Category: Bible

Is the Didache the Key to Understanding Paul’s Controversy with the Judaizers?

Didache-660x330The Didache (“Did-ah-KAY”) is a first century manual of Christian instruction, and it provides a fascinating view of life in the early Church. You can read it here.

British scholar Alan Garrow has done a lot of work on the Didache, and he has a fascinating hypothesis linking it to Paul’s controversy with the Judaizers in Acts and Galatians.

You can watch his video presenting the hypothesis here.

Key points of his hypothesis are as follows:

  1. The conference Paul has with the apostles in Galatians 2 is not the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15. Instead, it took place during the famine relief visit of Acts 11.
  2. When the council of Acts 15 occurred, the apostles wrote a lengthy document which was the original version of the Didache (it was later supplemented to form the Didache as we have it today). Luke summarizes the original version as the letter sent to the churches in Acts 15:23-29.
  3. This version of the Didache (and the one we have today) contains ambiguous statements that could be taken as requiring Gentiles to be circumcised before their deaths if they are to be saved.
  4. After Paul evangelized the Galatians, Judaizers pointed to these statements as proof that both Paul and the Jerusalem apostles expected them to be circumcised.
  5. When Paul learned of this, he wrote the epistle to the Galatians and vigorously denounced this interpretation. However, he did not explicitly address the statements in the Didache because the document was too ambiguous and could undermine his case.

I very much enjoyed Garrow’s presentation, though ultimately I do not believe his hypothesis succeeds. Let’s take a brief look at the key points.

 

The Famine Relief Visit

Many recent scholars have been inclined to link the Galatians 2 conference with the famine relief visit of Acts 11 because of the list of Paul’s activities described in Galatians 1:13-2:10:

  • Paul’s former life in Judaism (1:13-14)
  • His conversion and call (1:15-16)
  • His sojourn to Arabia and Damascus (1:17)
  • His visit “after three years” to Peter in Jerusalem (1:18-20)
  • His sojourn in Syria and Cilicia (1:21-24)
  • His visit “after fourteen years” to Jerusalem where circumcision was discussed (2:1-10)

From this catalogue, it is inferred that the two Jerusalem visits Paul mentions here were the only visits he made during this time period.

If so, then the Galatians 2 conference can’t be the Acts 15 conference because of the record of Paul’s Jerusalem visits found in Acts:

  • After Paul’s stay in Damascus, Barnabas takes him to the apostles in Jerusalem (9:27-30)
  • He and Barnabas make the famine relief visit (11:29-30)
  • He and Barnabas go to Jerusalem for the Acts 15 council (15:1-29)

If Paul’s visit “after fourteen years” is his second visit to Jerusalem following his conversion then it must be the famine relief visit.

There is a lot that can be said about this, but it all hinges on the inference that Paul had only two visits to Jerusalem in this period, and this is not clear from Galatians.

Paul does not say that he visited Jerusalem only twice. He does indicate that he was not popularly known in the churches of Judea (Gal. 1:21-24), which implies that he did not spend a lot of time there, but it does not mean that he never made a brief visit.

This is clear from the fact that he had already made a visit lasting two weeks (Gal. 1:18-20) and this did not make him popularly known in Judea.

It’s therefore quite possible that he and Barnabas made an additional, brief visit (described in only a single verse: Acts 11:30) that he doesn’t mention in Galatians because it is not relevant to the subjects he is discussing—i.e., where he got his gospel and how circumcision is not necessary for salvation.

He thus jumps to the next major event that was relevant—the Jerusalem visit that occurred “after fourteen years.”

Identifying this event with the famine relief visit of Acts 11:30 creates multiple problems with the chronology of Acts, and one of them becomes clear beginning what Luke says next:

About that time Herod the king [i.e., Herod Agrippa I] laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword; and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter (Acts 12:1-3).

Luke then goes on to narrate Peter’s escape and Herod’s death (Acts 12:20-23).

According to Acts 12:1, the famine relief visit of 11:30 took place just before or in proximity to the events of Acts 12, which include Herod’s death.

Herod Agrippa I is commonly reckoned as having died in A.D. 44, though recent studies have indicated it was more probably in late A.D. 43 (see Daniel R. Schwartz, Agrippa I, 107-111).

Either way, this gives us an approximate time frame for the famine relief visit, and if it occurred “after fourteen years” from Paul’s conversion then Paul’s conversion (Acts 9) would have had to occur around A.D. 29 or 30.

This is too early, even on the view that the Crucifixion occurred in A.D. 30, and certainly too early on the better-established view that it took place in A.D. 33.

More could be said about the chronological problems with identifying the Galatians 2 conference with the famine relief visit, but this will suffice.

 

The Didache and the Acts 15 Letter

Garrow proposes that, after the Acts 15 council, the apostles wrote a lengthy document to be sent to the churches and that this document was the original version of the Didache.

On this view, the Didache is, in the most literal sense, what its title presents it as—“The teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles by the twelve apostles”—because the Jerusalem apostles wrote it.

Garrow points out that it would be unreasonable for Luke to repeat the whole of the Didache in his account of the Acts 15 council, so he argues that Luke summarized it as the letter found in Acts 15:23-29:

23b “The brethren, both the apostles and the elders, to the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greeting. 24 Since we have heard that some persons from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, 25 it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, 26 men who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. 28 For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: 29 that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”

To support his proposal, Garrow notes several themes that this letter and the Didache have in common. He’s also certainly correct that Luke would not have interrupted his narrative to reproduce the whole of the original Didache if it was before him.

But how likely is that the Acts 15 council wrote it?

