• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2189 0

the Qumran texts contain some extraordinarily warlike themes, especially in the apocalyptic documents. There, it seems clear, the group will become divine fighters of the last judgment. The angels, however, will provide the most powerful weapons against the enemies of truth and they will do most of the fighting. This small group could not expect to beat the armed Temple priests or the Herodians, much less the Roman oppressors, without massive divine aid. The Qumranites would uniquely be able to fight on the side of the angels because they keep the strictest possible purity rules and so are fit to remain in community with them. One supposes that Josephus left this part out because it would have made the Essenes seem like a revolutionary group when they were religious revolutionaries, not political ones.

To us, however, the Essenes are beginning to look like extremist, apocalypticist groups today who have sometimes taken up arms to further their cause. We do not have direct evidence of their active militancy but we do find their works at Masada where the violent and militaristic Zealots went for their last stand.

The most impressive aspect of the Qumran finds is that they show us how a first-century apocalyptic community actually lived and worked. We must not get the impression that the Qumran group was the only apocalyptic group; they were but one of many, starting with those who produced Daniel and before. But in Qumran we have the outlines of their actual communal structure, a datum that gives a more three dimensional view of apocalypticism, changing it from a literary genre to a social phenomenon. Here was a group of persons who expect the end of the world very soon, a major apocalyptic theme which is entirely missing from Josephus’ description. Their notion of life after death, which has just emerged from the texts, was closely associated with the life of the group. It was hard to understand how anyone else except themselves would share in the life to come.

Angelomorphism at Qumran

QUMRAN’S FELLOWSHIP with angels and their use of Daniel pointedly raises a new question, implied by Josephus’ description: Did the Qumran elite expect to be transformed into angels? If so, did they think they were already angels on earth? Israeli scholars Rachel Elior and Bilhah Nitzan concluded that there was a harmonic and mystical relationship between the angels and the Qumranites. The members of the community wanted to approach God’s throne and their hymnic texts demonstrate this relationship.21 Other scholars see only their desire to ascend; others only the presence of the angels amongst them at the end of days. Scholars disagree vehemently about the correct definition of mysticism in Judaism; yet the solution seems in sight.22 New monographs of Crispin H. T. Fletcher-Louis and Rachel Elior convincingly argue that the purpose of the language of mystical participation at Qumran was angelification.23

Since its publication, “The Angelic Liturgy” (11QShirshab, and the various other fragments found in cave 4) have been interpreted as a cycle of psalms which the angels in heaven sing for the thirteen Sabbaths that make up each of the four seasons of the year.24 The publication of these documents was a much awaited, carefully edited, and very well-received scholarly enterprise. In the years since its publication, a number of anomalies have suggested that perhaps the cycle of liturgy shows us something even more spectacular than an angelic liturgy, the liturgy of the human priests of Qumran who were actually undergoing transformation into angelic creatures, worshiping in the heavenly Temple. The liturgy seems to map a seven-stage ascent to heaven to view God’s throne and glory. As a result they antecede the more developed mystical journeys of the Hekhalot literature and show what was at stake in mystical ascent in Judaism.

Angelomorphism can be found in at least one very important place, 1QSb 4:24-28, in the blessings on the group members:

May you be as an Angel of the Presence in the Abode of Holiness to the Glory of the God of [hosts]