Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [185]
More interesting and more difficult to adjudicate is the question of whether the process of angelification is to take place only with martyrdom, at the end of time, some combination of both, or in the presence of the community. Some texts suggest that the process has already begun or, even, been completed in the community. The future tense suggests an action that will be complete in the future but, as everyone familiar with Semitic tenses knows, the verb form itself does not prevent the process from having started already in the past or present, as the Hebrew future is actually an imperfect tense.
Fletcher-Louis and Elior also demonstrate that there are gradations of “the holy ones” in the community. The angelomorphic priesthood seems to have been the elite of the total population of Qumran. This is consistent with the evidence that the movement was split into two groups-those who maintained stricter laws, probably being priests, and those who maintained the lesser laws, probably being laity. In the document known as 4QMMT we find a distinction drawn between Israel, who are the “holy ones” and Aaron, who is the “holy of holy ones.” The existence of the “holy of the holy ones” corresponds to the promise in 4Q511 frag. 35 that God will make holy some of the holy ones (line 2). This suggests some special heavenly holiness otherwise not attained on earth.
These texts, in turn, lead to the possibility that there was a ritual connection between the celibacy of some Essenes and their angelomorphic identity. According to Josephus, some Essenes were celibate and others were not (J.W. 2.119-21, 160-61). Joseph Baumgarten and Elisha Qimron have argued that one passage in the Damascus Document (CD 6:11-7:8) clarifies this Josephan report. Qimron especially has reconciled the two reports by saying that they designate the intentional community of celibate priests and the rest of the movement who live in “the camps of Israel.”29 Certainly, this agrees with Josephus’ report that the Essenes “renounced pleasure as an evil and regarded self-control (continence) and resistance to passions as a virtue” (J.W. 2:120). This purity is quite similar to that required for the eschatological war, presumably because angelic hosts were involved (1QM 7:3-6).
In other words, in Fletcher-Louis’s estimation, the elite at Qumran adopted a celibate life because they attempted to live in a permanent state of Temple purity, which they understood as tantamount to and anticipatory to full angelic existence. As such, all sexual expression was inappropriate for Temple purity, but it must also have seemed unnecesary because the community had transcended earthly relations and had been transformed into the priests serving forever in the heavenly Temple. Celibacy was itself equivalent to martyrdom as a qualification for status as a “holy one.” The topics of asceticism, celibacy, and the issues of gender which it raises will be treated in a later chapter.30 For now we must note only that the leaders in the Qumran community were regarded as angels, that they mediated between heaven and earth, that they were exemplars of the perfection which the group emulated and revered, and were actually revered as semi-divinities, probably in a similar fashion to the martyrs of Mac-cabean times.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, in sum, give us a totally unexpected glimpse of Jewish sectarian apocalyptic life, describing the rules of an ancient apocalyptic community and allowing us to match their social organization with their apocalyptic writings. Even more exciting is the extent to which the Dead Sea Scroll community illustrates the relationship between apocalyptic notions of the end and mystical notions of resurrection and angelomorphism. The Qumran community felt itself to