Writing on fragments of pottery from Qumran refer to giving property between two men, which has prompted scholarly discussion of an account in Acts and if the two could be related.
The New Testament account of Ananias and Sapphira (below: The Death of Ananias, by Masaccio) is, I think, one of the most remarkable in the whole body of early Christian literature, portraying the earliest Christians and their faith as ascetic and their God as unforgiving unto death:
Acts 4
The Believers Share Their Possessions
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.
Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means Son of Encouragement), sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet.
Acts 5
Ananias and Sapphira
Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.
Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God.”
When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.
About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?”
“Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”
Peter said to her, “How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”
At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.
This is, of course, not a historical account, for we have seen that much of the New Testament is parodying the Messianic Judaism that is the target of Greco-Roman enmity:
- Archaeology of the earliest canonical gospels
- Flavian Midrash Sources of the New Testament
- Josephus as a primary source for the New Testament
- Hadrian’s parody
We have seen also, in my previous post – Chrestians and the lost history of Classical Antiquity – that in the first century, though there were pagan, Greco-Roman Chrestians, there was no Jesus Christ or Christians, who are Hadrianic creations of the second century.
The people described as followers of the Messiah in Acts are, therefore, Messianic Jews. We have not identified Ananias and Sapphira in the historical record, though Ananias is a name well known in the Jerusalem High Priesthood of the early first century.
Ananias and Sapphira are either parodies of Messianic Jews in general, or members of an ascetic order which we may assume are meant to be the Essenes.
Essenes
The founders and earliest practitioners of ascetic religions (e.g. Buddhism and the Christian desert fathers) lived extremely austere lifestyles refraining from sensual pleasures and the accumulation of material wealth.
Reconstruction of the Scriptorium at Qumran, by the Dead Sea.
The Essenes were a Jewish religious group that flourished from the 2nd century BCE and through the three Jewish-Roman wars of the first two centuries of this era. Some scholars claim they seceded from the Zadokite priests. (F.F. Bruce, Second Thoughts On The Dead Sea Scrolls. Paternoster Press, 1956)
They lived in various cities, but congregated in communal life dedicated to asceticism, voluntary poverty, and abstinence from worldly pleasures, including marriage and daily baptisms.
Josephus records that Essenes existed in large numbers, and thousands lived throughout Judæa. Philo wrote that there were more than 4,000 Essenes (Essaioi) living in villages throughout Palestinian Syria.
Pliny the Elder in his Natural History (N’H,V,XV) relates that the Essenes do not marry, possess no money, and had existed for thousands of generations. Pliny, also a geographer and explorer, located them in the desert near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.
Ascetics
Left: the Buddha as an ascetic. Gandhara, 2-3rd century CE. British Museum.
The Essenes were ascetics and we first encounter ascetic monks in Greco-India, as Buddhists:
- Archaeology and identity of the first Buddhists
– The language of Buddhist archaeology
– The Zen of Buddhist archaeology: earliest texts
The basic lifestyle of an ordained Theravadin practitioner of Buddhism was intended to have enough of life’s basic requisites (particularly food, water, clothing, and shelter) to live safely and healthily, without being troubled by illness or weakness, and no more than that.
These Theravadian Buddhist ascetics have been identified as the Therapeutae (Greek: literally “attendants” or “physicians,” hence “worshippers of God”), a monastic order among the Jews of Egypt, similar to the Essenes.
After the Jews returned from the Babylonian exile and the prophetic institution was done away with, a form of asceticism arose when Antiochus IV Epiphanes threatened the Jewish religion in 167 BCE, with Hellenisation.
The Hassidean sect attracted observant Jews to its fold and they lived as holy warriors in the wilderness during the war against the Seleucid Empire. With the rise of the Hasmoneans and finally Jonathan’s claim to the High Priesthood in 152 BCE, the Essene sect separated under the Teacher of Righteousness and they took the banner of asceticism for the next two hundred years, culminating in the Dead Sea sect at Qumran.
