'With the oldest monks...' light from Essene history on the career of the beloved disciple? (John)     

        The Journal of Theological Studies

          April 01, 1998   by   Capper, Brian J.

 

As Rilke tells us, it is the religious, the ascetic, the contemplative, the mystic, who is the master of myth. Within the New Testament, the Gospel of John is unrivalled for its sublime command of myth and symbol. John's distinctive `spiritual'(2) character clearly derives, in some fashion, from a mind or circle of very individual religious and intellectual type in early Christianity. John's theological method appears strongly meditative. His intense interweaving of events with symbols drawn from the Old Testament Scriptures, his intricate exposition of theological terms and their interrelations, and indeed the very depth of his theological vision, all suggest the extended, concentrated reflection of the mystic.(3) Could part of the answer to the question of the distinctive character of the Johannine tradition lie in its conception in a distinctive, intensely contemplative, virtually monastic spirituality?

 

This question may be mischievous. No particular insight can ever be proven to derive from a specific form of `religious discipline'. However, the purpose of this paper is to suggest that a particular type of ascetic Jewish life does in fact lie at the heart of the problem of the fundamental difference of character and approach between the Synoptic tradition and the Fourth Gospel, by demonstrating that an association probably existed between the enigmatic figure of the `Disciple whom Jesus loved', purportedly the fount of the tradition and witness on which the Fourth Gospel is based, and a discernible pre-Christian, ascetic(4) group in Jerusalem.

 

John Ashton, in what is surely to become the standard late-twentieth century treatment of the thought of the Fourth Gospel, has forcefully argued that John's dualism betrays a converted Essene (rather than, as Bultmann suggested, a converted Gnostic) at the source of the Johannine tradition.

 

The evangelist may well have started life as one of those Essenes who were to be found, according to Josephus, `in large numbers in every town' ... (BJ ii. 124). Such a suggestion may appear to some almost as improbable as that of Bultmann. I admit that it cannot be proved. But its apparent improbability is a consequence of its specificity. Unlike all other theories except Bultmann's it offers the right kind of explanation of the profoundly dualistic nature of the evangelist's thinking--in terms not of his receptiveness to new ideas but his own gut reactions.(5)

This paper seeks to address the question of specificity to which Ashton draws attention by showing the probability that the `Beloved Disciple' was a member of an ascetic religious quarter in Jerusalem which previously, during the reign of Herod the Great, and into the reign of his son Archelaus, had housed the Essene community at other times resident at Qumran. By the time of Jesus' ministry this ascetic community in Jerusalem was probably reduced in size by the exit of a major part of its membership to the Qumran site during Archelaus' reign. It appears to have had a development independent of Qumran for some two decades or more, and then to have developed links with, or even been fully drawn into, the movement of Jesus and his disciples.(6)

 

The view taken in this paper is that the Beloved Disciple was not one of the twelve, and that the Fourth Gospel does not seek to portray him as such, but a Jerusalem disciple. This view has received support in a number of important treatments of the Fourth Gospel.(7) Martin Hengel has strongly supported the position that the Beloved Disciple was identical with the Elder John to whom Papias refers (ap. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39-4) and was also, despite a process of subsequent development of his writing, the essential author of the Gospel.(8) Hengel has allowed that an element of deliberate ambiguity may exist in the portrayal of the Beloved Disciple to allow a possible dual identification, claiming thus also the authority of John the Son of Zebedee behind the work;(9)

 

Richard Bauckham has followed Hengel's essential position but objected to the possibility of a deliberately ambiguous portrayal.(10) The argument of this paper is concerned with the origins of the Johannine tradition in Palestine, and holds that the Beloved Disciple was an important figure behind the earliest formation of the Johannine tradition in Judaea prior to AD 66. He was an early Jerusalem disciple and witness to Jesus, whose intimacy as the disciple who reclined on Jesus' breast (John 13:23) uniquely fitted him to witness to Jesus (21:20-24).(11) While the thesis of this paper would cohere with and support positions which closely tie the Beloved Disciple to the authorship of the Fourth Gospel, it is essentially unconcerned with the later stages of the Johannine tradition, possible redactional processes prior to the final composition of the Gospel, and the external evidence for authorship from the second century onwards.

 

The present piece is not concerned to demonstrate that the Beloved Disciple had a substantial hand in formulating the text of the Gospel as we have it. Rather, it seeks, firstly, to draw a picture from the overall content of the Gospel, of the kind of Palestinian context from which the Beloved Disciple appears to have come. Then, from an analysis of relevant political and sectarian developments over the preceding two centuries, it will be demonstrated that we can in fact identify the site of, and know something of the history of an ascetic community in Jerusalem within which the Beloved Disciple was a leading figure at the time of Jesus' final arrival, trial, and death in Jerusalem.

 

I. A PALESTINIAN LIFE-SETTING FOR THE BELOVED DISCIPLE

 

It is surely a counsel of despair to treat the Beloved Disciple as a purely ideal figure.(12) However, to accept him as an historical figure requires that we give some coherent account of the particular constellation of factors which the Fourth Gospel suggests define his position in Palestine at the earliest roots of the Johannine tradition, his necessary `pre-Christian' biography, and his role in relation to Jesus. The following five factors must be shown to belong together in the original life-setting of the Beloved Disciple:-

 

1. The particular connection of the tradition behind the Fourth Gospel with southern Palestine, and the probable connection of the Beloved Disciple to the city of Jerusalem itself. The strong arguments for a connection of the Fourth Gospel to Ephesus do not contradict the evidence from its particular knowledge of place names and local custom that the Johannine tradition has an original and strong connection to Palestine.(13) Knowledge of Jerusalem, in particular, extends beyond the familiarity of the Synoptic tradition.(14) There are a particularly large number of Johannine special traditions linked to southern Palestine.(15)

 

It seems probable that the Beloved Disciple owned or had charge of premises in Jerusalem, to which at John 19:27 he takes the mother of Jesus with whose care he is entrusted at the cross. Acts 1:12-14 locates the very early post-Easter prayer of the disciple-group `together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers' (1:14) in the `upper room' (1:13, [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]); this room is probably that of the Last Supper, although it is called by a different name at Luke 22:12 ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). Thus the possibility naturally arises that the Beloved Disciple may have been the `master of the house' ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) sought out by the two disciples for the room Jesus required for the meal (Luke 22: 11, Mark 14:14), and was possibly even himself the host at the Last Supper. We shall see below that there are good arguments for this last possibility.

