Chris_Hansen said
Robertus said
Chris_Hansen said
There is no proof this body was Essene. You can only do this by assuming the Josephan portrait is accurate and drawing parallels, which is automatically problematic from the start, because Josephus is notoriously inaccurate and functions under the use of Hellenistic historiographical techniques, as Robertus pointed out above. I would add that many of the supposedly “sectarian” texts are actually general enough they could have come from anywhere.
My remarks were also directed against your own argument that “the Qumran community has several noted contradictions with Josephus’ description of Essenes.”
I think there is a fairly strong consensus that the Damascus document is indeed sectarian. It mentions the Teacher of Righteousness as an important, early reformer of their group and copies of it were found in three different caves at Qumran.
And? Being sectarian is no evidence of what kind of sectarian, and that we keep claiming it is “Essene” comes from the presumption of Josephus being accurate… which he was not. I’m with Steve Mason. Josephus’ text cannot lead us to conclude Essenes were the Qumran community or author of the DSS texts.
If we insist that Josephus’ Essenes and the authors of the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls were somehow two groups, we would have to conclude that there were two distinct Jewish religious communities in first-century Judea such that each
(a) had a policy of secrecy concerning key doctrines;
(b) believed in predestination;
(c) had a sacred meal blessed by a priest beforehand;
(d) had a lengthy process of admission for entry into the community;
(e) had laws against spitting in a group; and
(f) travelled some distance to a remote place to defecate.
Now which of the following options seems more likely?
(1) That there were two entirely distinct, unrelated communities which mysteriously agreed point by point on these and many other issues?
(2) That Josephus was making it all up as he went (or hallucinating), and yet somehow, just by by chance, he managed to tell a completely fictional story matching the sectarian DSS on these and many other points?
(3) Or that Josephus was narrating — in a somewhat, though not perfectly, accurate way — about the same people as those who penned the sectarian scrolls?
The last option has emerged as the broad scholarly consensus, and rightly so, in my view.
(I agree with the scholars who say that (b), the belief in predestination, is enough to identify them, since that is not attested of any other ancient Jewish community except Josephus’ Essenes. Agreement on minor issues like (e) and (f) merely strengthens the conclusion.)
Chris_Hansen said
Robertus said
Chris_Hansen said
There is no proof this body was Essene. You can only do this by assuming the Josephan portrait is accurate and drawing parallels, which is automatically problematic from the start, because Josephus is notoriously inaccurate and functions under the use of Hellenistic historiographical techniques, as Robertus pointed out above. I would add that many of the supposedly “sectarian” texts are actually general enough they could have come from anywhere.
My remarks were also directed against your own argument that “the Qumran community has several noted contradictions with Josephus’ description of Essenes.”
I think there is a fairly strong consensus that the Damascus document is indeed sectarian. It mentions the Teacher of Righteousness as an important, early reformer of their group and copies of it were found in three different caves at Qumran.
And? Being sectarian is no evidence of what kind of sectarian, and that we keep claiming it is “Essene” comes from the presumption of Josephus being accurate… which he was not. I’m with Steve Mason. Josephus’ text cannot lead us to conclude Essenes were the Qumran community or author of the DSS texts.
Omar6741 said
Good discussion here! A number of interesting points for me to address. Before going further, though, let me offer a clarification in this post.
I think we need to distinguish between two issues (both important and interesting), which tend to get conflated: the identity of the community that occupied the Qumran site for a century half before the Roman destruction, on the one hand; and the identity of the Jews who were behind the sectarian documents found in the caves. The sectarian documents — which scholars have identified as such based on the cluster of distinctive terms and ideas that tend to re-appear among them — point towards a distinctive group responsible for them. The question then becomes: is this distinctive group the same distinctive group that Josephus called “the Essenes”? The identity of the occupants of Qumran is not the issue, but merely the identity of the people behind the sectarian documents.
Most people identify the authors of the DSS sectarian documents with the Essenes, and most people also also identify the occupants of Qumran with the Essenes. Just to clarify my own view for the discussion: I accept the former, (based on the kinds of reasons offered in Beall’s book); yet I am agnostic about the latter.
