PART THREE
7
The Visions in the Book of Daniel
THE IMPLICATIONS of Daniel 12 are so crucial to understanding the conception of the afterlife in Judea and so important for the rise of Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that we must delve into its secrets more completely. The comparative, social-historical technique which we have been using to analyze other cultures’ views of the afterlife can be used to understand the development of Biblical views of the afterlife. Set in the context of the wider world, Biblical traditions about the afterlife show the same correlation with social institutions that we have seen in other cultures.
“Apocalypticism,” whatever else is implied, has meant the revelation of the secret of the coming end of time, the violent end of the world, and the establishment of God’s kingdom.1 Apocalypses are often pseudepigraphical, that is, fictitiously ascribed to an earlier hero or patriarch. Many apocalyptic books-notably Daniel and Revelation, the only two Biblical books in the genre-also have arcane symbolism, strict dualism of evil against good, and puzzling visions, the meaning of which is hardly clear from a first reading. Second Maccabees, with its martyrology, establishes a conventional story of religious martyrdom, whether or not the events happened in just the way the text describes, but, by comparison with Daniel, it is a book of critical history.
Apocalypticism has a long history. Possibly, some of the noncanonical books, especially I Enoch and related material, preceded the Biblical book of Daniel. We cannot be sure. History gives us many examples of movements arising full-blown in response to certain events, while others seem to simmer for a long while and focus into a movement after a previously existing literature of apocalypticism suddenly galvanizes a new sect, due to specific events. The best we can do is distinguish between apocalyptic literature and apocalyptic movements, while realizing that each is dependent upon the other.2
With Daniel, we are on the cusp of understanding the details of the social circumstances that produced this apocalyptic notion of resurrection. We have already seen that apocalypticism is one response to persecution, or to take a larger perspective, one possible response to colonial domination. We shall see others in future chapters. But before we came to understand the relationship between apocalypticism and social circumstances, we could only surmise how the Jews developed a religious form of apocalypticism. Daniel’s direct statements on astral immortality, promising a starry future to those who turn many to righteousness and resurrection for some of the good, was such an innovation in Hebrew thought that we must pause to investigate the circumstances that produced it.
The Form of the Book
THE BOOK OF Daniel contains two distinct content sections and two distinct languages: Hebrew and Aramaic. But the contents do not parallel the languages. Evidently the current, received book is composed of fragments from two different copies, one in Hebrew, the other in Aramaic, but the contents had already each assumed more or less in the form which we have today and the language break does not follow the change in subject matter. Why the current book came to be passed on in this form is anyone’s guess. We may be grateful for the quandary because it is possible that the book would not have been canonized if it had not contained some Hebrew. Certainly, no book written in Greek was ever allowed into the Masoretic Text by the rabbis.
Behind the seam produced by the change of language, we note another seam, almost as obvious, based on a change of content, which must underlie both the Hebrew and Aramaic versions. The first part of the book of Daniel consists of several miracle stories about the seer Daniel, purported to have lived during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar, Darius the Mede, and Cyrus, a miraculously long lifespan. Nor do these reigns easily correspond with the historical personages. These stories make more sense as popular tales. They are stories that preach constancy to the laws of Moses, to the benefits of dietary regulations, and to the other special rules of Judaism, even though the penalty for keeping them may be martyrdom. They are almost the same kind of martyrdom stories we saw in the last chapter with one major innovation: The narrator depicts God as actually saving his righteous martyrs from the threatened martyrdom, thus miraculously preventing them from being martyred at all.3
The famous stories of Daniel in the lion’s den and the fiery furnace impress the readers with God’s special regard for those who follow his laws, as they portray God’s repeated deliverance of Daniel from the threatened martyrdoms. It is important that the heroes are in actual and real danger of death but preserved alive by divine intervention. It is, from this point of view, an important variation of the martyrology genre, showing the value of righteousness, steadfastness, and wisdom, even in the face of oppression. So although no explicit martyrdom appears, we have, in effect, a martyr tradition defined by the innocent sufferer delivered by God’s intervention. Although they are fictional, they teach real lessons in martyrdom, as well as promise salvation for the wise, persevering, and courageous.
Daniel is the name of a famous Canaanite hero, the father of Aqhat, the subject of an ancient epic. Furthermore, the name Daniel is a combined form of the word for judge (Hebrew: dan) with the suffix ’el which is a divinity name, usually translated as “great” when appended to another term. In form, it literally means “’El is my Judge.” Daniel was a wise ruler in the past, and Daniel’s wisdom, special skills, and revelatory knowledge are prominent aspects of the story. In this period, names ending with the suffix “-el” come to indicate angels in Hebrew-like Gabriel, Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and a myriad of others.
The Date of the Book
THE TALES MAY not be from the Babylonian (587-539 BCE) or the Persian period (539-333 BCE) but they are certainly more ancient than the visions which follow, starting in chapter 7, which were produced around 165 BCE. The visions purport to be prophecies from the Babylonian and Persian period, we have already seen that they are actually the product of the Maccabean period (168-165 BCE), as every recent historical analysis has found.4 As interesting as the tales of Daniel may be, the visions that follow them must interest us more for their concrete and detailed revelation of a beatific afterlife. These fantastic visions gain credibility by their linkage to the stories of the rescue of the righteous seers that precede them. They predict that the martyrs and saints of the future who, unlike Daniel and his friends, actually undergo torture and death, will yet be returned to life by resurrection, just as the previous martyrs had been preserved by direct divine intervention. Together these two different genres of literature, connected by the theme of the preservation of the saints, are connected to become the literary output of the seer Daniel. The persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes in the life of Judea, which produced the holiday of Hanukkah are the stimulus for these speculations into the nature of the afterlife.
While the visions purport to be prophecies, the writer already knows that many of the events related in the visions have already come to pass; he need only predict a relatively short span of time before the final consummation. The events of the Maccabean period can be established by the prophecies in Daniel 7:8 and its interpretation in 8:9. “The little horn speaking great things” must be Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid king of Syria and ruler of Judea during the first half of the second century BCE. His evil reign is described as “a time, two times, and a half a time of the little horn,” which is an allusion to the three and one-half years when Antiochus persecuted the Jews during the Maccabean revolt. The mention of “the abomination of desolation,” a parody of the epithet of Haddad, is a reference to the stationing of Syrian troops in the Temple and the subsequent desecration of Temple purity (Dan 11:31; 12:11).5 The Syrian troops probably worshipped Haddad in the Jerusalem Temple.
The author’s skill in describing the events of the Maccabean revolt is so good that when the story goes awry, it reveals the likely date of composition for the visions. The major prediction of Daniel, which actually did not come true, is that Antiochus would die in Egypt before his return to Jerusalem after the war with Egypt (Dan 11:40-45). In fact, Antiochus did not die in Egypt. His attack was cut short by the intervention of the Romans, who forced him into an embarrassing peace with an expensive tribute. On his return, he stopped in Jerusalem and punished the city mightily for its rebelliousness, presumably using the vessels of the Temple to help pay his bill to Rome.
Daniel 7 and Canaanite Imagery
THE VISIONS ARE not imagined or written merely as history, however; instead the deliberate change in perspective to the fictional narrator in the past signals the birth of a new form of prophetic consolation, which we have already labeled “apocalypticism”-the secret revelation or uncovering of God’s plan. The visions predict that, after the present arrogant dominion has had its short day of dominance, God will intervene and destroy the hateful oppressors who also arrogantly oppose God’s will. From this point of view, the apocalypticist is prophesying revenge against the hated oppressor just as surely as he is predicting the promised remedy for its injustice. As opposed to prophecy, where repentance can avert any of God’s threats, in this vision, the predicted end will come, regardless of human behavior. No one expects Antiochus to repent and become a believer in God. His fate is sealed. But there are many in Israel who did not favor the program of the apocalyptic prophet. Their only recourse was to join the virtuous by conversion to the prophet’s group or sect. This is an important new social phenomenon that we will have to investigate to understand what resurrection means.
The end will come in the following way: A divine figure characterized by the term “ancient of days” (Dan 7:9) presides over the divine council at the last judgment and sentences this last, fourth kingdom to destruction. Then there appears in the clouds of heaven “one like a Son of Man” (Dan 7:13, kebar ’enash), an expression in Biblical Aramaic that means only “like a human figure.” His human appearance contrasts with the monstrous figures that have preceded him in the vision so we may further conclude that his human shape, so emphasized by this puzzling designation, is meant to distinguish him as the good figure from the bizarre animals who are the evil figures. An angel interprets the figure as symbolizing “the holy community, the saints of the most high” (Dan 7:27), who are the sect of the righteous who expect to be saved at the consummation.
The imagery in this passage comes directly out of Canaanite mythology.6 The enthronement of the two figures and the names used for them correspond rather closely to the Canaanite description of ’El, the older, father god, sometimes known in Ugaritic as “the father of years” (abu shanima) rather like the Aramaic term used here, “an ancient of days” (’atiq yamin, Dan 7:9) or “the ancient of days” (’atiq yamaya, Dan 7:13). The indefinite noun in Daniel 7:9 suggests that it is a description of the figure rather than its proper name or title. The Biblical character with his white, woolly beard parallels the description of the Canaanite divinity. The “Son of Man” must therefore be closer to the Canaanite divinity Ba’al, the son of ’El, who supersedes his father in the regulation of the cosmos.7 In parallel fashion, it too is likely to be a description rather than a title. Probably then, in its present context, the figure like a “Son of Man” or, more idiomatically, “the manlike figure” is meant to be understood as an unnamed, principal, heavenly figure in God’s retinue, probably the functional equivalent of the so-called “Prince of the Presence” in later Jewish mysticism, since he is enthroned next to the ancient of days, the grandfatherly figure.