 

2. The connection of Johannine thought to Qumran. The dualism of John in particular has a close connection with the thought of Qumran: what John Robinson correctly called `the emergence of the same qualified ethical and eschatological dualism, expressed in terms of light and darkness, truth and error, very different from the Gnosticising metaphysical dualism, in which spirit is good, matter evil or unreal'.(16) Robinson follows the treatment of J. H. Charlesworth, editor of the important volume John and Qumran.(17) This collection of essays clearly demonstrates that, while the connection between John and Qumran is by no means one of bald assimilation, nonetheless the Fourth Gospel stands in a peculiar proximity to Qumran within the writings of the New Testament. As noted above, John Ashton has similarly found a clear connection of Johannine dualism to Qumran.(18)

 

This relation is close enough to suggest a definite, albeit modified and perhaps indirect, influence. The theses of A. Jaubert concerning the possible relevance of the Qumran calendar to the date on which Jesus celebrated the Last Supper (a meal, as we shall argue below, hosted by the Beloved Disciple),(19) and of O. Betz on the relation of the paraclete in John to Qumran community theology,(20) are also highly suggestive of some kind of inheritance in the Johannine tradition from the theology of Qumran.

 

3. The peculiar links of the Gospel, and possibly of the Beloved Disciple himself, to John the Baptist. A definite link between the Johannine tradition and the Baptist is clear from the way only this Gospel tradition describes an overlap of Jesus' ministry with John's (John 1: 1-4:3) and the transfer of disciples' allegiance from John to Jesus (1:19-42). From this evidence alone we may conclude that the figures behind the first Palestinian formation of the Johannine tradition had enjoyed an unusual proximity to John the Baptist, greater than the first transmitters of the Synoptic tradition.

 

The polemical interest of John's Gospel against the Baptist may not relate entirely to later periods in the development of Johannine tradition, rather than its earliest social context.(21) It has been suggested that the Fourth Gospel's dualistic, Essene mind-set may have derived from the early association of those who transmitted its tradition with the Baptist; early in John we indeed see disciples of the Baptist passing into the following of Jesus.(22) However, although aspects of the Baptist's ministry often suggest to scholars a link with Essenism,(23) no evidence demands an association between the Baptist and Qumran, and the openness of the Baptist's mission may suggest that a close connection is unlikely. Ashton has not felt the association of the Baptist with Qumran an adequate explanation for the pervasive dualism of the Fourth Gospel unless he `was so deeply soaked in Qumranian ideas as to be virtually indistinguishable from one of the community's own teachers'. This would push the Baptist so close to Qumran that he could not function as a `middleman or intermediary'.(24)

 

The significance which we wish to argue for the unusual connection between those at the Palestinian base of the Johannine tradition and John the Baptist coheres with Ashton's judgement. It will be argued below that John the Baptist was not the source of the Essene theological inheritance of the Fourth Gospel. Rather, this came through the earlier derivation of the Beloved Disciple's Jerusalem group from Qumran Essenism. The Baptist was a figure who helped `open out' this Jerusalem group, which had its origins in Qumran Essenism, but had for some time steered a course independent of Qumran Essenism and was already less narrow in its approach. As an ascetic he proved attractive to this disciplined, ascetic community and served to link them to the even greater openness of Jesus' ministry.

 

The unnamed disciple in 1:35-42, who transfers his allegiance to Jesus at John the Baptist's command, may indeed be the Beloved Disciple himself.(25) In this case, the figure would not merely point to a Baptist-associated group which was responsible for the early transmission of Johannine tradition but would identify the Beloved Disciple as a definite individual who had been associated with the Baptist. It would not be unreasonable to assume, in view of the claim for the Beloved Disciple's singular qualification as witness (21: 20-24), that the unnamed disciple here is indeed he. The Beloved Disciple would then be both the first and last disciple to be mentioned in the Gospel, as is Peter in Mark's Gospel.(26) A natural explanation for the complete silence concerning his identity would be that only later in the narrative will he be introduced as the one who dined at Jesus' breast (13: 23) and hence as the disciple whom Jesus loved. However, the state of affairs here may be more complex. At 21: 2, two unnamed disciples appear, one of whom is later identified as the Beloved Disciple (21:20). The unnamed figure of 1:35-42 may be this (or another) anonymous figure.

 

To anticipate the later argument of this piece, the silence concerning these figures may have something to do with the kind of religious group from which they were drawn. There may be a hint, in the avoidance of names, of religious humility, of the deliberate submergence of the individual within the group or his subordination to a spiritual master. If these figures have something to do with the ascetic quarter which we will identify in Jerusalem below, their non-identification may reflect the religious discipline of this community. In this case, the unnamed disciple of 1:35-42 may not be the Beloved Disciple but a member or associate of his group in Jerusalem. As a subordinate member in particular, his witness may have been deliberately subsumed, by nonidentification, under the witness of the Beloved Disciple. We will later identify the Beloved Disciple as a leading figure in this Jerusalem group--possibly the leader. It may have been appropriate to transmit the witness of a member of his community under his testimony alone. To subsume the witness of a subordinate member of his community under his testimony was to give it sufficient and appropriate credentials.

 

The Beloved Disciple himself apparently preferred to be identified through the anonymous dignity of dining at Jesus' breast, perhaps in line with the same ethos of humility, although he was, as we shall see, probably the host who entertained Jesus at the meal. Whether the unnamed disciple of 1:35-42 is the Beloved Disciple himself or an associate, his connection with the Baptist is a factor we must take into account in describing the various influences which bore upon and defined the Beloved Disciple's original Jerusalem community.

4. The connection of the Johannine tradition, and possibly of the Beloved Disciple himself, to the High Priestly aristocracy, and the interest of the Gospel in the Temple environs and ritual. At John 18:15-17 an unnamed disciple, often identified with the `disciple whom Jesus loved',(27) follows Jesus into the premises of the high priest's house, later returning to speak with the `maid who kept the door' and gain access for Peter also.

 

Only the Fourth Gospel records the name of the high priest's servant Malchus (18:10), and knows that the man who later accused Peter of an association with Jesus was also a servant of the high priest, and a kinsman of Malchus (18:26). The unnamed disciple was `known' ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) to the high priest (18:15, 16); [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] has occasionally been taken to imply that the disciple was a kinsman of the high priest, a meaning which the adjective can definitely carry.(28) If it is perhaps wiser not to take the word alone as proof of kinship, it certainly means in its context `familiar friend',(29) which R. H. Strachan took to imply that the disciple `had a fairly intimate standing with Caiaphas and his entourage'.(30) The Beloved Disciple was at least one of the familiar friends of the high priestly family, the circle within which the reciprocal obligations of friendship applied.(31) Hence his standing with the family was sufficient to lead servants to comply with his requests.

