The Era of Wrath: An Apocalyptic Timeline of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The first quote from 4Q390 is a direct reference to the Hasmonean royals. No other time in Israel’s history had the Sons of Aaron ruled as kings (and the daughters as queens). This would by necessity place the writing of 4Q390 at least 70 years after Simon Thassi became the first Hasmonean prince and high priest. Although this particular fragment has not yet been carbon-tested, the Herodian era handwriting identified by paleographers aligns with a first century CE provenance for the text.

On Alexander Jannai: King Alexander Jannai, whose Hebrew name was Jonathan, was one of the most notorious rulers in the history of ancient Israel, infamous for his crucifixion of Pharisee rebels during a period of civil war. From the document cited, it is clear that some in the DSS Community were actually fans of this guy! Scholars have had a difficult time contending with this troublesome connection. The logical conclusion is that the Scrolls Community had an element of the Sadducean priesthood as a part of their heritage. This makes perfect sense of the halakha (which translates to “The Way” and signifies Jewish law) found in scrolls such as MMT, which scholars have noted bear a striking resemblance to the beliefs of the Sadducees (Vermes 2011, 221).

After Jannai’s death, his widow, Queen Salome Alexandra, became the ruler of Israel. Salome, some say at the behest of Jannai’s dying wish, made peace with the Pharisaic party and their influence grew to the extent that Josephus claims that the Pharisees were the true rulers of Israel during her reign (A.J. 13:16:2). Whether or not Josephus’s assertion has any factual basis, this political shift in power from the Sadducees to the Pharisees must have been a key turning point for conservative Sadducees, who would have become increasingly disgruntled with the Hasmonean governance. 

The Seventh Jubilee ends around the year 71 BCE by counting back 140 years from 70 CE. As mentioned, the destruction of the Temple in that year would have been a sign to readers of the book of Daniel that the beginning of the last week had dawned. The religious and political shift instituted by Queen Salome Alexandra aligns perfectly with the history presented in the Apocryphon of Jeremiah, which records a significant theological about-face towards the end of the seventh jubilee. The resulting punishment from YHWH would come in the form of the Roman General Pompey, who captured Jerusalem in 63 BCE, ending the period of true Israeli independence instituted by the Maccabean Revolt.

The Blasphemous Gentile King is often said to refer to Antiochus IV Epiphanes (Wise, Abegg, and Cook 2005, 44). On the contrary, I identify the Blasphemer as Caesar Augustus, who was declared Divi filius, or son of the deified one (the deified being Gaius Julius Caesar) when he became the first Emperor of Rome. The historical backdrop recounted in the Jeremiah Apocrypha all but confirms this identification, as we are told that during the reign of the Blasphemer, the kingships of both Israel and Egypt would be shattered. The latter occurred in 30 BCE, when Octavian’s army defeated the forces Cleopatra and Marc Antony in battle. Famously, Cleopatra and Antony committed suicide upon their defeat and the rule of the pharaohs in Egypt was henceforth terminated. Israel meanwhile, had already been under the dominion of Rome since 63 BCE, although Rome allowed their client kings, the most famous of which is Herod the Great, to maintain a veil of sovereignty until the year 6 CE. In that year, Herod’s son and successor, Herod Archelaus, was deposed and sent into exile. As recorded in the Gospels and Josephus, a series of Roman governors then took charge of Judaean affairs, sparking outrage and rebellion amongst the Jewish people. In agreement with the Jeremiah Apocrypha, this occurred during the reign of Caesar Augustus, a blaspheming Gentile king.