Todd Beall’s argument is based on cataloguing the similarities and differences between Josephus’ description of the Essenes, on the one hand, and points we find in the sectarian scrolls on the other. I don’t believe this argument has gone out of date, since it is unaffected by archaeological developments, and the broad consensus that Beall is defending is still there among scholars (and rightly so, in my opinion).
Not only are the similarities and probable similarities much more numerous than the differences, but the sectarian documents reveal a number of traits not known of any ancient Jews other than the Essenes; these include belief in predestination, and rules against spitting in an assembly, and a lengthy admissions process, and a policy of secrecy about their books and teachings. The best explanation of this overall pattern of similarities and differences is that the very people remembered by Josephus under the name ‘Essenes’ were the ones who authored the sectarian documents; unsurprisingly, Josephus, who never made it past the first stage of the Essene admissions process and remained an outsider to the group, seems to have misremembered certain points of detail (the exact length of the admissions process), and in some cases he may have been speculating, or embellishing his narrative. Overall, he is evidently basing himself on genuine recollections from his time in Israel.
I don’t know if this counts as ‘proof’; I do think it is the best explanation, however, and it deserves to be a kind of “default working hypothesis”.
Thanks to everyone reading, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts!
Several methodological issues:
(1) cataloguing similarities and differences and then weighing things based on the number of similarities vs. differences is amateurish at best, imo. If I did this with dying-rising gods and Jesus, I would be laughed out of the academy and with good reason. While anyone can over emphasize “similarities” between things and say the differences are too few to “outweigh” them, even just a few differences can show the difference between same and different sects. For instance, one could do the same thing with different sects of Christianity. Just pile up the similarities, they all believe in a Christ who walked earth, is part of some triune godhead, etc. They may differ on… what they mean by those terms, but who cares. Just weigh similarities and eventually we can just say “they are the same” by discounting the differences.
I am not sure what academy you attend that would “laugh you out”, when all historians try to explain overall patterns of similarity and dissimilarity; if your academy tells you that is “amateurish”, I hope you find a better one.
I am not sure what exactly you are trying to say about dying-rising gods and Jesus. But I have said nothing that requires me to deny the differences between Christian sects. The numerous similarities are there simply because these are sects belonging to the same religion (with distinctive doctrines like belief in Christ, belief in a triune Godhead, and so on). Surely, if we came across enough of these same doctrines in a new document, we would conclude this document was produced by people belonging to the same religion as Christianity. And that is exactly the sort of reasoning that leads us to conclude that Josephus’ Essenes belonged to the same community as the authors of the Dead Sea sectarian scrolls, for that is the best explanation of the overall pattern of similarities and dissimilarities we have.
Ockham’s Razor is an important methodological consideration as well; assuming Josephus was not just hallucinating or creating fiction, it makes little sense to claim Josephus’ Essenes were a completely different group from the sectarian DSS authors, as that just multiplies ancient Jewish groups unnecessarily.
Todd Beall has very helpfully documented 47 parallels or probable parallels — I have given some striking examples — and 6 discrepancies between Josephus’ description of the Essenes, on the one hand, and what can be gleaned from the sectarian scrolls, on the other. This part of his argument is a solid contribution, and has never been refuted. The discrepancies he notes are exactly the kind of thing that could arise from someone trying to remember with moderate but imperfect accuracy, and that is why they are discounted (so no need to postulate a special subsect of the DSS sectarians). Now, if we do not follow the consensus in identifying these two groups, what other hypothesis can account for this pattern of similarities and differences? Or do we just throw up our hands and say “No idea what is going on here!”?