 

The high priesthood represented the top of the Jewish social ladder. Thus we are confronted with a remarkable insight into the social following of Jesus, which has some parallel in the stories of the secret disciples Nicodemus (cf. 3:1-2) and Joseph of Arimathaea (19:38; only John is aware of Joseph's secret discipleship). The Fourth Gospel shows particular knowledge of the high-priestly clan, uniquely informing us that Annas was the father-in-law of Caiaphas (18:13).(32) Only the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus was first interrogated, after his arrest, by Annas (18:13-24). Given that Annas, high priest AD 6-15, was succeeded in this office by five sons, as Josephus informs us,(33) as well as by his son-in-law, the Fourth Gospel is correct to suggest that Annas retained great influence.(34) We are also indebted to the Fourth Gospel for a unique and, though disputed, probably correct notice that the Sanhedrin was not competent to pass the death sentence on Jesus (18:31).(35)

 

F. C. Burkitt identified the unknown disciple of 18:15-16 as the Beloved Disciple, deduced from his acquaintance with the high priest that the Beloved Disciple was a Sadducee, and made the acute observation that the word `Sadducee' never appears in John, a fact which contrasts with its seven occurrences in Matthew.(36) Burkitt's view that the term was avoided because it represented an unacceptable `nickname' may require revision, however. Matthew regards the Sadducees as a religious group uniformly opposed to Jesus.(37) If the tradition behind the Fourth Gospel stemmed from someone who was himself a Sadducee or was closely associated with the Sadducees, he would be unwilling to use the party-description of opponents of Jesus, since this would portray `Sadducees' as undifferentiated in their opposition to Jesus. The author of Acts has it that Sadducees believe in neither `angel nor spirit' ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Acts 23:8).

 

This text should possibly not be pressed to indicate the absolute exclusion of the existence of non-material entities apart from God, since the Pentateuch, which the Sadducees held as authoritative, includes appearances of angels.(38) This element of Sadducean conservatism appears to indicate resistance against the developed angelology and demonology of the post-exilic period, which would naturally have extended to reluctance over associated emphases in religious practice, including exorcism. While two angels appear at the tomb in John 22:22, it is a remarkable feature of the Fourth Gospel that Jesus is nowhere portrayed as an exorcist, in marked contrast to the Synoptic tradition.

 

A particular connection in the Fourth Gospel to Jerusalem, and possibly to the priesthood, may be suggested by the Gospel's familiarity with the Temple precincts. This Gospel knows that Solomon's Portico, on the East side of the Court of the Gentiles, was a sheltered spot in winter, and writes with obvious familiarity: `It was the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the Portico of Solomon' (10:22-23). He also knows the Temple treasury in the Court of Women (8:20). He sets Jesus' self-identification as the `light of the world' (8:12) in this court, knowing that here stood the great candelabra which was ceremonially lit during the feast of Tabernacles, the setting which continues from 7:2 (cf. 7:10, 37).

 

Similarly, the libations brought from Siloam to the altar at Tabernacles provide the setting for Jesus' appeal, on `the last day of the feast', `If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink' (7:37-38). While these details would be known to any regular worshipper at the Temple, we must note that this particular, extensive concern for the Temple and its ceremonial in the Fourth Gospel stands in marked contrast to the more limited attention the Temple receives in the Synoptic tradition. This contrast must interest us, since we wish to bring into clear focus some of the larger dimensions of the differences between the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptic tradition.

 

It would be most natural if the person or persons behind the Johannine interest in the Temple were priests. This point may be made in another way. Since the priests formed a numerically and religiously significant element in the population of Palestine, there is every chance that at least a few priests took an interest in Jesus (cf. Acts 6:7). Who, of all the figures who appear sympathetic to Jesus in the New Testament, is most likely to have been a priest? Surely the Beloved Disciple is the most likely, since he appears to be at the fount of the tradition behind a Gospel peculiarly interested in the Temple. If it is incorrect to identify the unnamed figure of 18:15-16 with the Beloved Disciple himself,(39) this figure's link to the high priest nonetheless points to an association of the Beloved Disciple's group with the high priest. His witness is in literary terms subsumed under the witness of the Beloved Disciple, which suggests, as with the unnamed disciple of 1:35-42 discussed above, an association with the Beloved Disciple's group.

 

As is well known, Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, when writing to Victor of Rome C. AD 191 during the paschal controversy, held that the Beloved Disciple had officiated as high priest. He wrote of `John, who leant against the Lord's breast, and became a priest ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), having worn the [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].(40) The term [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] indicates a part of the high-priestly regalia, either `the whole of the high priest's crown or that part of it which formed a band across the forehead and on which the tetragrammeton was engraved'.(41) The historical value of Polycrates' notice is disputed.(42) Richard Bauckham has proposed that the tradition that the Beloved Disciple wore the high-priestly plate or crown, and thus officiated as high priest, `is neither metaphorical nor historical, but exegetical,' a piece of exegesis which (on the basis of [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in John 18:15) identified the Beloved Disciple with the John who appears after Annas and Caiaphas, and is followed by Alexander, in the list of figures of high-priestly family in Acts 4:6. Bauckham notes that it was common practice for early Christian exegetes to identify figures in New Testament writings who bore the same name, and points to Polycrates' identification earlier in the present passage of Philip the apostle with Philip the evangelist.(43)

 

Bauckham has here brought considerable light on Polycrates' assertion; indeed, he may have completely solved the problem which it raises. However, the identification of a supporter of Jesus and author of a Gospel with a member of the Sadducean group who early in Acts from the early Christian community's most trenchant opponents may remain for some surprising. For Polycrates to have identified the two Christian Philips, for example, both presumably mobile preachers, has a certain logic to it, albeit according to a principle of interpretation which functioned as a sort of exegetically sharp but historically half-blunt Occam's razor. Polycrates may have made the identification on the basis of his knowledge of the Fourth Gospel and especially John 18:15 alone. It is also possible, however, that Polycrates felt confident to make this identification because he had other traditions concerning the high-priestly associations of the Beloved Disciple (John 18:15 may have been a constant source of questions from the faithful), or because he at least knew from the abiding knowledge about this figure, especially his rank within the Jerusalem elite, that it was quite plausible that he had stood alongside Annas and Caiaphas as they examined Peter and John the son of Zebedee.

