, for example, notes here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=HBLvN ... us&f=false

And the Damascus Document associates the Scoffer/Spouter of Lies with these "smooth things" too and also says that "a follower of the wind [ruach, or "spirit"], one who raised storms and rained down lies, had preached to" what are called "the kings of the peoples" and those who were regarded as polluting the Temple for marrying their nieces, a practice that was common with Herodians (as noted here, for example).

https://books.google.com/books?id=GvWG0 ... ge&f=false

This is similar to what is said of Paul in Acts 26:28: "Then Agrippa said to Paul, "Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?"
Last edited by John2 on Sat Dec 17, 2016 7:05 pm, edited 3 times in total.
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.
John2
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Joined: Fri May 16, 2014 4:42 pm

Re: When/what is the End of Days?

Post by John2 »

There are various opinions about MMT and the Sadducees. This book, for example, notes that:
...out of 17 halakic rulings so far identified in MMT, only two can be considered as having any significant possibility [of being Sadducaic], and one of these only supports the biblical text ... even proponents have been able to argue for connections between only four of the MMT halakot and those of the [Sadducees]. Far from a series of remarkable coincidences between MMT and the [Sadducee] pericopae of tannaitic literature, we find little of substance. The Sadducean identification seems to have slithered from our grasp.

https://books.google.com/books?id=VHt-5 ... es&f=false


So I don't think MMT is enough to overturn the resemblances between the DSS and Rabbinic Judaism I mentioned earlier.
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.
outhouse
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Re: When/what is the End of Days?

Post by outhouse »

John2 wrote:So to me the DSS sect seem similar to the Pharisees, but a harder core version of it, similar to the Fourth Philosophy."
I think your correct but take into account many Pharisees were Hellenist and many aligned with the Zealots creating a division within their beliefs and theology.
outhouse
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Re: When/what is the End of Days?

Post by outhouse »

John2 wrote:
Paul too is presented as being friendly with the Herodians

There is always the quote that states he is from the same house, context and accuracy both debated.

Reality is they were both Hellenist who were not oppressed Jews like the Essenes or Zealots.
outhouse
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Re: When/what is the End of Days?

Post by outhouse »

John2 wrote: So I don't think MMT is enough to overturn the resemblances between the DSS and Rabbinic Judaism I mentioned earlier.
It doesn't overturn it, agreed.

But it does give weight to a Jerusalem collection being stashed in a cave. I don't place much weight on this but a few support it.

Here is what baffles me, multiple copies of the same text, more then just a small community would ever need and or use. This was not cheap and would have been a valuable collection.
John2
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Re: When/what is the End of Days?

Post by John2 »

But part of the argument, as I said earlier, is that the DSS sect was a conglomeration of people from all the sects, like the Fourth Philosophy (even if the sect had origins and issues with the Pharisees). They actively sought converts.
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.
John2
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Re: When/what is the End of Days?

Post by John2 »

By the way, what gives you the impression that the DSS sect was "just a small community"?
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.
John2
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Re: When/what is the End of Days?

Post by John2 »

Charlesworth, for example, notes:
From a sociological perspective, the Damascus Document reflects the existence of people having a different way of life from the rest of the Jewish population, but not completely isolated from the common social and religious institutions of Israel. Echoing the language of the Temple Scroll and 4QMMT [4Q394-399], the Damascus Document speaks of people living in the "city of the Temple" (CD 12.1-2) or in "the camp" (10.23), as well as living in "the cities of Israel" (12.19) or in the "camps" (7.6; 19.2), people who "take women and beget children" (7.6-7; cf. 12.1-2; 15.5-6) and are "owners" of properties (9.10-16), have a job and earn a salary (14.12-17), and attend the Temple in Jerusalem and offer sacrifices (12.17-21; 16.13-14).

https://books.google.com/books?id=TmVYV ... on&f=false
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.
John2
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Re: When/what is the End of Days?

Post by John2 »

The sect also included gentile converts (nilvim, or "joiners") and even altered the OT to support this by adding vavs to Ezk. 44:15 (one of which is not rendered in Vermes' translation, which I must resort to at the moment, so I will add it in brackets; and Vermes' "the Levites are" (in parenthesis) in the interpretation is not in the Hebrew, only a word play on Ezekiel's Levites: nilvim), thus they turn Ezekiel's description of one thing, "the priests, the Levites, the sons of Zaddok," into three things, with one of them being gentile converts.

"As God ordained for them by the hand of the Prophet Ezekiel, saying, 'The Priests [and] the Levites and the sons of Zadok who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel strayed from me, they shall offer me fat and blood.' The Priests are the converts of Israel who departed from the land of Judah, and (the Levites are) those who joined them. The sons of Zadok are the elect of Israel, the men called by name who shall stand at the end of days" (CD col. 3-4).

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/ezekiel/44-15.htm

Eisenman's translation (I just found it in another post) has all the vavs and nilvim:
The Priests and the Levites and the Sons of Zadok, who kept the service of the Temple, when the Sons of Israel strayed from me, will offer me the fat and blood." "The Priests" are the Penitents of Israel, who went out from the Land of Judah and "the Joiners" [nilvim] with them. And "the Sons of Zadok" are the Elect of Israel, called by name, who will stand up in the Last Days."
Regarding the meaning of nilvim as gentiles, not only is this how the word understood in the OT (and in an eschatological context), this meaning is confirmed by the statement that follows a few lines later: "And with the completion of the Era of these years, there will be no more joining to the House of Judah, but rather each man will stand on his own watchtower" (CD 4:10-12).

As Cohen notes, "this word is used in the OT to describe gentiles who convert to Judaism or attach themselves in some manner to Israel.
Isaiah 14:1 ... prophesizes that "strangers (hager) shall join (venilvah) them and shall cleave to the House of Jacob" ... these passages address the eschatological age, when the earth is filled with knowledge of the Lord, and a new cosmic order is being created ... The first and only passage in the Tanakh that would seem to refer clearly to the social integration of the gentile in the historical present is Esther 9:27: "The Judeans undertook and irrevocably obligated themselves and their descendants, and all who might join them, to observe these two days in the manner prescribed and at the proper time each year." Here we have Judeans (yehudim), and gentiles who attach themselves (nilvim aleihem) to them; all alike constitute the community of those bound by the law of the Purim festival.

https://books.google.com/books?id=cvWq4 ... en&f=false
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.
outhouse
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Re: When/what is the End of Days?

Post by outhouse »

John2 wrote:By the way, what gives you the impression that the DSS sect was "just a small community"?

In comparison to all Essenes as a whole, this was a small aspect of the sects. There is not a lot of evidence for large Aramaic Jewish habitation.
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