It is unlikely that the figure is a mortal human because the text would have said that it was a human being, not a figure shaped like one. Hence, the figure is likely to be a specific archangel-perhaps Michael but possibly Gabriel-who are mentioned in other visions. The human figure in heaven is more or less what we would call an angel, a person shaped like a human but obviously part of the divine court. Since it is the “primary” angel, we might consider calling it God’s Kavod or “Glory” or, even in later Jewish terminology, his Shekhinah (though that figure is usually gendered feminine in Midrash). Instead of the transient evil kingdom of Antiochus, he establishes a permanent, everlasting, and universal kingdom, which brings salvation from the sufferings in the present, transient, and evil kingdom of Antiochus Epiphanes.
This author must be writing very close to the events of the Maccabean revolt. By framing his predictions as prophecy, he is saying that God has known about this particularly heinous villainy from the beginning and planned for its short duration. The vision is prophecy because it reveals God’s plans for the immediate downfall of this terrible kingdom. This, no doubt, consoled the disheartened and persecuted members of Israel who were being martyred and killed, not for having abandoned God’s word but specifically because they were keeping it: God has vengeance in mind for the oppressors and felicity for those who stay true to God’s word. After Daniel admits his anxiety about the vision, the angel explains what the plan is, and after that, the final judgment quickly follows, being shared by “the Son of Man” and the “saints of the most high,” who are the beneficiaries of the war and succeed to an everlasting kingdom.
It is not clear exactly who the “Saints of the Most High” are. They appear to be humans as they are described as “the people.” But they also have a name that suggests angels: “The Holy Ones of the Most High,” an alternate translation of the same term. It also suggests martyrdom, as “sanctification of the name” is the standard term for martyrdom in Rabbinic Hebrew. These possible implications all turn out to be true when we look at the fuller context, including the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The saints cannot be all the people, as we know that not all the people will be saved or resurrected in the afterlife (Dan 12:1-3). Furthermore, Daniel 11:32 distinguishes between the “those who violate the covenant” and the “people who know their God”:
Forces from him shall appear and profane the Temple and fortress, and shall take away the continual burnt offering. And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate. He shall seduce with flattery those who violate the covenant; but the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action. And those among the people who are wise shall make many understand, though they shall fall by sword and flame, by captivity and plunder, for some days. When they fall, they shall receive a little help. And many shall join themselves to them with flattery. (Dan 11:34)
These verses narrate that the evil oppressors profane the Temple and they set up an “abomination that makes desolate.” We do not know exactly what this means but it is a severe insult to the purity of the Temple. The best guess is that they set up a pagan altar in the Temple. “They” are evidently the Greek Syrians, soldiers of Antiochus Epiphanes, who occupied the land and persecuted the Jews for their religion, at least in the eyes of 1 Maccabees and Daniel. It may be that their very presence inside the inner Temple precincts was the crucial action which stimulated this prophecy, but the very ferocity of the argument suggests that they also committed other acts of desecration. The violators of the covenant are those parts of the society who were allies of the Greeks, whom both Maccabees and Daniel understand as apostates. There were evidently a good many people who just passively ignored the events. Daniel 12 suggests that there will be those who just live and die, experiencing no resurrection. In the distinct minority are those few who know God. They teach the people the truth and fight against oppressors. They must be the group that produced this book, and they had a sectarian organization and identity.8
The party of the faithful are also specified as “those among the people who are wise” who “make many understand,” which probably means “give instruction to the many” in Daniel 11:33. They pay dearly for this service as they fall “by sword and flame, by captivity and plunder for some days.” They became martyrs by combat and captivity. And they are the group that will, at the end of days, become angels (stars) in Daniel 12:3. The story suggests that the faithful have been martyred and that, for their supreme sacrifice, they will not only be resurrected but “they who have made the many righteous will shine as stars forever.” This is the equivalent of becoming angels and so can be called angelomorphism.9 The events are just about to happen, nearly upon us.
The angelic army is quite possibly related to the rapiuma, the royal dead war heroes of Canaan, as the imagery in Daniel 7 has Canaanite roots as well. Sometimes Canaanite gods were described as stars. But it is clear that these heroes had human rather than birdlike forms. Unlike the Canaanite story, which explained where the dead were and established regular feasts to keep them happy in the afterlife, this story functions to punish those who have opposed Israel, especially those who have dared to murder God’s most wise and sacred saints. It describes the final reward not of kings but of martyrs.
There are also analogies with Greek thinking, where great heroes become the heavenly constellations. The point is, however, that it is not exactly Greek nor Canaanite nor Persian, though it is generally parallel to all of them, using the native Hebrew vocabulary for resurrection together with martyrdom, as reunderstood from the ambiguous Scripture appearing in the prophets. Possibly this can be seen as part of the general process in the Hellenistic period of transferring the abode of the dead from under the earth to the heavens. But no one in the group that produced this text would have been aware of that perspective. In a sense then, the death of the saints, their “martyrdom” as the church would call its fallen heroes, has sharpened the age-old question of why the righteous suffer to the point that the writers of Daniel adapted a very popular idea in the ancient Near East, until this moment missing in the history of Israel: the notion of resurrection as a reward for saints and martyrs.
The conception of life after death that it outlines is not exactly like anything else we have seen thus far. Although it is resurrection, which might put it into the same camp as Zoroastrianism, it is not at all what Persian resurrection was. For one thing, it is not at first guaranteed to all the good. Nor does it eventually extend to the evil once they have purged themselves of their evildoing. In this text, reward is only promised to some of the good and punishment only to some of the evil. The evil will also be resurrected but they ought not to be glad of their resurrection because they regain their bodies only to be punished. Furthermore, there is a large group of ordinary Israelites who receive neither resurrection nor special punishment, who just die and are no more.
As we have seen, it is a picture of life after death adapted to the circumstances of this particular group. It is derived, as we saw in the last chapter, from putting together a number of Biblical passages in a new, inspired way and narrating a consistent new story about it. It promises punishment for the evil ones, a restored life for those who have been cut off before their natural span, and astral immortality, eternal life as an angel, to those who make others wise, evidently the principal teachers or leaders of the group, or at least those among them who were martyred. As opposed to the majority of the Persians, who saw the end of the world as an eventuality, and resurrection as the privilege of the whole human race eventually, this group expected it to happen momentarily, as the final consummation is the very next event narrated. They also think that only the very righteous-themselves-will ever attain resurrection. This is a sectarian stance, which gives us important information about the kind of group that created these documents.
The Sociology of the Daniel Group
OTTO PLÖGER argued in his now classic Theocracy and Eschatology10 that the group of people who produced this vision can be characterized as a “conventicle-spirit of deliberate separatism in that membership of the ‘true’ Israel is made to depend on the acknowledgment of a certain dogma, namely the eschatological interpretation of historical events, which meant, in effect, membership in a particular group” (Plöger, p 19). Plöger struggled to find words to express what he saw. He said that the afterlife described in Daniel is limited to those people who join the group and come to share its assumptions. Plöger wrote before sociology became more readily utilized in Biblical studies, so his description requires a further explanation.
Plöger means that the group that produced Daniel was a small group of committed religious fighters and teachers. They expected God to reward them for their suffering and for the injustices that were done to the rest of the faithful. We already know a great deal more about them: The members of the group illuminated by it are called “those who are wise” or “the wise men of the people” and help many to insight, or suffer martyrdom (Dan 11:33, 35) “but will one day shine like the stars” (Dan 12:3). And there is some suggestion that they have priestly functions.
This surprising religious ideology is not very close to the position of the Maccabees, even though the Maccabees had a priestly lineage. In 1 Maccabees, the events that founded the Hasmonean house, the dynasty of the Maccabees, are expressed in activist and political terms. While God’s sovereignty is acknowledged, what we would call ordinary causation is the immediate source of history. In 1 Maccabees there are but few references to God’s miraculous intervention in history.
On the other hand, the book of Daniel is full of supernatural interventions directly in history, all prophesied or divined ahead of time by special dreams and revelations. In fact, the military action of the Maccabees appears to be directly addressed in the book of Daniel-as another group allied to the sect and called the “little help” (Dan 11:34), evidently belittled out of disappointment and frustration. The group that produced Daniel cannot be the Maccabees but it may be something like the group of people called the Hasidim (“pious ones,” Hasideans in Greek) in 1 Maccabees 2.11In 2:42, a group of Hasidim or Hasideans is described as joining the Maccabean cause, but some are subsequently martyred because they offer no resistance to military action on the Sabbath. They made a common cause with the more practical Maccabean soldiers but evidently gave up hostilities once the Temple was purified.