Robertus said
Chris_Hansen said (emphases mine)
There is no proof the Damascus Document originated with the Essenes. … The mere presence of a document does not tell us what they actually practiced, and did not just preserve it for the sake of posterity. Not to mention, the mere presence of a document at Qumran is not evidence of them being Essene… because there is sparse evidence that the Qumran community was Essene. I think the evidence for it is sparse, and further more the Qumran community has several noted contradictions with Josephus’ description of Essenes. The idea that the Damascus Document originated with the Essenes is based on the presupposition that the DSS were of Essene origin, which I highly doubt. …
Todd Beall assumes far too much, imo. This assumes the Community Rule document is not just some document collected by the DSS community, just something they found and copied. Same as the Damascus document. It is based on so many presuppositions I would not find it convincing remotely. …
There is no proof this body was Essene. You can only do this by assuming the Josephan portrait is accurate and drawing parallels, which is automatically problematic from the start, because Josephus is notoriously inaccurate and functions under the use of Hellenistic historiographical techniques, as Robertus pointed out above. I would add that many of the supposedly “sectarian” texts are actually general enough they could have come from anywhere. And, again, there is no proof that these texts were sectarian texts used by the DSS community, instead of being texts that they found and copied, essentially functioning like a Dead Sea library of Alexandria. …
Also, Todd Beall wrote that in 1988, over 30 years ago. It is outdated and there have been tons of developments since then in the field. …I’m with Steve Mason. Josephus’ text cannot lead us to conclude Essenes were the Qumran community or author of the DSS texts. …I am on the side of Steve Mason, who concluded that we cannot conclude that the Essenes were responsible for the documents at Qumran or the community located therein. And given Steve Mason is a far more current, updated, and leading scholar of Josephus, I’ll take him over Beall’s outdated work.There is no “proof” of any position, nor any final “conclusion”. It’s all a matter of weighing and trying to best account for the evidence with probable (not provable) hypotheses. Kenneth Atkinson and Jodi Magness in 2010 still considered the work (not mere assumptions and presuppositions) of Todd Beall to be relevant, as one can see in the conclusion of ** you do not have permission to see this link ** I recommended above.
And I don’t think there is any solid evidence by which to place the Damascus Document or others as sectarian documents belonging to the Qumran community. Technically speaking there is no “proof” of anything except in the mathematical or purely logical realm, I was just using it colloquially, but I guess since we are going to play the definitions game…
And I don’t remember saying Beall is irrelevant. I said he is outdated.
Omar6741 said
Chris_Hansen said
Robertus said
Chris_Hansen said
There is no proof this body was Essene. You can only do this by assuming the Josephan portrait is accurate and drawing parallels, which is automatically problematic from the start, because Josephus is notoriously inaccurate and functions under the use of Hellenistic historiographical techniques, as Robertus pointed out above. I would add that many of the supposedly “sectarian” texts are actually general enough they could have come from anywhere.
My remarks were also directed against your own argument that “the Qumran community has several noted contradictions with Josephus’ description of Essenes.”
I think there is a fairly strong consensus that the Damascus document is indeed sectarian. It mentions the Teacher of Righteousness as an important, early reformer of their group and copies of it were found in three different caves at Qumran.
And? Being sectarian is no evidence of what kind of sectarian, and that we keep claiming it is “Essene” comes from the presumption of Josephus being accurate… which he was not. I’m with Steve Mason. Josephus’ text cannot lead us to conclude Essenes were the Qumran community or author of the DSS texts.
If we insist that Josephus’ Essenes and the authors of the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls were somehow two groups, we would have to conclude that there were two distinct Jewish religious communities in first-century Judea such that each
(a) had a policy of secrecy concerning key doctrines;
(b) believed in predestination;
(c) had a sacred meal blessed by a priest beforehand;
(d) had a lengthy process of admission for entry into the community;
(e) had laws against spitting in a group; and
(f) travelled some distance to a remote place to defecate.
Now which of the following options seems more likely?
(1) That there were two entirely distinct, unrelated communities which mysteriously agreed point by point on these and many other issues?
(2) That Josephus was making it all up as he went (or hallucinating), and yet somehow, just by by chance, he managed to tell a completely fictional story matching the sectarian DSS on these and many other points?
(3) Or that Josephus was narrating — in a somewhat, though not perfectly, accurate way — about the same people as those who penned the sectarian scrolls?
The last option has emerged as the broad scholarly consensus, and rightly so, in my view.
(I agree with the scholars who say that (b), the belief in predestination, is enough to identify them, since that is not attested of any other ancient Jewish community except Josephus’ Essenes. Agreement on minor issues like (e) and (f) merely strengthens the conclusion.)
