In offering a second edition of this book to the public, my first duty is to acknowledge the kind reception of the original edition which made a second possible. Naturally I did not expect general agreement. Criticism has come from quarters from which it was to be expected. I do not propose to take up space here to deal with it.

I take this opportunity, however, to supplement the short references to the Dead Sea Scrolls on pages 56-57, 72 and 89 by giving some account of the literature that has sprung up round the subject since Dupont-Sommer wrote his preliminary survey, to which alone I refer in my text.

The most comprehensive account of the discoveries is The Dead Sea Scrolls (London, 1956) by J. M. Allegro, one of the international team of scholars engaged in the excavation and editing of the Scrolls. Thanks to the work of Allegro and his colleagues the ancient date of the documents is now undisputed: not even Driver contends now for the sixth or seventh century. The final proof of antiquity was supplied by physical science. All organic matter contains an atomically unstable form of carbon, known as carbon-14, in addition to the normal form of that element (carbon-12). In dead matter carbon-14 disintegrates at a constant rate. By measuring, therefore, the amount of carbon-14 in any specimen of organic matter scientists can estimate the time that has passed since it ceased to be part of a living body. Tests made on the flaxen covers of scrolls taken from the first cave excavated show that the flax was cut at some date between 168 B.C. and A.D. 233. Any closer dating must depend on the internal evidence of the documents, and may vary with different documents.

The scrolls taken from the first cave include two manuscripts of the book of Isaiah (one well preserved, the other in bad condition), a book of rules of the sect, regulations for a "war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness," a hymn book, and the commentary on the prophet Habakkuk mentioned in my text. All are interesting. The interest of the manuscripts of Isaiah lies in their bearing on the textual criticism of the Old Testament, into which we need not enter here. The book of rules, or "Manual of Discipline," as some prefer to call it, serves to identify the sect with that responsible for a document discovered in 1896 at Cairo and known as the "Damascus Document," since it refers to the exile of the sect "in the land of Damascus."

The sect which produced these writings called itself the "Covenant" or the "New Covenant," practised community of goods and managed their affairs at meetings provided for in the rules. Both men and women were admitted; female skeletons have been found in the cemetery of the community. There can be no reasonable doubt that we have to do with the Essenes described by Josephus who also practised community of goods, and some of whom married, though the severer sort did not.

It is over the relation of this sect to the primitive Christians that controversy is hottest. The sect of the Dead Sea documents are the followers of a certain "teacher of righteousness" (or, as Dupont-Sommer translates it, "master of justice") who was persecuted by a "wicked priest." Of the "teacher of righteousness" nothing is known outside the Scrolls and the kindred "Damascus Document." The identification of the "wicked priest" is disputed. Du pont-Sommer, whom I follow in my book, identifies him with Aristobulus II (67-63 B.C.) on the ground that the commentary on Habakkuk refers to a disaster which overtook the Jews on the Day of Atonement and to the deliverance of the "wicked priest" into the hands of his enemies. If the text is correctly translated, this can refer only to Pompey's capture of Jerusalem in 63 B.C., which occurred on that day, and to his carrying of Aristobulus into captivity at Rome.

Allegro, on the other hand, identifies the "wicked priest" with Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 B.C.), the father of Aristobulus. He argues that another Dead Sea document, a commentary on the prophet Nahum, refers to Alexander's practice of crucifying his enemies as an atrocity never before committed in Israel. On the assumption that the Nahum and Habakkuk commentaries refer to the same oppressor, this would clinch the argument. Allegro, however, does not explain the statement of the Habakkuk commentary that the "wicked priest" fell "into the hands of his enemies." Alexander reigned until his death. It is, after all, possible that the Dead Sea Scrolls refer to more than one tyrant.

Be this as it may, the fact remains that about a century before the traditional date of the foundation of Christianity, the Essenes venerated a "teacher of righteousness" who was persecuted and martyred by a Hasmonaean priest-king. Further, they expected the reappearance of a "teacher of righteousness," an "elect," through whom judgment would be executed on all nations and especially on false Jews. It is a legitimate inference that the martyred teacher and he who was to appear at the end were one and the same. This is in accordance with Jewish ways of thought. Elijah was popularly expected to return to anoint the Messiah; the Messiah himself, for some, was to be Joshua redivivus; Jesus in the Gospels is reputed to be Elijah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist or one of the prophets. From all this it results that in Jewry at the time of the Christian era the expectation of the return of a dead leader as a deliverer was not the unheard-of paradox which it is said to have been by apologists of Christianity.

It must be remembered that "Messiah" -- "annointed" -- was a title, not a personal name. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Essenes should have used the title to denote two separate functionaries, the "Messiah of Aaron," or priestly interpreter of the law in the days to come, and the "Messiah of Israel," the warrior who was to lead the people to victory and inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth. The "teacher of righteousness" killed by the Hasmonaeans seems to have been a dissentient priest opposed to the Jerusalem hierarchy; and it was as the "Messiah of Aaron" that he was expected to return. Along with him would appear the "Messiah of Israel," and between the two of them they would carry out the revolution that would put down princes from their thrones and exalt them of low degree. In historic Christianity all trace of a dual Messiahship is absent. But in view of the revision of the Gospels "three times, four times, many times," (as Celsus said) in the interests of Pauline theology this is not surprising.

It was not to be expected that Christian scholars would acquiesce in an interpretation of the facts which reduced the crucifixion of Jesus, and the faith in his resurrection and advent, from something unique in human history to something that had happened before and might have happened a dozen times in the underworld of Jewry with its visions of revenge on the kingdoms of the world. In The Dead Sea Scroll and the Originality of Christ (London, 1956) Father Geoffrey Graystone puts the best face on the matter that a Catholic can. After all, there is nothing in the Dead Sea Scrolls about the incarnation of the Son of God, or about the Atonement, or about the resurrection on the third day; nor anything in the New Testament about the Essenes; so what can one have had to do with the other? To be sure! And there is nothing in the Dead Sea Scrolls about the virgin birth, the immaculate conception, transubstantiation or the infallibility of the Pope. Allegro disposes of this argument when he points out that the New Testament in its present form (still more the dogmas of the Church) "cannot be claimed to represent with certainty the standpoint of the first Jewish-Christians of Jerusalem."

I have dealt with this aspect of the matter more fully in my book. A Protestant scholar, Professor Millar Burrows of Yale University, U.S.A., carries hedging to the length of a fine art by casting doubt on any positive conclusions from the evidence whatever. One wonders what Professor Burrows would say if his skeptical methods were applied to the Bible!

The coincidences between the practices of the Dead Sea sect and those of the primitive churches are too many to be fortuitous -- the community of goods; the communal meal; the blessing of bread and wine; the apocalyptic expectation of final victory of the "sons of light" over the "sons of darkness"; the very name, "New Covenant," by which the sect was known to its members. Are we really to believe that the primitive church of Jerusalem knew nothing of, and owed nothing to a community who lived some dozen miles away and whose rules so resembled their own?

Archibald Robertson

August, 1961.