Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §9.4
have no first-hand account from the period. 122 The point can be illustrated
readily enough. 123
The Qumran Essenes saw themselves as alone true to the covenant of the
fathers, 'the sons of light', 'the house of perfection and truth in Israel', the chosen
ones, and so on (1QS 2.9; 3.25; 8.9; 11.7). In contrast, the political and religious
opponents of the sectarians are attacked as 'the men of the lot of Belial',
'traitors', 'the wicked', 'the sons of Belial' who have departed from the paths of
righteousness, transgressed the covenant, and such like. 124 One of the chief sins
for which these other Jews are condemned is the failure to recognize the Essene
claim to have been given the correct insight into the Torah, and thus to be constituted
as the people of the new covenant. 125 'Those who seek smooth things', the
'deceivers', 126 are usually identified as the Pharisees, and the halakhic debates
reflected in the recently published 4QMMT confirm that Pharisees were amongst
the Qumran sect's disputants. 127
The Enoch corpus gives evidence of a bitter calendrical dispute which
racked Judaism probably during the second century BCE. 'The righteous', 'who
walk in the ways of righteousness', clearly distinguished themselves from those
who 'sin like the sinners' in wrongly computing the months and feasts and years
(7 En. 82.4-7). The accusation in 1 Enoch 1-5 is less specific, but again draws a
clear line of distinction between the 'righteous/chosen' and the 'sinners/impious'
(1.1, 7-9; 5.6-7), where the latter are clearly fellow Jews who practised their Judaism
differently from the self-styled 'righteous' — 'You have not persevered,
nor observed the law of the Lord' (5.4). Whether there were more specific targets
remains obscure.
Similarly in T. Mos. 7 we find a forthright attack on 'godless men, who rep-
122. 'The heyday of Jewish sectarianism was from the middle of the second century BCE
to the destruction of the temple in 70 CE' (Cohen, Maccabees 143); see also Saldarini, Pharisees
65, 210-11, and n. 56 above.
123. In what follows I draw particularly on my 'Pharisees, Sinners and Jesus' 73-76. See
further the texts reviewed by M. A. Elliott, The Survivors of Israel: A Reconsideration of the
Theology of Pre-Christian Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) chs. 3-4. Cf. also P. F.
Esler, 'Palestinian Judaism in the First Century', in D. Cohn-Sherbok and J. M. Court, eds., Religious
Diversity in the Graeco-Roman World: A Survey of Recent Scholarship (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic, 2001) 21-46.
124. E.g., 1QS 2.4-10; CD 1.11-21; 1QH 10(=2).8-19; lQpHab 5.3-8; 4QFlor[4Q174]
1.7-9.
125. E.g., 1QS 5.7-13; CD 4.7-8; lQpHab 2.1-4.
126. 1QH 10(=2).14-16, 31-32; 12(=4).9-11; 4QpNah 1.2, 7; 2.2, 8; 3.3-7.
127. E.g., Vanderkam, Dead Sea Scrolls 60, 93, 107; J. A. Fitzmyer, 'The Qumran Community:
Essene or Sadducean?', The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2000) 249-60 (here 251-52); others in Saldarini, Pharisees 279 n. 6. Schaper makes
much of 4QMMT in his description of the early Pharisees ('Pharisees' 406-407).
282