The Teacher of Righteousness from Qumran and Jesus of Nazareth

From time to time sensational claims that the Teacher of Righteousness of the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran anticipated the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus have received much notice in the press. Some of the men who make these claims are not only competent but distinguished scholars in their field. Yet most of their colleagues, equally competent and distinguished, would take issue with the forced interpretations necessary to buttress such claims. Their more sober views do not, of course, receive publicity. It might therefore be profitable to consider critically the evidence for the allegation that “the Galilean Master, as He is presented to us in the writings of the New Testament, appears in many respects as an astonishing reincarnation of the Teacher of Righteousness” (A. Dupont-Sommer, The Dead Sea Scrolls [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952], p. 99).

The Allegations

The first scrolls were discovered in 1947 in the area known as Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. Subsequent discoveries have yielded thousands of fragments, which include manuscripts of all the Old Testament books except Esther. The monastic community at Qumran is identified by most scholars with the Essenes, a strict, Jewish sect known from the writings of Josephus and of Philo. Some of the sectarian writings—the Damascus Document, the Habakkuk Commentary, and the Commentary on Psalm 37—refer to an anonymous Teacher of Righteousness.

On May 26, 1950, Professor André Dupont-Sommer of the Sorbonne provoked a controversy in Europe by a lecture in which he claimed that the Teacher of Righteousness had probably been crucified, had been raised from the dead, and had appeared in judgment against the city of Jerusalem at the time of the Roman general Pompey’s entrance in 63 B.C. Since the initial lecture, Dupont-Sommer has repeated this claim—albeit with modifications—in various articles and books. Because of the language barrier, the controversy did not receive the same attention in the United States.

Then in the May 14, 1955, issue of the New Yorker, the journalist Edmund Wilson described the exciting story of the scrolls. By his best-seller, The Scrolls from the Dead Sea (New York: Oxford, 1955), Wilson helped to attract national attention to the scrolls. Unfortunately, he also distorted some of the implications of these documents. He suggested that Jesus may have spent some of his childhood years with the Essenes and alleged that New Testament scholars were avoiding the study of the scrolls.

Soon thereafter views similar to Dupont-Sommer’s were aired in broadcasts in Britain by Professor John Marco Allegro of the University of Manchester. These views were published in his book, The Dead Sea Scrolls (Baltimore: Penguin, 1956; reprinted with revisions in 1958, 1959; second edition, 1964. It should be noted that Allegro modified the expression of his views considerably in the second edition). The allegations of Allegro and of Dupont-Sommer have often been disseminated by popularizing writers in articles and books without a careful presentation of their evidence.

The Evidence

What texts are used by these scholars? Three passages in particular are worthy of note. They will be cited here from A. Dupont-Sommer’s translation, The Essene Writings from Qumran (Cleveland: World, 1962).

1. The Nahum Commentary II.13b: “The explanation of this concerns the furious Young Lion [who … took ven]geance on those who seek smooth things—he who hanged living men [on wood … which was not] formerly [done] in Israel; but he who hanged alive upon [the] wood.…” (Note: the parts in brackets are restorations of gaps.)

Allegro interprets the “Young Lion” as the Wicked High Priest, Alexander Jannaeus. The references to “hanging” probably refer to crucifixion. We know from Josephus that Jannaeus crucified eight hundred rebels. Although the Teacher of Righteousness is not explicitly mentioned, as the enemy of the Wicked High Priest, he was one of those who were crucified. The text, as may be seen, is in a very fragmentary state. In any case, Allegro’s interpretation seems to be highly unlikely, inasmuch as in the text those who were persecuted are “those who seek smooth things,” i.e. the Pharisees, who were considered corrupt by the Essenes, and not the Essenes themselves.

2. The Habakkuk Commentary XI.4–8: “The explanation of this concerns the Wicked Priest who persecuted the Teacher of Righteousness, swallowing him up in the anger of his fury in his place of exile. But at the time of the feast of rest of the Day of Atonement he appeared before them to swallow them up to cause them to stumble on the Day of Fasting, their Sabbath of rest” (italics ours).

This is the celebrated passage that formed the basis of Dupont-Sommer’s initial formulation. Originally he took the word rendered “exile,” glwtw, to mean “to strip” and associated this with crucifixion. Other scholars such as Burrows, Kuhn, and Allegro favored the meaning “exile,” which he adopted in his 1962 translation cited here. The crux of the passage is in the word hwpyc, rendered “he appeared.” Dupont-Sommer believes that this refers to the Teacher of Righteousness. Many other scholars believe that this refers to the Wicked Priest, with the second sentence as parallel to the first.

The verb ypc means “to shine; to reveal oneself; and to appear.” At first Dupont-Sommer maintained that the word bore supernatural connotations, “thus the Teacher of Righteousness, shining with a divine light.” In other words, he believed that this referred to the resurrection of the Teacher of Righteousness, appearing in judgment upon Jerusalem at the time of Pompey’s entrance in 63 B.C. He now concedes that “the Hebrew verb used here may also be translated ‘He revealed himself to them,’ with no supernatural implication” (Dupont-Sommer, op. cit., p. 266, n. 4).

An alternative view is set forth by Lou H. Silberman in “Unriddling the Riddle: A Study in the Structure and Language of the Habakkuk Pesher” (Revue de Qumran, III (1961), 358, 359). Recognizing that eight of the fourteen occurrences of the verb in question in the Qumran documents have God as the subject, Silberman proposes that the phrase “he appeared” refers here to God.

