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be so closely connected to the angelic realm that it appears to have viewed itself or at least the leaders of the community as the maskilim, “those who are wise” of the famous Daniel 12:2 passage: “Those who are wise will shine with the brightness (Zohar) of the heaven, like the stars forever.” The phrase, conventionally translated “those who are wise,” is actually more causative and intensive in Hebrew, implying “those who make others wise,” such as teachers or prophets. In the Hodayot, IQS, The Song of the Sabbath Sacrifice, 4QI8I, and many other texts, the members have been raised from normal human existence to the heavenly heights, seemingly to live as angels, which is functionally what transformation into a star would mean. It is not clear whether the forebears of the Qumran group wrote the apocalyptic sections of the book of Daniel or not. But the Qumran sectarians certainly used the prophecies in it to explain their exalted state.

The Native American Evidence

IN ORDER TO understand the sociology of the Qumran community and various conceptions of the afterlife, we must make a very large jump from ancient Israel; we must move into the modern period and see what millenarianism looks like in our own time, when we can study it in more detail.

One modern case is that of the Shawnee Prophet and his brother, who led a messianic movement that eventuated in the Battles of Tippecanoe and the Thames. This movement and its leaders, Tecumseh and Tenkswatana, have been described by R. David Edmunds in his classic work, The Shawnee Prophet.31 Edmunds shows that Tenkswatana’s religious leadership in reviving the Shawnee tribes’ fading power and cohesion was strengthened by Tecumseh’s secular leadership abilities. It was the charisma and religiously framed exhortation of the leaders of this movement that united the tribes behind them to try to halt their increasing deprivation. And, as happened later in the case of the Ghost Dance, their religious activities, their “dances” and other rituals, were misunderstood and viewed as hostile by the whites, who felt they needed to put the Indians down forcefully.

We find a similar story among the Seneca tribes when we consider their prophet, Handsome Lake.32 His visions, and the resulting religious and moral revitalization of this particular Native American community, began around 1800 with newly arriving settlers in what was then the American frontier, western New York State near Lake Erie.

In the spring of 1799, it is reported, some friends found Handsome Lake seemingly dead on his bed. As they began to lay him out for burial, they discerned a warm spot on his body. After two hours he miraculously began breathing again. When he fully recovered consciousness, he recounted the story of his vision. In that and subsequent visions, he suggested a new moral code, called Gaiwiio, for the Iroquois Confederacy, to which the Seneca belonged. The code preached self-respect in terms coming from both Native American and the Western European religion of the white man, in particular, from Quakerism. The Iroquois were to give up alcohol, witchcraft, love magic, and abortion, all of which, the prophecy said, had contributed to their great troubles and their unhappy history living near white settlers. The reward promised by the prophecy was the resurgence and restoration of the Iroquois religion and society to the state it had been in before the predations of the white settlers.

The troubles, the visions, and Handsome Lake’s preaching had a great effect on those who heard him. This was a Messianic movement that can be called, in Wallace’s term, a “revitalization movement,” an attempt to renovate the old ways, with some changes, in a time of great crisis.33 In some sense, Handsome Lake was showing his people that there was a new way in which the old language and culture could help the tribal people cope with the crisis of white invasion.

Some common social and psychological conditions seem to underlie the attraction of individuals to Messianic, millennial, and apocalyptic movements. People who join these