 

Polycrates may be applying a typical exegetical method, but not without some kind of genuine historical sense for the materials with which he had to do. This is not to say that Polycrates' identification was historically accurate; what remains interesting is that it was for him historically plausible. His claims may not deserve to be taken completely at face value, but may contain nonetheless some independent witness for the Sadducean connections of the Beloved Disciple.(44)

5. The Beloved Disciple's role as the regular host of Jesus when he visited Jerusalem, and his host at the Last Supper. D. E. H. Whiteley, who supported the idea of a Sadducean connection with the Fourth Gospel(45) also pointed to the opinion of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) that the author of the Fourth Gospel was'... a dweller in Jerusalem and wrote: `I am strongly convinced by the conjecture of those who think that Christ held the (last) Supper in his, the Jerusalemite's house'.(46) Whiteley followed the explanations of seating arrangements at Jewish meals offered by Strack-Billerbeck,(47) and engagingly deduced that the Beloved Disciple was the host at the Last Supper:(48)

 

... at a formal meal the host reclined on his left arm, as they [the guests] all did, in the centre of a rough horse-shoe. The guest of honour, in this case Jesus, reclined to the left of his host, and the guest next in precedence to the right of his host. Because the `placings' overlapped, each reclined in the `bosom' ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) of the person on his left. In 13:23 we read that in the [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] there reclined one of his disciples whom he loved, presumably his host. Peter, reclining to the right of his host, beckoned to him to ask Jesus who it was that was going to betray him as Jesus had prophesied in 13:21 above. In answer to his host's question, presumably whispered, Jesus answered that it was the disciple to whom he would give the sop, [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], which he would dip, [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. It would be much easier for Jesus to do so without attracting attention if Judas, being treasurer of the twelve, and therefore counting as third in precedence, after Jesus and Peter, were reclining in the third most honourable place, to the left of his master.

 

Jesus himself does not seem to have been the host. If he had been, Peter would be to Jesus' left,(49) the Beloved Disciple presumably to his right (again, therefore, in the `bosom' of Jesus). In this situation Peter would have to lean across Jesus, absurdly, to ask his question of the Beloved Disciple. Judas could also not be seated next to Jesus, since Jesus reclines between Peter and the Beloved disciple.(50) Whiteley's argument has a certain neatness, but cannot be taken on its own as absolute proof that the Beloved Disciple was host at the meal. However, given the overall case for a special connection of the Beloved Disciple to Jerusalem, it is not implausible that he was a contact of the Galilean preacher in the capital and played host to Jesus and the disciple-group, so Whiteley's argument may be allowed a certain force.

 

Regular feasts punctuate the Fourth Gospel's progress, in marked contrast to the Synoptic tradition. Jesus, a pious Galilean Jew, would most likely have visited Jerusalem regularly at the pilgrimage feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. The Passover had to be eaten within the city. It would be natural for a regular pilgrim to Jerusalem to develop particular acquaintances, and, especially in view of the considerable demand for eating venues, make regular use of a particular guest-facility, at least for the Passover meal. The tradition of the Fourth Gospel, which has regular visits of Jesus to Jerusalem, seems in this detail to give us useful extra historical information about Jesus, superior to the Synoptic tradition, with its simpler arrangement of the Jesus tradition as a journey, ending in Jerusalem, which is merely the prelude to Jesus' passion at the climax of the story.

 

The description of how Jesus directs his disciples to find the room of the Last Supper in both Mark and Luke, however, shows that he is familiar with the dimensions and furnishings of a particular room: note the [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] of which Jesus speaks at Mark 14:15 and Luke 22:12. The precision of the description suggests that Jesus has probably seen this room before. The familiarity implied by the Synoptic accounts supports the Johannine view of Jesus' regular visits and legitimates the combination of the Johannine and Synoptic traditions in the historical investigation of these premises. That in his message to the master of the house through the disciples Jesus describes himself merely as [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and uses an unexpected genitive in referring to the room concerned ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) also confirms his familiarity with this person and location (14:15). As we have noted, it is likely that Jesus, as a pious Jew, had stayed many times in or close to Jerusalem for all the three pilgrimage feasts, and must have eaten the passover lamb many times in Jerusalem. Hence it is entirely likely that Jesus had eaten in this room before. It may have been his regular place for eating the Passover. This observation holds regardless of whether Jesus' Last Supper was a passover meal or not.(51)

 

Similarly, the means Jesus uses to direct his disciples to this room, meeting and following a man carrying a jar of water to the house (Mark 14:13, Luke 22:11) suggests some sort of familiarity on his part with the house and its master. We will have cause later to return to this enigmatic means of finding the house. For the present, it suffices to say that it too would be very naturally explained by a liaison of some duration between Jesus and the master of the house.(52) Furthermore, only a long-term familiarity of Jesus with his host at the Last Supper can explain how this figure, seemingly a Jerusalem inhabitant rather than a member of the travelling party, is able to play a major role at an important meal of the disciple-group at the point when it faces its greatest crisis, the impending arrest of Jesus.

We may now draw together the various threads of our investigation so far. The Beloved Disciple appears to have been a regular host of Jesus in Jerusalem when he travelled to Jerusalem for the feasts.(53) He was probably a priest resident in Jerusalem who, after providing the room in which the Last Supper was eaten, subsequently allowed these premises in Jerusalem to be taken over by the disciples, thus enabling their group to take root in Jerusalem. While this picture of the Beloved Disciple plausibly accounts for various aspects of his role in relation to Jesus and several features of the Fourth Gospel, certain tensions between the Beloved Disciple's `socio-political' connections remain unexplained:

 

1. John the Baptist was probably not so close to Qumran as would be required had he been the sole mediator of Essene dualistic ideas to the tradition behind the Fourth Gospel. Nevertheless, the Beloved Disciple seems both to have had some kind of association with the Baptist and to draw heavily on the ideas of Qumran.

 

2. The Beloved Disciple himself was most likely the principal source of a theological inheritance from Qumran in a sector of early Christianity. But he or his immediate associates in Jerusalem seem also to have had close links with the Sadducean hierarchy, to whom the Qumran community, settled at their desert site at the time of Jesus and John the Baptist, cannot have been close. The Beloved Disciple therefore appears almost to bridge within his own person these two Jewish `sects', divided over the issue of who should control the Temple.

 

3. Furthermore, the association of the Beloved Disciple or figures very close to him with both the Baptist and the Sadducean hierarchy is surprising. The Sadducean hierarchy probably felt threatened by the Baptist's preparedness to criticize the political establishment with which they were so closely identified. One would also not naturally expect an associate of the powerful and wealthy high priestly Jerusalem aristocracy to have an interest in the strongly ascetic Baptist.(54) In socio-political terms, the Beloved Disciple seems to have connections with both the most powerful, established group in Palestinian Judaism, and a popular movement sharply critical of the political status quo.