3. The Damascus Document VI.7–11: “And the rod (the Lawgiver) is the Seeker of the Law; … and the nobles of the people are they that come to dig the well with the help of the Lawgiver’s precepts, that they may walk in them during all the time of wickedness and without which they shall not succeed until the coming of the Teacher of Righteousness at the end of days.”

Both Allegro and Dupont-Sommer believe that this passage refers to the resurrection of the Teacher of Righteousness. This depends upon the identification of the rod with the Teacher of Righteousness. Frank Moore Cross, in The Ancient Library of Qumran (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961, pp. 227 ff.), would identify the rod with a forerunner of the Teacher of Righteousness. In this case the phrase “the end of days” would simply refer to the period after the forerunner and not to the resurrection of the Teacher (cf. Helmer Ringgren, The Faith of Qumran [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1963], pp. 184, 185).

In review we may note the following: (1) It is certain that the Teacher of Righteousness was persecuted by the High Priest. (2) It is possible that he may have been crucified, although the texts do not indicate this. Crucifixion was, after all, a common form of execution. (3) The allusions to a resurrection and return of the Teacher of Righteousness are quite doubtful. F. F. Bruce, in The Teacher of Righteousness (London: Tyndale, 1956, pp. 34, 35), concedes their possibility.

On the whole, however, the reactions of most scholars have been negative, as may be seen by the following citations:

“The passages in the Habakkuk Commentary which Dupont-Sommer interprets as referring to the return of the Teacher must certainly be interpreted in some other way and they do not allude at all to any returning messiah” (Ringgren, op. cit., p. 185).

“There are no references to his [the Teacher’s] crucifixion, to his resurrection, or to any atoning efficacy in his death” (William H. Brownlee, The Meaning of the Qumran Scrolls for the Bible [New York: Oxford, 1964], p. 128).

“There are no references to a resurrection of the Righteous Teacher in the Qumran literature …” (Cross, op. cit., p. 223, n. 54).

“There is nowhere any suggestion of the miraculous in the death of the Teacher of Righteousness” (Menahem Mansoor, The Dead Sea Scrolls [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964], p. 156).

Conclusion

In actuality, the differences between the Teacher from Qumran and the Teacher from Nazareth are far more striking than any superficial similarities. Professor Brownlee (op. cit., pp. 143–51) lists ten such differences:

1. “Unlike Jesus, the Teacher of Righteousness was a confessed sinner who gratefully acknowledged his dependence upon the forgiveness of God.” This point and the following ones are based on the ascription of certain of the Thanksgiving Hymns from Qumran to the Teacher of Righteousness.

2. “Unlike Jesus, he must suffer in order to be purified from sin.”

3. Unlike Jesus, the Essene Master founded a community vowing hatred toward its enemies.” The injunction “to hate all the sons of darkness” has led scholars to believe that Jesus may have had the Essenes in mind when he said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’ ” (Matt. 5:43). This was true of the Essenes, but not of the Pharisees.

4. “Both teachers founded a church—but only Jesus built a church which the powers of death could not overcome.” After the destruction of their community by the Romans in A.D. 68, we hear no more about the members of the Qumran community.

5. “Unlike Jesus, the Teacher called his followers out of the world, but Christ on the contrary sent His followers into the world.” The sectarians were admonished to keep separate from nonbelievers and to conceal their doctrines from them. “And let him not rebuke the man of the Pit nor dispute with them; let him conceal the maxims of the Law from the midst of the men of perversity …” (Manual of Discipline, IX. 16 f.).

6. “Unlike Jesus, the Teacher of Righteousness does not appear to have been ‘a friend of publicans and sinners.’ ”

7. “Unlike Jesus, the Essene Master performed no works of healing, nor in other ways did he engage in acts of compassion among the needy.” Indeed, in contrast to the ministry of Jesus who welcomed the sick and deformed, the community excluded anyone with a physical defect: “… every (person) smitten in his flesh, paralyzed in his feet or hands, lame or blind or deaf, or dumb or smitten in his flesh with a blemish visible to the eye, or any aged person that totters and is unable to stand firm in the midst of the Congregation: let these persons not en[ter] …” (Manual of Discipline, the Rule Annexe II.5–8).

8. “Unlike Jesus, he was at most a prophet, not a redeemer.”

9. “Unlike Jesus, the Teacher of Righteousness was simply preparing the way for one far greater than himself.” The sectarians awaited the coming of two Messiahs, a kingly one and a priestly one. The Teacher was not himself considered to be the Messiah.

10. “Unlike Jesus, the Teacher of Righteousness founded a community enmeshed in legalism.” The Essenes were so fanatical in their observance of ritual law that they considered the Pharisees lax. Since this was so, Ethelbert Stauffer says, “I contend: had Jesus fallen into the hands of the Wilderness sectarians, they would have murdered him as ruthlessly as did the Pharisees” (Jesus and the Wilderness Community at Qumran [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964], p. 21). Stauffer gives eight differences between Jesus and Qumran, somewhat similar to those listed by Brownlee. (See also Bruce, op. cit., pp. 28 ff.; and Jean Carmignac, Christ and the Teacher of Righteousness [Baltimore: Helicon, 1962].)

Oscar Cullmann, in an essay entitled “The Significance of the Qumran Scrolls for Research into the Beginnings of Christianity” (The Scrolls and the New Testament, ed. by Krister Stendahl [New York: Harper, 1957], pp. 31, 32), asks: “Is it not significant that Josephus and Philo can both describe the Essenes in detail without once mentioning the Teacher of Righteousness? Without the Damascus Manuscript and the Qumran texts, we would know nothing at all of such an Essene Teacher. Would it be possible to describe primitive Christianity without naming Christ? To ask the question is to have answered it.”

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.