Damascus
The Damascus Document is the name given to one of the texts found in fragments of multiple copies in the caves at Qumran, and as such is counted amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. The fragments from Qumran have been assigned the document references 4Q265-73, 5Q12, and 6Q15.
Even before the Qumran discovery this particular work had been known to scholars through two manuscripts found during the late 19th century amongst the Cairo Genizah collection, in a room adjoining the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat.
The title of the document comes from numerous references within it to Damascus.
The way this Damascus is treated in the document makes it possible that it was not a literal reference to Damascus in Syria. If symbolic, it is probably taking up the Biblical language found in Amos 5:27: …therefore I shall take you into exile beyond Damascus.
This is noteworthy in relation to how Saul, a historical character within the histories of Josephus, appears to change his name to Paul within the New Testament accounts (Acts 9):
As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
The Damascus Document is a collection of rules and instructions reflecting the practices of a sectarian community. It includes two elements:
- The first is an admonition that implores the congregation to remain faithful to the covenant of those who retreated from Judea to the “Land of Damascus.”
- The second lists statutes dealing with vows and oaths, the tribunal, witnesses and judges, purification of water, Sabbath laws, and ritual cleanliness.
The right-hand margin is incomplete. The left-hand margin was sewn to another piece of parchment, as evidenced by the remaining stitches.
Fragments of eight manuscripts of the Damascus Document were found in Qumran Cave 4 (4Q266-273), with scripts dated paleographically from the first century BCE to the first century CE. In addition, small bits of the work survive in a manuscript from Cave 5 (5Q12) and another from Cave 6 (6Q15).
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4Q271(D[superscript]f) Parchment Copied late first century BCE. Height 10.9 cm (4 1/4 in.), length 9.3 cm (3 5/8 in.) (Israel Antiquities Authority) 1. …with money… |
The document contains a reference to a cryptic figure called the Teacher of Righteousness, whom some of the Qumran scrolls treat as a figure from their past, and others treat as a figure in their present, and others still as a figure of the future.
In The New Testament Code, Eisenman undertakes a sweeping investigation of the relation of the Scrolls to the previously known materials from this era. He shows, for example that the Damascus Document, which defines the strategic orientation of the community, is basically an elaboration on the Letter of James. He shows that much of the language of the Scrolls is either copied or parodied or countered by The New Testament corpus. And he shows that many of the issues that agitate the Scrolls writers were current in the run-up to the Jewish War, but not previously.
– Robert Eisenman’s “New Testament Code”
There is a high degree of shared terminology and legal rulings between the Damascus Document and the Community Rule, including terms like sons of light, and their penal codes. The fragment 4Q265 appears to have come from a hybrid edition of both documents.
Below the figures of the gods on the north wall (Qasr el-Ghuieta at the Kharga Oasis), Eugene Cruz-Uribe discovered the cartouche of the Persian king Darius.
Son of Re, Lord of Appearances, the Great, Darius, given life.
In Archaeology of first-century wizards we noted:
1QS iii.17-26 describes how God created two spirits, ‘the Angel of Darkness’ exercising dominion over ‘the sons of deceit’, and ‘the Prince of Lights’ who holds dominion over ‘all the sons of justice/righteousness’, and the text promises that ‘the God of Israel and the angel of his truth will assist all the sons of light’.
There is a formal parallel here with such a passage as 1 Cor. ii 12, where Paul says, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God”. I do not accept any of the Pauline letters as authentic.
Florentino Garcia Martinez, professor of religion and theology at the University of Groningen and a leading expert on messianic ideas in the Dead Sea scrolls, in his paper Magic in the Dead Sea Scrolls:
The magic revealed by these texts is not the magic of the marketplace and cannot be dismissed as an accidental expression of popular religion. Both types of the magic Alexander discovers at Qumran are learned magic: the first type (exorcism) is clearly based upon the biblical text and is expressed within the dualistic world-View of the community; the second (divination) is a direct consequence of the community’s determinism. Both forms are thus perfectly adapted to the needs of the community.