 

The Beloved Disciple therefore stands as a linking figure in a three-pointed configuration of associations between the Baptist (and later Jesus), the Sadducean hierarchy, and an Essenism close to that of Qumran. In the following, a hypothetical life-setting for the Jerusalem tradition behind the Fourth Gospel will be proposed. The Beloved Disciple will be located, where he must belong, as the centre of a linkage between an inheritance from Qumran, a connection with the Sadducean aristocracy, and an association with the baptising movements of John the Baptist and Jesus. It will be argued that the Beloved Disciple was connected with an ascetic quarter which can be localized to a site on the southwest hill of Jerusalem. This group existed before the events of Easter and Pentecost, and derived from the occupation of the site up to c. AD 6 by the Essenes of Qumran.

 

The group had definite links with the Sadducean aristocracy, as had the Qumran Essenes when previously located on the site, but probably had no continuing link with the reestablished community at Qumran. It will be suggested that this group first responded to the Judaean preaching of John the Baptist, and, thus prepared for its association with Jesus, accommodated him on his visits to Jerusalem. The group exerted evident influence on the social form of the nascent church as reported in Acts. In the person of the Beloved Disciple its distinctive theology and religious discipline was brought to bear on the story of Jesus, and ultimately contributed much to the distinctive character of the presentation of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel.(55)

 

II. THE ASCETIC QUARTER ON THE SOUTHWEST HILL OF JERUSALEM

 

Bargil Pixner, who teaches at the Dormition Abbey on the southwest hill in Jerusalem, has since 1976 argued that in New Testament times there was an `Essene' quarter in Jerusalem, on the southwest hill.(56) This paper employs a modified form of his hypothesis, since there are reasons to believe that at the time of the ministry of Jesus this community was no longer in intimate association with the Essenes of Qumran, as it had been some twenty years or more earlier. Because of this discernible period of independent development, the present article deliberately speaks only of an ascetic quarter (albeit occupied by a splinter originally from Qumran Essenism), rather than an Essene quarter, in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.(57)

 

Both Josephus and Philo imply that the Essenes had settlements in every significant centre of population in Palestine.(58) The unique sanctity of the holy city certainly suggests that we might expect to find more than a few Essenes there. The Damascus Rule prescribes that `No man shall sleep with a woman in the city of the Sanctuary, to defile the city ...' (CD XII.I).(59) The War Scroll from Qumran specifically mentions a `congregation in Jerusalem' (IQM III.II), but the reference is difficult to construe because it is part of the plan for the expected eschatological conflict.(60) Josephus refers to a `gate of the Essenes' in Jerusalem, in the southwestern corner of the city wall on the southwest hill (BJ 5.4.2 [sections] 145). Rainer Riesner(61) has drawn attention to the opinion in the last century of the pioneering critical historian of ancient Judaism, Emil Schurer. He wrote, on the basis of the notices of the Essenes in the Greek sources then available:

 

There were certainly Essenes in Jerusalem, where they frequently make an appearance in history, and where a gate was named after them, probably because the house of the order was behind it.(62)

 

The line of the southern wall of Jerusalem was traced by F. J. Bliss in 1894, nine years after the first edition of Schurer's great work. In the section of the wall which ran northwest-southeast across the southwest extremity of the hill, as the wall turned the corner of the city, Bliss uncovered the successively-laid thresholds of an ancient gate, towards the southeastern end of this section of the wall, immediately before the wall turns to run eastwards towards Siloam.(63) The location corresponded to Josephus' description. B. Pixner, D. Chen, and S. Margalit have uncovered afresh this section of the wall, including the thresholds which Bliss originally found.

 

A variety of dating techniques show that the thresholds are later additions to a Hasmonean wall. The first dates from the early Herodian period.(64) Mathias Delcor has noted that the positioning of the gate, above the `veritable precipice' of Gehinnom, is unexpected and suggests that the gate may have had somewhat unusual origins.(65) It is most likely that the `Essene' gate would have received its name from a settlement of Essenes located directly within the city-wall on the southwest hill at this point, as Scherer originally suggested. If there were Essenes in Jerusalem, it is not unlikely that they would locate themselves by a gate, in order to be able to leave the boundary of the holy city easily for reasons of purity. The designation of the entrance as the `Essene' gate could therefore also relate to its regular use by Essenes, as has sometimes been suggested, since it would be the point where Essenes would most frequently be seen entering and leaving the City.(66)

 

Some confirmation that the Essene gate was indeed named after a community of Essenes which had lived close by it comes from a further detail of Josephus' notice on the gate. He says that, starting from Herod's tower Hippicus to the north, the walls of the city first ran south, and `descended through the place called B [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to the gate of the Essenes', before turning east to define the southern boundary of the city. B. Pixner points out that B [GREEK TXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] was long ago reasoned by J. Schwarz to reflect the Aramaic ??, and thus to indicate a sanitary block,(67) an interpretation followed by G. Dalman.(68) Other explanations of the term are less convincing, e.g. that the fortress of Bethsura was meant, S. Merrill,(69) or the view of E. Robinson, who made the same linguistic deduction as Schwartz but related the term to the `Dung' gate.(70) As B. Pixner points out, the interpretation of Schwartz is strongly supported by a passage of the Temple Scroll (IIQTemple) from Qumran.

 

Yadin has argued for a connection between Josephus' reference to the Bethso and the prescription relating to the construction of the sanitary facility in the plan for the ideal organization of the Temple and Jerusalem (46.13-16).(71) This text mentions a distance of three thousand cubits (c.1.4 km) in connection with the building of the sanitary facility. Yadin's opinion of the location of the sanitary block according to the Temple scroll has varied. In his edition of the Temple scroll he understood this building to have a location in the ideal plan at a minimum distance of three thousand cubits from the city.(72) In a later work on the Temple Scroll, he held that the Essene gate and the sanitary block of the Temple Scroll, still identified with Josephus' Bethso, lay `in the Western section of the city wall ... close to each other'.(73) In an earlier work, written while working on the editing of the Temple Scroll, he located the Bethso two hundred metres to the northwest of the city, a decision based on a different but unexplained understanding of the Temple Scroll and impossible to reconcile with Josephus' location of the Bethso close to the course of the wall, as the last significant station before the Essene gate.

 

As J. A. Emerton has emphasized, Josephus locates the Bethso in the immediate vicinity of the Essene gate, which cannot be reconciled with a reading of the Temple Scroll which locates the sanitary block at least three thousand cubits from the city.(74) The following translation of IIQTemple 46. 13-16 closely follows those offered by R. Riesner(75) and B. Pixner,(76) and resolves this difficulty:

 

(13) And they shall make a place of the hand outside the city, where they shall go (14) out in a north-westerly direction with reference to the city, and make roofed booths (??) with pits inside them, (15) into which the stool (??) can descend and will not be visible at any distance (16) from the city, three thousand cubits...

