The Gospel of John and Christian Origins (16 page)

I should add at this point that I was mistaken, in the first edition of
Understanding the Fourth Gospel
, to argue for a direct connection between the Fourth Gospel and the Qumran community simply on the basis of the dualistic language (especially the opposition between light and darkness) that the Gospel shares with many of the sectarian writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls, above all the Two Spirits section of the
Community Rule
(1QS 3:13–4:26). I am now fully in agreement with Philip Esler’s rejection of my earlier argument; in a chapter entitled “Introverted Sectarianism at Qumran and in the Johannine Community,” he argues, rightly I now think, that the introverted sectarianism found in both groups is best explained by the fact that “the fundamental social reality for both groups was a marked division between themselves and the outside world. In such a context dualism comes naturally”;
^[7]
so there is no need to posit a direct debt. Although I have returned to the view that there may well be a connection between the two groups, it is for different reasons.

Now although I have counted the insiders/outsiders distinction as one typical feature of apocalyptic writing, it should be pointed out that it has no place in John J. Collins’s classic definition of an apocalypse (quoted further on in this chapter). The reason for this is that it cannot be said to characterize the apocalyptic genre as such, from any formal or literary perspective. The distinction occurs quite noticeably in the majority of apocalypses (and we will shortly see some typical examples) simply because these mostly represent the views of men and women opposed to people in their own milieu whom they regard as alien and hostile.

What is more, it would be wrong to suggest that the distinction is restricted to apocalyptic. Here is a quotation from the Gospel of Mark that actually uses the language of insiders and outsiders with specific reference to the mystery of the kingdom of God: “To you has been given the mystery [μυστήριον] of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in riddles [ἐν παραβολαῖς], that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; lest they should turn again, and be forgiven” (4:11-12). (The confusion arises from the fact that the Greek word παραβολαί, besides meaning parables, as it commonly does, can also mean riddles, as in this passage in Mark.)

We in our turn may be forgiven for failing to understand this mysterious saying, for neither, apparently, did one of Mark’s earliest readers, the evangelist Matthew, who altered the purpose clause and transformed it into an
explanation
: Jesus spoke to the crowd in parables not with the intention of veiling his meaning from them in riddling sayings but
because they needed parables
, conceived as figurative explanations, to assist their comprehension (Matt. 13:13). If Matthew understood what Mark’s Jesus was saying (and I rather suspect he did not), then he completely disagreed with him. But it is Mark, not Matthew, who effectively conveys the sense that his readers or hearers belong to a privileged minority and differ from everyone else in their ability to comprehend the mystery that has been entrusted to them. Those outside, in the nature of things, are unable to penetrate mysteries. It might be added that Mark’s conception of a mystery hidden from outsiders—Matthew and Luke use the plural form, μυστήρια, at this point—brings him quite close to the apocalyptic view of the Christian message I associate with John. Indeed, what is often called the messianic secret may be better conceived as the hidden phase of an apocalyptic revelation of the true meaning of the kingdom of God, the primary object of Jesus’ assertion that “there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret, except to come to light” (Mark 4:22).

If Mark’s Jesus, in the reference to “those outside” in the passage I have just quoted, seems to be looking for enemies, John’s Jesus literally demonizes his own regular adversaries, the Jews: “Why do you not understand what I say?” he asks them: “It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (8:43-44).