– The metamorphosis of magic from late antiquity to the early modern period, Volume 1 of Groningen studies in cultural change, by Jan N. Bremmer, Jan R. Veenstra; Peeters Publishers, 2002Magic has an important place in the history of Classical Antiquity and the development of faiths. Moreover, there is a theme, running from Babylon and Persian Zoroastrianism, into both Judaism and the earliest Christianity.
We first noted such Persian-inspired syncretism in Persian, Greek and Roman syncretism in the Kharga Oasis. We now move on to a secular Persian office that become Greek, then Jewish and Greco-Roman, and lastly, Christian.
Episkopos
Communal Rules (CD A 12.20b-14.22 + 4Q material). This is the last part of the work and includes rules for the Overseer/Inspector” (Hebrew Mebaqqer) of the sectarian group; rules for the punishment and expulsion of erring members; provisions for an annual meeting of Levites and “men of the camps” in the third month of the year (during the festival of Shavuot/Weeks?); and a conclusion.
The Community Rule describes a close-knit “Community” that holds possessions in common; it advances a harshly dualistic world view that is hostile to outsiders; it generally deals with men only; and it views the group members as a spiritual Temple and seems to reject literal sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple.
There is reason for linking it with the previously available data concerning the mebaqqer, to give new insights into the relationship between the office of mebaqqer and that of the Christian bishop.
– Mebaqqer and Episkopos in the Light of the Temple Scroll by B.E. Thiering (1981)
We have noted in numerous posts how the Persian office of ‘King’s Eye’ was adopted and adapted by the Greeks and in the last post – Chrestians and the lost history of Classical Antiquity – this role was taken by Antonia Minor in her holding foreign child hostages:
Right: FROM “SHIMEON BAR KOSIBA, PEACE! To Yehonathan son of Be’aya.” This papyrus letter, found in the Cave of Letters in the Nahal Hever, was among several other letters stashed in a goat skin with many items belonging to a woman. (Photo: David Harris)
Crispinus is a name to which we must return, most especially in regards ‘Julia Crispina, Daughter of Berenicianus’ in the vastly-important Cave of Letters at Ein Gedi (for an introduction, see the earlier post: Archaeology of Ein Gedi).
A Deed of Gift
In 1997 two ostraca accidentally found in 1996 at the edge of the cemetery at Qumran by the University of South Florida excavations under the direction of James Strange were published by Frank Cross and Esther Eshel in Israel Exploration Journal.2 Ostracon No. 1 (KhQ1) is the most extensive writing yet known from the site of Qumran itself, as distinguished from manuscripts found in nearby caves.
James Strange: “The excavators [Strange and crew] had excavated straight down into virgin soil in the center of the terrace and dumped beside the east wall. When cleaning up the soil, the volunteers were sweeping and scraping lightly with trowels beside the same outside wall of the ruin. The idea was to remove every last trace of the intrusive soil originating from the middle of the terrace. One volunteer [Joseph Caulfield of Everett, Washington] heard the clink of his trowel on a sherd, picked it up, and saw writing. The sherd—and others—therefore came from the top layer of the trench left by Père de Vaux when he excavated outside the wall” (Strange, 4 Oct 1997, quoted in P. Callaway, “A Second Look at Ostracon No. 1 from Khirbet Qumrân”, Qumran Chronicle 7 [Dec. 1997], 145-170 at 156 [the opening reference to “the excavators” refers to Strange's excavation, not de Vaux’s]). James Strange: “The volunteer was scraping the top of the next layer with a trowel. This sometimes results in what we call ‘overdigging’ in archaeology. While removing the upper, later layer it is preferable to scrape or dig slightly into the lower layer to insure that not one scrap from the upper layer was left to contaminate the lower layer. May I add that our ‘dump’ on top of de Vaux’s trench next to the wall was sterile of any human-made object. We were removing sterile marl, gravel, and clay which had been removed from 15 m. deep in the terrace. There was simply no chance that the ostraca came from that deep in the terrace. Since the volunteer was brand new, he did not know to leave a significant find in situ. Therefore, in his first encounter with a sherd in situ (the clink of the trowel), he picked it up to take a look and saw writing. He then took it to me (I was talking archaeology in front of the book shop with an official person), and I immediately recognized it as an ostracon. When we returned to brush the find spot, he picked up the second half from the small heap of dirt and sherds he had scraped up before he sought me out. In simple brushing we picked up several dozen sherds, mostly Iron II, but had to stop, as we had no permit to dig in that spot” (James Strange, forwarded to Orion, 2 Sept 1997.
