Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [180]
It seems likely that Philo was writing in the same tendentious way. And so it is safer to describe apocalypticism and mysticism as Siamese twins, joined at the hip, unless there is some specific need to distinguish between these two notions. Or, they are like magnetism and electricity; two different effects of the same electromagnetic wave. In this Judean society at this particular time, we always find mysticism and apocalypticism together. The reasons for this have to do with the positions of Philo and Josephus as subaltern clients of the Roman order, people whose education and culture puts them in a very good position to mediate Jewish values to a Roman world. Rather than refer to the Essenes in terms that accurately depict their beliefs, they both described the Essenes in ways likely to interest their audience, which was cultured and Hellenistic (see ch. 8, on mystical experience).
What the scrolls themselves showed was far more like resurrection, when looked at very closely. There were a few hints that these Dead Sea Scroll sectarians were not the Sadducees of Josephan description. The earliest published scrolls themselves were not particularly helpful because they never confront the issue as such. We encounter statements such as, “Hoist a banner, O, you who lie in the dust, O bodies gnawed by worms, raise up an ensign” (1QH 6:34-35; cf. 11:10-14), which may connote bodily resurrection. On the other hand, the poet’s language may just be symbolic.
The community rule, discussing the reward of the righteous and the wicked, assures the just of “eternal joy in life without end, a crown of glory and a garment of majesty in unending light” (1QS 4:7-8), and the sinners of “eternal torment and endless disgrace together with shameful extinction in the fire of the dark regions” (1QS 4:12-13). This seems like resurrection but it is hard to be sure. If so, it is interesting to observe that resurrection was not conceived of as an entirely new state of being, but rather as a direct continuation of the position attained on entry into the Community.
From that moment, the sectarian was raised to an “everlasting height” and joined to the “everlasting council” and “congregation of the sons of heaven” (1QH 3:20-22). Salvation was coterminous with membership in the group in a strongly apocalyptic model. But they could not be ordinary Sadducees if one gives any credence to the New Testament, since it says the Sadducees believe in no afterlife, neither as a spirit or an angel (especially Acts 23:7; but also Matt 22:23; Mark 12:18; Luke 4:1, 20:27). It must be true that their traditions were priestly because the core of the movement was priestly in heritage, with lay-persons being grafted to it.
In the 1990s a scholarly revolt took place against the few professors who controlled the texts. Some of the texts had been published promptly, but the flow of publication had slowed considerably. The revolt was based on impatience that many important texts, which deserved to be in the public domain, remained unpublished and were seemingly delayed by personal problems, idiosyncrasies, and academic politics. Acting boldly, perhaps too boldly, a number of scholars published the remaining texts without permission.17 When the full Qumran hoard was finally published, there were many demonstrations that the Qumranites believed in resurrection of the dead and many more examples of their apocalyptic and mystical beliefs. In the new batch of publications was a passage in which resurrection was clearly promised and several more places that supported it.
The lines themselves almost echo the lines of the current Jewish prayer-book: “And the Lord will perform marvelous acts such as have not existed, just as He said, for He will