In apocalyptic writings outsiders are frequently identified as “the foolish,” in contrast to the wise, and as “the wicked,” in contrast to the righteous. Since they are both foolish and wicked, they refuse to listen to words of wisdom; but it is often implied that even if they did they would be unable to comprehend them. In the book of Daniel this is spelled out clearly in the last chapter: “none of the wicked shall understand, but those who are wise shall understand” (Dan. 12:10). I have already insisted on one crucial difference between the Essenes and their opponents, “the Seekers of Smooth Things,” namely, the conviction of the former that any reliable interpretation depends on a special revelation. Even the Torah is mysterious, insofar as it cannot be properly understood without divine aid. The same holds, as we have already observed, of the words of the prophets, who were often thought of as authors of Scripture (see, for instance, Rom. 1:2; 3:21). The net result of all these revelations is
knowledge
, not the ordinary sort of knowledge, however, that is primarily the outcome of study and learning, but a very special kind of knowledge reserved for members of the sect and setting them apart from all outsiders. The oath exacted from incoming members was a promise to return wholeheartedly to the Torah “
in accordance with all that has been revealed of it
to the sons of Zadok, the Priests, keepers of the covenant and seekers of his will, and to the multitude of the men of the covenant who together have freely pledged themselves to his truth” (1QS 5:9-10). The Master, accordingly, was entrusted with the important task of instructing his members “in the mysteries of marvelous truth” (1QS 9:18). But this duty was accompanied by a corresponding negative responsibility: those whom he saw as outsiders “are not included in his covenant since they have neither sought nor examined his decrees in order to learn the hidden matters in which they err” (1QS 5:11) and have no entitlement to know the truth. Consequently, the Master is instructed to conceal the teaching of the Law from these men (1QS 9:17), that is, the men of injustice, or sin (
‘wl
), who have just been called the men of the pit (
šḥt
) (1QS 9:16). They are to be completely shunned, not even argued with.

Behind these peremptory commands we can detect an anxious apprehension. In revealing his secret knowledge to the members of his community the Master is running the risk that some renegade might pass this knowledge on to others who are not entitled to it. Nevertheless, “the Interpreter shall not conceal from them through fear of an apostate spirit any of those things hidden from Israel which have been discovered by him” (1QS 8:11-12). His anxiety, however well grounded, does not give him the right to keep his fellow covenanters in the dark.

I have already pointed out that the charge leveled against the enemies of the sect that they have failed to examine God’s decrees so as to “learn the hidden matters in which they err” looks grossly unfair, because it is said at the same time that God denied them the kind of special revelation without which the necessary awareness was simply not available. The sectarians are anxious to blame “the Seekers of Smooth Things” for looking for loopholes and easy answers, but at the same time they lay exclusive claim to special revelations that are an essential element in the new covenant that entitles them to arrogate to themselves the proud name of Israel.

In the
Damascus Document
the hidden things in which all Israel strayed are spelled out as “his holy sabbaths, his glorious appointed times [that is, feast-days], his righteous testimonies, his true ways, and the desires of his will, which a person shall do and live by them” (CD 3:14-16). The specified sins concern the cultic calendar, but the vague expression “the desires of his will” must refer to bitter disputes over other interpretations of the law that we can only guess at. It is obvious that the breakaway of the new sect was preceded by acrimonious arguments between the two groups concerning these. But much more was at stake than the need to win debates over the correct interpretation of detailed items of legislation. The primary concern of the leaders of the community was to ensure that the novices in their charge were imbued with a sense of the exceptional nature of the privileged existence to which they were about to commit themselves. And one way to do this was to convince them that their Instructor was himself the recipient of divine revelations regarding the specific interpretation of the Scripture on which their rule was based.

Very much later in the history of religious thought, one of the first tasks of those entrusted with the instruction of the young votaries of the Christian religious orders that began to emerge when Christianity had become the dominant religion of the Western world, was to persuade them that the heavenly vocation of each of their founders (Benedict, Dominic, Francis, and Ignatius are the most important names here)—a vocation that was nothing short of a personal revelation from God—legitimized and indeed sanctified the astonishingly strict rule of life to which they were submitting themselves. The rules of the new orders show nothing of the bitter recriminations of the sins of their parent body so typical of the key writings of the Essenes. But in other respects, such as their layered organization, whereby priests formed the upper layer with a Master or Superior at the very top, with their vows of poverty and chastity, and above all with the felt need for the inspiration provided by a dominant foundation myth, the later Christian religious orders bore an uncanny resemblance to the only Jewish religious order known to us—which preceded them by several centuries.

