Qumran's "Righteous Teacher"

As is well known among biblical scholars, it was in the 1946 that a young Bedouin shepherd came across an obscure cave in the wilderness, just to the northwest of the Dead Sea. But humble though it was, this cave would change our knowledge of the Bible and Jewish society during the time of Jesus, forever.

Peering inside this cave, the young shepherd observed a large number of ancient jars that contained a collection of old scrolls. The cave was near Qumran, and its scrolls, as well as other ancient scrolls later found in nearby caves, became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, written and hidden by the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes. 

The publication of all the scrolls is still only a recent phe- nomenon. Not surprisingly, for years some scholars spread the belief there must have been some sort of conspiracy and cover-up to protect religious institutions from the scrolls’ explosive unpublished content. However, despite the fact that the bulk of the scrolls have now been published, all thus far demonstrating little cause for concern, some still claim that their content undermines the foundations of both Judaism and Christianity. As a result, a theory that 

In the early 1980s, one such splinter-group put forward the idea that Jesus’ brother James must have been a great leader in the group at Qumran; and that the scrolls generally, and the Commentary on Habakkuk in particular, should be viewed in light of James’ life and career. Given that James, together with the disciples John and Peter, was a leader of the Christian Church in Jerusalem following Jesus’ death, it was claimed that his influence must have extended to Qumran as well. But at the very same time, another group began to claim that the cryptically labelled 

Then, in the early 1990s, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, whose best-selling book The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail inspired Dan Brown to write his now infamous The Da Vinci Code (upon which the blockbuster movie of the same title is based), published The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception. In it, they claimed that the Dead Sea Scrolls were actually written between a.d. 66 and 74, by Christians living in Qumran, and that the similarities between early Christianity and the writers of the Scrolls prove that they must have been one and the same religious group. Therefore baptism was the same ritual cleansing that was practiced at Qumran; and Qumran’s communal sharing, Messianic hopes and the 12 male leaders there all show that the Dead Sea Scrolls had been written by Christians living in Qumran. As for the Righteous Teacher, Baigent and Leigh claimed he must have been Jesus. 

This book has had much fame, but was not to be the last splinter-group “theory.” In early 2011, another group actually said that Jesus must have been sent by His parents to be schooled in Qumran by Essene teachers during the lost years from age 13 onwards, and that His textbooks were the actual Dead Sea Scrolls themselves! 

These are bold claims, yet of the aforementioned claims fail on three principle counts. First, there is the dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves. Palaeographic testing has proved they were written between the beginning of the 

The second count where these wild claims fail is in regards to what the Bible’s Gospels and the Dead Sea Scrolls actually say about Jesus and the Essenes. Of course, the Righteous Teacher had certain qualities, which Bible readers would also observe in Jesus as well: that is, a burning desire to preach salvation, a view of himself as a prophetic figure and a sense that the end times were imminent. But the two had stark differences as well. For one thing, the scrolls  

The third count upon which these sensationalised claims fail is with regard to the finer details of the nature of the actual arguments themselves. They simply lack any historical strength. Baigent and Leigh, for instance, claimed a link between the Essene use of ritual washing and Jesus’ baptism. But ritual washing was practiced throughout the whole Jewish world as Jews ceremonially cleansed themselves to become ritually pure for worship. That was the case at Qumran too. At Qumran itself ritual washing pools called Mikva’ot were built to accommodate this  

In fact, hatred was so indoctrinated into the Essenes of Qumran that the Community Rule ordered that they were not even allowed to greet or have anything to do with people outside the Essene sect, stating that: 

Likewise, no man shall consort with him [an outsider] in regard to his work or property lest he be burdened with the guilt of sin... no member of the community shall follow them in matters of doctrine and justice, or eat or drink anything of theirs, or take anything from them except for a price... For all those not reckoned in His Covenant are to be set apart, together with all that is theirs. (1QS 5.12–18) 

Jesus, however, preached a very different message, and he strongly criticised the Essenes for their sanctioned hatred. In fact, it appears that Jesus intentionally sought to correct them and steer people away from the spiteful rules and teachings contained in the Community Rule and the War Scroll. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his audience: 

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5: 43–48) 

Although this is a message for all the ages, it no less applied to Jesus’ own time. Thus, while loving one’s neighbour is a well-known teaching from Leviticus 19:18, hating one’s enemy finds not one mention in the whole of the Old Testament. But as we have seen, it was an