 

The appearance together of ?? as the term used for these buildings with ?? to describe their purpose in the following line means that this Temple Scroll text settles the meaning of Josephus' phrase. Close reading of the above passage shows that the distance of three thousand cubits is connected in the first instance with the preceding phrase about visibility, the question which determines the radius within which a sanitary facility must be roofed. The point of the text is that any sanitary facility within three thousand cubits of the city must be roofed, in order that the rays of the deity, who is resident within the city, should not be offended.(77)

 

The centrality of the concern that what is unclean should not be visible is based on the Deuteronomic regulation for camp-sanitation on which Essene practice was based; God who walks in the midst the camp should not `see anything indecent among you' (23:14). Josephus explains that the Essenes carefully spread their garments around them `so as not to offend the rays of God', by which Josephus clearly means the light of the sun, in some sense understood by the Essenes as the light of God.(78) It appears that for the authors of the Temple Scroll, God dwelling within the city has replaced the light of the sun, as for the author of the book of Revelation, for whom `the city has no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the lamb', with the result that the city into which nothing unclean enters knows no night (21:22,25,27).

 

The distance of three thousand cubits defines not the distance of the construction from the city, but the distance within which any such construction must be roofed, and within which anything else unclean may not be allowed to be visible. The Temple Scroll ideology is that nothing unclean may be allowed within the city, and nothing unclean may be allowed to be visible within a radius of three thousand cubits outside the city.

 

Since we learn from Josephus of only one Bethso around the walls of Jerusalem, all the Essenes in Jerusalem who originally gave the Bethso its name seem to have dwelt together in the vicinity of the Essene gate, regularly passing out of the city in this area to walk to their sanitary block out of respect for the holiness of the city. Josephus mention of the Bethso on the course of the wall close to the Essene Gate thus confirms that the gate originally received its name from a community of Essenes living in the vicinity. From Josephus' description there arises the picture of an ascetic community intensely concerned for the sanctity of the Holy City, who dwell within the walls but may leave the boundary of the city at a moment's notice in order to avoid defiling it.

 

A terrace lies outside the wall, someway back along the wall to the northwest from the gate, below the scarp on which the wall rests at this point. In 1875, C. Conder took various cuttings in the rock of the scarp above the terrace to indicate a roofed construction outside the wall, built on the terrace. He suggested that the construction had been a stable, identifying a channel cut into the rock as a `hewn trough'.(79) This roofed establishment can now be seen to have been the buildings of a sanitary block such as that for which the Temple Scroll legislates. A further detail of the Temple Scroll specifications coheres with the topography of the site. As noted above, the section of the wall at this comer of the city ran northwest to southeast.

 

The Essene gate itself is towards the southeastern extremity of this section of the wall. About thirty metres back to the northwest along the wall from the Essene gate is a small opening in the wall which appears to have formed a minor and perhaps private entry and exit point; some seventy metres further along the wall in the same northwesterly direction begins the terrace with Condor's cuttings, an area which extends for about a further forty metres along the wall.(80) Thus anyone in the area of the upper city wishing to reach the terrace would leave by either the Essene gate or the `private' exit and turn immediately to walk in a northwesterly direction alongside the wall until they reached the terrace. The reference to the northwest in IIQTemple 46.14 has been translated above as relating to the direction of travel on leaving the city (??, `to the northwest with reference to the city') rather than indicating the compass-bearing on which the Bethso lies with reference to the centre of the city. This understanding, combined with reading the three thousand cubits as the radius within which nothing unclean may be visible outside the city, allows Josephus, the Temple Scroll, and the topography around the Essene gate to be read together and resolves Yadin's difficulties over locating the Bethso. The copy of the Temple Scroll which we possess is palaeographically dated to the Herodian period. It is particularly significant that this text can be read in a way consistent with the topography of this site since, as we will see in the following section, the Qumran Essenes were brought by the politics of Herod the Great to Jerusalem.

 

Pixner notes a number of cisterns and ritual baths hewn in the rock within the wall, forming a rough semi-circular arc against the wall which he suggests defines the perimeter of the area of the Essene Quarter.(81) The `private' opening leads into this area. Outside the wall immediately to the northwest of the `private' opening are a further ritual bath and cistern, the ritual bath closer to the Bethso terrace. The layout is appropriate. Anyone returning from the Bethso would have been able to ritually cleanse himself in the bath before passing by the cistern which fed the bath (which meant that the cistern was in no danger of ritual contamination) and into the city by the `private' entrance or by the Essene gate.(82)

 

III. THE ASCETIC QUARTER IN JERUSALEM FLOURISHED DURING THE REIGN OF HEROD THE GREAT

 

Excavations at Qumran show that the site of the monastic `headquarters' of Essenism there was uninhabited from about 40-37 BC to somewhere between 4 BC and AD 6.(83) The presence of (rare) coins of Antigonus (40-37 BC) demonstrate that the previous phase of occupation persisted into Antigonus' reign. The timing of the abandonment of the Qumran site closely coincides with the archaeological evidence dating the construction of the Essene gate to the early Herodian period. This strongly suggests that during their absence from the desert site, the Essenes of Qumran moved to Jerusalem and established their quarter on the southwest hill. R. De Vaux made the suggestion that the fire which terminates the desert occupation might have been the result of natural catastrophe, if it can be assumed to have coincided with the earthquake Of 31 BC, the destructive effects of which may be observed at the site.(84)

 

J. T. Milik observed that the archaeological evidence is ambiguous as to the chronological order of fire and earthquake, but that there were few fireplaces on the site, and that the thick layer of ash rather suggests a deliberate burning down of the whole building.(85) As J. H. Charlesworth observes, De Vaux only suggested destruction by a natural catastrophe as the `simplest' hypothesis. Charlesworth suggests that the site may have been destroyed by the Parthians during their invasion of Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine in 40-39 BC,(86) but it cannot be assumed that the Parthian invaders would have burnt the site without reason. To ask who may have destroyed the Qumran settlement, and for what reason, leads us to an issue crucial for understanding the relations between the rulers of Judaea and the Essenes of Qumran, and the timing and purpose of the move of the Qumran Essenes to Jerusalem.

What grounds might there have been in this period for the destruction? The Parthians installed their protege, the Hasmonean Antigonus, as king. His rule lasted until his ejection by Herod, the client of Rome,(87) who eventually brought to a close more than two decades of severe disturbance in the region. It is possible that Antigonus had a hand in the destruction at Qumran, given his first action as king: when his uncle Hyrcanus II was delivered to him by the Parthians, Antigonus had Hyrcanus' ears cut off (or, in the more gruesome version of the story, bit them with his own teeth) so that Hyrcanus would be permanently disqualified from occupying the office of high priest.(88) Hyrcanus had operated as high priest and latterly also as ethnarch under the Roman governor of Syria.(89)

 

The prestige of the Hasmonean Antigonus depended not only on his occupation of the throne, but also on his tenure of the high priesthood. Kings of his dynasty had been high priests since Jonathan Maccabacus had accepted the high priesthood from Demetrius I of Syria in 152 BC. The continued viable claim of a former high priest presented a threat to Antigonus. To disable Hyrcanus from that office was a necessary expedient to secure Antigonus' precarious throne.