But trouble resumes, this time between the Maccabees and some priests, as the Maccabees get more and more ambitious when they become rulers. Evidently a priestly group broke decisively with the Maccabees in 142 BCE when Simon Maccabee was proclaimed “high priest forever, until a faithful prophet should arise” (1 Macc 14:41). The Maccabees came from a rural priestly family but they were not of the high priestly family. They were not eligible for the high priestly office so they took it by force. By 142 BCE they were very Hellenized themselves. Possibly they produced the short paean in Psalm 110, so important to later Christianity, which proclaims a new high priestly line forever, from the order of Melchizedek (literally: the righteous king). The Maccabees may propose Melchizedek as an alternative lineage to the high priestly lineage through Zadok which they usurped because they had become the kings of the country. If so, the sectarian group that produced Daniel may have assumed that the Mac-cabean high priest was actually Malkirasha (the sinful king) and that they themselves were the righteous ones. This is later characteristic of the Dead Sea Scroll community. There must be a relationship.
The Dead Sea Scrolls and Daniel
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS give a totally unexpected glimpse of Jewish sectarian life, for they are concerned with the nature of the actual community as well as its apocalyptic expectations about the end of time. Since the Dead Sea Scrolls reflect an Essene-like group, they make possible for the first time a view of the workings of an actual apocalyptic community, comparing the social organization described in the Dead Sea Scrolls with known and newly-found apocalyptic writings, and even, with some care, the descriptions which Josephus and Philo give us concerning the Essenes.
It is the Dead Sea Scrolls that give us the most hints as to the importance of the events described in Daniel for the millennialist sect. In the scrolls we find a number of different materials, some of which were important only to the sect while others were of more general interest to Judaism. Among the sectarian writings were a series of pesherim (pěšărîm, “solutions,” “interpretations”), which purport to give the full meaning of various prophetic texts. The full meanings tend to be hidden references to historical events which happened to the sect and which they then recognized as prophesied in the Bible. None would have been obvious to anyone outside the group and show how readily scripturally centered groups can reread texts so long as they serve as prophecies for events critical to sectarian history.
This underlies the constant use of Scripture to produce political ideology. In this respect, their interpretation of Scripture could function as myth. The ideological content of myth and religious story has been the subject of many recent continental intellectuals, producing a garden of ideas, a few of whose blooms will decorate this portrait of the Dead Sea community.12 The Qumran group itself was founded as a rebellion of priests to the Maccabees’ usurpation of the high priesthood, as well as the kingship. Evidently, the Dead Sea Scroll community, whose antecedents may have fought with the Maccabees against the Syrian Greeks, were later abandoned by them and summarily thrown out of the Temple.
Eventually, after a period of chaos, a person emerged, called by the sect “The Teacher of Righteousness,” who was persecuted by one of the Maccabean kings. Most likely, the persecutor, known as the “Wicked Priest” in the Dead Sea Scrolls, is the same Simon who proclaimed himself high priest, but it may have been any of his successors. This may well identify the Hasideans as the forefathers of the Qumran or Dead Sea Scroll sectarians; but, if not, it certainly marks the group as another quite similar, dissident and isolated group of purists who had a special and secret view of divine providence. We have ample examples of the views of the Dead Sea Scroll community, who were certainly “a special conventicle” of apocalypticist Jews who expected God to intervene on their behalf and return them to rightful power. If the authors of Daniel were not the exact forebears of the Qumran community, they appear to be another closely associated group with relatively similar goals, expectations, and sociology.13 The Qumran group, however one identifies them, is defined by its priestly character and revolutionary social apocalypticism.
One thing they had in common was millenarianism. Just as Daniel is a millenarian text, so the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal to us a millenarian community living in expectation of the immediate end of the world. It is important to note therefore that the Danielic group may have been revolutionaries, but they were not necessarily from an underclass yearning to be free of economic domination, as we would normally assume in the modern period. Instead they were aristocrats, priests, who have been dispossessed of their traditional sacerdotal roles. The Judaism they evince is priestly in character.
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the “Essenes:” From Literary Apocalypse to an Actual Apocalyptic Group
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS are now normally identified as Essene writings. But we cannot be absolutely sure that the Dead Sea Scrolls were exactly the group whom various writers called in Greek the “Essenes.” (We have no satisfactory equivalent for the Greek term in Hebrew or Aramaic. Thus, they appear to us to be mentioned neither in the New Testament nor in Rabbinic literature.) For one thing, there are apparently a number of groups with slightly different habits who called themselves or were called by the name “Essene” and they may, in turn, be related to the still different group which Philo called the Therapeutai (“Healers”). “Healer” is one possibility for the meaning of the term “Essene” in Aramaic, as it could easily come from the root ‘-s-y, meaning “to heal.” Josephus calls them the essaioi frequently, which could be a more exact Greek transliteration of “Healers,” Assai’in.
On the other hand, another possibility seems more likely in view of the ascent traditions which we see there. The word “Essene” may indeed come from the root h-s-y meaning to be pious and it connects them with the Hasidim of the time of the Maccabees. This also has the advantage that it can account for both Greek forms, Essaioi and Essenoi as the absolute form “pious one” is hesin, while the construct emphatic form “the pious ones” is ḥesaia. Philo also connects the name of the community with the Greek word hosiotēs, “piety,” “holiness.” The community, as we shall see, frequently called itself, “Holy Ones” or kedosim in Hebrew.14
According to Philo, who gives us the only description of the therapeutai, they lived in Egypt, where they founded a communal settlement. They were the model community for Jewish mystics who sought to ascend and gain a vision of God: “But it is well that the Therapeutai, a people always taught from the first to use their sight, should desire the vision of the Existent and soar above the sun of our senses (Contempt. 11). They were severely ascetic in their diet and their primary concern was “self-control” (egkrateia, continence); they gave little thought for their physical appearance, taking care only to dress in white for their religious observances. Furthermore, they preferred chaste marriage to carnal marriage (Con-temp. 68). Philo says that on account of this, they live “in the soul alone” and can be called “citizens of heaven.” Quite possibly, they believed themselves transformed into angelic beings, even while on earth, as a result of their mystical ascents and ascetic behavior.15
In Palestine these sects had an added, political dimension. The Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran were the product of a cloistered group that closely resembled the Essenes of Philo’s and Josephus’ description:
The doctrine of the Essenes is wont to leave everything in the hands of God. They regard the soul as immortal and believe that they ought to strive especially to draw near to righteousness. They send votive offerings to the Temple but perform their sacrifices with a different ritual of purification. For this reason they are barred from those precincts of the Temple that are frequented by all the people and perform their rites by themselves. Otherwise, they are of the highest character, devoting themselves solely to agricultural labor…. Moreover, they hold their possessions in common, and the wealthy man receives no more enjoyment from his property than the man who possesses nothing. The men who practice this way of life number more than four thousand. They neither bring wives into the community nor do they own slaves, since they believe that the latter practice contributes to injustice and that the former opens the way to a source of dissension. Instead they live by themselves and perform menial tasks for one another. They elect by show of hands good men to receive their revenues and the produce of earth and priests to prepare bread and other food. (Ant. 18.18-22).
As we have seen, the Essenes probably formed a separate priestly group when a high priest not to their liking was appointed in Jerusalem. They eventually supported an alternate leader who taught righteously and was therefore called the “Teacher of Righteousness.” They had previously retired to the desert but with him they established their own center of priestly purity away from the center of priestly power in Jerusalem. Though they did not set up a Temple in the desert, they interpreted their communal body as the Temple of the LORD, an idea that was to be paralleled in Christianity. The Essenes were distinguishable from other protest groups of their day by their priestly character.
Resurrection at Qumran
FOR THE LONGEST time, nothing showed up in the scrolls to demonstrate that the Dead Sea Scrolls supported resurrection or immortality. This was a great problem for scholarship. Some even asserted for a while that these people were Sadducees because Josephus reports that the Sadducees believed in no afterlife, which is also confirmed by the New Testament in Acts 23:6-9.16
Immortality, as distinct from resurrection, is better attested in discussing the Essenes, but not in the scrolls themselves, only in Josephus’ and Philo’s description of them. Whether the substance of Josephus’ account is confirmed in the Dead Sea Scroll texts depended entirely on each scholar’s opinion about how much poetic license Josephus should be allowed in his descriptions. Josephus describes Essenic “immortality of the soul.” But he is translating the concept of resurrection, a notion totally foreign to pagan Romans, into immortality of the soul, which his Hellenistic audience could understand more readily.
In fact, Josephus described the Essenes in terms completely appropriate to a Neo-Pythagorean sect, with their notion of the immortality of the soul. We know that Josephus’ description of the Essenes concentrated on their “mystic” meditations and abilities, to make them understandable and less dangerous to the pagan audience, while the texts we have from the Dead Sea show them to be a deeply apocalyptic community, fully expecting to fight against the sinner, Jews and gentiles.
It seems likely that Philo was writing in the same tendentious way. And so it is safer to describe apocalypticism and mysticism as Siamese twins, joined at the hip, unless there is some specific need to distinguish between these two notions. Or, they are like magnetism and electricity; two different effects of the same electromagnetic wave. In this Judean society at this particular time, we always find mysticism and apocalypticism together. The reasons for this have to do with the positions of Philo and Josephus as subaltern clients of the Roman order, people whose education and culture puts them in a very good position to mediate Jewish values to a Roman world. Rather than refer to the Essenes in terms that accurately depict their beliefs, they both described the Essenes in ways likely to interest their audience, which was cultured and Hellenistic (see ch. 8, on mystical experience).
