More interesting items from Boccaccini's work, which describe some of the factors towards the creation of the Qumran community. The author believes the Qumran community is an offshoot of the Essene movement, and that the Enochian elements of the Essene movement considered their priesthood much older than the Zadokite priesthood. Details below.....
Page 73: "While the Zadokites founded their legitimacy on their responsibility to be the faithful keepers of the cosmic order, the Enochians argued that this world had been corrupted by an original sin of angels, who had contaminated God's creation by crossing the boundary between heaven and earth and by revealing secret knowledge to human beings. Despite God's reaction and the subsequent flood, the original order was not, and could not be, restored. The good angels, led by Michael, defeated the evil angels, led by Semyaz and Azaz'el. The mortal bodies of the giants, the offspring of the evil union of angels and women, were killed, but their immortal souls survived as evil spirits (! En 15:8-10) and continue to roam about the world in order to corrupt human beings and destroy cosmic order. While Zadokite Judaism describes creation as a process from past disorder to current divine order, the Enochians claim that God's past order has been replaced by the current disorder. While being a member of the heavenly court (Job 1:6-12; 2:1-7; Zech 3:1-2; 1 Chr 21:1), Enochic Judaism would be ultimately responsible for the creation of the concept of the devil. While Zadokite Judaism struggles to separate evil and impurity from the demonic and makes their spread depend on human choice, Enochic Judaism removes control of these disruptive forces from humans." "...The myth of the fallen angels was not merely a bizarre or folkloric expansion of ancient legends; it disrupted the very foundations of Zadokite Judaism. Enochic Judaism directly challenged the legitimacy of the second temple and its priesthood...." Page 74: "...the attribution to Enoch of priestly characteristics [Footnote 45: M. Himmelfarb, "Enoch as Priest and Scribe," in Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) 23-25...] suggests the existence of a pure prediluvian, and pre-fall, priesthood and disrupts the foundations of the Zadokite priesthood, which claimed its origin in Aaron at the time of the exodus, in an age that, for the Enochians, was already corrupted after the angelic sin and the flood." Page 185: "The roots of the Essene movement (and therefore of the Qumran community) are in a priestly anti-Zadokite tradition of the second temple period that expressed itself in the earliest Enochic literature (Book of the Watchers, Aramaic Levi, Astronomical Book). The generative idea of this dissident movement was that the good universe created by God was no longer such, since it had been corrupted by the sin of rebellious angels. Claiming to represent a competing (and more ancient) priestly line than that of the ruling Zadokite priesthood, the Enochians did not recognize the legitimacy of the second temple and maintained that Israel was still living in exile." "The view that Essenism was a Zadokite reaction following the Maccabean crisis has no foundation in our sources. After the death of Onias III, the strictly Zadokite party fled to Egpyt, and the closest heirs of Zadokite Judaism, the Sadducees, accepted the Hasmonean rule and priesthood. The Essenes had many reasons to oppose the Hasmoneans, but their Enochic genetic code never made them miss the Zadokite high priests." Page 186: "...What in the early second temple period was probably only a minority phenomenon of some priestly families spread [to other priestly families] and won adherents during the Maccabean crisis. The end of the Zadokite priesthood gave confidence to the group, while the harshness of the struggle seemed to prove the soundness of their ideas about the spread of evil and the degeneration of history." "The Enochians contributed to the coalition of groups (the Hasidim) that supported the Maccabees against the high priest Menelaus and King Antiochus IV (Dream Visions). The success of the uprising opened new horizons. A group or documents expressed dissatisfaction with the earlier Enochic concept that all human beings, including the Jews, were affected by evil. God's historical determinism restored the foundations of Israel's election and gave sense to a concrete political and religious agenda for the chosen people even in this corrupted world. The inclusive theology of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll suggests that the Enochians became the center of a vast and composite movement that aimed to replace the Zadokite leadership." "....The self-consciousness of the Enochians as the chosen among the chosen and as having a message significant for the entirety of Israel gave to their party a clear and distinct identity and led them to seek a certain degree of separation from the rest of the people (Proto-Epistle of Enoch, Halakhic Letter). It is probably at this point that the Enochians (or part of the movement they initiated) became the "Essenes" of Philo and Josephus, with the establishment of communities in towns and villages. This may explain why ancient historiography presented the Essene movement as both a new phenomenon and a venerable movement. The many similarities between the life of the Essene communities in Palestine and the life of the Qumran community show that the structure of the Essene communities was already formed in its basic lines before the emergency of the Qumran community." [!] Page 187: "After the polemical phase of the parting of the ways between Enochic Judaism and Qumranic Judaism at the beginning of the first century BCE, the Qumran community remained marginal to the ideological debate that saw Essene Judaism still competing with the other varieties of middle Judaism. The Qumran sectarians implemented and strengthened their own separate identity within the Essene movement, and built on individual predestination and a dualistic world view that made God the source of both good and evil." Page 188: "Mainstream Essenes [i.e., non-Qumranite Essenes] maintained a more moderate approach that led them to reject the doctrine of individual predestination held by their sibling movement. The religious and social sources of disagreement with the Jewish society of the time were not pushed so hard as to justify a complete separation. The non-Qumran Essenes stood as champions of "the poor" of this world and bearers of a heroic morality, which allowed them to continue to play a recognized, influential role as some of the major Jewish movements of their time (Josephus and Philo)." Page 195: "It has taken some time to realize that the Qumran library comprised not only the documents of a marginal sectarian community but also a substantial body of Essene literature from the second temple period, independent of Qumran [i.e., Enochian]. "Their Qumran secessionists have in one way given the Essenes a sectarian reputation, but they have also, it seems, redeemed themselves somewhat by handing over to us the means to rediscover a mainstream Jewish movement" [quoted from P.R. Davies, Behind the Essenes: History and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls, BJS 94 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987) 134.] Thanks to the Enochic/Essene hypothesis, we need no longer face the mystery of four thousand Essenes, creative and strong-minded, yet vanishing like the lady in the Hitchcock movie, disappearing as though they had never been. Thanks to the Enochic/Essene hypothesis, those four thousand Essenes, forgotten and neglected, may come back to life adn, through the Enochic literature, speak again." [END OF CLIPS] For private reply, e-mail to George Brooks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from Orion, e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: "unsubscribe Orion." Archives are on the Orion Web site, http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il. (PLEASE REMOVE THIS TRAILOR BEFORE REPLYING TO THE MESSAGE)