10. Transcription of KhQ1 (Ostracon No. 1).97
Translation
1 In the second year of [ …
2 in Jericho, gave ??oni s[on of … (?)
3 to Eleazar son of N<>, […
4 the place, the l[…
5 all of the ml[…
6 and the boundaries of the house and [ …
7 and the fig trees, the pal[m trees …
8 and all trees of the ea[rth …
9 and it/you shall be (?) […
10 to him/me the […
11 and the land (?) […
12 and by (o r, into) the hand of Ju[d]ah […
13 l … […
14 ?…. […
15 … […
This documents either a legal transfer of property: a deed of gift, or rather a statement or certificate of title, referring back to what had been documented with a full deed of gift.
In favour of a community-gift interpretation of KhQ1 are indirect arguments: the find site at Qumran raises the question of a possible relationship to the 1QS/4QS texts due to association with the same site, and the male-to-male giving.
The giver is Honi and the receiver is Eleazar.
The Community Rule mandates that a new member’s property be given over to an officer of the community described in that text at the start of the new member’s second year, and a written record made of the gift.
“… and when he has completed one year within the community … his property and his earnings shall be given into the hand of the Examiner in charge of the business of the Many and they shall write it into the account-record in his (the Examiner’s) own hand and they shall not spend it for the Many …”
According to the Community Rule, at the end of the novitiate’s second year, if he was approved for full membership, his property (which up to then had been held in trust separately) would then be mingled with the community’s funds (1QS 6.21-23).
Cross/Eshel suggest a parallel in Acts 4.34: “for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold”.
However as Cross/Eshel note, in Acts 4.34 the property is first converted to money before it is given over to the group. In KhQ1 the property is given with no conversion to money.
1QS 6.17-20 says that both the receiving of the novitiate’s earnings and property and the writing of the record of the gift were to be done by the same officer.
But in KhQ1 these two functions are by differently-named individuals (the recipient is “Eleazar”, line 3; the writer is “Judah”, line 12).
Right: Plates and bowls from Qumran (KhQ 1587 a-h).
The fact is the visible text of KhQ1 says nothing about a community or about Eleazar representing anyone other than himself. Nevertheless, a lacuna at the end of line 3 allows for one more word following Eleazar’s patronymic and possible place of origin, compared to the spacing of equivalent wording associated with Honi of line 2.
On palaeographic grounds Cross/Eshel claim to know a 38-year maximum range of possibility for the date of writing of KhQ1/KhQ2. They write: “The script on the ostraca is Late Herodian. Cross has defined ‘Late Herodian’ as the period between 30-68 CE."
The name “Eleazar” was found at Qumran by de Vaux on a bowl among hundreds of others at locus 86, all from a Period Ib context. Like KhQ1, the writing on this bowl from locus 86 was given a 1st century CE palaeographic date by Cross.136 However the true date of the locus 86 bowl is known on archaeological grounds to be 1st century BCE, earlier than its palaeographic dating.137 No other name or writing was reported found on these hundreds of locus 86 bowls. According to de Vaux, the name had been scratched into the clay by the Period Ib potter prior to firing.138 The meaning of “Eleazar” on the locus 86 bowl is obscure, especially since these bowls, stored in large numbers, may have been the ancient equivalent of disposable paper plates.