Although the formation of the Dead Sea Scrolls Community was in all likelihood a gradual event and aspects of its ideology can certainly be traced back to the Hasmonean period, the sect retroactively pinpoints its founding to the year 23 BCE. This is exactly 100 years before the calculated expiration of Daniel’s prophecy in 77 CE, placing the community’s origin at the 390 year mark just like the opening of the Damascus Document states. As mentioned above, the radiocarbon dating of Damascus Document 4Q266 backs this assertion, while the earlier 4Q267, from the remains we have, bears no mention of this eschatological framework. In testing my hypothesis, I looked to see if there were any events in the history of Israel for which the circumstances might correspond to the formation of a new Jewish sect. I found such an event in 23 BCE when Herod the Great deposed High Priest Joshua ben Fabus and installed one Simon, son of Boethus in his stead. This would have been viewed as a brazen and controversial move, as Josephus tells us Simon was not among the upper echelon of priests (A.J. 15:9:3). Adding to the corruption of it all, Herod only gave Simon Boethus the high priesthood in order that he might wed the priest’s daughter, Mariamne II. Surely, the establishment priesthood, consisting mostly of Sadducees at the time, would have been outraged at such an act of wickedness. In my postulated scenario, this would have caused these temple priests to question their ways, asking God what they had done to deserve such punishment. The establishment of a New Covenant in the land of Damascus also makes a great deal of sense during this period, as the area in and around Damascus was just outside the borders of Herod’s kingdom, unlike Qumran (a codename for Damascus according to the imaginations of some scholars) with its relatively close proximity to Jerusalem.  

But according to the Damascus Document, it took another twenty years until this new community found a leader. I place the Teacher’s arrival in 4 BCE, the year of Herod’s death, around which time another notable event is recorded by Josephus. At some point during Herod’s reconstruction of the Jerusalem Temple (which by the way, would be a suitable context for the composition of the Temple Scroll, carbon-dated to between 53 BCE and 21 CE), a golden eagle – the symbol of Rome – was placed above one of the Sanctuary’s gates (A.J. 17:6:2). It need not be imagined that many faithful Jews would have found such an object idolatrous . Josephus tells us that shortly before Herod’s death, a group of zealous youth endeavored to pull down the golden eagle  (A.J. 17:6:3). The Jeremiah Apocrypha record a period of time when the priests of Israel would return to serve the “abominations of the nations.” If a pagan icon within the Temple’s sacred bounds does not classify as such an abomination, I don’t know what does. Furthermore, the scroll’s author specifically calls out three priests as participating in the sacrilege. During this period, three priests of the House of Boethus (a family the Talmud also labels as wicked) filled the religion’s highest office: Simon Boethus, Joazar ben Boethus, and Eleazar ben Boethus. 

So where does the Teacher of Righteousness factor into this? And being that I identify the Teacher with John the Baptist, isn’t this a bit early of a start for his career based on the testimony of Josephus and the Gospels? I admit that the suggestion goes against the accepted beliefs of Biblical scholars, but it’s not without some historical attestation. The Slavonic Josephus places the beginning of John’s ministry during the reign of Herod Archelaus (4 BCE – 6 CE). 

And he did nothing else to them save that he plunged them into the stream of the Jordan and dismissed them, instructing them that they should cease from evil works, and promising that there would then be given them a ruler who would set them free and subject to them all that is not in submission; but no one of whom we speak would himself be subjected. Some reviled, but others got faith.

 

And when he had been brought to Archelaus and the doctors of the Law had assembled, they asked him who he is and where he has been until then (Mead 1924, 104).

Here we have a story about John seemingly not reliant on the Gospel tradition, and while the extra material found in the Slavonic translation of Josephus is generally seen as a forgery, it attests to a tradition that was apparently extant during its writing. Fascinatingly, John’s message in this passage sounds quite similar to the Fourth Philosophy as documented by the real Josephus (A.J. 18.1.1). Although I suggested otherwise in a previous article, I would not be surprised if Zadok the Pharisee–or “Rabbi Zadok” as Josephus perhaps heard–the associate of Judas the Galilean in 6 CE, was a garbled memory of John’s codename, the Teacher of Righteousness (“Zadok” translates to Righteous and Pharisees called their teachers “Rabbi”). John would have been a young man in 6 CE, and likely tested the waters of the various schools of Jewish religion (much as Josephus did) before he became the recognized leader of the DSS Community.