(a) Congrats. Hundreds of religions and sects practiced this, and not just the Essenes.
(b) So did non-Essene groups. It has been notably argued that 4 Ezra attests to this belief. Paul came to this belief not from an Essene background but from a Hellenistic Diaspora Judaism background… Philo of Alexandria, again a Hellenistic Jew from Egypt, not an Essene, also seemed to believe in various forms of predestination for good and bad people (** you do not have permission to see this link **).
(c) Congrats… practically everyone had meals of this type. Ritual communal dining seems to have been something several early Jewish sects were developing at the time. Paul, the Gospels, Qumran, Josephus, and others attest.
(d) Again, many people did.
(e) Finally, something unique.
(f) Again… lots of people did this. Also, the Qumran community did not do this, the toilet was found adjacent to the Ritual bath.
——
(1) Many of these issues are so generalistic that hundreds of religions could qualify for them. Hence my point, throwing around loose similarities is amateurish. It doesn’t show anything. Differences tell us far more than similarities do. Read some J. Z. Smith. In fact, all but one of them (point e) was so generalistic that methodologically, they tell us nothing.
(2) He didn’t… You are just projecting Josephus on them, and using loose, commonplace beliefs and practices to claim similarity.
(3) Based on? Bad “similarities”
Now, if we do not follow the consensus in identifying these two groups, what other hypothesis can account for this pattern of similarities and differences?
That this was a librarian community, that widely copied and documented various pieces of literature from all over… hence why you get scrolls from all kinds of sects, origins, and places. Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, some seem “Essene” while others simply cannot be by any definition, etc.
Anyways, I’m done here. I’ve said what I want to.
Chris_Hansen said
Omar6741 said
Chris_Hansen said
Robertus said
Chris_Hansen said
There is no proof this body was Essene. You can only do this by assuming the Josephan portrait is accurate and drawing parallels, which is automatically problematic from the start, because Josephus is notoriously inaccurate and functions under the use of Hellenistic historiographical techniques, as Robertus pointed out above. I would add that many of the supposedly “sectarian” texts are actually general enough they could have come from anywhere.
My remarks were also directed against your own argument that “the Qumran community has several noted contradictions with Josephus’ description of Essenes.”
I think there is a fairly strong consensus that the Damascus document is indeed sectarian. It mentions the Teacher of Righteousness as an important, early reformer of their group and copies of it were found in three different caves at Qumran.
And? Being sectarian is no evidence of what kind of sectarian, and that we keep claiming it is “Essene” comes from the presumption of Josephus being accurate… which he was not. I’m with Steve Mason. Josephus’ text cannot lead us to conclude Essenes were the Qumran community or author of the DSS texts.
If we insist that Josephus’ Essenes and the authors of the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls were somehow two groups, we would have to conclude that there were two distinct Jewish religious communities in first-century Judea such that each
(a) had a policy of secrecy concerning key doctrines;
(b) believed in predestination;
(c) had a sacred meal blessed by a priest beforehand;
(d) had a lengthy process of admission for entry into the community;
(e) had laws against spitting in a group; and
(f) travelled some distance to a remote place to defecate.
Now which of the following options seems more likely?
(1) That there were two entirely distinct, unrelated communities which mysteriously agreed point by point on these and many other issues?
(2) That Josephus was making it all up as he went (or hallucinating), and yet somehow, just by by chance, he managed to tell a completely fictional story matching the sectarian DSS on these and many other points?
(3) Or that Josephus was narrating — in a somewhat, though not perfectly, accurate way — about the same people as those who penned the sectarian scrolls?
The last option has emerged as the broad scholarly consensus, and rightly so, in my view.
(I agree with the scholars who say that (b), the belief in predestination, is enough to identify them, since that is not attested of any other ancient Jewish community except Josephus’ Essenes. Agreement on minor issues like (e) and (f) merely strengthens the conclusion.)
(a) Congrats. Hundreds of religions and sects practiced this, and not just the Essenes.