What the scrolls themselves showed was far more like resurrection, when looked at very closely. There were a few hints that these Dead Sea Scroll sectarians were not the Sadducees of Josephan description. The earliest published scrolls themselves were not particularly helpful because they never confront the issue as such. We encounter statements such as, “Hoist a banner, O, you who lie in the dust, O bodies gnawed by worms, raise up an ensign” (1QH 6:34-35; cf. 11:10-14), which may connote bodily resurrection. On the other hand, the poet’s language may just be symbolic.
The community rule, discussing the reward of the righteous and the wicked, assures the just of “eternal joy in life without end, a crown of glory and a garment of majesty in unending light” (1QS 4:7-8), and the sinners of “eternal torment and endless disgrace together with shameful extinction in the fire of the dark regions” (1QS 4:12-13). This seems like resurrection but it is hard to be sure. If so, it is interesting to observe that resurrection was not conceived of as an entirely new state of being, but rather as a direct continuation of the position attained on entry into the Community.
From that moment, the sectarian was raised to an “everlasting height” and joined to the “everlasting council” and “congregation of the sons of heaven” (1QH 3:20-22). Salvation was coterminous with membership in the group in a strongly apocalyptic model. But they could not be ordinary Sadducees if one gives any credence to the New Testament, since it says the Sadducees believe in no afterlife, neither as a spirit or an angel (especially Acts 23:7; but also Matt 22:23; Mark 12:18; Luke 4:1, 20:27). It must be true that their traditions were priestly because the core of the movement was priestly in heritage, with lay-persons being grafted to it.
In the 1990s a scholarly revolt took place against the few professors who controlled the texts. Some of the texts had been published promptly, but the flow of publication had slowed considerably. The revolt was based on impatience that many important texts, which deserved to be in the public domain, remained unpublished and were seemingly delayed by personal problems, idiosyncrasies, and academic politics. Acting boldly, perhaps too boldly, a number of scholars published the remaining texts without permission.17 When the full Qumran hoard was finally published, there were many demonstrations that the Qumranites believed in resurrection of the dead and many more examples of their apocalyptic and mystical beliefs. In the new batch of publications was a passage in which resurrection was clearly promised and several more places that supported it.
The lines themselves almost echo the lines of the current Jewish prayer-book: “And the Lord will perform marvelous acts such as have not existed, just as He said, for He will heal the fallen and will make the dead live for he will proclaim good news to the meek” (4Q 521, lines 11-12). In this passage, Psalm 146 is reinterpreted in order to bring in a reference to resurrection. The canonical Psalm 146 warns not to trust humans, even princes (because, among other things, they die) but to trust God who performs marvelous things.
These motifs of earthly salvation and deliverance occur in a number of other Jewish Scriptures, including Isaiah 61:1-4, which explains the prophet’s vocation to bring good tidings and proclaim liberty to the captives. Thus, the prophet took on the role of announcing the good tidings which God will bring (see also Ps 145:14; Isa 35:5; 42:7; as well as many places in apocalyptic literature). In the Qumran community God is pictured, not only as doing all this but also as raising the dead, certainly the most miraculous of all the “good news.” It affirms resurrection, even though the original psalm actually emphasized that men die, implying that only God lives forever.
In the Qumran passage it is the LORD who does these wonderful things, which now include resurrection, in a way that is reminiscent of the contemporary Jewish prayerbook. In Matthew 11:4-6, a similar group of signs fulfilled is understood to foretell the coming end time and, from the context, it turns out to be Jesus who fulfills them, not God directly. The newly published passage puts the Dead Sea Scrolls clearly in line with those in the first century who accepted resurrection, including Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. It caused considerable scholarly stir and readjustment of theories about the Dead Sea sectarians. For instance, it completely undermines any theory that the Dead Sea Scroll sectarians could have been Sadducees, although still priestly in their approach to Judaism. The Sadducees, in fact, stood with the Hellenistic world in a number of ways as clients of the Romans when possible. The Qumranites were clearly very critical of the behavior of the Sadducees (as well as the Pharisees).
Even more interesting, these new scrolls tell us something very important about Josephus, something that we had strongly suspected for a long time. It confirms the suspicion that Josephus was writing very tendentiously on this topic, figuring the beliefs of the Essenes in Hellenistic form. Josephus does not stress resurrection because his Hellenized Roman community would not have understood resurrection of the body and certainly would not have perceived resurrection of the body as worth attaining. They may even have known it as the belief of their arch-enemies the Persians, and so would have been even more contemptuous of it. Josephus would certainly not want to stress a belief which the Jews had in common with the enemies of the Roman order. Instead, Josephus says that they believe the soul to be imprisoned in the body for life but once released from the bonds of the flesh, they rejoice and are borne aloft (J.W. 2.155), suggesting a heavenly journey like the Romans’ and not unlike that found in the Enoch books, which were represented at Qumran. Good souls receive a reward in an abode beyond the ocean, a kind of paradise, says Josephus, not unlike the Greek notion of the Isles of the Blessed. Evil persons are sent to never-ending punishment in the murky dungeon of the world.
When the passages on resurrection were published, Josephus’ strategy as a writer became clearer. All of this research was synthesized in an enormous and prescient, two-volume French work by Émile Puech.18 Puech actually published long before all the scrolls came out, anticipating the direct evidence of resurrection, so his book is a masterpiece of scholarly reconstruction. He probably had access to all the scrolls from the Dead Sea but he did not find any overt notions of resurrection, as we know exist today. Instead, through a series of very astute inferences, Puech demonstrated in detail that the Dead Sea Scrolls sectarians believed in resurrection of the dead, that it was combined with ascension to heaven, and that Josephus was translating his descriptions into a Hellenistic medium.19
Puech also assumes that the dualism and the apocalyptic imagery in the Dead Sea Scrolls community come, not only from Canaanite imagery like Daniel, but from Persian culture. On the other hand, we know that not every text found at the Dead Sea was produced by the group. They collected a library of like-minded but not necessarily sectarian literature. Lastly, we cannot be entirely sure that the archeological remains found at Qumran belonged to the Essene group. But, despite other possibilities, right now they seem to be in the right place for the community of Essenes described by Pliny the Elder. And the contents of the sectarian writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls appear to correspond generally (though not in every respect) to the description which Josephus gives us of the Essenes.
The Essene Community
THE ESSENES lived a communal, monastic life at a time when such practices were rare but attested in some of the Greco-Roman philosophical sects as well. The extent to which the Essenes were willing to go in their asceticism and celibacy was unknown elsewhere. Josephus as well as Philo was much impressed by this abstemious lifestyle. To the ancients, this behavior was judged philosophical, as philosophers were identifiable by their strange, garb, ungroomed appearance, and often by their communal lifestyles. Josephus takes pains to describe the details of their life as if they were a philosophical school: They elected special officers and lived a rigorous life under their supervision. They kept all their property in common and dressed very simply, except when they changed into white garments for meals and prayer services. They were up before sunrise for prayer and work. Then they purified themselves by daily baptism in cold water and ate their noon meal. During the meal they sat quietly and only spoke in an orderly fashion. The spectacle of their quiet eating was so unusual that the silence appears like a mystery (J.W. 2.132). Then they worked until evening and ate in the same manner.
Their Sabbath observances were equally impressive. They kept the rules very strictly and did not allow themselves to defecate at all on that day so as not to profane the purity of the camp with their excrement. Probably this was because they also expected angelic visitations and heavenly ascent on that day and therefore could not risk offending the angels with bodily pollutions. All their judicial procedings were by vote and by leadership from the elders. This is in general consonance with the materials we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Essenes “immortalize” (athanatizousin) the soul (Ant. 18.18); but we know that they actually believed in resurrection of the body and in apocalyptic fatalism. Josephus was strictly correct but he did not translate the more colorful parts of their beliefs, which would have meant nothing to the Romans who had no familiarity with Jewish Scripture. It seems more likely that he was suggesting that they believed in a ritual process by which the elect are translated to heaven and become part of the angelic host, a ritual process by which the “soul” is “apotheosized.” It is very hard to know to what this may actually correspond, as Josephus was trying to characterize a basically Semitic group to a pagan, philosophically trained readership, who were the only practical readers of his work.
The Qumran community’s library contains many writings which generally verify this description, but not at all in the Greek style that Josephus employs. It stands to reason that not all the books in the collection belonged to the group exclusively. The Enoch literature seems to be one of that category of literature which actually precedes the Qumran community and helped form it.20 Josephus’ account of providence, fate and foreknowledge is framed in terms proper to Greek philosophy, not the religious life of Judea. But many, many of his observations appear to hold true for the group of texts found at Qumran.
Still there are some surprises and, indeed, some striking ones: For one thing, the Qumran texts contain some extraordinarily warlike themes, especially in the apocalyptic documents. There, it seems clear, the group will become divine fighters of the last judgment. The angels, however, will provide the most powerful weapons against the enemies of truth and they will do most of the fighting. This small group could not expect to beat the armed Temple priests or the Herodians, much less the Roman oppressors, without massive divine aid. The Qumranites would uniquely be able to fight on the side of the angels because they keep the strictest possible purity rules and so are fit to remain in community with them. One supposes that Josephus left this part out because it would have made the Essenes seem like a revolutionary group when they were religious revolutionaries, not political ones.