The Didache is such an early document that it’s not unreasonable to hold that its original edition dates to this time period, but if the controversy was about the role of circumcision—as both Acts and Galatians indicate—would the apostles really have written such a lengthy document in response? The matter could be settled much more concisely.

Further, the content of the proposed first edition of the Didache is basic Christian instruction. As reconstructed by Garrow, it contained treatments of basic Christian morality, sacramental practice, and eschatology. Is that what the Jerusalem authorities would have written in response to a controversy about circumcision?

As Garrow notes, the Didache never mentions circumcision. It’s one thing to see how a brief letter like the one in Acts could omit the word “circumcision,” saying merely, “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things” and then not name circumcision as a requirement. However, it is very hard to imagine a document that goes on for chapter after chapter of basic Christian instruction without dealing in some clear way with circumcision, given that this was the issue that prompted the document to be written.

It seems much more likely that the Jerusalem authorities would write a more concise document that dealt directly with the issue at hand, which is what we find in Acts 15:23-29.

Lest modern readers of the New Testament be puzzled by the brevity of this letter, its length is entirely what we would expect. Letters in the ancient world—even by famous epistolary authors like Cicero—were typically written on a single sheet of papyrus (E. Randolph Richards, Paul and First-Century Letter Writing; David Trobisch, Paul’s Letter Collection).

The most normal letters in the New Testament are 2 John, 3 John, and Jude—the very letters we tend to overlook because of their brevity.

By ancient standards, Paul’s letters are literary abnormalities. By comparison, they are enormous. And it seems that under Paul’s influence the other authors of the New Testament epistles were led to copy his practice of writing theological-pastoral treatises in letter form.

But this is not what we would expect at the time of the Acts 15 council (A.D. 49), before Paul’s literary career had taken off. Instead, we would expect exactly the kind of short letter that we find in Acts.

It was common, at the time, to write only a brief letter and then have the courier(s) orally fill in any necessary context for the readers, which is precisely what we have here (“We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth”).

Further, since Paul and Barnabas figured heavily in the controversy provoking the council (Acts 15:2), we would expect the letter to make mention of them to clarify their status in the eyes of the Jerusalem authorities, as it does (“it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ”).

Yet none of these things are in the Didache.

On Garrow’s proposal, Luke has boiled the entire original edition of the Didache down to just two verses—Acts 15:28-29—and freely composed everything else in the letter (five verses).

If Luke had taken such liberties with the apostolic decree, then he would have been subject to charges of falsification. The issue of circumcision remained a live one in Christian circles at this time (and, indeed, for several centuries in Jewish Christian circles), and it would have been much safer for him to simply summarize what the apostles said without casting it in the form of a fundamentally fictitious letter.

We are thus confronted with two hypotheses:

  1. The apostles responded to the Acts 15/Galatians 2 circumcision controversy by writing an astonishingly long treatise on basic Christian instruction that never directly addresses the controversy at hand or mentions the parties involved in it, and Luke summarized this in the form of a fundamentally fictitious letter, opening him to charges of falsification by those who favored circumcision.
  2. In keeping with the epistolary practices of the day, the apostles wrote a brief letter that addressed the central controversy, discussed the status of the participants, and sent couriers who could confirm its authenticity and supply needed context.

The latter is the more likely hypothesis.

 

The Didache’s Ambiguous Statements

Garrow points out that the Didache contains a pair of passages that could be misunderstood as implying that circumcision is necessary for salvation.

First, at the end of its section on basic moral instruction, it says:

For if you are able to bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect. But if you are not able, then do what you can.

Now concerning food, bear what you are able, but in any case keep strictly away from meat sacrificed to idols, for it involves the worship of dead gods (Did. 6:2-3).

Second, the end of the document gives an eschatological warning and says:

Gather together frequently, seeking the things that benefit your souls, for all the time you have believed will be of no use to you if you are not found perfect in the last time (Did. 16:2).

Garrow calls attention to the word “perfect” in these passages and argues that the first could be taken as indicating that to perfectly “bear the whole yoke of the Lord” one would need to be circumcised.

Failing to be circumcised might be acceptable at least temporarily, given the concession, “But if you are not able, then do what you can.” However, one could look at the second passage and conclude that, since one must be “found perfect in the last time” for the faith to profit you, one must be circumcised at some point.

It is not plausible to think that this is what the author(s) of the Didache meant the reader to understand. Circumcision has to be injected into the thought of the text at both points, for it is not mentioned in either of them or in their surrounding contexts.

However, Garrow does not claim that this is what the Didachist(s) meant, just that this is what the Judaizers made of the text.

 

Paul and the Judaizers

Garrow’s claim at this point is reasonable. If the Didache was in circulation prior to Galatians, Judaizers could, indeed, point to these passages in an attempt to bolster their claim that faith and baptism may be necessary but that one must go on to embrace circumcision if one wants to be ultimately saved.

They could further point to Paul’s circumcision of Timothy (Acts 16:3), which strikingly occurs in Acts just after the Jerusalem council and the delivery of its letter.

Timothy was from the Galatian city of Lystra and was well known in the neighboring city of Iconium (Acts 16:1-2), and his circumcision by Paul was publicly known. Paul performed the act so that Timothy could accompany him, “because of the Jews that were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek” (16:3).

It therefore would have been easy for the Judaizers to appeal to Paul’s circumcision of Timothy and claim that even the “apostle to the Gentiles” agreed with their view on the ultimate necessity of circumcision.

This would explain passages in Galatians that seem to indicate Paul was being portrayed as a preacher of circumcision:

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you [i.e., if we should preach a gospel of circumcision], let him be accursed (Gal. 1:8).