 

The occupants of the Dead Sea settlement professed loyalty to the authentic `Sons of Zadok, the priests' (1QS V.9), that is, to Zadokite high priests, whom the Hasmoneans had ejected. Their long-stated opposition to the Hasmonean family's tenure of the high priesthood, if proclaimed with less tact than the turbulent times demanded, may have led Antigonus also to act against the Qumran Essenes. Cautious about any who were disloyal to him in Palestine as he struggled to resist the campaign of Herod, perhaps even provoked by an optimistic delegation to the Parthians on behalf of the Zadokite cause, Antigonus may have destroyed their desert premises. The site at Qumran was not reoccupied until some time during the reign of Herod the Great's son, Herod Archelaus (4 BC-AD 6).

Whether or not concerns over loyalty to the Zadokite high priesthood may have resulted in the destruction of the Essene site at Qumran, it is certain that concerns over the high priesthood determined Jerusalem as the next site for the Essene headquarters. According to Josephus, Herod `held the Essenes in great honour, and thought more highly of them than their mortal nature required'. The reason was supposedly the prophecy, by an Essene prophet called Menahem, of Herod's future rise to power, while the king was yet a boy. When Herod was `at the height of his power' he called Menahem for an audience to thank him, and `held, from that time on, the Essenes in high esteem'.(90)

 

Herod's innocent-sounding expression of thanks apparently dates to the period of stability and prosperity 25-13 BC.(91) There are deeper grounds for the wily Herod's friendliness toward the Essenes, arising from Herod's early struggle to wrest and retain power from the Hasmonean dynasty, which was to involve him in the ruthless slaughter of most of the Hasmonean clan. The Essenes were a group whose longstanding loyalty to the ideal of a Zadokite high priesthood gave them common cause with Herod against the Hasmoneans. The loyal presence in Jerusalem of these natural allies could only bolster Herod's establishment.(92) We can also surmize, on the basis of the Temple Scroll from Qumran, that the possibility of gaining influence in Herod's marvellous reconstruction of the Temple would prove extremely attractive to Essenes formerly grouped around Qumran.

 

Some Qumran Essenes may have considered it the Temple hoped for in the Temple Scroll.(93) By associating themselves with Herod's Temple, the Qumran Essenes would pay Herod a favour in return: their reputation as the most rigorously pious group held the esteem of the populace, and could only add prestige to Herod's regime if centred on his capital and temple, perhaps as a final authentication of his greatest project to win the favour of the Jewish populace.

Thus Herod appears to have exploited inner-Jewish rivalries to his own advantage. However, the alliance of the Essenes with his house seems to have broken down under Herod's son Archelaus. According to Josephus, the Essene prophet Simon interpreted a dream of Archelaus as pointing to his limited reign and final downfall.(94) The story points to the passing of Essene favour from the Herodian dynasty,(95) and is consistent with the archaeological evidence for the resettlement of the Qumran site during Archelaus' reign. It is hardly surprising that the Essenes did not succeed in sustaining an alliance with Archelaus, the most brutal and unloved of the Herods.(96)

 

IV. THE ASSOCIATION OF THE ASCETIC QUARTER WITH THE SADDUCEAN HIGH PRIESTLY ARISTOCRACY

 

The ascetic quarter in Jerusalem was a point where influences from Qumran met with the powerful high priestly Sadducean families. The political necessities of Herod's reign explain this confluence. The prestige of the Hasmoneans, the creators of the now-lost Jewish independence, made Herod the Great's task of asserting his rule against the older dynasty difficult.(97) Herod celebrated his accession by ruthlessly purging the Jerusalem aristocracy of any who remained loyal to the Hasmonean cause,(98) despoiling the rich families of the kingdom, killing forty-five of the most wealthy and eminent men of Jerusalem,(99) and all bar one member of the Sanhedrin.(100) Herod's slaughter and ousting of the aristocrats who had supported the king-priest Antigonus and welcomed the Parthians as liberators from the might of Rome means that we cannot assume simple continuity between the Sadducean hierarchy which led the Sanhedrin in Herodian times and the high priestly circles which wielded power in Jerusalem prior to Herod's accession.

 

Ernst Bammel has pointed out that central to Herod's policy was his own inability, as an Idumaean and hence not even a member of an ordinary Jewish priestly family, to take to himself the high priesthood:(101)

... so hatte Herodes, nichtpriesterlicher, ja nichtjudischer Abstammung, wie er war, der Hasmonaischen Ordnung gegenuber nichts selbst entgegenzusetzen. Wollte er den Hasmonaern, die sich durchgesetzt hatten und die sich gerade in den Umbruchsjahren wieder der Volksgunst erfreuten, Jos. Ant. 15 [sections] 52, das Wasser abgraben, so konnte er das nur bewerkstelligen, wenn er die zweifelhafte Legitimitat der Hasmonaer herausstellte und ihnen Hochpriester eigener Wahl gegenuberstellte, an deren Makellosigkeit, im kultischen Sinne, nicht zu deuteln war, die sich so von den Hasmonaern vorteilhaft abhoben und geeignet waren, der Aura, die these umgab, ein Widerpart zu sein.

 

A vacuum arose through Herod's eradication of the Hasmonean high priests, and those loyal to them, which he was unable to fill personally. This vacuum was partially filled by the entrance of the priestly community of Qumran to Jerusalem, outlined above. Herod had to create a priestly establishment for his Temple on which he could rely, and whose prestige would outweigh the popular desire for the return of the Hasmoneans. The natural move was to turn to the supporters of the older Zadokite high priestly lines which had been ejected by the Hasmoneans in their illegitimate seizure of the high priesthood.

