From time to time: brother can you spare me a dime


Anyway,
we can see the reflection
of jewish messianic beliefs
in early christianity: several published
texts prove their important contribution to our understanding
of Qumran's eschatological doctrines & they
emphasize the 'super-human' aspects
of the priest at the end
of days.

Of course,
in these areas as well,
our progress yields new questions & possible answers.
True, it stands to reason that the Qumran community believed
that the eschatological priest would be one of their own Sons of Tsadok,
& it is possible that they once thought that the Messiah of the House of Aharon
was the Teacher of Righteousness or, perhaps,
his heir, the Interpreter of the Law.

But how
can this hope be reconciled
with the midrash on Melchitsedek
also uncovered among the fragments?
There is no reason to assume that this work refers to an angel
named Melchitsdek. Clearly this Melchitsdek is described as playing a role
very similar to that of the Messiah of the House of Aharon,
except that Melchitsedek cannot be a scion of this house
since he lived before Aharon. It is also evident
that the superhuman descriptions
of the eschatological priest
in the scrolls and the
Testament of Levi,
and of Melchitsedek
in his eponymous scroll,
are similar to the descriptions of the
'son of man' in the apocalyptic literature.
That said, the Qumran scrolls have yet to yield a single explicit
reference to the 'son of man'. This seems doubly perplexing
if we consider that Yochanan the Baptist, who
was close to the Essenes {?}, hoped for
the advent of the 'son of man',
as the Gospels of Mat & Luke
so plainly attest?!

Thus we may
assume that there was no uniformity of opinion
among the members of the Qumran community with regard to the details
of their eschatological doctrine. It is possible that strict discipline was not always enforced,
and that the sect did not consider significant
disagreements in this area.

Still,
the most important shift
may occur in the study of early christianity,
more specifically, in the question of Yehoshua's own messianic consciousness.
Some christian scholars have even denied that he had any messianic consciousness,
assuming that the church 'invented' this doctrine after Yeshua's death.
But the Qumran texts that have been published up till now
suggest that the idea of a super-human messianic figure
clearly circulated in jewish apocalyptic circles
long before Yeshu's time. In truth,
rabbinic Judaism never accepted
this messianic mythology:
Yehoshua himself
belonged,
ultimately,
to Pharisaic-Rabbinic Judaism
but was not a pure Pharisee, & he had access
to the mythological aspects of Jewish apocalypticism,
particularly with regard to the role of the messiah - no doubt
under Essene 'influence'. So now with the publication
of more Qumran fragments, it is no longer possible
to assert that this "Christology" was created
by those early churches after Yeshua's
tragic unforeseen death by
hanging on a Roman cross
some forty years prior
to the destruction
of the Temple
as centre
of Judaism in general!?

If we really wish to make finally
some more progress in this terribly fascinating field,
we must not hesitate to refresh our questions every now and
then, to cast anew s more critical eye on the synoptic gospels,
which are, after all of course, still our primary
source of information concerning
the 'historical' Yehoshua
[after Shapo Sha'ulPaul]
and so on. It still
boggles the mind
as Mister Natural said
already more than fifty years ago
& that's what makes
this worthwhile
...
cool!
24 apr 2010 - bewerkt op 26 apr 2010 - meld ongepast verhaal
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