John2 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 02, 2019 1:39 pm
davidmartin wrote: ↑Sat Nov 02, 2019 10:28 am
One problem with associating the DSS and Christianity is the former seemed to be preparing to arm themselves to fight the Romans at least the narrative I've heard is the reason they were left in the caves is because they hid them during the battle and never returned
Yet Jesus appears to be opposed to fighting the Romans in the gospels, and not only that during the Bar Kohkba revolt I have heard Christians didn't join in with in
So how can Christianity really have sprung from a group who wanted to overthrow Roman rule with Jesus's opposition to fighting?
Assuming the DSS/Qumran community were preparing to fight and Jesus was opposed to physical battle, and apparently a physical kingdom
And that's not the only big difference, although there are similarities too I'm just not sure why people are excited to connect the two it doesn't seem to resolve hardly any questions
The DSS I think could be Jewish Christian (some of the pesharim and the Damascus Document) would have been written by violent proto-Ebionites of the sort that tried to kill Paul in Acts (and the "false brothers" he complains about in Galatians) who gave the more moderate Nazarenes a bad name (Acts 24:5: "We have found this man to be a troublemaker, stirring up riots among the Jews all over the world. He is a ringleader of the Nazarene sect").
I want to add something to this, David. The proto-Ebionites in Acts are not only violent and thus gave moderate Nazarenes a bad name (which makes sense given the Fourth Philosophic context of the times), I can understand why they would have found Jesus appealing (despite his apparent moderation), since he considered himself to be Daniel's "son of man," a figure who is said in Dan. 7:14 to have been "given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed." Does it really make any difference if this "son of man" figure is a spiritual being?
In other words, while Jesus had submitted to being tortured and executed, that was only the first part of his philosophy, in keeping with his interpretation of various OT passages (e.g., Daniel's "cut off" Messiah and Isaiah's Suffering Servant), as per Mk. 8:31:
He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.
But there is a second part to Jesus' philosophy, as per Mk. 8:38 and 14:61-62:
If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.
Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”
“I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
This is the same scenario mentioned by the grandsons of Jesus' brother Jude in the time of Domitian according to Hegesippus in EH 3.20.6:
And when they were asked concerning Christ and his kingdom, of what sort it was and where and when it was to appear, they answered that it was not a temporal nor an earthly kingdom, but a heavenly and angelic one, which would appear at the end of the world, when he should come in glory to judge the quick and the dead, and to give unto every one according to his works.
So in my view Jesus simply had a different approach to accomplishing the same thing other Fourth Philosophers were trying to do, i.e., suffer first then conquer (as a spiritual being), as per his interpretation of Daniel's "son of man" and "cut off" Messiah and such. And as I've mentioned upthread, a relatively large number of copies of Daniel and Daniel-related writings were found among the DSS. As Flint notes:
No less than seventeen of the scrolls found at Qumran are relevant for the study of Daniel, and present the reader with two surprises of unequal impact. The first surprise is the relatively high number of copies (eight) of the biblical book in the Qumran caves. Despite its relatively small size (twelve chapters), Daniel is outnumbered by only eight other compositions -counting both biblical and non-biblical- at Qumran ... The discoveries at Qumran have yielded several other writings that either mention Daniel or contain material that is in some way related to, or of relevance to, the biblical book of Daniel. This new material, none of which was previously known to scholars, bears powerful testimony to several traditions related to "Daniel" among at least some Jews in the last century BCE and the first century CE.
https://books.google.com/books?id=NuZlN ... an&f=false
But Jesus seems like he was a pretty bold guy when he alive too. He told the Pharisees, whose oral Torah was the law of the land during his time according to Josephus and which is regarded as being divine in Rabbinic Judaism to this day, where they could put it (e.g., Mk. 7:1-13) and did not mince words when he was asked by the high priest if he was the Messiah. So I can see how someone like that could appeal to extremists like the violent proto-Ebionites in Acts who I think could have written some of the DSS.
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.