• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1163 0

many parallels which these texts afford with the organization of the primitive Christian Church. The community calls itself by the same name ('edah) as was used by the early Christians of Palestine to designate its legislative assembly as was used by that community to denote the council of the Church. There are twelve "men of holiness" who act as general guides of the community-a remarkable correspondence with the Twelve Apostles. These men have three superiors, answering to the designation of John, Peter and James as the three pillars of the Church.4'

Regarding this deliberative council composed of "presbyters," the Zadokite continues:

Any knowledge which the expositor of the law may possess but which may have to remain arcane to the ordinary layman, he shall not keep hidden from them; for in their case there need be no fear that it might induce apostasy.

Here is an admission of the existence of the mysteries, i.e., the mythos and ritual "behind the hidden door." It is also a confession of the conspiracy to keep such mysteries secret from the masses and of their possible effect on them, i.e., that the people would fall away from the faith if they knew such secrets.

The Zadokite further says of the council:

When these men exist in Israel, these are the provisions whereby they are to be kept apart from any consort with froward [sic] men, to the end that they may indeed "go into the wilderness to prepare the way," i.e., do what Scripture enjoins when it says, "Prepare in the wilderness the way . . . make straight in the desert a highway for our God" [Isa. 40:31.42

As Gaster says, "The same quotation is used in the same sense by John the Baptist; Mat. 3:3; John 1:23," thus illustrating yet another important link between the Zadokites and Christianity.

Regarding the role of the "specially holy men," the Zadokite also states:

Until the coming of the Prophet and of both the priestly and the lay Messiah, these men are not to depart from the clear intent of the Law to walk in any way in the stubbornness of their own hearts.

Gaster notes, "That is, the prophet foretold in Deut. 18:18, `1 will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee [Moses]; and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him'."43 The prophet who is supposedly predicted at Deuteronomy 18 is in fact Joshua-that is, Jesus, who is to act as a "mouthpiece of God." The priestly and lay Messiahs are, of course, Christs. The obvious conclusion is that when all else failed, i.e., when no such divine instruments were forthcoming, the conspirators rolled these exalted personages into one fictionalized character, i.e., Jesus the Christ.

Moreover, Gaster also points out that the Manual of Discipline and Zadokite Document are similar to the Christian texts called the Didache, the Didascalia Apostolorum, and the Apostolic Constitutions of the early Church organization.44 The scrolls also contained Jewish apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, as well as texts with a Zoroastrian/ Hellenistic Gnostic tinge, such as the "Memoirs of Patriarchs," the Psalms and the "Litany of the Angels," indicating that these Zadokites were of the same brotherhood at Antioch, whence came Gnosticism and where "Christians" were first so called. The Book of Enoch was found at the Dead Sea, as were scrolls containing quotations identical to one in the Epistle of Barnabas and one in the works of Justin Martyr, thus proving the connection between the Christians and the Zadokites.as

It was not the Essenes who constituted the "Jewish" brotherhood from which Christianity issued but the SyroSamaritan Gnostic "sons of Zadok," the authors of various Dead Sea scrolls who were determined to restore their priesthood to its proper place as spiritual leaders of Israel and of all mankind, and who occupied some of the most important places depicted in the NT: Jerusalem, Galilee and Antioch. The Zadokites/Sadducees were the Palestinian contributors to the Christ conspiracy, constituting a sect that "held by the way" of Abraham and Melchizedek,