Who is 'the Teacher of Righteousness"?

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
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DCHindley
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Re: Who is 'the Teacher of Righteousness"?

Post by DCHindley »

John T wrote: Sat Feb 17, 2018 4:27 pm
Secret Alias wrote: Sat Feb 17, 2018 11:28 am At least with Trumpism the underlying irrationality and appeal to disinformation can be explained as only a tool for something more core to human behavior (racism, sexism, greed, resentment, hatred of humanity, undesirable people who can't get laid etc). That I get. Will to power, the big lie - we've seen it before with Hitler and Goebels. But to go to the same drawer for the Qumran sect? No one cares this much about the dating of the scrolls except for someone who made the appeal to C-14 in the first place.
Please go on and tell us how you really feel about Trump.
Is Trump actually Eisenman in disguise?

Inquiring minds would like to know and Secret Alias knows all. :P
Actually, Secret Alias and Ben C Smith are actually one and the same.

This is established through posts by each of them that admit that they each had full beautiful mullet style haircuts in college days, while photos available now show much shorter hair with bald spots. Case closed! If only biblical criticism were this easy ... or is it already? Hmmmm ...

DCH (apologies to both SA & BCS for the silly connection, made for the purpose of making a little fun at the phenomenon of "parallelomania" in bib crit. I personally have been spared, although my forehead seems to be getting bigger over the ages, which I am pretty sure is not due to my head being overstuffed with brain).
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Re: Who is 'the Teacher of Righteousness"?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

DCHindley wrote: Sun Feb 18, 2018 6:05 am
John T wrote: Sat Feb 17, 2018 4:27 pm
Secret Alias wrote: Sat Feb 17, 2018 11:28 am At least with Trumpism the underlying irrationality and appeal to disinformation can be explained as only a tool for something more core to human behavior (racism, sexism, greed, resentment, hatred of humanity, undesirable people who can't get laid etc). That I get. Will to power, the big lie - we've seen it before with Hitler and Goebels. But to go to the same drawer for the Qumran sect? No one cares this much about the dating of the scrolls except for someone who made the appeal to C-14 in the first place.
Please go on and tell us how you really feel about Trump.
Is Trump actually Eisenman in disguise?

Inquiring minds would like to know and Secret Alias knows all. :P
Actually, Secret Alias and Ben C Smith are actually one and the same.

This is established through posts by each of them that admit that they each had full beautiful mullet style haircuts in college days, while photos available now show much shorter hair with bald spots. Case closed! If only biblical criticism were this easy ... or is it already? Hmmmm ...

DCH (apologies to both SA & BCS for the silly connection, made for the purpose of making a little fun at the phenomenon of "parallelomania" in bib crit. I personally have been spared, although my forehead seems to be getting bigger over the ages, which I am pretty sure is not due to my head being overstuffed with brain).

I used to like you, David. ;)
ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
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DCHindley
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Re: Who is 'the Teacher of Righteousness"?

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Feb 18, 2018 6:21 amDCH (apologies to both SA & BCS for the silly connection, made for the purpose of making a little fun at the phenomenon of "parallelomania" in bib crit. I personally have been spared, although my forehead seems to be getting bigger over the ages, which I am pretty sure is not due to my head being overstuffed with brain).
I used to like you, David. ;)

Ahh, but overstuffing with brain would be more appropriate to you, good sir. :notworthy:
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Re: Who is 'the Teacher of Righteousness"?

Post by Secret Alias »

The best candidates for the Wicked Priest that I am aware of are Menelaus, the priest who killed Onias III, and Ananus, the priest who killed James.
Well

1. the scrolls can't have anything to do with James so who cares and
2. there must have been dozens if not tens of dozens of people who (a) murdered a sectarian leader and then (b) died a violent death themselves.