To us, however, the Essenes are beginning to look like extremist, apocalypticist groups today who have sometimes taken up arms to further their cause. We do not have direct evidence of their active militancy but we do find their works at Masada where the violent and militaristic Zealots went for their last stand.
The most impressive aspect of the Qumran finds is that they show us how a first-century apocalyptic community actually lived and worked. We must not get the impression that the Qumran group was the only apocalyptic group; they were but one of many, starting with those who produced Daniel and before. But in Qumran we have the outlines of their actual communal structure, a datum that gives a more three dimensional view of apocalypticism, changing it from a literary genre to a social phenomenon. Here was a group of persons who expect the end of the world very soon, a major apocalyptic theme which is entirely missing from Josephus’ description. Their notion of life after death, which has just emerged from the texts, was closely associated with the life of the group. It was hard to understand how anyone else except themselves would share in the life to come.
Angelomorphism at Qumran
QUMRAN’S FELLOWSHIP with angels and their use of Daniel pointedly raises a new question, implied by Josephus’ description: Did the Qumran elite expect to be transformed into angels? If so, did they think they were already angels on earth? Israeli scholars Rachel Elior and Bilhah Nitzan concluded that there was a harmonic and mystical relationship between the angels and the Qumranites. The members of the community wanted to approach God’s throne and their hymnic texts demonstrate this relationship.21 Other scholars see only their desire to ascend; others only the presence of the angels amongst them at the end of days. Scholars disagree vehemently about the correct definition of mysticism in Judaism; yet the solution seems in sight.22 New monographs of Crispin H. T. Fletcher-Louis and Rachel Elior convincingly argue that the purpose of the language of mystical participation at Qumran was angelification.23
Since its publication, “The Angelic Liturgy” (11QShirshab, and the various other fragments found in cave 4) have been interpreted as a cycle of psalms which the angels in heaven sing for the thirteen Sabbaths that make up each of the four seasons of the year.24 The publication of these documents was a much awaited, carefully edited, and very well-received scholarly enterprise. In the years since its publication, a number of anomalies have suggested that perhaps the cycle of liturgy shows us something even more spectacular than an angelic liturgy, the liturgy of the human priests of Qumran who were actually undergoing transformation into angelic creatures, worshiping in the heavenly Temple. The liturgy seems to map a seven-stage ascent to heaven to view God’s throne and glory. As a result they antecede the more developed mystical journeys of the Hekhalot literature and show what was at stake in mystical ascent in Judaism.
Angelomorphism can be found in at least one very important place, 1QSb 4:24-28, in the blessings on the group members:
May you be as an Angel of the Presence in the Abode of Holiness to the Glory of the God of [hosts]
May you attend upon the service in the Temple of the kingdom and decree destiny in company with the Angels of the presence, in common council [with the Holy Ones] for everlasting ages and time without end; for [all] His judgments are [truth]!
May He make you holy among His people, and an [eternal] light [to illumine] the world with knowledge and to enlighten the face of the Congregation [with Wisdom].
[May He] consecrate you to the Holy of Holies! for [you are made] holy for Him and you shall glorify His Name and his Holiness.
There are several ways in which a person can resemble an angel in this passage, and the text betrays the same ambiguous use of the word “like” that is also implicit in Daniel 12:2. Does it imply likeness to the brightness of the heavens or identity and melding with the heavenly figure? Should “k” be translated as “like” or “as”?25 In favor of transformation are several other passages. As early as 1972, Milik noted that the fragment of 4QAmram calls Aaron (brother of Moses but in this context, founder of the priesthood) an angel of God.26 Furthermore, S. F. Noll has drawn attention to the similarity of description between angels and the sectarians.27 The sect uses the term “prince” (sar) for some members of the sect as well as for angels (CD 6:6; 4QpPsa 3:5; cf. 1QH 6:14). It also likens the privilege of these believers to that of ministering angels (cf. Josh 5:14; Dan 10:13, 20; 12:1; 1QS 3:20; CD 5:18; 1QM 13:10). The ministering angels were commonly depicted as those angels who served as priests in God’s heavenly Temple. This terminology is also commonplace in other Jewish mystical texts. When it is placed in the context of Daniel, more interesting implications emerge. The group prays to be made “holy among His people,” language which suggests both angelic as well as priestly ministration and, especially, martyrdom in Daniel. It also prays to illumine the world with knowledge and wisdom, the job of the maskilim in Daniel.
At the climax of the liturgy (the twelfth and thirteenth songs), there is both a vision of God’s chariot (twelfth song) and his Glory (thirteenth song). The thirteenth song is the climax of the liturgy, according to this interpretation. In it, the human form seated on the throne in Ezekiel I first comes into view. The human high priesthood makes manifest the anthropomorphic appearance of the likeness of the Glory of the Lord. Rather than crowned angels in heaven, the exalted creatures of the thirteenth song are the human saints in heaven, who have received their crowns as result of their transformed status. The Glory of Ezekiel I is visible but it appears to be embodied as the community’s high priest, especially in his high priestly garments, miter and breastplate.
Everyone agrees that the final vision of the divine throneroom is the climax of the vision. It is the angelification that is still debated. But angelification seems to be demonstated in the more recent publications of the texts. Two fragments from cave 4 published in DJD 7 (1982) have shed further light on this phenomenon. The first (4Q491) has been discussed by scholars hotly since Baillet considered it the self-description of Israel’s archangel Michael. But Morton Smith pointed out in 1990 that the speaker is more appropriately described as a mortal human being who has been raised into heaven.28 The figure is given a “mighty throne in the congregation of the gods” (line 12) and will be “reckoned” with the gods (line 14). This suggests that a community member was being transformed into an angel, as both Elim (gods) and Bene ha-Elohim (the sons of gods) were angelic designations.
The second fragment is included in The Sons of the Sage (4Q510-511). The relevant part reads:
Some of those who are seven times refined and the holy ones God shall sancti[y] as an everlasting sanctuary for Himself and purity amongst the cleansed. They shall be priests, His righteous people, his host and servants, the angels of his glory. They shall praise Him with marvelous prodigies.
Most commentators have understood the passage to refer to human ministers to the angels, but Fletcher-Louis and Elior make a cogent case that there are other distinct possibilities. Furthermore, “holy ones” and “ministering angels” are regular angelic designations, even in this period. We have already seen the connection between these terms and martyrdom in Daniel.
More interesting and more difficult to adjudicate is the question of whether the process of angelification is to take place only with martyrdom, at the end of time, some combination of both, or in the presence of the community. Some texts suggest that the process has already begun or, even, been completed in the community. The future tense suggests an action that will be complete in the future but, as everyone familiar with Semitic tenses knows, the verb form itself does not prevent the process from having started already in the past or present, as the Hebrew future is actually an imperfect tense.
Fletcher-Louis and Elior also demonstrate that there are gradations of “the holy ones” in the community. The angelomorphic priesthood seems to have been the elite of the total population of Qumran. This is consistent with the evidence that the movement was split into two groups-those who maintained stricter laws, probably being priests, and those who maintained the lesser laws, probably being laity. In the document known as 4QMMT we find a distinction drawn between Israel, who are the “holy ones” and Aaron, who is the “holy of holy ones.” The existence of the “holy of the holy ones” corresponds to the promise in 4Q511 frag. 35 that God will make holy some of the holy ones (line 2). This suggests some special heavenly holiness otherwise not attained on earth.
These texts, in turn, lead to the possibility that there was a ritual connection between the celibacy of some Essenes and their angelomorphic identity. According to Josephus, some Essenes were celibate and others were not (J.W. 2.119-21, 160-61). Joseph Baumgarten and Elisha Qimron have argued that one passage in the Damascus Document (CD 6:11-7:8) clarifies this Josephan report. Qimron especially has reconciled the two reports by saying that they designate the intentional community of celibate priests and the rest of the movement who live in “the camps of Israel.”29Certainly, this agrees with Josephus’ report that the Essenes “renounced pleasure as an evil and regarded self-control (continence) and resistance to passions as a virtue” (J.W. 2:120). This purity is quite similar to that required for the eschatological war, presumably because angelic hosts were involved (1QM 7:3-6).