If I, brethren, still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? (Gal. 5:11)

Garrow’s hypothesis thus coheres very well at this point.

But do these passages provide positive evidence that the Judaizers were appealing to the Didache?

It does not seem so.

The passages we have just seen do suggest that the Judaizers were portraying Paul as acknowledging the necessity of circumcision, and they likely appealed to his circumcision of Timothy as evidence for this.

However, we don’t need to suppose that the Didache in particular was in circulation or that they appealed to it. All we need to suppose is that the idea was in the air that one needed to complete one’s conversion to Christ by circumcision, and we have good evidence that this idea was present, whether or not the Didache was in circulation.

 

Paul and the Acts 15 Letter

Paul was apoplectic when he learned what the Judaizers had been telling his Galatian converts, and he wrote his letter to them in a white hot fury.

In this epistle, Paul’s sharp elbows are at their sharpest, and he vigorously denounces the views of the Judaizers, including their own apparent misrepresentation of his own actions.

What, then, are we to make of the fact that he does not mention the document that the Acts 15 council wrote?

For Garrow, Paul does not do so because that document (the original edition of the Didache) was too ambiguous.

It’s true that the Didache contains passages the Judaizers could plausibly exploit. However, it’s not clear that a personality as forceful as Paul would refrain from taking those passages on.

After all, circumcision is nowhere mentioned in either context, and a careful exegesis of the Didache does not support the claim that it is necessary. In context, “the whole yoke of the Lord” for Gentiles is the material under discussion in chapters 1-6 of the document, and circumcision is not among the topics covered.

Paul easily could have pointed this out and insisted that his interpretation—bolstered by the other facts he mentions in Galatians—is the true one and that it authentically represents the view of the Jerusalem authorities.

Once again we must ask whether the Didache needed to be in circulation to explain why Paul doesn’t mention the document the council produced, and the answer again is negative.

If Galatians 2 does refer to Acts 15 (as the bulk of the evidence indicates) then Paul’s summary of it in the epistle makes all the essential points. He does not need to refer to the letter.

Further, he may not have had a copy of the letter with him. We know that Paul was sometimes separated from his personal library (2 Tim. 4:13), and he may have avoided discussing the letter if he couldn’t quote it exactly.

Even if he had the letter with him or was comfortable quoting it from memory, there are serious reasons why he might not want to, because the letter contained pastoral provisions as a concession to Jewish sensibilities. Specifically, it asked that Gentiles “abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity.”

While he may not have had a problem with (or a choice regarding) these items as pastoral concessions, Paul is on record stating that there is nothing wrong in principle with eating idol meat. He discusses this explicitly in 1 Corinthians 8, and he covers the same issue from another perspective in Romans 14.

It is highly probable that he would not have had a problem in principle with eating blood or strangled things in view of his comments regarding becoming all things to all men that he might win some (1 Cor. 9:22), and specifically regarding his comment that “To those outside the law I became as one outside the law . . . that I might win those outside the law” (1 Cor. 9:21).

This is further underscored by his declaration “let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink” (Col. 2:16), and by his excoriation of Peter for breaking table fellowship with Gentiles (Gal. 2:11-14).

Since the pastoral provisions of the Acts 15 letter were inconsistent with views Paul held and openly discussed with his converts, as the other letters just quoted indicate, he had ample reason not to call attention to the letter in his discussion here. Doing so would only raise the question of what status these pastoral provisions had: Were they matters of divine law that were binding on everyone or only accommodations made for the sake of harmony within the Church?

Delving into these concessions to Jewish sensibilities would have undercut Paul’s fundamental point that Gentiles only need to become Christians, not Jewish Christians, to be saved.

Further, raising the subject of the letter in his account of the council (Gal. 2:1-10) would undercut the argument he was about to make regarding Peter (Gal. 2:11-14), because the letter’s pastoral provisions would suggest to the readers that Peter might not have been wrong to withdraw from table fellowship with Gentiles.

Paul was thus incentivized to remain silent on the letter and focus instead on the points he makes about the council in verses 1-10.

 

Conclusion

Garrow has provided a fascinating discussion of the Didache and how it might have influenced first century discussions regarding the need for circumcision.

While it seems very unlikely that the Didache was produced by the Acts 15 council, it is quite possible that early versions of the document were in circulation in the mid-first century.

It also is possible, though not necessarily probable, that—either before Galatians was written or afterwards—Judaizers appealed to the document’s statements regarding perfection to bolster their argument that circumcision is necessary for salvation.

The Didache thus remains an important background document, and the light it may shed on the New Testament and its history needs to be further explored.

The Mystery of the Antichrist – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

MYS011

What or who is the Antichrist? Is he alive today, was he an historical figure, or perhaps he’s yet to be born? Does he signal the end of the world? Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli tackle the mystery of the Antichrist, what the Bible says, and what the Church says.

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Pluck Out Your Eye?

 

Discern_vol4_no3_fb_if-your-right-eye-causes-you-to-sinSunday, September 30, is the Twenty-Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B). Mass Readings: Numbers 11:25-29, Psalm 19:8, 10, 12-13, 14, James 5:1-6, Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48

* * *

This Sunday’s readings have two prominent themes. The first is that God can work outside of expected, formal situations.

We see this in the reading from Numbers, where God takes some of the spirit he gave to Moses and endows seventy elders with it. Two of the elders—Eldad and Medad—weren’t present for the ceremony, yet God gave them the spirit as well, and they prophesied. Upon learning this, Joshua asked Moses to stop them—perhaps implying that they were delinquent in not coming to the ceremony and therefore had no right to prophecy. But Moses took a more generous attitude and said he could wish all of God’s people were prophets.