I don't know if this is going to decide anything. If you were intellectually honest you'd have to admit that what we are allowed to consider are individuals who are named and for whom detailed biographical information is preserved owing to the survival of sources from antiquity. Ezra is not on that list. Ezra's death is not preserved. But he is surely not the only candidate either. To focus on Josephus and people from Josephus's perspective who might have been 'teachers of righteousness' and 'wicked priests' is uncritical folly in itself. Surely the people whom Josephus might have thought to be 'righteous' and 'wicked' would have been inverted by other Jews and so on. I think a new avenue of consideration is the cipher 450 which is the gematria of both 'teacher of righteousness' and a number found in another scroll and which is the value of 'Damascus.' The likelihood under this scenario is that the teacher of righteousness was a royal figure who was taken to be the messiah. Not clear if Ezra qualifies. His social role is not clearly defined in the literature.
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Re: Who is 'the Teacher of Righteousness"?

Post by John2 »

Stephan wrote:
I can see JohnT has appeared for this 'good cop/bad cop' schtick to follow (John2 setting up a calm rational approach and JohnT the rabid pit bull ...
He also wrote (with respect to me reading and thinking about the DSS and Christianity):
Stop digging.
I thought you were the cop, since you wrote on another thread:
And Ephesians uses the same fucking word (= Peshitta) to speak about a fence. But here is what annoys me about you. YOU KNOW THAT A SIYAGA IS A FLIMSY BARRIER NOT A BRICK WALL typically separating fields or paths from fields. It is not the same term used at Qumran. Stop this fucking disinformation exercise!! You're just using the fact that 99% of people don't have a clue what the terminology means in order to further the idiotic Eisenman agenda. A syaga is basically a couple of stakes set around a garden or path and a string strong between the stakes. It might be a hedge, it might be a couple of stones - but in all cases it's not a solid 'wall.' It basically says 'this is mine' but does not effective prevent anyone from going to 'my area.' My god I hate being the policeman but ...
And maybe you should dig a little more so you don't make comments like the above (to which I responded with this citation from Wacholder):
Here in 5:20 the text deals with the rise of the opposition, the מסיגי הגבול (the Shifters of the Boundaries), a sobriquet for the Pharisees or Rabbanites, introduced in this section [8.12] as החיץ בוני (the builders of the wall).

https://books.google.com/books?id=ZZ58U ... ES&f=false
Stephan also wrote on another thread:
This stupid theory has a threefold superficiality

1. saying that (a) the Qumran texts are (b) the product of the Essene community
2. saying that the (b) the Essene community were (c) early Christians
3. ignoring the obvious fact that the Qumran texts were produced before early Christianity.
To which I responded:
I don't agree with any of that. As I've said a number of times, I see the DSS as being writings that various Jewish sects created or older ones they brought with them when they joined the Fourth Philosophy that were deposited in caves for safekeeping during the 66-70 CE war, similar to what Golb proposes, and I see Christianity as being a faction of the Fourth Philosophy.

I don't mind any constructive input, but if you're going to bring your customary hostility to this thread, at least be aware of what I and the DSS actually say.
And Stephan wrote on this thread:
1. the scrolls can't have anything to do with James so who cares and
2. there must have been dozens if not tens of dozens of people who (a) murdered a sectarian leader and then (b) died a violent death themselves.

I don't know if this is going to decide anything. If you were intellectually honest you'd have to admit that what we are allowed to consider are individuals who are named and for whom detailed biographical information is preserved owing to the survival of sources from antiquity. Ezra is not on that list. Ezra's death is not preserved. But he is surely not the only candidate either. To focus on Josephus and people from Josephus's perspective who might have been 'teachers of righteousness' and 'wicked priests' is uncritical folly in itself. Surely the people whom Josephus might have thought to be 'righteous' and 'wicked' would have been inverted by other Jews and so on. I think a new avenue of consideration is the cipher 450 which is the gematria of both 'teacher of righteousness' and a number found in another scroll and which is the value of 'Damascus.' The likelihood under this scenario is that the teacher of righteousness was a royal figure who was taken to be the messiah. Not clear if Ezra qualifies. His social role is not clearly defined in the literature.
Regarding the idea that the Teacher was Ezra, as I said above, you're isolating one factor, the deaths of the Wicked Priest and the Teacher, but it is also (for example) commonly argued that the writings that mention the Teacher also refer to the Pharisees, and they are first mentioned as existing during the Maccabean era, long after Ezra. I also pointed out some scholars who argue that the Damascus Document is not in agreement with Ezra-Nehemiah, such as Grossman:
We have seen that the Damascus Document makes no mention of the Second Temple or the return from exile ... In fact, the text appears to ignore entirely such post-exilic priestly claims as those found in Ezra/Nehemiah and Chronicles, which offer genealogies and accounts of the return of the exiles in an attempt to confirm the authenticity of the post-exilic priesthood. In place of such claims, the Damascus Document locates the authority of its priestly remnant in a very different sort of departure and return: the willingness of the covenanters to 'depart from' sin and also from sinful people and places, while 'returning to' righteousness, whose location is articulated in similar geographic terms.