In other words, in Fletcher-Louis’s estimation, the elite at Qumran adopted a celibate life because they attempted to live in a permanent state of Temple purity, which they understood as tantamount to and anticipatory to full angelic existence. As such, all sexual expression was inappropriate for Temple purity, but it must also have seemed unnecesary because the community had transcended earthly relations and had been transformed into the priests serving forever in the heavenly Temple. Celibacy was itself equivalent to martyrdom as a qualification for status as a “holy one.” The topics of asceticism, celibacy, and the issues of gender which it raises will be treated in a later chapter.30 For now we must note only that the leaders in the Qumran community were regarded as angels, that they mediated between heaven and earth, that they were exemplars of the perfection which the group emulated and revered, and were actually revered as semi-divinities, probably in a similar fashion to the martyrs of Mac-cabean times.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, in sum, give us a totally unexpected glimpse of Jewish sectarian apocalyptic life, describing the rules of an ancient apocalyptic community and allowing us to match their social organization with their apocalyptic writings. Even more exciting is the extent to which the Dead Sea Scroll community illustrates the relationship between apocalyptic notions of the end and mystical notions of resurrection and angelomorphism. The Qumran community felt itself to be so closely connected to the angelic realm that it appears to have viewed itself or at least the leaders of the community as the maskilim, “those who are wise” of the famous Daniel 12:2 passage: “Those who are wise will shine with the brightness (Zohar) of the heaven, like the stars forever.” The phrase, conventionally translated “those who are wise,” is actually more causative and intensive in Hebrew, implying “those who make others wise,” such as teachers or prophets. In the Hodayot, IQS, The Song of the Sabbath Sacrifice, 4QI8I, and many other texts, the members have been raised from normal human existence to the heavenly heights, seemingly to live as angels, which is functionally what transformation into a star would mean. It is not clear whether the forebears of the Qumran group wrote the apocalyptic sections of the book of Daniel or not. But the Qumran sectarians certainly used the prophecies in it to explain their exalted state.
The Native American Evidence
IN ORDER TO understand the sociology of the Qumran community and various conceptions of the afterlife, we must make a very large jump from ancient Israel; we must move into the modern period and see what millenarianism looks like in our own time, when we can study it in more detail.
One modern case is that of the Shawnee Prophet and his brother, who led a messianic movement that eventuated in the Battles of Tippecanoe and the Thames. This movement and its leaders, Tecumseh and Tenkswatana, have been described by R. David Edmunds in his classic work, The Shawnee Prophet.31 Edmunds shows that Tenkswatana’s religious leadership in reviving the Shawnee tribes’ fading power and cohesion was strengthened by Tecumseh’s secular leadership abilities. It was the charisma and religiously framed exhortation of the leaders of this movement that united the tribes behind them to try to halt their increasing deprivation. And, as happened later in the case of the Ghost Dance, their religious activities, their “dances” and other rituals, were misunderstood and viewed as hostile by the whites, who felt they needed to put the Indians down forcefully.
We find a similar story among the Seneca tribes when we consider their prophet, Handsome Lake.32 His visions, and the resulting religious and moral revitalization of this particular Native American community, began around 1800 with newly arriving settlers in what was then the American frontier, western New York State near Lake Erie.
In the spring of 1799, it is reported, some friends found Handsome Lake seemingly dead on his bed. As they began to lay him out for burial, they discerned a warm spot on his body. After two hours he miraculously began breathing again. When he fully recovered consciousness, he recounted the story of his vision. In that and subsequent visions, he suggested a new moral code, called Gaiwiio, for the Iroquois Confederacy, to which the Seneca belonged. The code preached self-respect in terms coming from both Native American and the Western European religion of the white man, in particular, from Quakerism. The Iroquois were to give up alcohol, witchcraft, love magic, and abortion, all of which, the prophecy said, had contributed to their great troubles and their unhappy history living near white settlers. The reward promised by the prophecy was the resurgence and restoration of the Iroquois religion and society to the state it had been in before the predations of the white settlers.
The troubles, the visions, and Handsome Lake’s preaching had a great effect on those who heard him. This was a Messianic movement that can be called, in Wallace’s term, a “revitalization movement,” an attempt to renovate the old ways, with some changes, in a time of great crisis.33 In some sense, Handsome Lake was showing his people that there was a new way in which the old language and culture could help the tribal people cope with the crisis of white invasion.
Some common social and psychological conditions seem to underlie the attraction of individuals to Messianic, millennial, and apocalyptic movements. People who join these movements feel deprived of something meaningful in their society. Marxist interpretations of millennialism stress the appeal of millennial hopes to colonized people who have minimum access to the rewards of their own labor. Normally, Marxist interpreters also note that the millennialist movements are but “symbol manipulation,” a first, pre-political step on the road to a more significant political revolutionary movement.34
But the economic forms of deprivation which help motivate these movements are not the only kind of deficiency which the movements address. In the case of the Senecas, economic troubles were only part of a whole set of evils: powerlessness, illness, social deviance and immorality, decline of cultural integrity, meaninglessness. Every aspect of the social structure and culture of the Native American society was weakened and threatened with destruction by the steady deprivations of white culture. The deprivation (if deprivation can be used to cover a variety of anomic situations) was brought on by white settlement that started in the eastern frontier and soon spread, with the westward movement of the whites, to the Great Plains and beyond.
In this situation there emerged yet another Messianic leader, a Paiute from western Nevada, to preach what became known among the whites as the Ghost Dance religion. Wovoka lived all his life in a rather small geographical area, the Mason Valley of western Nevada, about forty miles northwest of the Walker Lake Indian reservation but his influence was felt a great deal further. As was the custom in those days, he also took an “Anglo” name, John. Since he occasionally worked at the ranch of David Wilson, he was known by the name Jack Wilson. Wovoka was a classic apocalyptic prophet preaching nativism to culturally deprived people. He experienced his first revelation about 1887, after which he began to teach new dances and rituals to his people.
Wovoka’s principal vision came on January 1, 1889, during a solar eclipse. He was taken up into the spirit world where he was given a message for his people. He taught that the whites would be supernaturally destroyed and dead Native Americans would return to earth. So too, the buffalo and other game, then in grave danger of extinction as were the Indians themselves, would return and the old way of life would flourish on a reconstituted earth where sickness and old age would disappear. (This looks like a great many Jewish apocalypses too.) Thus, Wovoka promised not only an end to the tribes’ worldly troubles but a complete restoration here on earth of the Indians’ traditional life as it was before the white settlers and the soldiers came. Such a promise meant, as well, the elimination of the whites. The whites, learning of these promises and seeing a threat in the recommended dances and rituals, began a campaign against him. They called the transcendent spirit in whose name the Messianic leader claimed to speak by the denigrating name of “ghost.” Since the principal ritual of the believing community was dancing, the movement became known to the whites as the “Ghost Dance Religion.”
The Ghost Dance movement was an expression of an unrealistic hope, a fantasy for the Indians. Yet that is but one side of the drama. It always takes opposition to galvanize the movement. The whites took the prophecy as a potentially violent attack on them but they did not wait for further provocation or to find out whether the movement might turn out to call for nonviolent confrontation. They killed those they thought believed in it, a response that culminated in the massacre of Chief Big Foot and his entire band at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890, about a year after Wovoka’s revelation. As a movement, the Ghost Dance Religion probably would have had a stabilizing effect on the endangered society of the tribes, helping them to adjust to their miserable and deteriorating situation. And it is far from clear that it had an activist military aspect until the whites attacked. But it is almost impossible for this dominant group not to feel threatened by the massing of peoples and the heightened feelings that movements of this type often engender. And the ignorant fear and violence of the whites did not allow a nonviolent or passively aggressive solace to develop.35
The underlying hostility and fear separating the Indian and white communities is clearly the reason that the whites made the judgment and took the action about the Ghost Dance religion that they did. This case reveals how ambiguous the character and effects of different millennial movements can be. Sometimes they can be seen and treated as pure symbol manipulation-that is, changing the language but not changing the material situation of the deprived. Other times they may be seen as the precursors to political action and violence. The reasons that one movement remains quietistic, in the realm of hope and fantasy, while another takes an activistic path to political action and violence, can only be discerned in the individual histories of each movement. Those reasons are complicated, involving the reactions not only of the sectarians, but also the reactions of colonial powers.
Melanesian Millennialism
KENELM BURRIDGE and Peter Worsley have studied the various revitalization movements that came into being in Melanesia after the Second World War.36 Millennialism has been largely ignored in studies of Biblical religion and Christian origins, though the titles of both anthropological works are quotations from the Bible.37 Few if any scholars of religion have successfully put their work to use in understanding Islamic apocalypticism. But there are important common elements uniting Hellenistic Jews with Native Americans in the nineteenth century, contemporary Melanesia and even militant Islam. All had to deal with problems of acculturation and disorganization brought on by the domination of an imperial colonial power. The two modern sets of revitalization movements-native American and recent Islamic-attempted to restore meaning and integrity to the society in the same ways that ancient Jewish society dealt with Greek culture and Roman domination: by following a prophet announcing that God or the Great Spirit would restore their society, if only they would follow special rules of moral order and religious belief.
If the causes of such movements are similar, often the movements exhibit similar characteristics. The most important similarity, perhaps, between ancient and modern apocalypticism is that both characterize time as a linear process which leads to the destruction of the evil world order that has made them suffer. For both, also, there will be an “end of days,” a decisive consummation of history. As opposed to holding an optimistic view of social and cultural progress, members of apocalyptic communities are impatient with the corrupt present, seeing it as a series of unprecedented calamities. The “end of days” is seen as a sudden, revolutionary leap into an idealized future state, when believers will finally be rewarded for their years of suffering and believing, while their oppressors and other evil infidels will be duly and justly punished.38 Consequently, these movements tend to be brief episodes in religious history. Normally the end does not occur as predicted or the hostility of the surrounding society is so great that the movements are relatively short-lived.
