Even today,
some confuse the seditionists called
Christiani with the early Christians, the same confusion of identity made by the Roman authorities (Pliny the Younger for an example) who persecuted the Christians:
Eisenman probably more than about anyone has publicized the–for lack of a better term–Fourth Philosophy = Christ-movement argument in 1st CE. There have been other strong independent arguments as well, e.g. the little-known work of George Wesley Buchanan, The King and His Kingdom (1984), and Eric Laupot, “Tacitus’ Fragment 2: The Anti-Roman Movement of the Christiani and the Nazoreans,” Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 54, no. 3 (2000), pp. 233–47 (which remains substantial despite criticism from Carrier).
Here is how this theory can be seen as compatible with the earlier deposit date of all of the literary texts in the caves of Qumran. The whole linchpin to everything is the dating and interpretation of the Damascus Document. Critical here is the article of Annette Steudel, “The Damascus Document (D) as a Rewriting of the Community Rule (S)” Revue de Qumrân 25/4 (2012): 605-620. Inverting traditional and prevailing views in Qumran scholarship, Steudel, along with Reinhard Kratz and a few others, convincingly show D is later than and rewrites from S, not vice versa. D is a late-composed text in the form in which it is known in the Qumran texts and Cairo Genizah, not early. I came to realize that the final composition of D is contemporary with the era of composition of the pesharim, and that this is all at the tail end of the Qumran texts, the final generation, the era of the Teacher vs. Liar conflict so central to the world of these texts, late 1st BCE.
The whole key is the Teacher is Hyrcanus II, and the Liar is Herod, and the Qumran texts end–the entire deposits of all of the literary texts in the caves of Qumran–on that note. The texts, deposited at a former Hyrcanus II site (Qumran being essentially an outpost of and controlled from the Palaces at Jericho), now with the entire Hasmonean dynasty nearly exterminated by Herod according to Josephus, end in that context and on that note, with D holding out only a forlorn hope that “in forty years” (i.e. not imminent) a Messiah of Aaron and Israel will arise.
But what happened after that? Hyrcanus II, or the 1st BCE Teacher revered high-priestly figure at the close of the texts whoever he may be, was not violent in the sicarii-terrorist sense that Josephus calls the Fourth Philosophy and attributes in origin to Judah of Galilee. And yet the world of D, the world of the Teacher’s circles of the Qumran texts, is a world in which the high-priestly figure, the Teacher, is explicitly not the Davidic violent warrior messiah which is foreseen to arise–an emphasis and ideological development which it is fairly mainstream scholarship reflected in a number of studies to reconstruct as having arisen and taken root starting ca. the second half of 1st BCE or ca. the time of Herod, very plausibly in response to and in opposition to Herod as its originating context.
Compare: D opposed to Herod, with the hope in the world of D and the pesharim for a distinct Davidic warrior messiah to come, as the closing note of the Qumran texts as those texts end ca. end of the 1st century BCE. Militant Davidic messianism, which is arguably what Jewish-, as distinguished from Pauline, Christianity may have been other language for, in this way could represent development from and be in continuity from the end of the Qumran texts in the time of Herod. It would be post-Qumran texts’ development of Davidic messianism into–so to speak–radical al-Christiani terrorism in Judea, as the then-civilized Western world would have viewed it, and did if the Tacitus passage is genuine. This is the Eisenman and Laupot argument cut to essentials, though argued in different ways. In this line of argument the Fourth Philosophy, militant davidic messianism, 1st CE Jewish liberation movement activity in its various forms, the Nazorean movement, the Dagger-Men and other names by which such activity became known, could be the rest of the story, the postscript, the “what happened after that”, after the lights went out in the Qumran texts according to a long-overdue correction in the dating of the Qumran text deposits.