https://books.google.com/books?id=quDpw ... ra&f=false
And Blanton:
... the literature of the sectarian Association appears to bypass the Ezra-Nehemiah account. This is an important elision, the reason for which is not hard to deduce: the literature of the Association does not countenance a successful attempt at covenant renewal during the Persian Period. In fact, the Association's construal of Israel's history contradicts the idea that the Sinaitic covenant had been renewed prior to the sect's own formation ... Since Ezra-Nehemiah reports a return of Diasporic Jews to Jerusalem and may imply an attempt at covenant renewal there, [the Damascus Document] does not make mention of these books, as they provided information that would have weakened [the] claim that the covenant, broken prior to Jerusalem's destruction by Nebudchanezzar, was only renewed during the time of, and by the Association.

https://books.google.com/books?id=rdaTp ... ra&f=false
And Collins:
The situation of Ezra and Nehemiah differs from that of the Damascus Document ... The movement described in the Damascus Document has power to enforce internal discipline and to expel members who fail to conform, but it does not have power over the society at large, and so it relies on the threat of divine punishment. It also offers the prospect of reward in the afterlife, an idea that is not attested in Ezra and Nehemiah.

https://books.google.com/books?id=13ZxD ... ra&f=false


Regarding the flow of ideas from the first century BCE to the first century CE in the DSS (as per Eisenman), Flint notes in The Book of Daniel, Volume 2 Composition and Reception:
... 4Q245 differs from 1 Chronicles 5 in extending its list of priests into the Hellenistic period. The name חוניה (Onias) occurs in fr. 1 i.9, שמעון (Simon) in line 10, and the name preceding Simon is reasonably restored as יונתן (Jonathan). While there were several Smons in the Hellenistic period, the sequence Jonathan-Simon is found only among the Maccabees. The list of priests then continues beyond the last Zadokite High Priest, Onias III, and includes the Hasmoneans Jonathan (152-42 BCE) and Simon (142-35 BCE). The priestly list ended in line 10, since line 11 initiates a new list (here of kings), presumably with some introductory comment: This suggests that Simon was the last High Priest in the sequence.

https://books.google.com/books?id=BK29C ... as&f=false
And in Eschatology, Messianism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls:
This work is found in only one manuscript, 4QpsDan ar or 4Q245, which is dated to the Herodian period (probably the early first century CE).

https://books.google.com/books?id=DDUw9 ... an&f=false
So unlike with the Teacher of Righteousness, the DSS have no problem with naming Onias, and the content of the text (and paleography) indicates that it was written after his time and that the DSS sect was fine with Jonathan and Simon Maccabee (which goes against the idea that one or the other was the Wicked Priest, as some argue).

Regarding the dating of the writings that mention the Teacher of Righteousness, I've already pointed out that all of them are dateable by paleography and carbon dating to the Herodian period. This is also noted by Oegema (with respect to the pesharim that mention the Teacher) in Qumran-Messianism: Studies on the Messianic Expectations in the Dead Sea Scrolls:
The Qumran writings Pesher on Habakkuk (1QpHab), Pesher on Psalm 37 (4QpPs or 4Q171), War Scroll, Commentary on Genesis (4Q252) and Midrash on Eschatology (4QFlor or 4Q174) can be dated in the time from the beginning of the Roman-Herodian period up to the destruction of the Qumran community in the year 68 CE ... One of the latest Qumran writings is the Pesher on Habakkuk (1QpHab).

https://books.google.com/books?id=-j4YA ... gs&f=false
They are also commonly thought to be the last writings of the DSS sect (like Oegema above regarding the Habakkuk Pesher), well after the time of Ezra and Onias, so in my view, whoever the Teacher was, I don't reckon it was either of them.