Deprivation
SOCIAL AND cultural “deprivation” is a common source of Messianic movements.39 But deprivation is not a simple phenomenon. Nor does deprivation itself “cause” millennialism. Severely deprived people may themselves react in different ways. And very severe crises may actually inhibit or prevent a society from producing any new ideological reaction. In seventeenth-century Jewry, when Shabbatai Zevi’s Messianic cult became so popular, it did not originate in the lands terrorized by pogroms but in lands nearby where Jews were not personally affected by the slaughters. On the other hand, they were deeply worried about the tragedies happening to Jews elsewhere, which were viewed as imperiling their security. It is not only the actual victims of persecution, but also the nearby survivors who see themselves equally vulnerable to the threat.
Besides deprivation of some sort, there must be a willingness to interpret one’s lot in explicit religious terms. This is usually supplied by millenarianism or fundamentalism and, when fundamentalism has done its educating job thoroughly, it may itself foster the birth of a millenarian cult or an extremist cult. There must also be an ideology of apocalypticism, which can be supplied by the traditional religion or invented by a new prophet’s innovative revelations or both. But there must be a leader whose life and behavior exemplifies the piety of the group (like Osama bin Laden). There is often a practical leader who organizes the movement.
Although the sociological picture of ancient apocalypticism is incomplete, apocalyptic movements in the modern period, particularly those in Melanesian and Native American religions (with all the dangers inherent in analogies between ancient and modern movements), evidence clear sociological commonalities. The modern data also have limitations, but because they are complete by comparison to data in the ancient period, they serve as a practical guide.
Melanesian and Native American societies during the last century, though far removed from the world of Maccabean Judaism in history, geography, and material culture, exhibited some of the same social forces. They, too, had to deal with the problems of acculturation and disorganization brought on by European domination, similar to ancient Jewish society’s need to deal with the problem of Greek culture-whether it be defined as Egyptian Greek, Syrian Greek, or later Roman domination-as well as their own oppressive leadership in the Hasmonean dynasty. The colonial relationship between the subject group producing the religious movement and the imperial power seems significant in every case.
In Messianic movements, the leader’s individual skills and talents, the way he or she communicates the new messianic beliefs, values, and ideals, have a key effect on the movement. The leader comes to be revered by the community of believers, not primarily as a strong political leader but as a person who exemplifies the moral values of the group.40 This is an important perception for understanding the rise of the Qumran sect, whose organizer and possible founder was the Teacher of Righteousness. The perception is crucial for the rise of Christianity as well.
What Modern Apocalypticism Can Tell Us about Martyrdom, Resurrection, and Deprivation in Daniel
IN RECENT years we have seen several other American examples of the violent history of millenarian sects, as well as a surprising relationship with martyrdom and notions of life after death. In the case of Jonestown in Guyana in 1979, the movement ended in a mass suicide, in which hundreds of people apparently willingly drank cyanide-laced punch, though they were not in any danger. Those who knew what was happening thought they were escaping persecution by commiting suicide. It is interesting to note that there were constant rehearsals of this mass suicide, in which the initial horror of the suicide was dissipated by habituation. It is a dramatic and terrible illustration of the process of building mythological patterns for martyrdom.
In the somewhat similar case of the Branch Davidians in 1993, the movement ended in a suicidal conflagration in Waco Texas, which was partly due to the sect’s own hostility to authority, partly due to the justifiable suspicions of their neighbors, partly due to the rash and inept initial attempt by law-enforcement officials to disarm them. After the initial battle lines were drawn, with heavily armed sectarians facing off against heavily armed authorities, the whole situation resembled nothing so much as a ticking bomb, scheduled to go off at some unknown time, despite the best efforts of many people who sought to defuse it.
There is also the equally sad example of the members of “Heaven’s Gate,” who inexplicably all committed suicide to join the spaceship hiding behind Comet Hale-Bopp, which was coming to save them from this life. These incidents have illustrated to the people of the world how powerful is religious faith in motivating people’s actions towards martyrdom.
These people were not necessarily conscious martyrs to their cause in the Christian, Jewish, or Muslim tradition, but they are bizarre variations of them. Many were martyrs by their own definition. In the case of the Heaven’s Gate group, they simply thought they had found the door to a better existence. But this is a common claim of willing martyrs.
Martyrdom, we can see already, is an oblique attack by the powerless against the power of oppressors. It is a way of canceling the power of an oppressor through moral claims to higher ground and to a resolute claim to the afterlife, as the better, permanent reward, giving the oppressors only a temporary advantage. The sinister aspects of this inversion of authority were only fully revealed when used by the power structure to encourage martyrdom of their soldiers-in short, to encourage martyrdom as a motivation for an army. This is not usually an apocalyptic notion but it can be a key power of the powerful over the naively religious, as in Islamicist political extremism when martyrdom was turned into an offensive weapon. We shall turn to the Islamicist version of suicide soldiering in the last chapter.
Let us review. From modern examples, we can see that what produces martyrdom and exaltation of the afterlife is, first of all, a colonial and imperial situation, a conquering power, and a subject people whose religion does not easily account for the conquest. There must also be a society that is predisposed to understand events in a religious context. This can be provided by either an apocalyptic cult or a fundamentalist movement within the society, as well as ordinary religious life. “Deprivation” of some sort is another important ingredient. The word “deprivation” has been highlighted with quotation marks because the nature of the “deprivation” will be our next topic of attention. We shall see that “deprivation” is not necessarily or even primarily political or economic. Those dominated believe the “deprivation” is not just political but also a religious challenge. It may merely be the superiority of an imperial class over a group of the pious who consider the imperial class sinful.
For this imperial situation to be an active motivator, the political, social, or economic oppression of the disadvantaged must be perceived as a religious as well as a political and social threat. The oppression must be an event that is seen as a possible disconfirmation of the religious views of the society: The death of saints was a seeming disconfirmation of the covenant of Israel or the salvation of Christ. The existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state in the midst of the traditional Dar Essalam, the habitation of Islam, is not just a political threat but a disconfirmation of the continued progress Islam should be making in its pacification of the world. So it serves as one motivation for the terrorist acts of extremists groups like Hamas and Hizballah. (There is far more to this story, which we will discuss in detail in ch. 15.)
From here we must face the thorny problem of the motivation of the society that supports martyrdom as an option. There is no modern consensus on what constitutes the exact motivation of the oppressed in the book of Daniel and the associated ancient literatures. Indeed very few scholars have even tried to link the ancient events to the modern world.
Dissonance and Status Ambiguity as Deprivation
THE MOST RECENT searching challenge to the notion that deprivation and disconfirmation are motivators to apocalypticism and martyrdom has been tendered in the interesting book by Stephen L. Cook, Prophecy and Apocalypticism.41 In the end, I disagree with the main point of his book, but he reviews the issues in a suggestive and interesting way. So it is useful to bring up the issues in the book directly. The book surveys the later prophets as well as much of anthropological discussion of the last half century. Cook’s hypothesis is that, for Israel,
[P]roto-apocalyptic texts are not products of groups that are alienated, marginalized, or even relatively deprived. Rather, they stem from groups allied with or identical to the priests at the center of restoration society. First, the proto-apocalyptic description of the end-time assault of “Gog of Magog” in Ezekiel 38-39 expresses the same central-priestly motifs and concerns as the rest of the book of Ezekiel. Second, proto-apocalyptic texts in Zechariah 1-8 appear to have been written in support of the Second Temple establishment.42
Cook forgets that the societies that produce these movements are ones in which religon is the dominant language, not politics or economics. The nature of the deprivation is likely to be expressed in religious rather than economic or political terms. As well, Cook takes no account of the issues of colonial and imperial oppression and the reactions of the various subgroups that form in this situation. But, there is an important sense in which Cook’s hypothesis is true. The suicide hijackers of 9/11/01 were not the most materially deprived of the Arab world. On the contrary, they were quite privileged. One needs education and economic power to accomplish such ends. This is why Cook says that it is not deprivation that causes these groups.
But his notion of deprivation is just too narrow. The young Arab terrorists’ very willingness to pursue Western occupations and their failure to gain jobs equal to their achievement was apparently a motive in their movement into Islamist extremism. They were also educated in strongly Muslim schools where the reasons for this disparity were sought in religious terms. So we need some more subtle notions of what deprivation is, to understand religious impulses towards martyrdom and the way notions of the afterlife feed it.
Terrorists are often members of both the dominant and the subdominant groups but failures in their own aspirations. Having been educated in radical fundamentalist Madrassas (religious schools) that Islam is the highest and most perfect religion, they then take their technical training to Europe and the United States where they see that Islamic countries rank far behind the European and American world in political rights, economic development, and social freedoms. Or, they remain in Muslim societies in which they have no real opportunity to practice their technical skills. The only freedom and opportunity which presented itself in the 90s was to fight as a mujahid against the Russians, where the young warriors were brought under the influence of extremist thinkers like Osama bin Laden and also witnessed the defeat of the Russian invaders and the diffidence of American aid.
This dissonant situation can be explained basically by either one of two different tacks: Either the Islamic world is not as perfect as they previously had been taught or the Western world had stolen these technical treasures from its rightful owners, the pious Muslims, and, with it, stolen Muslim dignity. Of course, the real culprits here are the failed and repressive Muslim states in which they were raised and the almost magical notion of the success of Islam which they were taught in fundamentalist Madrassas.