Something similar happens in the Gospel, where the disciples report to Jesus that they told an exorcist to stop driving out demons in Jesus’ name because “he does not follow us.” Jesus, too, took a more generous attitude, telling them, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

This shows us that, out of his love, God can bestow his grace and work miracles, even outside of the situations you’d expect. It also shows us that, when he does so, we should take a generous attitude toward it—an important lesson for us and the ecumenical situation we face today.

The second theme deals with sin. St. James warns his readers—particularly rich ones who have exploited the poor—that their comeuppance will arrive. They have indeed, “stored up treasure for the last days,” but not in the way they thought! “Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud.” Exploitative landowners have actually accumulated a “wealth” of judgment.

To keep such judgment from happening to us, Jesus tells us we must deal decisively with sin. “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off”; “and if your foot causes you to sin, cut if off”; “and if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.” This is a classic example of hyperbole, or exaggeration to make a point. Jesus doesn’t intend us to literally make ourselves blind, lame, or handless. Doing those things wouldn’t actually deal with the problem, since—as he elsewhere says—sin actually proceeds from our hearts, our inner selves. Instead, his point is that we must do whatever it takes to deal effectively with sin.

Part of that effort is prayer. We need God’s help to overcome our innate, sinful tendencies. His grace is what allows us to conquer them. We will make mistakes, even unintentionally, without being aware of it. Thus the Psalmist praises God’s commandments and says, “though your servant is careful of them, very diligent in keeping them, yet who can detect failings? Cleanse me from my unknown faults!”

At the same time, God can empower us so that we avoid mortal sin. Thus the Psalmist also prays, “From wanton sin especially, restrain your servant; let it not rule over me. Then shall I be blameless and innocent of serious sin.” This should ever be our prayer, so we lay up real treasure for the last days.

The Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls

 

dead sea scrollsThe Dead Sea is a mysterious place. Its name invokes one of the greatest mysteries—death—and there is a good reason for that.

The waters of the Dead Sea are almost ten times as salty as the ocean, preventing fish, birds, and plants from living in it. That’s why it’s called “dead.”

It’s also so salty that you can float in it even if you don’t know how to swim.

Located at the south end of the Jordan River Valley, the Dead Sea is the lowest point on any of Earth’s landmasses—being more than 1,400 feet below sea level.

It is a valuable source of chemicals, including salt, potash (potassium chloride), and asphalt (bitumen). Because of the latter, it was known in the ancient world as Lake Asphaltites.

Several ancient sources reveal that a mysterious Jewish sect known as the Essenes lived near the Dead Sea.

 

The Dead Sea and the Essenes

The Roman author Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) is one of several ancient writers who discussed the wonders of the Dead Sea and the Essenes who lived nearby.

[The Jordan River flows] towards that gloomy lake, the Dead Sea, which ultimately swallows it up, its much-praised waters mingling with the pestilential waters of the lake. . . .

The only product of the Dead Sea is bitumen, the Greek word for which gives it its Greek name, Asphaltites. The bodies of animals do not sink in its waters, even bulls and camels floating; this has given rise to the report that nothing at all can sink in it. It is more than 100 miles long, and fully 75 miles broad at the broadest part but only 6 miles at the narrowest. On the east it is faced by Arabia of the Nomads. . . .

On the west side of the Dead Sea, but out of range of the noxious exhalations of the coast, is the solitary tribe of the Essenes, which . . . has only palm-trees for company (Natural History 5:15:71-73).

 

The Mystery Deepens

In the 1940s, the mystery surrounding the Dead Sea deepened when a teenage Bedouin shepherd named Muhammed edh-Dhib went in search of a lost goat.

Details of exactly what happened are sketchy. It’s not even certain what year this happened, though it was sometime between 1945 and 1947.

In later accounts, edh-Dhib said that he thought the lost goat was in a cave, so he threw rocks in, hoping to startle the goat into making a noise or coming out of the cave.

Instead, he heard the sound of breaking pottery, and he decided to investigate and entered the cave and discovered clay jars containing ancient scrolls.

The local Bedouin often supplemented their income by illegally raiding archaeological sites, so the scrolls soon appeared in the local antiquities market, and in 1947 word of the scrolls began to spread among scholars.

 

The Story of the Scrolls

The Dead Sea scrolls have had a tumultuous history. In the first phase of this history, the investigation of the scrolls was hampered by events surrounding the founding of Israel and the Arab-Israeli hostilities of the time.

This led to colorful, cloak-and-dagger episodes, such as when—in late 1947—the Jewish scholar Eleazar Sukenik disguised himself as an Arab so he could safely travel from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to purchase some of the first scrolls, which were in the possession of a cobbler and part-time antiquities dealer nicknamed “Kando.”

In 1954, Sukenik’s son—the Israeli military general and scholar Yigael Yadin—had a similar transaction, in which he employed a secret intermediary using the false name “Mr. Green” (later revealed to be the American Jewish scholar Harry Orlinsky) to purchase several scrolls that had been advertised in the “miscellaneous for sale” section of the Wall Street Journal’s classified ads.

DSS_adAfter the Bedouin’s initial discovery, a survey was eventually undertaken, and scholars found ten more caves containing scrolls. Today they are numbered Caves 1 to 11.

Eventually a huge number of scrolls and scroll fragments—almost a thousand—were discovered. This number was so large that it led to the next troubled phase in the scrolls’ history.

The study of the scrolls was parceled out to a team of scholars, but some of the scholars did not process them in an efficient manner.