Regarding not knowing the details of how Ezra died, as I pointed out above the earliest account of it is in Josephus in Ant. 11.5.5, which gives no indication that he died a violent death:
So it came to pass, that after he had obtained this reputation among the people, he died an old man, and was buried in a magnificent manner at Jerusalem.
But if you are fine with the idea that Ezra was tried and sentenced to death by a wicked priest (and that he believed in an afterlife, as the Teacher did), and if you don't think the DSS refer to the Pharisees, that's fine, but it doesn't work for me.
Last edited by John2 on Tue Feb 20, 2018 6:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Who is 'the Teacher of Righteousness"?

Post by Secret Alias »

Regarding the idea that the Teacher was Ezra, as I said above, you're isolating one factor, the deaths of the Wicked Priest and the Teacher, but it is also (for example) commonly argued that the writings that mention the Teacher also refer to the Pharisees, and they are first mentioned as existing during the Maccabean era, long after Ezra
I don't get the reference to what is 'commonly' held here. Since Ezra isn't usually identified as the Teacher of Righteousness I fail to see of what value it is to say that other aspects of the common understanding also don't apply. If I have owned a dog and am used to putting a leash on my pet and walking around the neighborhood expecting my pet to sniff, pee every 20 minutes and happily greet every dog we meet along the way, I can't be surprised that if I try to do the same things with my new pet cat I am going to be disappointed. That doesn't mean I have to stick with a dog. It just means that if I buy a cat I will have to adjust the expectations associated with being a pet owner. In the same way if the Teacher of Righteousness is identified as Ezra then the builders of the wall are someone other than the Pharisees.
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Re: Who is 'the Teacher of Righteousness"?

Post by Joseph D. L. »

Regarding the idea that the Teacher was Ezra, as I said above, you're isolating one factor, the deaths of the Wicked Priest and the Teacher, but it is also (for example) commonly argued that the writings that mention the Teacher also refer to the Pharisees, and they are first mentioned as existing during the Maccabean era, long after Ezra.
But could not such anachronisms be the product of when the scrolls were written, and not why they were written?

Or to put it another way, the Old Testament is filled with such anachronisms because the books that comprises it were written much later than when the events they purport to record took place. The same with the Gospels. They are about events that took place in the past, but include in them certain terms that became popular during the time of the writers. (Think rabbi in John, or the use of Nazarenes in Acts of the Apostles).

So could not something similar be happening with the scrolls? Surely, if they record the deaths of the Teacher of Righteousness and the Wicked Priest, then they must have been written afterwards--perhaps long afterwards. That in itself could account for the anachronisms, and also reveal why they were written to begin with.

I think what Stephan (and myself) are saying is that the scrolls represent a similar sectarian disputation as what happened in later Christianity, with both sides claiming to be the true bearers of the Gospel. You have one side: Ezra/Sanballat; and you have another: Teacher of Righteousness/Wicked Priest.

As far as the scrolls having relevance to Christianity: it could be that the Qumran community, or some remnant of it, was still functioning during bar Kochba (after all, some of his letters were found in the vicinity). But insofar as any reference to Jesus or James, or John or Paul, can be made; is simply impossible, given that these figures were still current at the time.
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Re: Who is 'the Teacher of Righteousness"?

Post by John2 »

Stephen Goranson,

I had a chance to read your pdf link yesterday and really enjoyed it. Good work. I want to think about the Judas the Essene = the Teacher idea. I think that's a good candidate.

However, I have some issues with the Alexander Jannaeus = the Wicked Priest idea.