Now we must take a further step. The sense that the community had privileged access to the truth extended beyond the traditions hidden in the Scriptures and reached out to include other mysteries besides. This meant that, unlike many if not most Jews, even in the Second Temple era, they were open to the possibility that God had not yet had his final say—that the Mosaic Torah was not the definitive revelation it was thought to be by many or most of their contemporaries.

The documentary evidence for this openness among the Dead Sea Scrolls is of two kinds. I have already remarked on the popularity of two particular books at Qumran: Daniel and
1 Enoch
. These books are apocalypses in a more technical sense than the sense in which I have been using the word
apocalyptic
, for their revelations are of a particular sort. Here I cite the definition of apocalypse given by John J. Collins.  He begins by outlining what he calls “a common core of constant elements.” This permits

I want now to discuss in turn two books found at Qumran that indisputably fit this definition. Concerning Daniel, however, the first of these, we must start with a qualification. Strictly speaking, only the second half of the book is apocalyptic in the narrow sense of the word, for it is not until chapter 7 that Daniel, the eponymous hero of the book, begins to have the kind of visions or dreams that are at the heart of any true apocalypse. Up to that point he himself is the interpreter: as an honored guest at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, he is repeatedly asked to “expound the interpretation” of the king’s dreams.

Early on in Daniel we find the king seeking an explanation of his first dream, which concerned a succession of great kingdoms, subsumed under the image of a formidably large statue, variously composed. Its head was of gold, its breast and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of iron, and its feet partly of iron and partly, famously, of clay.  Daniel tells the king what he knows already: none of his own hired team of clever men can expound to him “the mystery which he has asked.” But, Daniel assures him, “there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries” (2:28). Thus, very early in the book, in an assertion that could easily be missed, comes the crucial distinction that, as I observed earlier, marks out Jewish apocalypses in the full sense from “the Law and the Prophets.” “There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries,” Daniel tells the king, and he has made known to him “what will be in the latter days” (2:28). The Teacher of Righteousness, as I argued in the previous chapter, must have reflected deeply on the idea that prophecies could have a relevance long after the time when they were first uttered, as well as on the notion that they contained mysteries; and indeed there is a strong likelihood that this was the inspiration behind the passage in the Habakkuk pesher asserting that God had told him (the prophet) to write what was going to happen to the last generation (1QpHab 7:2).

Anyone reading the book of Daniel for the first time will be startled by the abrupt shift of emphasis in the second half of the book, and above all by the difference between the first dream of Daniel himself and those of the king recounted in the opening chapters. For now, in chapter 7, we are suddenly transported into heaven. Daniel himself, hitherto so confident and assured, is dazzled and bewildered by what he now sees: the four winds of heaven stirring up the sea, four great beasts emerging from the sea, one like a lion with the wings of an eagle, one like a leopard, and a third like a bear. The fourth beast, different from the rest, had ten horns. But these were less significant than the little horn that appeared among them, for in it “were eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth speaking great things” (7:8). At this point came a scene that captured the imagination not just of Daniel, but also of Jesus, of the four evangelists, and of other Jewish apocalyptic seers. The vision of the so-called Ancient of Days seated on a throne was inspired by a much earlier vision of the prophet Ezekiel, but the figure “like a man” that was presented before God and given an enduring dominion over all the peoples of the world, had never been seen before. So much has been written about this figure by one learned professor after another that he has virtually been swallowed up in scholarship, and his true importance lost sight of. In a later chapter I will speak of the crucial role he plays in the development in the fourth evangelist’s thinking of the person of Jesus. Here I simply want to emphasize that in any branch of Judaism, the appearance of an angelic figure, soon to be called “
the
Son of Man,” seated on a throne alongside that of God himself, is truly astonishing. And whatever conclusions we reach concerning Jesus’ own understanding of this figure, his importance in the final eschatological prophecies attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels is beyond question.