Although one could simply take photographs of the scrolls and publish the photographs, it was customary to allow scholars to translate, analyze, and prepare commentaries on the scrolls before publication.

For a variety of reasons—including the huge number of scrolls and fragments—some scholars didn’t do their work quickly, and decades went by without the full body of scrolls being published.

This led to rumors that the unpublished scrolls were being deliberately held back, and since some of the scholars analyzing them were Catholic, rumors began to circulate that the Vatican was suppressing the scrolls because they contained dangerous revelations that would threaten the Christian Faith.

This was one of the inspirations for the conspiracy novel The Da Vinci Code.

In a surprise twist, the impasse was finally broken in 1991 when rebel scholars frustrated with the situation made an unexpected move.

Although many of the scrolls had not been published, an exhaustive concordance of them had been. Like concordances of the Bible, this work listed each word in the scrolls, along with a snippet of its context.

The rebel scholars used a computer program to analyze the concordance and piece together the text of the unpublished scrolls by combining the concordance entries like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

In the wake of this, the Huntington Library in San Marino, California—which had a complete set of photographs of the scrolls—announced that it would allow scholars access to this material.

The embargo on the unpublished scrolls was now broken, and today all of the scrolls are available to the public. In fact, the Israeli Antiquities Authority has put them online, where they can be viewed for free at www.DeadSeaScrolls.org.il.

 

By the Numbers

Because of their fragmentary nature, statistics on the Dead Sea Scrolls have to be approximate, but it appears that the total number of texts is around 930.

The vast majority of the scrolls are parchment (animal skin prepared for writing), a small number are on papyrus (paper made from a reed that grows in Egypt), and one is inscribed on copper.

Breaking them down by the languages they are written in:

  • 790 (85%) are in Hebrew
  • 120 (13%) are in Aramaic
  • 20 (2%) are in Greek

Breaking them down by subject matter:

  • 230 (25%) are Jewish biblical texts
  • 250 (27%) are general Jewish texts
  • 350 (38%) are sectarian texts
  • 100 (11%) are unclassified

The biblical texts are books that belong to the Jewish Bible as it is understood today (i.e., the protocanonical books of Scripture).

The general Jewish texts are ones that aren’t included in the Jewish Bible, though they were read by a broad range of Jews. Examples include the deuterocanonical books of the Catholic Bible, as well as non-canonical works like Jubilees and 1 Enoch.

The sectarian writings are those that the Qumran sect produced itself and that reflect its unique views. Examples include the War Scroll, the Halakhic Letter, and the Community Rule.

The unclassified texts are ones that scholars aren’t sure about. They are not biblical texts, but it is hard to tell (often because they are too fragmentary) whether they are general Jewish texts or specifically sectarian ones.

 

Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Near the caves where the scrolls were found is an archaeological ruin known as Qumran.

Most scholars have concluded that the scrolls were placed in the caves by the people who lived at or near Qumran. For this reason, the people who wrote the scrolls are often called “the Qumran sect,” although they called themselves the yakhad (Heb., “community”).

Because ancient sources including Josephus and Pliny the Elder report that there were Essenes living by the Dead Sea at approximately the location of Qumran, the majority view among scholars is that the Qumran sect were Essenes.

If this is correct, the scrolls give us new information about the history of the Essenes.

 

Naming the Scrolls

Scholars needed a way to keep track of the huge number of manuscripts and fragments, so they developed a numbering system.

A typical designation in this system is “4Q491.” The Q stands for Qumran, and the 4 that precedes it indicates that the text was discovered in Cave 4. The designation “4Q491” thus indicates manuscript 491 from Cave 4 at Qumran.

Every text in the Dead Sea Scrolls has a designation like this, but they often have additional names based on their content.

For example, an important text at Qumran is known as “the War Scroll,” which describes an apocalyptic battle between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. 4Q491 is a fragment of the War Scroll, but another, longer copy was found in Cave 1. That more complete copy is sometimes called 1QWarScroll.

Biblical manuscripts typically have content-based designations in addition to their numerical ones. For example, 4Q41 is also known as 4QDeutn because it is from a copy of Deuteronomy.

 

History of the Qumran Sect

The sect appears to have originated in the early second century B.C. It existed for twenty years before a man known as the Teacher of Righteousness became its leader.

The sectarians thought Teacher of Righteousness to be divinely inspired, and he appears to have been a high ranking priest from Jerusalem—perhaps a high priest who was deposed by Jonathan Maccabeus.

The Teacher was opposed by a figure known as the Wicked Priest (often thought to be Jonathan Maccabeus), who pursued him into the desert. He was also opposed—within the Qumran sect—by a dissenter known as the Man of Lies (or the Spouter of Lies) who rejected the Teacher’s interpretation of the Jewish Law.

The fact the scrolls do not identify these figures by name has led to a great deal of speculation among scholars.

Precisely how the Qumran sect fit into the world of ancient Israel is unclear. Their legal interpretations are strikingly similar to those of the Sadducees, leading some to suggest they were an offshoot of this sect.

However, they also held theological views (including belief in the afterlife and predestination) that were rejected by the Sadducees.

The Jewish historian Josephus records that the three major Jewish sects of the time were the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes and that the last was the strictest of these sects.

This fits with the picture the scrolls give of their authors. They were a radical sect that looked down on the more relaxed attitude of the Pharisees (who they referred to as “seekers after smooth things”). They also believed that the Sadducees had allowed the Jerusalem temple to become polluted, and so they refused to worship there.

Like others in the period, the Qumran sectarians expected an imminent war between the forces of light and darkness. They expected God to give them victory in this war, leading to the destruction of their enemies and an age of perpetual peace.

