Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §9.4
consistent across the range of literature surveyed above. We may consider, for
example, the fearful curses called down on the men of Belial when the novice enters
the Qumran community —
Be cursed because of all your guilty wickedness!
May he deliver you up for torture at the hands of the vengeful Avengers!
May he visit you with destruction by the hand of all the wreakers of
revenge!
Be cursed without mercy because of the darkness of your deeds!
Be damned in the shadowy place of everlasting fire! . . .
(1QS 2.5-10 Vermes).
The curses against the deceitful and stubborn covenanter in 1QS 2.11-18 are no
less fierce than those against the 'men of the lot of Belial'. Or in Jub. 15.34 'there
is for them [those who have made themselves like the Gentiles] no forgiveness or
pardon so that they might be pardoned and forgiven from all of the sins of this
eternal error'. We might compare the warning against the 'eternal sin' in Mark
3.29, occasioned by refusal to recognize that Jesus' exorcisms were effected by
the power of the Holy Spirit. And even the Johannine Jesus' castigation of 'the
Jews' as sons of the devil (8.44) is readily echoed in Jub. 15.33-34, 4QFlor[4Q
174] 1.8 and T. Dan 5.6 (the last drawing on the Book of Enoch the Righteous).
Perhaps most striking of all in its sustained character in the polemic reviewed
above is the regular condemnation of other Jews as 'sinners', given that the sinner
in Jewish theology was excluded from participation in the world to come and
condemned to eternal darkness. 134
How much weight should we give to such considerations? Did the Jews
who wrote 1QS or the Psalms of Solomon really believe that those thus cursed or
called 'sinners' were as such indeed outside the covenant, beyond the saving
righteousness of God? Did the Pharisees who are reported as criticising Jesus for
eating with sinners (Mark 2.16; Luke 15.2) really think that these sinners would
be condemned in the final judgment, and Jesus too? That is certainly the theological
logic of their language. But did they always mean it? 135 Here we might note
how incipient sectarianism forces an inevitable ambivalence on the key term of
134. E.g., Deut. 29.18; Ps. 92.7; 1 En. 98.10-16; 102.3; Jub. 36.9-10; T. Abr. 11.11;?«.
Sol. 2.34; 3.11-12; see further J. D. G. Dunn, 'Jesus and Factionalism in Early Judaism', in
Charlesworth and Johns, eds., Hillel and Jesus 156-75; Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism
index 'the Wicked'; D. A. Neale, None but the Sinners: Religious Categories in the Gospel of
Luke (JSNTS 58; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1991) 82-95.
135. The fact that some Jews were ready to kill other Jews over issues of Torah loyalty
— Paul was one who attempted to 'destroy' the church of God out of Phinehas-like 'zeal' (Gal.
1.13-14; above at n. 25) — is a salutary reminder of how seriously at least some intended such
language.
284