(b) So did non-Essene groups. It has been notably argued that 4 Ezra attests to this belief. Paul came to this belief not from an Essene background but from a Hellenistic Diaspora Judaism background… Philo of Alexandria, again a Hellenistic Jew from Egypt, not an Essene, also seemed to believe in various forms of predestination for good and bad people (** you do not have permission to see this link **).
(c) Congrats… practically everyone had meals of this type. Ritual communal dining seems to have been something several early Jewish sects were developing at the time. Paul, the Gospels, Qumran, Josephus, and others attest.
(d) Again, many people did.
(e) Finally, something unique.
(f) Again… lots of people did this. Also, the Qumran community did not do this, the toilet was found adjacent to the Ritual bath.
——
Before you go, please help me by providing some references or links.
We should be examining the similarities and dissimilarities relative to what we know of the land of Israel, and particularly areas not far from Jerusalem, around or before the time Josephus was there. It does not matter at all if hundreds of groups from around the world had these traits.
(a) Which groups in the land of Israel (and specifically in or around Jerusalem where Josephus grew up, and where he encountered the Essenes), other than the Essenes, established such a policy of secrecy?
(b) Where has it been “notably argued” that 4 Ezra contains a belief in predestination? Please do provide references: Ezra 4 is relevant since it is from the land of Israel, but the other cases are not: Paul and Philo are not evidence of what was going on in the land of Israel.
(c) Which groups attested in the land of Israel had an ongoing regular meal practice in which there was a priest invoking a blessing beforehand?
(d) Could you please give some examples from Israel?
(f) As I said, I am focussing on the authors of the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls, and not the occupants of Qumran; the latter probably had some relation, but may not have been identical to the sectarians represented in the text.
Chris_Hansen said
Omar6741 said
Chris_Hansen said
Robertus said
Chris_Hansen said
There is no proof this body was Essene. You can only do this by assuming the Josephan portrait is accurate and drawing parallels, which is automatically problematic from the start, because Josephus is notoriously inaccurate and functions under the use of Hellenistic historiographical techniques, as Robertus pointed out above. I would add that many of the supposedly “sectarian” texts are actually general enough they could have come from anywhere.
My remarks were also directed against your own argument that “the Qumran community has several noted contradictions with Josephus’ description of Essenes.”
I think there is a fairly strong consensus that the Damascus document is indeed sectarian. It mentions the Teacher of Righteousness as an important, early reformer of their group and copies of it were found in three different caves at Qumran.
And? Being sectarian is no evidence of what kind of sectarian, and that we keep claiming it is “Essene” comes from the presumption of Josephus being accurate… which he was not. I’m with Steve Mason. Josephus’ text cannot lead us to conclude Essenes were the Qumran community or author of the DSS texts.
If we insist that Josephus’ Essenes and the authors of the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls were somehow two groups, we would have to conclude that there were two distinct Jewish religious communities in first-century Judea such that each
(a) had a policy of secrecy concerning key doctrines;
(b) believed in predestination;
(c) had a sacred meal blessed by a priest beforehand;
(d) had a lengthy process of admission for entry into the community;
(e) had laws against spitting in a group; and
(f) travelled some distance to a remote place to defecate.
Now which of the following options seems more likely?
(1) That there were two entirely distinct, unrelated communities which mysteriously agreed point by point on these and many other issues?
(2) That Josephus was making it all up as he went (or hallucinating), and yet somehow, just by by chance, he managed to tell a completely fictional story matching the sectarian DSS on these and many other points?
(3) Or that Josephus was narrating — in a somewhat, though not perfectly, accurate way — about the same people as those who penned the sectarian scrolls?
The last option has emerged as the broad scholarly consensus, and rightly so, in my view.
(I agree with the scholars who say that (b), the belief in predestination, is enough to identify them, since that is not attested of any other ancient Jewish community except Josephus’ Essenes. Agreement on minor issues like (e) and (f) merely strengthens the conclusion.)
(a) Congrats. Hundreds of religions and sects practiced this, and not just the Essenes.