Instead, when the Jewish War of A.D. 66-73 occurred, the Romans were victorious and the Qumran sect disappeared from history.

 

The Scrolls and the Bible

The Dead Sea Scrolls are significant because they are a thousand years older than the next earliest copies of the Hebrew scriptures that we have, which were made by Medieval Jewish scribes known as the Masoretes.

The scrolls’ discovery demonstrated the remarkably accurate preservation of these texts.

At the same time, they contain some readings that are different from the Medieval Hebrew copies.

Sometimes these alternative readings support those found in the Septuagint—the major Greek translation of the Old Testament—and sometimes they are unique to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Today Bible translators use the Masoretic texts, the Septuagint, and the Dead Sea Scrolls when trying to determine the original reading of biblical passages.

 

The Scrolls and the Canon

The Dead Sea Scrolls are important for the study of the canon of the Bible. They include copies of all of the protocanonical books of the Old Testament except for Esther, whose canonicity was disputed by some Jews.

The scrolls also include copies of deuterocanonical works like Tobit, Baruch, and Sirach.

It is unclear whether the Qumran sectarians had a closed list of books they regarded as canonical or precisely which books these were.

However, the scrolls do show that they thought more books counted as Scripture than the Sadducees and Samaritans (who accepted the first five books of the Bible) and the Pharisees (who accepted the protocanonical books, roughly speaking).

It appears, for example, that the Qumran sect regarded books such as 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Temple Scroll as divinely inspired.

 

Notable Scrolls

Some of the most notable works among the Dead Sea Scrolls include:

The Community Rule (1QS): A manual describing how the Qumran sect was to function, including information about initiation, communal meals, etc. It is the sect’s equivalent of a monastic rule like the Rule of St. Benedict.

The Temple Scroll (11QTempleScrolla): A lengthy work describing a version of the Jerusalem temple that was never built. Written in the form of a revelation from God to Moses, it describes the sect’s ideal temple and the ceremonies that should take place in it.

The Halakhic Letter (4QMMT): A letter written to the Jerusalem priests explaining the points of Jewish law (halakhoth) that the Qumran sectarians felt separated them from the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

The War Scroll (1QWarScroll): An apocalyptic prophecy of a battle between the “sons of light” (the Qumran sect) and the “sons of darkness” (everybody else, but led initially by the Romans). It includes the military tactics that the sons of light were expected to use.

The Copper Scroll (3Q15): Unique among the Dead Sea Scrolls, this document is inscribed on a roll made of copper. It contains a list of locations where vast sums of gold and silver are said to be buried. None of the sites have ever been found, leading some to suggest it is a work of fiction. However, it seems unlikely anyone would take the trouble to inscribe a work of fiction on a difficult medium like copper, suggesting it is real. If the treasures were real, they are so vast they could only have come from the treasury in the Jerusalem temple, presumably being hidden to keep them safe from the Romans in the Jewish War of A.D. 66-73.

 

Christian Connections?

When the scrolls were discovered, attention quickly focused on what light they might shed on early Christianity, and there are a number of similarities between the Qumran sectarians and early Christians.

Both groups had a focus on prophecy and personal holiness, both had some members who practiced celibacy, and both had leaders who were called “bishop” or “overseer” (Hebrew, mebaqqer, Greek, episkopos).

This led some crackpot authors to make fanciful proposals, such as that John the Baptist was the Teacher of Righteousness, Jesus was the Wicked Priest, and St. Paul was the Spouter of Lies.

None of these are possible. Carbon dating shows that scrolls mentioning these figures were written before the New Testament era, meaning that they are too old.

Also, the early Christian attitude toward Gentiles and the Jewish law was starkly opposed to the rigorist and exclusivist view of the Qumran sectarians.

The Dead Sea Scrolls thus do not tell us anything directly about early Christianity, though they do tell us a great deal about the world in which early Christianity emerged.

 

Other Finds

Because of the mystery surrounding them, the Dead Sea Scrolls represent the most famous find of ancient literature, but there have been other major finds. Two of these are the documents of the Cairo Genizah and the Nag Hammadi texts.

The Cairo Genizah: Traditional Jewish piety forbids throwing away a manuscript that contains the name of God (YHWH), and so it became customary for synagogues to have a special place to house worn out manuscripts containing the divine name.

This place is known as a genizah—from a Hebrew word meaning “to put away” or “to hide.” Manuscripts would be stored in genizoth and then later buried.

In the 1890s, the American rabbi Solomon Schechter realized the genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt contained a vast trove of important manuscripts. These were written between about A.D. 870 and 1880, and the number of texts and fragments dwarfs those found at the Dead Sea. All told, around 300,000 fragments have been recovered from the Cairo genizah.

The Nag Hammadi Texts: In 1945, an Egyptian farmer near the town of Nag Hammadi discovered a buried pottery jar that contained twelve volumes of ancient writings.

These proved to be significant because among the writings was a large collection of Gnostic documents from the fourth century. Gnosticism was a heresy that flourished from the second to the fourth centuries, but before this point the only accounts of what the Gnostics believed were found in the writings of their opponents—the Church Fathers.

As a result of the Nag Hammadi texts, scholars now have direct access to the writings of the people the Church Fathers were reacting to, allowing us to better understand many things.

 

Learning More

There are many good resources you can use to learn more about the Dead Sea Scrolls. These include:

 

 

“Let’s Take Him Down a Peg”

 

Sunday, September 23, is the Twenty-Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B). Mass Readings: Wisdom 2:12, 17-20, Psalm 54:3-6, 8, James 3:16-4:3, Mark 9:30-37

a-jesus-in-trial-before-the-roman-empire_0* * *

By God’s design, human beings are social rather than solitary creatures. We need to live in society with other humans, and that means we need to pay attention to our status and reputation, to make sure we have a safe and stable place in society.