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KhQ2 |
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Cross/Eshel transcription |
New transcription |
| 1 ] (?) [ 2 ] (?) [ 3 Jehose]ph son of Nathan[ 4 his [s]ons from ‘En[ Gedi (?) |
1 …]q’[… 2 … the prie]st(?), Ho[ni … 3 … Jose]ph son of Natha[n(ael) … 4 … ]ny and Reue[l ... |
Josephus tells us of an Eleazar who could be the recipient:
So the king at that time complied with these persuasions of Ananias. But afterwards, as he had not quite left off his desire of doing this thing, a certain other Jew that came out of Galilee, whose name was Eleazar, and who was esteemed very skillful in the learning of his country, persuaded him to do the thing; for as he entered into his palace to salute him, and found him reading the law of Moses, he said to him,
"Thou dost not consider, O king! that thou unjustly breakest the principal of those laws, and art injurious to God himself, [by omitting to be circumcised]; for thou oughtest not only to read them, but chiefly to practice what they enjoin thee. How long wilt thou continue uncircumcised? But if thou hast not yet read the law about circumcision, and dost not know how great impiety thou art guilty of by neglecting it, read it now.”
– Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews – Book XX (CONTAINING THE INTERVAL OF TWENTY-TWO YEARS. FROM FADUS THE PROCURATOR TO FLORUS. CHAPTER 2. HOW HELENA THE QUEEN OF ADIABENE AND HER SON IZATES, EMBRACED THE JEWISH RELIGION; AND HOW HELENA SUPPLIED THE POOR WITH CORN, WHEN THERE WAS A GREAT FAMINE AT JERUSALEM.)
There is also this Eleazar, when the Jewish Resistance at the start of the First Jewish-Roman War recruits a leader:
They also chose other generals for Idumea; Jesus, the son of Sapphias, one of the high priests; and Eleazar, the son of Ananias, the high priest…
– Josephus, The Wars Of The Jews, or The History Of The Destruction of Jerusalem, Book II CHAPTER 20.
In the history of Josephus for the first Eleazar, appears an antagonist presented in the New Testament as Paul of Tarsus:
These events have left their mark in the New Testament as follows. Eisenman notes (as of course all commentators do) that there is no room for the famine relief visit in Galatians’ itinerary of Paul’s visits to Jerusalem, but he ventures to place the event during Paul’s sojourn in “Arabia,” which in the parlance of the time could include Edessa/Adiabene. Acts knows two Antiochs, those in Pisidia and Syria, but there were others, including Edessa! Eisenman identifies Paul as the first Jewish teacher who tells Izates he need not be circumcised if he has faith in God. (This episode also lies at the basis of the Antioch episode recounted in Galatians, when certain men from James arrived in Antioch to tell Paul’s converts they must be circumcised after all.) Paul is one of Helen’s agents to bring famine relief to Jerusalem, which he is said to do “from Antioch,” in Acts 11.
– Robert Eisenman’s James the Brother of Jesus: A Higher-Critical Evaluation by Robert M. Price, Drew University
Scholars studying KhQ1 and KhQ2 wrestle and fail in their comparing the gift of Honi to Eleazar, to that in Acts, when they consider the biblical text to be sacred. That is, the two are not describing the same process, because they regard Acts as reliable history, which, of course, words of divine inspiration, if such existed, would be.
The reality is, or course, that people wrote both texts and people are what they are, nothing more and nothing less – so for a scholar to reason otherwise is a flaw fatal to their scholarship. Next, they’ll be adding to their scientific work phrases such as ‘Before Jesus Christ’ and ‘The Year of Our Lord’ – and in Latin! No, that would never happen.
Related posts:
- The Royal Library of Alexandria in the first century
- Acts of the Chresmologoi: the Role of Oracles and Chronicles in the Creation of Divine Men
- An army of divine men and the secret army of Mithras
- Chrestians and the lost history of Classical Antiquity
- Aulus Pudens in the Chichester inscription
- Pliny correspondence with Trajan: Christians or Chrestians?
- Archaeology of a first-century wizard
- The Gospels According to Hadrian, Part III: The Aelian Canon and the Main Hand of God
- The Gospels According to Hadrian (part one)
- Josephus as a source: difficult and dangerous
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