These were the times of turbulence for the Jews of the Holy Land. The anointed one was relentlessly persecuted by the Pharisees.


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The Romans tried this man and issued a death sentence although he posed no threat to their might and glory. Jews thought they had silenced the voice of Messiah but their acts gave rise to a new sect of Judaism called — Christianity. The voice Jesus became immortal. Envisaging a foreign threat the Essenes living on the shores of the Dead Sea hid the jars containing their precious manuscripts in the mountain Caves, located in a valley known as Qumran.

In all about manuscripts have been discovered from the caves, surrounding the Dead Sea. The scholars have dated these manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ranging from 10 B. The Scrolls have proved valuable tools in the reconstruction of history of the advent of early Christianity. It records the power struggle between a righteous, an evil and a liar, the hint of this conflict is to be found in the Book of Acts. Below are the excerpts from the above book.

He must contend with two quite separate and distinct adversaries. One of these is Paul, an outsider who, having first persecuted the community, then converts and is admitted into it, only to turn renegade, prevaricate and quarrel with his superiors, hijack the image of Jesus and begin preaching his own doctrine — a doctrine which draws on that of the community, but distorts it. Ananas is a notoriously corrupt and widely hated man.

James the Just in the Habakkuk Pesher

He has also betrayed both the God and the people of Israel by collaborating with the Roman administration and their Herodian puppet-kings. All of this takes place against a backdrop of increasing social and political unrest and the impending invasion of a foreign army. When the fragmentary details of the Qumran texts had been assembled into a coherent sequence, what emerged was something extraordinarily similar to the chronicle of Acts, Josephus and early Christian historians.

In II Corinthians WolfgangvonUSA , Nov 16, Jul 12, Messages: Abogado del Diablo , Nov 16, Jul 15, Messages: May 2, Messages: WolfgangvonUSA , Nov 17, Abogado del Diablo , Nov 17, He is is consultant for the Huntington Library in the struggle to free the Scrolls. It's not unlike trying to find Quatrains in Nostradamus to fit current historical details. If the original writing is vague enough, it could be used to fit just about anything. I've found a link on this subject. I don't know how reliable is the info on it, but there is a translation of the entire Pesher.

The scrolls have many lacunas and this offers space for a lot of interpretation. But here you have the link and you can see by yourself: Sep 15, Messages: Isn't it interesting how the interpretation of carbon dating for the Shroud of Turin keeps changing, especially when somebody realized the church in which the shroud was stored had a fire which significantly affected carbon dioxide levels and thereby the results. Every few years this and other issues seems to flip flop for any number of unanticipated reasons, and I would not be the least bit surprised to see this controversy to ebb and flow as well.

But if anybody is interested in Eisenman's response to this carbon dating, just read pages 80 to 90 in his book, "James, Brother of Jesus", published in , in which he provides evidence that causes the carbon dating to remain inconclusive. And speaking for myself, I am not convinced that any carbon dating technique is really capable of distinguishing between time periods within the space of 50 to years that long ago.

But even if this newest carbon dating is correct, Eisenman's contention of a conflict between James and Paul certainly does not rest entirely upon the dating of any Dead Sea Scroll, as there is ample evidence of this from a host of ancient historians, including Josephus, Origen, Jerome, Eusebius, et al. His book spans more than a thousand pages and only a small fraction is devoted to the dating of the Qumran scrolls. In his article, "Paul as Herodian", Eisenman writes: The last allows us to arrive at a proper textual and historical dating of Qumran documents and has important ramifications for Gospel research.

Underestimating it, I believe, is one of the most serious defects of Qumran research. I have also redefined "Pharisees" generically in terms of "seeking accommodation with foreigners" for two reasons: WolfgangvonUSA , Nov 18, On a side note, I always thought that the Shroud of Turin was the absolute silliest "holy relic" in all of Christendom until I read about the "Holy Prepuce" the foreskin of Jesus - I kid you not! Abogado del Diablo , Nov 19, WolfgangvonUSA , Nov 20, Here are some excepts from a scholarly review of Eisenman's book.

The full text is located at http: The breadth and detail of Eisenman's investigation are breathtaking, as are its implications. In James the Brother of Jesus he tells the long-lost tale of formative "prehistoric" Christianity as it emerged from the crucible of revolutionary Palestine and from the internecine hostilities between Pauline and Ebionite Christianities. I call it "prehistoric" because Eisenman reconstructs the events lying before and beneath our canonical histories of early Christianity.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND James and Paul

His enterprise is in this sense akin to that of Burton Mack, that other great delver into the subterrene depths of religious pre-history. Like Mack, Eisenman discovers a "Christianity" or perhaps a proto-Christianity, or even a pre-Christianity for which Jesus had not yet attained centrality. Only whereas Mack sees the initial germ of the new religion as a variant of Cynicism, Eisenman rejuvenates, even vindicates, Renan's old claim that Christianity began as "an Essenism.

While one still carries the burden of representing the Christian religion it appears to be almost impossible to kick free of the apologetic bias. In dealing with Paul, this means that even critical scholars cannot help presupposing that Paul's message, theology, whatever, must be basically true. Even if one must practice a little sachkritische surgery here and there, e.

At the very least this implicitly Paulinist bias results in what Bruce Malina and others call a docetic approach to the text, an according of priority to the theological abstractions as if they were really the engine of the train and not its epiphenomenal, rhetorical caboose. Even the bold and brilliant E.

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Sanders, who admits, in Paul , the Law , and the Jewish People , that Paul's arguments are usually a mass of inconsistent rationalizations, still grants priority to the conversion experience which he assumes underlies them. The third chapter of Habakkuk is missing entirely from the pesher, but it was left out intentionally, not destroyed by aging most of the last column of the scroll is blank, clearly showing that the text of the pesher was complete. Regardless, the scroll is still largely readable, and editors have filled the lacunae with reasonable confidence.

The scroll is a pesher a type of commentary in Hebrew written sometime in the later half of the 1st century BC.

James the Just in the Habakkuk Pesher by Robert H. Eisenman

The author's situation was not unlike that of the prophet Habakkuk half a millennium before: Israel is threatened by gentile forces. The pesher, then, is an eschatological template, with the author arguing for Habakkuk as a prophecy to be fulfilled in his time. The pesher also relates several contemporary individuals to the prophecy, though they also are only referred to with titles instead of names. The hero or leader that the community should follow is called the Teacher of Righteousness , a figure found in some other Dead Sea scrolls. The pesher argues that the Teacher has directly communed with God and received the true meaning of the scriptures.

The Wicked Priest is portrayed as a false religious leader who was at one point trusted by the Teacher. Towards the end of the pesher, the Wicked Priest is reported to have been captured and tortured by his enemies. It is even argued that this was a title attributed to multiple individuals.

Paul and James in the Habakkuk Pesher Pt1

Also mentioned in passing by the author is a House of Absalom, which is accused of standing idle while the Man of the Lie worked against the Teacher. Unlike the others, this name is attributed only to a couple of historical figures, the most likely candidate being a supposedly Sadducean relative to Aristobulus II , named Absalom. The author of the pesher reaches a similar solution to his difficult situation as the prophet Habakkuk had centuries before: He affirms that his community will not die at the hands of the wicked Judah.

In turn, the power to retaliate against and judge the Kittim will be granted by God to the faithful. What is even more significant than the commentary in the pesher is the quoted text of Habakkuk itself.