The rebellion of 6 CE, led by Judas and Zadok, was a failure, however. Whether by threat of the Roman war machine or the clever persuasion of Joazar ben Boethus, the majority of the Jewish people reluctantly acquiesced to the census of Quirinius and Roman taxation. This crushing ideological defeat of the Zealot movement would have spurred the parting of ways recorded in the DSS, in which the Liar, Judas bar Jesus, would have looked to perhaps garner increased support from the laity by dropping the strict requirements such as those we read in the Community Rule. Judas was, in effect, going back to the drawing board; taking elements of John’s theology and simplifying them in order to make them more palatable to the general public. John would have, of course, resented and condemned this move. As the Righteous Teacher laments in Thanksgiving Hymn 14: 

The members of my Covenant have rebelled and have murmured round about me; they have gone as talebearers before the children of mischief concerning the mystery which Thou hast hidden in me…And like serpents which creep in dust, so do they let fly their poisonous darts, viper’s venom against which there is no charm…My bread is turned into an adversary and my drink into an accuser…According to the mysteries of sin, they change the works of God by their transgression (1QH).

In 28 CE, around the time Pilate became the Roman governor of Judaea, John apparently thought it was time to expand his own ministry and we are told that, “the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem came to him in order to be baptized” (Mark 1:5). As the Melchizedek Scroll interprets, this occurred in the first week of the last jubilee, which would be from around 28 BCE to 35 BCE according to our timeline. During this “week,” Melchizedek (perhaps an exalted and glorified Teacher of Righteousness) would, “proclaim to them liberty, forgiving them the wrong-doings of all their iniquities” (11Q13 II). These similarities to the message of John the Baptist along with the Melchizedek Scroll’s alignment with the rest of the overarching chronology are too much for us to ignore.

John’s execution at the hands of Herod Antipas has been dated by some scholars to the year 35 CE based on Josephus, although it may have occurred a few years earlier (Visi 2020). There is not much that we have to add to this at the moment except for the clue that the Teacher’s death was said to have transpired about forty years before YHWH seemingly annihilated the Men of War, the so-called traitors who departed from the sect to follow the Liar. As the Fourth Gospel famously depicts, it was understood that Jesus poached followers off of John’s group, the most famous of whom is Simon Peter’s brother, Andrew (John 1:40-41).

We are now towards the end of our timeline and we must open our eyes to the Dead Sea Scrolls’ numerous descriptions of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome–descriptions that are written in the scrolls’ typical clandestine fashion. It is evident to me that the scrolls should be classified as wartime literature, with their apocalyptic fervor and thinly-veiled references to the Romans as the “Kittim.” As many scholars have observed, the Kittim are not only compared to an eagle, the icon of Rome, they employ Roman battle tactics (Vermes 2011, 164). The Dead Sea Scrolls sectarians were literally gazing from a distance and watching Roman armies, “encircle [the fortresses of the peoples] with a mighty host” (1QpHab IV). They prayed for revenge as they witnessed Roman soldiers, “sacrifice to their standards and worship their weapons of war” (1QpHab VI).

Perhaps the most vivid depiction of Roman atrocities during the First Jewish Revolt is found in the Nahum Pesher. This text describes a character the author dubs the “Lion of Wrath,” also translated as the “Furious Young Lion.” This individual, “executes revenge on those who seek smooth things and hangs men alive” (4Q169 I). The author clearly has crucifixion in mind when describing this gruesome act. Scrolls scholars, perhaps deceived by the early consensus dating, have suggested Alexander Jannai as a leading candidate for the Lion of Wrath’s identity (Wise, Abegg, and Cook 2005, 244). This suggestion is quite faulty, however.

The passages directly preceding the description of the Furious Young Lion make it clearly apparent that this individual can only be a Gentile. 

Where is the lion’s den and the cave of the young lions? Interpreted, this concerns…a dwelling-place for the ungodly of the nations (4Q169 I).