Under the influence of sin, this natural need becomes distorted. It leads to envy, blind ambition, and conflict. Thus St. James warns us: “Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every foul practice”; “Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passions?”

When we sense that someone is getting ahead of us, there can be a sinful desire to “take him down a peg,” to reduce his status as a way of elevating our own, so that we can feel better about ourselves. The author of Wisdom shows us this thought process playing out in the minds of the wicked as they consider the righteous: “Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings, reproaches us for transgressions of the law.” That impulse can even lead the wicked to have murderous designs against the just one: “Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him.”

This contains a Messianic prophecy, for precisely such envy would lead the authorities to plot Jesus’ death. Thus in this week’s Gospel, we find him again predicting: “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.”

Jesus’ disciples were perplexed and too afraid to ask him to explain this. What they didn’t realize is that they were falling into the same trap as the authorities. As they walked along the road, they argued about which among them was the greatest. Jesus had offered them secure, even honored places in God’s new society—but they weren’t content with these and petty place seeking began among the Twelve.

Jesus confronted them with their selfish ambition and taught them that “if anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” Rather than being built on ambition and narcissism, God’s new society would be built on humility, service, and love.

At points in our lives, all of us have been victims of people who want to humiliate us. All of us have been able to say, with the Psalmist, “O God, hear my prayer; hearken to the words of my mouth. For the haughty men have risen up against me.”

God knows our need to have a safe and stable place in society. He knows we need to be concerned about our reputations. But we must keep our sinful tendencies in check and not give in to pride. We must seek to serve others, and—above all—we must not seek to humiliate them just so we can think better of ourselves.

What Would Jesus Do?—Are You Sure?

 

wwjdSunday, September 16, is the Twenty-Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B). Mass Readings: Isaiah 50:5-9, Psalm 116:1-6, 8-9, James 2:14-18, Mark 8:27-35

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We’ve all seen those bracelets that say, “What would Jesus do?” This question can be a helpful reminder of our need to use Jesus as a reference point and to follow the example of our Lord. That’s the theme of Thomas a Kempis’s spiritual classic The Imitation of Christ.

It’s also a welcome point of agreement with our separated brethren. In fact, “What would Jesus do?” has been particularly popular in the Protestant community, initially being popularized by the nineteenth century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon and the Congregationalist author Charles Sheldon and his novel In His Steps.

Though the subject of faith and works has long been contentious between Catholics and Protestants, both recognize—with St. James—the need to put our faith into practice: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works;” “Faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

While “What would Jesus do?” is an important question to ask, it comes with a huge caveat. There’s a well-known saying in biblical studies: “By their Lives of Christ ye shall know them.” What this means is that scholars tend to write biographies of Jesus that essentially remake him in the image that the author prefers. Marxist scholars envision a Marxist Jesus; politically conservative scholars see a politically conservative Jesus; etc.

There’s an example of just that phenomenon in this Sundays’ Gospel reading. When Jesus declares that he will be rejected by the authorities, killed, and rise on the third day, “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.” The prince of the apostles couldn’t imagine such things happening to Jesus—who Peter had just, correctly, identified as God’s long awaited Messiah. The Life of Christ that Peter was envisioning would have had an entirely different ending!

Peter must have been shocked when Jesus, in full view of the other disciples, rebuked him in turn, saying, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Indeed, Jesus was determined to perform a different mission than Peter and others had in mind for him. Rather than being a political deliverer who would expel the hated Romans from Israel, he would fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah: “I gave my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting.”

And yet Jesus would also emerge from the grave, fulfilling the prophecy of the Psalms: “For he has freed my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I shall walk before the Lord in the land of the living.”

None of this was imaginable to Peter or his fellow disciples, and it reveals to us that—when we ask the question, “What would Jesus do?”—we need to ask follow-up questions: “How sure am I that I really understand what Jesus would do? Am I recasting him in my own image, just rationalizing what I want to do? Am I thinking like men rather than God?”

 

God’s Compassion for the Disadvantaged

 

compassionSunday, September 9, is the Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B). Mass Readings: Isaiah 35:4-7, Psalm 146:6-10, James 2:1-5, Mark 7:31-37

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In this Sunday’s Gospel, we read the story of a deaf man. Because he couldn’t hear properly, he also couldn’t properly calibrate the way he spoke, and so he had a speech impediment and was hard to understand. Anyone in his situation would find the two conditions painfully frustrating and embarrassing, and though most of us are blessed with good hearing and speech, we’ve all faced the awkwardness and frustration of not understanding others and of not being understood.

Fortunately, Jesus had compassion on the man and healed both his hearing and his speech impediment. This was one of the signs of the Christ, for Isaiah had prophesied that in the Messiah’s day, the deaf would hear and the mute would speak. Not only that, the blind would see and the lame would regain their ability to walk—miracles that Jesus also performed.

The fact Jesus did these miracles reveals his identity as the Messiah, the Savior that God had promised centuries beforehand. The miracles also reveal something else: God’s compassion for the disadvantaged. God knows the pain and frustration of all who are disadvantaged—whether they are blind, deaf, mute, lame, or anything else. This is why the Psalms say that God “secures justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets captives free.”

God’s compassion extends to everyone, no matter what disadvantages they face. Thus he “raises up those who were bowed down” and “protects strangers”—those travelling in foreign lands, who face hostility and have no support network to sustain them. In the ancient world, many men died young, leaving their children and wives alone, but “the fatherless and the widow the Lord sustains.”

