The First One Hundred Years of Christianity in JerusalemI haven't read the book, so my comments are based entirely on this essay and are correspondingly provisional. The core of the argument is in the excerpt above. There may indeed be some influence from the Qumran community/Essenes on the early Jesus movement, but I don't find these particular arguments compelling. There is a pattern of parallels, which is promising, but many of the parallels themselves are very general or debatable. Casting lots and healing are hardly distinctive. The name Matthias was common and appears in quite different contexts here. The immersion rites of the Qumran sect are quite different from Christian baptism, as are the two so-called community rules. The hierarchy of twelve comes from the twelve tribes of Israel. Pentacost was a Jewish festival tied to the covenant with God and it's not surprising that both sects took an interest in it. The Holy Spirit is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Psalm 51:11; Isaiah 63:10-11) - not often, but in books both sects especially liked. Times of prayer and calendar are complicated issues and I'm not prepared to generalize as freely as above. The communal living aspect is interesting, but the Jewish Therapeutae did this in Egypt as well (and I am not prepared to identify them with the Essenes), so we don't really know how widespread it was.
One does not have to look far to see that many of these practices [Essene] were adopted by the early Christian community. They returned to that upper room after the death of Jesus. They were altogether there at Pentecost. They celebrated this according to the Essene calendar. (“Devout men “were present in Jerusalem.) They choose Matthias by lot (there is a house of Matthias mentioned in the copper scroll). Pentecost became the main feast for the early church. Baptism became the initiation rite of the new community; The Holy Spirit (not mentioned anywhere in the O.T.) is prominent in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the literature of the early Jewish community. They celebrated a sacred meal. They practiced communal living. Both sects observed a community rule (Didache for Christians). There was a hierarchy of twelve for both. Times of prayer were the same. Healing was done by both groups. Could it all just be coincidence? We are told early on that a group of priests converted. They couldn’t have been Sadducees, who are shown as opposed to the Christian sect in the Acts. So who else? The only alternative was the Essenes.
Essay based on Jesus and the First Century of Christianity in Jerusalem (NJ: Paulist Press, 2008).
By Elizabeth McNamer
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Department of Philosophy and Religion
Rocky Mountain College
Billings, Montana, USA
June 2009
As for the Sadducees, converts come from the most unexpected places and it proves nothing that the Sadducean group as a whole was hostile to the early Jesus movement. It would not surprise me to find that both Sadducees (i.e., priests who served in the Jerusalem Temple) and Qumran sectarians/Essenes (who evidently did not) were among the converts to that movement. It is entirely possible that there was some influence from both priestly groups, but a lot of this could, indeed, just be coincidence.