But facing the fact that the naive Islam they were taught may itself have contributed to their wildly exaggerated self-perceptions is unthinkable to a person with that education. Because of the immoral ways of the West, the violence of the Zionist interloper on Arab territory, and the constant exhortation to hatred of people whose lives are different, the way of violence against the outsider is both possible and satisfying. It gives vent to rage and personifies the evil as something outside the body of Islam, just as surely as the projection of personal impulses onto the world as Satan excuses the bad behavior of Christian fundamentalists. While the first realization might lead to political reform, the second avoids the indignity of the first and leads to Islamic extremism. What Israel and the West have stolen from these young Muslim men in their own estimation is their confidence and pride in their own moral superiority, their self-esteem, at least as they understand the dynamics of the world.
But both the perception of the problem and the perception of the solution are provided by a mythical Islamist ideology which so distorts the actual causes of distress in the Muslim world as to to make any impartial assessment or determination of amelioration impossible. Few other people in their situation would have explained it that way but the religious fundamentalist education they received limits their choices for analysis on this crucial topic. So in a real sense, they produce their own problematic, for which violence and terrorism against the West is the solution. One sees the same notion at work on the so-called Muslim street. By believing that Israel was the true culprit in the World Trade Center attack, they preserve their sense that all problems in the Muslim world are due to demonic outside attack and every Muslim attack on the West is essentially a well-deserved defense against aggressive and murderous Western intervention.
The Dead Sea Scrolls Again
SO TOO ON THE world stage and even in ancient history: Fundamentalism and millenarianism both arise out of dissatisfaction and doubt of a colonial or even a scientific ideology overspreading a traditional culture, just as Hellenism was overspreading Judea. We have, for instance, seen that the Dead Sea Scrolls are millenarian and also deeply related to priestly tradition, so there can be no cogent argument with Cook’s understanding of the source of the apocalypticism we have seen there. The question is only whether this excludes the Dead Sea Scrolls group from being “alienated,” “marginalized,” or “deprived,” as Cook maintains.
Some traditional priests were in danger of being deprived of their independent rulership in Hasmonean Judea and the Roman Empire, and therefore they Hellenized to keep power. They themselves (the Sadducees) were active in the revolt against Rome in 66 CE, so they did have feelings of deprivation which they remedied by warfare. Another group of priests were so alienated by the claims of the Hasmoneans to both kingship and the high priesthood that they withdrew to the desert to found their own community. The Qumranites were doubly deprived, first by the Romans, and second by the Hellenized priesthood. They founded a mystical, martyr-oriented group that, nevertheless, considered themselves the most privileged, indeed angels already. But it was an ideology that reversed their very deprived state in the desert. Deprivation of both religious and material needs-in this case, deprivation from their traditional roles and lack of access to their traditional redemptive media-is a necessary precondition for millenarianism.
Other predisposing factors are also present. These frustrations may produce some of the literature that we find in the Enoch cycle. One extremely important factor is the presence of a leader (The Teacher of Righteousness) whose personal example and teachings help galvanize people’s hopes toward a specific religious goal, with the attendant necessary means of achieving it. Furthermore, and this is most important, there must be a tendency to impose religious meaning on events and to be searching for a more satisfactory system of religious values.
Sometimes, it is the leader who provides this expectation; but normally the society has traditionally sought religious solutions to historical problems before the leader arises, though he or she may preach a new variation on the solutions available in the society. Thus, the factors of felt troubles and deprivation, anxiety, strong leadership, and promise of a better society under the aegis of religion, all affect the production of millennialist or Messianic movements. We see this clearly in the revelations of the seer who is known to us only as Daniel. This religious innovation, granted to Daniel as a prophetic dream, provides the basis for the new understanding of the cult. Its source was an irregular state of consciousness, which is not that unusual for the source of a religious innovation.
Another such figure was clearly the “Teacher of Righteousness” of the Qumran group. The texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls report that for a long time after they were forced from their appointed rounds they continued to be lost in the wilderness. Then the Teacher of Righteousness arose and showed them how to organize themselves into a cenobitic community, a monastic life where the community comes together for meals. They honored their founder figure but there is no evidence that they expected him to return. Instead, they expected a great war at the end of time when the angels in heaven would come down and fight against the vastly superior forces on the other side. This would be possible because they kept themselves in such a state of purification as to allow for angelic presence at any time. Likely, they thought that their own forebears in the movement were the angels who would return.
Some of these movements then, like the Dead Sea Scroll community itself, even arise out of ambiguities in the way a religion is interpreted by different classes in a colonial and imperial setting. As priests they are entitled to a certain status in society which has been taken away, not by the Syrian oppressors but, ironically, by the Maccabean kings. While the whole society understood the fight to be against the Syrian Greeks, there was concerted military action in Judea. But when the priests alone were deprived of their traditional meaning and “access to the redemptive media,” the result was a religious innovation, a millenarian community of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This allowed them to divide the world into good and evil, identify themselves with only the good, and predict that God and his angelic minions (some of whom are the sainted dead of the group) will soon defeat the arrogant dominion of those who flout the law. This was a problem only for a small, well-defined group in the society.
Though all people require norms for orienting their lives, religious systems at times provide better norms for some parts of society than for others. When groups see themselves as cut off from the goals of society, in terms of power, ethics, or status, and from the feelings of self-worth that arise from achieving these goals, they may coalesce into antisocial movements of communitas, or communitarian idealism.43
Such movements, which stress an alternative social structure to that of the dominant majority, can appeal widely to one whose status is ambiguously defined by a society. Status ambiguities were common in Roman society because class was defined by law, not by occupation and buying power. Therefore, people who succeeded in a trade often achieved a status above their legal station in life. Reform of the basic social categories appeals to such people, and they are seeking to redress a deprivation, but one could hardly call them materially deprived in any normal sense. While deprivation of both material needs or spiritual status is necessary for the development of apocalypticism, it, too, is not sufficient to produce an apocalyptic movement.
To develop an apocalyptic cult, in contrast to a purely political movement, people must have a propensity to impose religious meanings upon events and must be searching for a more satisfactory system of religious values. The factors of need, deprivation, anxiety, leadership, and the propensity to interpret events in a religious framework all came together in first century Judea. The result over the next two centuries was the rise of a variety of apocalyptic cults, both religious and political.44
The Dead Sea Scrolls community is a very clear example of this latter kind of group. Because the Maccabees and their successors controlled the Temple but were (in the eyes of the Dead Sea Scroll sect) usurpers, they prevented this group, and indeed the entire world in the eyes of the group, from enjoying the benefits of God’s sacrificial service on earth. The service in heaven continued, however, and this group considered themselves not merely resurrected at the end of time but also exalted to angelic status, following the prophecy of Daniel 12:3, so that they could participate in the divine service.45 They may even have been the source of the visionary sections of Daniel. Contrary to Cook’s critique, then, the Qumran community was both priestly and apocalyptic, and their deprivation had nothing to do with their social class and present economic power. Rather it had to do with their estrangement from their traditional role as God’s priests.
The apocalyptic element (revealing the “end of time”) in Messianic movements is not explicitly political. But its vision of a future ideal state of societal affairs always implicitly involves the destruction of the current evil political order. The promised, new social order is always an idealization, a utopia, often an imagined and recaptured past state of perfection (“paradise,” as the Western term often figures it) that will be recreated in the future.46
Deprivation is what fuels these movements. But the source of the deprivation is inherent in the colonial situation itself. The colonial or imperial power evinces a great many superiorities to the native culture, despite the imperium’s distinct moral deficiencies from the native point of view. Yet, at the same time, the most religiously pious in the society, those who ought to be most favored by God, are materially and culturally disadvantaged in the imperial system. This creates cognitive dissonance, another kind of deprivation. In a way, though it is usually seen as a threatened disconfirmation of the native religion. When the goal cannot be achieved in this life, the rewards can be transferred to the next.
The Destiny of the Dead Sea Scroll Community
THE ESSENES had a mysterious ending. We do not know whether they remained quiescent or took an active, revolutionary role. The settlement at Qumran was destroyed by the Romans, as their arrowheads and the distinct evidence of catastrophic burning amply show. Was this because they fought the Romans after welcoming the revolt of 66 CE as the end they were expecting? We do not know. Certainly, their documents were warlike, though they themselves had no active role in the final battle, except to maintain their ritual purity. We have found Qumran writings including “The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness” at Masada, the last stronghold of the zealots. This certainly argues that the Dead Sea Scrolls were a goad to revolt. Or did they remain in their passive, ascetic mode of resistance to Roman rule right to end? Were they just in the wrong place at the wrong time? At this moment, we do not know. We do know, however, that they were tortured and martyred by the Romans during the revolt against Rome, who must have thought them a threat. Josephus tells us as much.
One thing is not puzzling, though. The metaphor of resurrection as arising from sleep came from Isaiah 26:19 and the way it was instantiated came from the visions in Daniel. Not only does resurrection itself seem to be like arising from the sleep of death, but the knowledge that resurrection will take place also comes from sleep, from dream visions. That is, it comes from religiously interpreted states of consciousness. This raises the issue of how Scripture and altered states of consciousness interact in these sectarians. To find out how Scripture could effect later visions, we must investigate the nature of ecstatic experience itself.
Religiously Interpreted States of Consciousness