You wrote:
But he [Alexander] more probably died of disease (angels “inflicted evil diseases,” 1QpHab 9:2; cf. 9:11)—as did Jannaeus.
Eisenman suggests that the word in question, machalim (מחלים), could be based on chalal (חלל), which BDB defines as to pollute or wound, rather than choli (חלי), which BDB defines as "sickness":
חלל

1. to profane, defile, pollute, desecrate, begin
a. (Niphal)
1. to profane oneself, defile oneself, pollute oneself 1a
b. ritually 1a
c. sexually
1. to be polluted, be defiled
d. (Piel)
1. to profane, make common, defile, pollute
2. to violate the honour of, dishonour
3. to violate (a covenant)
4. to treat as common
e. (Pual) to profane (name of God)
f. (Hiphil)
1. to let be profaned
2. to begin
g. (Hophal) to be begun
2. to wound (fatally), bore through, pierce, bore
a. (Qal) to pierce
b. (Pual) to be slain
c. (Poel) to wound, pierce
d. (Poal) to be wounded
3. (Piel) to play the flute or pipe

http://studybible.info/strongs/H2490
I don't agree with everything Esienman (or anyone) says (as my rejection of Stephan's outline of his theory above shows), but I think he makes an interesting case here that is worth considering, and the translation he gives for 1QpHab 9:1-2 reflects it.
They afflicted him [the Wicked Priest] with the judgements upon evil and inflicted upon him the outrages of evil pollutions [machalim] in taking vengeance upon the flesh of his corpse [geviyah].
(Martinez has this as "maladies acted upon him, as well as vengeful acts on his fleshly body").
This passage has caused confusion because the word we are translating here as 'pollutions'/'mahalim' in Hebrew has a primary meaning of 'diseases.' But this cannot mean simply 'diseases', since it is twice explicitly stated that a person or persons 'inflicted these (we prefer
'defilements') upon him'. Also the phrase 'flesh of his corpse' has been translated by some as 'his body of flesh', despite the fact that this is a redundancy and virtually meaningless in English. It is clear that we have direct action and the same plural 'they' who are 'committing the outrages of evil pollutions' are also 'inflicting the Judgments on Evil on him'; it is equally clear that these 'Judgments on Evil' or this 'Vengeance' is being inflicted in this sense of direct action by unspecified third-person plural parties on the 'flesh of his corpse' (geviyah) ...

In the history of Qumran studies, 'Establishment' or 'Consensus' Scholars, because of the obscurity of translations of this kind and a real paucity of historical insight [sorry Stephen Goranson; I gather that Eisenman is a cantankerous maverick and no offense is intended by this citation], began speaking in terms of 'diseases of the flesh,' from which some Maccabean High Priest might have been suffering in this period. But 'diseases' are not normally thought of as being 'inflicted' by third parties, which is very definitely the sense of the passage here. Furthermore, we are very definitely talking about the word 'corpse' here ... Since the second problematic word in the above translation, 'geviyah', means 'dead body', 'carcass', or 'corpse' in Hebrew, the redundancy implicit in most English translations of this passage disappears.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ZR57A ... es&f=false


But of course nothing is easy in this field, and geviyah can mean a living or dead body, so it is a judgment call.
גְּוִיָּה gᵉvîyâh, ghev-ee-yaw'; prolonged for H1465; a body, whether alive or dead:—(dead) body, carcass, corpse.

https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/le ... ongs=h1472
So does this have any merit? Does machalim mean diseases or pollutions or wounds (or maladies)? Does geviyah mean a living or dead body? I don't know.

You also wrote:
The Wicked Priest is a reputed heavy drinker (1QpHab 11:12-15); Jannaeus is a reputed heavy drinker (War 1:98; Ant. 13:398)
Here again Eisenman is the cantankerous maverick:
[This] has nothing whatever to do with 'drunkenness' on the part of 'the Wicked Priest,' that is, except figuratively -but rather 'drinking his fill (or 'drinking to the dregs') from the Cup of the Wrath of God' ... Here, in the Pesher, quite rightly, 'the Wicked Priest' is going to 'drink to the dregs' or drink to satiety,' but this, of course, has nothing to do with actual 'drunkenness,' nor means, as our commentators would have it, that he was a drunkard! He would be 'drunk,' it is true, but his 'drunkenness' would be from 'the Cup of the Wrath of God,' of which he would 'drink his fill.'

https://books.google.com/books?id=2GqwC ... nk&f=false
Here is Vermes' translation of the passage (which is all I have time to use today since it's easy for me to cut and paste):
"You have filled yourself with ignominy more than with glory. Drink also, and stagger! The cup of the Lord's right hand shall come round to you and shame shall come on your glory" [Hab. 2:16].