(b) So did non-Essene groups. It has been notably argued that 4 Ezra attests to this belief. Paul came to this belief not from an Essene background but from a Hellenistic Diaspora Judaism background… Philo of Alexandria, again a Hellenistic Jew from Egypt, not an Essene, also seemed to believe in various forms of predestination for good and bad people (** you do not have permission to see this link **).
(c) Congrats… practically everyone had meals of this type. Ritual communal dining seems to have been something several early Jewish sects were developing at the time. Paul, the Gospels, Qumran, Josephus, and others attest.
(d) Again, many people did.
(e) Finally, something unique.
(f) Again… lots of people did this. Also, the Qumran community did not do this, the toilet was found adjacent to the Ritual bath.
——
(1) Many of these issues are so generalistic that hundreds of religions could qualify for them. Hence my point, throwing around loose similarities is amateurish. It doesn’t show anything. Differences tell us far more than similarities do. Read some J. Z. Smith. In fact, all but one of them (point e) was so generalistic that methodologically, they tell us nothing.
(2) He didn’t… You are just projecting Josephus on them, and using loose, commonplace beliefs and practices to claim similarity.
(3) Based on? Bad “similarities”
Now, if we do not follow the consensus in identifying these two groups, what other hypothesis can account for this pattern of similarities and differences?
That this was a librarian community, that widely copied and documented various pieces of literature from all over… hence why you get scrolls from all kinds of sects, origins, and places. Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, some seem “Essene” while others simply cannot be by any definition, etc.
Anyways, I’m done here. I’ve said what I want to.
(1) When it comes to the six points I mentioned (one of which, the point about spitting, you agreed was unique), I meant them to be taken together, as representing a pattern or signature which can be used to identify a group. It is simply not true that “hundreds of religions” in the land of Israel at the time had all these six traits. We know of Josephus’ Essenes, and we know of the authors of the sectarian documents. The simplest explanation of the fact that both groups share this pattern of traits is that they were the same.
(2) Again, the combination of the six traits constitutes a pattern that was not “loose” or “commonplace” in the land of Israel at the time.
(3) The conjunction of the six characteristics I mentioned is not a bad similarity at all. It is a significant similarity, relevant to determining whether or not two ancient first-century groups in the land of Israel are the same.
Finally, I am only concerned with the sectarian authors: what is the best explanation of the fact that Josephus’s description matches information about the sectarians on all these six points, when no other group known to us does? (Note that I could have expanded the pattern easily, making it even more specific.) Isn’t the simplest and most satisfactory explanation of this match the hypothesis that these were one and the same group?
Thank you for your contributions!
Robertus said
Omar6741 said
I agree with the scholars who say that (b), the belief in predestination, is enough to identify them, since that is not attested of any other ancient Jewish community except Josephus’ Essenes.
What exactly do you mean by predestination here? How do you see the belief in predestination evidenced in the Dead Sea Scrolls more strongly than in parts of the Jewish scriptures and some other contemporary Jewish texts? It is indeed strongly apocalyptic. But do you not also see a paradoxical assumption of the importance of repentance and free will in the Dead Sea scrolls? Why did members choose to join their community, to follow their own specific interpretations of the law, and judge those who did not do so or former members who left?
** you do not have permission to see this link ** by Jonathan Klawans gives a very good and exquisitely subtle (sometimes too subtle?) discussion of these issues as found in the sectarian texts of Qumran, rabbinic literature, and texts that likely reflect the views of the Sadducees. You will no doubt like the fact that he largely maintains the value of Josephus’ simplified account.
By ‘predestination’, I mean the belief that God has providentially established everything that is going to happen so that whatever does happen, after He creates the world, is in exact accordance with His prior plan.
I actually don’t see this belief at all in the Hebrew Bible — please do send me passages expressing this belief, if you know them — or indeed in any literature from the land of Israel that can be dated to the Second Temple Period, except the sectarian documents from Qumran. The closest I have heard is the suggestion, from Chris Hansen, that it has been “notably argued” that Ezra 4 contains the doctrine. He didn’t respond to my request for references, no doubt because he left the thread, and I could not find anything in a brief google search. Please do share literature from Israel of the Second Temple Period that contains the belief in predestination, if you happen to know any.