Few things are certain in life, and we must not presume that we will always have the advantages that we do now. Because we won’t. One day we all will face hardship—whether it’s due to the death of a loved one, an illness, an accident, or a financial reversal. One day all of us will be disadvantaged in some way.

We must share God’s compassion for the disadvantaged, for one day all of us will need it ourselves. Among other things, this means that we must not show favoritism. St. James warns us against giving preferential treatment to the rich and well-advantaged. In the first century church, that might mean telling a rich, finely dressed man, “Sit here, please,” while telling a poor, shabbily dressed man, “Stand there,” or “Sit at my feet.”

By doing these things, we would set ourselves up as judges who look only at temporary, outward appearances—at fortunate or unfortunate circumstances that frequently are beyond the control of the person who experiences them. But God has compassion on everyone, regardless of their circumstances, and we need to show a corresponding, universal compassion on everyone.

After all, difficult days are coming our way. All of us will face hardship in the future. All of us will need to be shown compassion by others. And all of us will be grateful when we receive it. Let us show it to others today.

Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World – The Lost Gospels

MYS005

Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli discuss the claims and counter-claims about the so-called Lost Gospels from both the faith and reason perspectives. Do they tell a suppressed or untold story about Jesus Christ, are they the ravings of lunatics, or something in between?

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Religion, Relationship, and Ritual

religion-relationshipSunday, September 2, is the Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B). Mass Readings: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8, Psalms 15:2-5, James 1:17-18, 21-22, 27, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

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Sometimes we hear people running down the concept of religion. “Jesus didn’t come to bring us a religion,” they say, “but he wants to have a relationship with us.” Other times we hear people say they are “spiritual” but not “religious.” Both of these are based on an impoverished understanding of what religion is—as if it simply consisted of unimportant rituals or arbitrary doctrines.

But real religion involves neither of these. It doesn’t contain arbitrary doctrines but truths that have been revealed by God. It also involves genuine relationships with God, with Christ, and with our fellow human beings.

Thus St. James tells us that “religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” Having a real relationship with God means not only loving him but loving our neighbors as well—especially our less fortunate neighbors.

Yet it is possible to become too focused on external rituals. This happened with Jesus’ critics, who faulted his disciples for not washing their hands before they ate, in violation of the custom of their day. But this custom was not based on God’s teaching. It isn’t found in the Mosaic Law. Jesus thus rebuked his critics for “teaching as doctrines human precepts.”

Like the prophets before him, Jesus made it clear that moral values take precedence over mere ritual observances: “From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.”

This is not to say that rituals are unimportant. Ritual appears in every culture, showing that it’s built into human nature. Thus God gave Israel rituals alongside moral commandments in the Old Testament Law. This Law was a model of wisdom for the people of the ancient near east, and by observing it the Israelites would show “wisdom and intelligence to the nations,
who will hear of all these statutes and say, ‘This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.’”

God has ordained different rituals for us today, but ritual—together with the moral imperatives that flow from the ethic of love—is an important part of how we relate to God.

Rather than talking down religion, we should recognize and embrace the concept, for it is a biblical one. In doing so, we should embrace the impulse for ritual that God built into human nature, but we should also recognize the transcendent importance of love. This is taught in both the Old and the New Testaments. When Jesus identified the first and second great commandments as love of God and love of neighbor, he was quoting from the Law of Moses.

We thus should “be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.” And we always should strive to be one who “walks blamelessly and does justice; who thinks the truth in his heart,” for “whoever does these things shall never be disturbed.”

“Do You Also Wish To Go Away?”

disciples leave jesusSunday, August 26, is the Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B). Mass Readings: Joshua 24:1-2, 15-17, 18, Psalm 34:2-3, 16-21, Ephesians 5:21-32, John 6:60-69

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Despite everything God does for us, we can still be ungrateful. We still have free will, and we can choose to turn our backs on him.

Joshua presented the leaders of Israel with a choice: Would they serve the true God or would they serve the false gods of the nations? This occurred during the first generation to live in the Promised Land. They had received all the benefits God had assured them he would provide, and they were grateful. They declared that they would follow the Lord, for he “brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed.”

Despite this initial resolve, Israel’s gratitude faded, and many eventually rejected God and began to worship idols, bringing disaster upon the nation. It doesn’t have to take generations for this to happen. People can abandon God even though they’ve just experienced his blessings.

When Jesus fed the five thousand, countless disciples saw how he miraculously multiplied the loaves. But when he then declared an even greater miracle—that he would offer us his flesh and blood in the Eucharist—many balked. Jesus knew this, and he told them: “Among you there are some who do not believe.” He refused to water down his teaching on the Eucharist, and then we read one of the saddest verses in the Bible: “Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him” (John 6:66).

Think about that: These people were already so committed to Jesus that they had become his travelling companions, like the twelve apostles. But despite this commitment, and despite the miracle they had just seen, they refused to accept his teaching and turned their back on him.

Today many people abandon their Catholic Faith because the Church has “hard sayings” that people don’t want to accept. But when Jesus asked the twelve if they also wanted to depart, St. Peter replied, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter didn’t deny that Jesus’ saying was hard, but he accepted it anyway. In the same way, we can accept the difficult teachings of the Church, because Jesus is guiding it.

St. Paul tells us that “Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her,” caring for it the way each and every one of us cares for our own bodies. Not only does Jesus love and care for the Church, he also loves and cares for each one of us, especially when we encounter hardship in life. “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord rescues them from them all.” Knowing that God loves us and cares for us no matter what happens gives us the hope and courage we need to remain his disciples.