Interpreted, this concerns the priest whose ignominy was greater than his glory. For he did not circumcise the foreskin of his heart, and he walked in the ways of drunkenness that he might quench his thirst. But the cup of the wrath of God shall confuse him, multiplying his ... and the pain of ...
But I think "confuse" is better translated as "swallow," in the sense of "to destroy," like in Hab. 1:13:

http://biblehub.com/hebrew/1104.htm

http://biblehub.com/habakkuk/1-13.htm

You also wrote:
It is often claimed that the scrolls inform us that the Wicked Priest was killed by Gentiles. But the fragmentary Scrolls do not say that. The Wicked Priest reportedly had many enemies, both foreign and fellow-countrymen—as Jannaeus surely did—but neither group managed directly to kill him, and certainly not twice. Each group succeeded in providing him with close calls: in effect, he was, for a time, in their hand, under their power. They both sought to kill him, but, to revisit one of the supposed war death texts, we are merely told that God gave him “into the hand of the ruthless ones of the Gentiles to do […] against him.”
I will address this when I get more time. The two hour time limit the library gives me is almost up and I don't work today so this is all the internet time I have. But these are the only issues I have with your very good paper.
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Re: Who is 'the Teacher of Righteousness"?

Post by John2 »

Stephen Goranson,

There are a couple other issues I forgot to mention. (I also forgot to mention that I like what you say about 4Q448 not praising Alexander Janneaus; now you're being the "maverick" ;)), and it makes me want to re-examine it.

Okay, forgotten issue number one. You wrote regarding the idea that the Teacher is Judah the Essene:
Even the name Judah is provided in Pesher Habakkuk! Pesher Habakkuk 8:1: “Its interpretation [that is, of the theologically-important verse Habakkuk 2:4b, “And the righteous will live by his faithfulness”] concerns all those who observe Torah [that is, in this writer’s view, Essenes] in the House of Judah [here with double meaning], whom God will save from the house of judgement on account of their tribulation and their fidelity to the Righteous Teacher.”
I take House of Judah to mean "Jews." The expression is also found in column 4 of the Damascus Document and that is the sense I get from it there:
But when the age is completed, according to the number of those years, there shall be no more joining the house of Judah, but each man shall stand on his watchtower.
As Harrington notes in Jewish Identity and Politics Between the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba:
It is important to recognize that the Damascus Document is the only scroll to truly accept the ger at all ... Gentiles are not neutral; their idolatry makes them impure and contaminating. Nevertheless, presumably after an initiation and purification process, they can be included among the ger category of the sect.

https://books.google.com/books?id=o26q1 ... nt&f=false
And Himmelfarb notes in A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism:
We have already seen that Jubilees rejects the possibility of conversion ... of the ger; similarly 4QFlorilegium prohibits the ger along with a series of foreigners from entering its eschatological temple (4Q174 I 3-4). The presence of the ger among the members of the sect shows that for the Damascus Document, in contrast, gentiles were not so essentially different from Jews that it was impossible to cross the boundary.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ZgYAx ... nt&f=false

Right before the Damascus Document says "there shall be no more joining the House of Judah" it cites and interprets Ezk. 44:15:
"The Priests and the Levites and the Sons of Zadok, who kept the service of the Temple, when the Sons of Israel strayed from me, will offer me the fat and blood." The Priests are the Penitents of Israel, who went out from the Land of Judah and the joiners [nilvim] with them. And the Sons of Zadok are the Elect of Israel, called by name, who will stand up in the Last Days.
Eisenman points out that the Damascus Document alters this verse by adding vavs to it and makes a wordplay on "Levites" to arguably include Gentiles as one of the categories of people who went out to the land of Damascus to practice the new covenant; thus it turns Ezekiel's description of one thing ("the priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok") into three things here, with one of them possibly being Gentiles.