I also don’t find it paradoxical that the sectarians would be happy to continue making choices even though they believed in predestination. That is because they may have had ways of thinking that resolved this apparent conflict for them, as indeed do believers from other faiths (if you search for ‘Molinism’, you will see the kind of thing I mean). I also know of philosophy professors who are irreligious, and who staunchly argue for a deterministic view of the world that appears to fix all events in advance, and yet they do not feel any contradiction in continuing to act like free agents, since they have resolved (to their satisfaction) any apparent contradiction between determinism and free choice. In philosophical discussions of free will, the position called ‘compatibilism’ advocates that there is no conflict between free will and determinism. Again, I think the sectarians probably had developed their own ways of thinking that just eliminated the apparent contradiction, ways of thinking that they felt no need to make explicit in the documents that came down to us.
Thank you for the Klawans article. I look forward to reading it.
Robertus said
Chris already pointed you to Philo of Alexandria and 4 Ezra as contemporary Jewish expressions of predestination, which are to a certain extent rooted in larger biblical ideas of Israel as the chosen people and prophets predicting future events and which evolved into more explicit apocalyptic scenarios whereby God’s eventual triumph over evil is also known in advance, but you can also find it in wisdom texts (eg, ‘God guides the steps of the righteous’ and ** you do not have permission to see this link **) deal with the issue by saying that the sectarians believed that repentance itself was predestined but readily admit that this is paradoxical. These are largely attempts to superimpose later philosophical or religious expressions (eg, your use of ‘Molinism’ or Klawans references to Calvin) upon earlier texts that do not yet expressly deal with this issue in a systematic way. Already Josephus can be seen as imposing Hellenistic philosophical ideas onto the religious tendencies of Essenes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. The later rabbis would also classify the Sadducee heretics as epicurean (אפיקורוס, ‘epiquros’) and there must have already been some conscious appropriation of Greek philosophical ideas among elitist Sadducees and others (eg, Qohelet).
I am not sure which passages of 4 Ezra are thought to express predestination (in the way that I explained it). They would be of great interest to me, if they exist. I have not been able to find them, nor have I found an argument to the effect that 4 Ezra has any such expressions.
Statements like ‘God guides the steps of the righteous’ do express the idea of God’s intervention or ongoing action in His creation, but fall short of expressing predestination as I defined it, since that requires the idea of divine providence governing all things (roughly how Josephus explains the Essenes’ belief). The Community Rule contains a very striking and sweeping expression of providence governing each and every thing in God’s creation. I don’t think there are any similar expressions from other writings in the land of Israel during the Second Temple Period; I would love to know if I missed any such writings.
In the absence of any sectarian text dealing explicitly with the issue of how to resolve predestination and free will, we can only speculate as to how they would have addressed it. Since other theistic traditions we know of have made peace with the issue, it wouldn’t be surprising if they had similar approaches. In fact, I would be surprised if they didn’t have some way of thinking about the issue (akin to Molinism or other theistic philosophies). But I don’t think we are imposing anything on the sectarian authors in saying this, as long as we are clear that this is not based on anything explicit in their texts; it is just a reasonable extrapolation from what we know of other monotheistic, predestinationist believers. It is hard to say much about ancient history without such reasonable extrapolation.
Thank you very much for engaging with me on these fascinating topics! Maybe we will see a forum for them soon, and we can focus on the historical Jesus here.
Having been raised Presbyterian, I can only note the the explanation we were told was that time is a construct of creation, and that God exists outside of time, and is thus not subject to its limitations. Also, God’s knowledge of what will happen is not the same as making that outcome occur, and we probably just have to accept that we cannot really wrap our minds around such a concept. But there it is, and yes it is somewhat unsettling and unsatisfactory. Among many other problems, the account of history given in the Bible strongly suggests that God seems not always to know what he is doing, or is just going through the motions for reasons unknown.
Stephen said
A concept like “predestination” would only appear after your concept of God passed a certain threshold. The early embodied mythological Yahweh doesn’t know the future any more than his devotees do.
That is a good point. Predestination is a “universalizing concept”, so you need a universal God to make sense of His providence governing everything that happens.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)