Although part of this passage is lost, the next quote makes it evident that the author has Jerusalem in view.

Whither the lion goes, there is the lion’s cub, with none to disturb it. Interpreted, this concerns Demetrius king of Greece who sought, on the counsel of those who seek smooth things, to enter Jerusalem (4Q169 I).

So the old lion is Demetrius III Eukairos, a Seleucid ruler during the time of Jannai, and the young lion is…Jannai? A Jew? The mention of Demetrius has perhaps misled scholars into assuming that the rest of the scroll has this period in mind, but in fact, the author jumps forward in time within the very same passage.

But God did not permit the city to be delivered into the hands of the kings of Greece, from the time of Antiochus until the coming of the rulers of the Kittim. But then she shall be trampled under their feet… (4Q169 I).

Let’s get real: the Furious Young Lion is no Jew, but a “King of Greece,” one who ruled over the “ungodly of the nations.” The Furious Young Lion is Titus Caesar Vespasianus, the Roman general and future emperor who led the siege of Jerusalem during the First Jewish Revolt. Josephus recalls in his typical apologetic style:

This miserable procedure made Titus greatly to pity them, while they caught every day five hundred Jews; nay, some days they caught more: yet it did not appear to be safe for him to let those that were taken by force go their way, and to set a guard over so many he saw would be to make such as great deal them useless to him. The main reason why he did not forbid that cruelty was this, that he hoped the Jews might perhaps yield at that sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterwards be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies (B.J. 5:11:1).

This grisly scene is almost celebrated by the Nahum Pesher’s author, who writes, “Because of a man hanged alive on the tree, He proclaims, ‘Behold I am against [you, says the Lord of Hosts’]” (4Q169 I). By the author’s line of thought, the rebels deserved what they got. Clearly, whoever he may have been, the hatred this scribe felt for the “Seekers of Smooth Things” ran down to his very soul.

The Jewish Revolt was for all intents and purposes squashed at this point, but the ideological conclusion did not arrive until 73 CE. In this year, a group of Sicarii, who had sat out the greater portion of the war after the lynching of Menahem bar Judah, committed mass suicide at the mountain fortress of Masada (B.J. 7:9:1). This incident is well-known to historians and faithful Jews the world over. The Psalms Pesher (carbon-date 29 CE – 81 CE) repeats the claim that roughly forty years after the Righteous Teacher’s death, something major happened to the sect’s enemies:

A little while and the wicked shall be no more; I will look towards his place but he shall not be there. Interpreted, this concerns all the wicked. At the end of the forty years they shall be blotted out and no evil man shall be found on earth (4Q171 II).

It is quite difficult, if not impossible, to find a historical event that aligns so precisely to the chronology present in the DSS. While many individuals have been nominated as potential candidates for the Teacher of Righteousness and the Liar/Wicked Priest, I have not been able to locate a more decisive reckoning that occurred some forty years after the death of a proposed Teacher.

Finally, we come to the end of our timeline, and not a moment too soon, seeing as that I’ve gone way over my intended word count and Mark Goodacre’s “editorial fatigue” has definitely set in. And that’s to say nothing of how mentally taxing the gravity of the events discussed can be. But to conclude, the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE would have alerted the sectarians that the eschaton would arrive in the year 77 CE, one week of years later –as foretold by Daniel. Of course, this did not come to pass. Hence, we have the author of the Habakkuk Pesher reminding his readers that, “If it tarries, wait for it, for it shall surely come and shall not be late” (1QpHab VII). Well, it won’t be late according to God’s time at least. Also quoted is “another vision concerning the appointed time. It shall tell of the end and shall not lie” (1QpHab VII). This expectation of a new vision set the stage for the original unredacted version of Revelation, whose Jewish core has been proposed by scholars such as Josephine Massyngberde Ford (1975) and James D. Tabor (2017). 

So there you have it. Is the above reconstruction close to the truth? Or is it merely the imaginative rambling of a non-expert? You tell me in the comments below.