Regarding the meaning of nilvim (or "joiners") as Gentiles, this is how the word is used in the OT (and in an eschatological context), as Cohen notes in The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties:
Isaiah 14:1 ... prophesizes that "strangers (hager) shall join (venilvah) them and shall cleave to the House of Jacob" ... these passages address the eschatological age, when the earth is filled with knowledge of the Lord, and a new cosmic order is being created ... The first and only passage in the Tanakh that would seem to refer clearly to the social integration of the gentile in the historical present is Esther 9:27: "The Judeans undertook and irrevocably obligated themselves and their descendants, and all who might join them, to observe these two days in the manner prescribed and at the proper time each year." Here we have Judeans (yehudim), and gentiles who attach themselves (nilvim aleihem) to them; all alike constitute the community of those bound by the law of the Purim festival.

https://books.google.com/books?id=cvWq4 ... en&f=false
Given this context, I take "house of Judah" in the Damascus Document and in the Habakkuk Pesher to mean "Jews."

You also wrote:
“Jannes and his brother” make an appearance in the Damascus Document. Louis Ginzberg wrote a learned and significant observation on the name Jannes in CD 5:1. 81 Here’s the passage, including its footnote 54:
יחנה " (5, 18) name of a sorcerer contemporary with Moses. In talmudical sources (Exodus Rabba, 9,4; Menahoth 85a) he is called יוחני , in NT (II Timothy 3:8) and in the Pseudepigrapha: Iannes. The mentioning of Moses’ opponent by name may be a disguised attack on (King Alexander) Jannaeus ...'
I suppose it could be a disguised attack, but the context places Jannes in the time of Moses:
For (already) in ancient times God visited their deeds and His anger was kindled against their works; for it is a people of no discernment (Isa. 27:2), it is a nation void of counsel inasmuch as there is no discernment in them (Deut. 32:28). For in ancient times, Moses and Aaron arose by the hand of the Prince of Lights and Satan in his cunning raised up Jannes and his brother when Israel was first delivered.
As Ginzberg notes, Jannes and his brother are also mentioned in 2 Tim. 3:8, and I get the same sense of it there that I do from the Damascus Document:
Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected.
I guess it could still be an attack on Janneaus though (like 2 Tim. applies it to "teachers who oppose the truth"). It's interesting to think about.
Last edited by John2 on Wed Feb 21, 2018 3:08 pm, edited 5 times in total.
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.
John2
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Re: Who is 'the Teacher of Righteousness"?

Post by John2 »

Regarding the meaning of the House of Judah, LaGrand notes that:
Some scholars have inferred the Essene recruitment extended to the nations. Taking his cue from the directive to 'join oneself to the House of Judah' ... D.R. Schwartz concludes that the ancient community in view here "can reckon with true proselytes, whether from Israel or from among the Gentiles, who may come 'to join themselves' to the sectarian community."

https://books.google.com/books?id=gVEMl ... ah&f=false
And King points out that the Psalms Pesher (which also mentions the Teacher) uses House of Judah in a negative light:
... "Judah" is not consistently or unambiguously portrayed in a positive light. In 4Q Pesher on Psalms (4Q171) we find "the ruthless ones of the covenant who are in the house of Judah, who plot to destroy the Doers of the Law who are in the council of the Community."

https://books.google.com/books?id=ENckD ... ah&f=false


So here those who are of the House of Judah are opposed to the Doers of the Law who follow the Teacher.

It's hard (for me, anyway) to find all of the Psalms Pesher online, but Subramanian cites all of the House of Judah passage in it here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=quURB ... er&f=false

But I suppose it could refer to those who broke away from the "House of Judah" (in the sense of Judah the Essene) and followed the Scoffer in the Damascus Document:
This was the time of which it is written, Like a stubborn heifer thus was Israel stubborn, when the Scoffer arose who shed over Israel the waters of lies. He led them astray in a wilderness without way by bringing low the everlasting hills, and by causing them to depart from the paths of righteousness, and by removing the bound with which the forefathers had marked out their inheritance, that he might call down on them the curses of His Covenant and deliver them up to the avenging sword of the Covenant. For they sought smooth things and preferred illusions and they watched for breaks and chose the fair neck; and they justified the wicked and condemned the just, and they transgressed the Covenant and violated the Precept.
Interesting issue.
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.
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