 

From what we know of the history of those who claimed to be Zadokites, there seem at Herod's accession to power to have been three groupings:

 

1. Around 172 BC Onias IV, the heir of the Zadokite line, fled to Egypt after Antiochus had given the high priesthood to Alcimus. He was warmly received by Ptolemy VI Philometor, and established the Oniad cult-centre at Leontopolis, in the nome of Heliopolis.(102) The Septuagint changes the phrase `city of destruction' in Isa. 19: 18 to [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], referring the prophecy to Onias' temple at Leontopolis and suggestive of an emphasis on the Zadokite pedigree of the high priestly dynasty there.(103) The rival temple at Leontopolis persisted until c. AD 73, when it was closed by Lupus, the governor of Alexandria, on the order of Vespasian. Lupus' successor Paulinus stripped the temple of its treasures (104)

2. A second Zadokite group was linked to Qumran, which was loyal to `the sons of Zadok, the priests' (1QS V.9). The Qumran sect also had its beginnings with the early machinations over the high priesthood.(105) The founding of Qumran probably followed from Jonathan Maccabaeus' acceptance of the high priesthood, in 152 BC. Jonathan probably ejected an unknown acting high priest, who became the `Teacher of Righteousness'. (106) Josephus claims that the office of high priest was unoccupied from 159 to 152 BC, Ant. 20.10.3 [sections] 237. However, it is inconceivable that the Day of Atonement, at which the high priest had to officiate, went uncelebrated for so long. Either the name of the anti-Hasmonean `Teacher of Righteousness' was suppressed by Josephus himself, or it had been excised from the records which he used. S. H. Steckoll has discussed the archaeological parallels between Leontopolis and Qumran. Not all his points are persuasive, but the central tower or sanctuary structure at each establishment is a clear parallel.(107)

 

3. The full vowel in the second syllable of [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] shows a connection with the name ?? rather than merely with ??, `righteous one',(108) showing that the Sadducees claimed to be authentic Zadokites. Josephus clearly regards the Sadducees of John Hyrcanus' reign as the same party as the Sadducees of the first century AD. It therefore seems that, as we should expect, not all the powerful and landed Zadokite families joined Onias IV in Egypt at Leontopolis or the breakaway group which formed elements of the Hasidim into the Essene grouping linked with Qumran. Some Zadokite families submitted to Jonathan and remained in Jerusalem.

 

J. M. Baumgarten stressed the similarities between halakha attributed in Rabbinic sources to `Sadducees' and that of the Qumran document 4QMMT.(109) L. H. Schiffman has developed his suggestions, using `Sadducean' characteristics (which he also finds in the Temple Scroll) to oppose the `Essene' identity of the Qumran sect.(110) However, since hereditary `Zadokites' had splintered into three groupings, this position goes too far. The Qumran Essenes began with elements of the Hasidim who `sought God with a whole heart' and `for twenty years they were like blind men groping for the way' before being organized by the Zadokite `Teacher of Righteousness' into a coherent group (CD 1.3-13).(111) The foundation at Qumran had always been led by Zadokites. Hence the identifiable similarities with Sadducees to which Schiffman and Baumgarten point do not indicate that the Qumran group was not Essene. The Qumran Essenes and those identified in Greek sources as `Sadducees' were distinguishable groupings. However, their common Zadokite heritage, indicated by such similarities, does mean that under the right circumstances there could be rapprochements between them.

 

To which of the three groups above was Herod likely to turn? The `Sadducees' who had remained in Jerusalem and supported the Hasmonean cause were potentially disloyal; hence Herod had severely curtailed them in his purge on coming to power. As we have noted, those of this group who survived obviously transferred allegiance to Herod, accounting for Josephus' assumption of continuity between the Sadducees of earlier and later times. But these families were probably not allowed a predominant position in the Herodian period. We have seen above that the Qumran community gained entrance to Jerusalem during Herod's reign. This was perhaps due not only to their common opposition with Herod to the Hasmonean cause, but also to Herod's preparedness to install authentic Zadokite high priests in Jerusalem. It is most likely that Herod installed in Jerusalem high priests from amongst the families which had the greatest claim to legitimacy, the heirs of Onias IV in Egypt, who also became known as `Sadducees'.

 

Alexandra, daughter of Hyrcanus II (and mother-in-law of Herod) was able to prevail against Herod's first appointment to the high priesthood, the obscure Babylonian Ananel, and to have her son Aristobulus installed in his place.(112) Within a year Herod had arranged the drowning of the youth in the baths, and had reinstated Ananel,(113) an event which demonstrates the centrality to Herod's policy of ensuring a non-Hasmonean high priesthood. Josephus describes Ananel as being of `high priestly family'; Klausner suggested that Herod chose him because his family had better high priestly pedigree than the Hasmoneans, whom Herod wished to discredit.(114) J. Jeremias argued that Ananel was a Zadokite.(115)

 

In 47 BC the Zadokite Oniads were a group of significant military capability,(116) and were persuaded by Herod's father Antipater II to ally themselves with Caesar,(117) as had Antipater's own family previously. Herod seems to have installed these high priestly families of Egyptian Judaism in Jerusalem.(118) Ananel was succeeded by Jesus ben Phiabi. Phiabi/Phabi has variant forms both in Greek (including [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII](119) and in the Talmud (??) showing that its orthography was originally neither Greek, Hebrew, nor Aramaic. Samuel Krauss guessed that it was Egyptian.(120) A later high priest of this family group, Ismael ben Phiabi, may even have claimed descent from Phinehas.(121) Simon ben Boethus, high priest 24-5 BC, is known to have been an Egyptian.(122) Herod's marriage to his daughter, the second Mariamme, surely a dynastic association, suggests Simon's Zadokite lineage.(123) [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is better attested than [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] for Ananus or Annas ben Sethi,(124) first high priest (AD 6-15) of another clan, and is the Egyptian Seti. Camith (??) may also be Egyptian. Of the twenty-five high priests from Jesus ben Phiabi to the outbreak of war against Rome in AD 66, twenty can definitely be ascribed to these four clans,(125) confirming the domination of Egyptian families amongst the Sadducees from Herodian times.(126)

 

The Egyptian origins of the dominant Sadducean families after Herod's time confirms that Herod had turned to the clans of Leontopolis. By the installation of these legitimate Zadokite high priests he also drew the Essenes of Qumran to return to Jerusalem and ally themselves to his temple-establishment. The Herodian alliance was three-cornered: Herod himself, the Essenes of Qumran, and `Sadducees' drawn in particular from Egyptian Judaism.(127) The location of the Essenes' quarter in Jerusalem confirms this, for Herod allotted premises for it close to his own palace in the aristocratic upper city, close also to the Sadducean high priestly houses, which have in recent times been excavated in the upper city.(128) Herod's alliance with two priestly groups possessing great prestige and his rebuilding of the temple formed part of the same policy designed to emphasize the legitimacy of his reign through sponsorship of the most correct Jewish piety. The points of contact between the Temple Scroll and the architecture of Herod's temple support the thesis of intimate Essene involvement with the project.(129)

 

Magen Broshi's excavations on the summit of the southwest hill have shown that the area of the crest was resettled, after a period of abandonment, around the beginning of Herod's reign; the development of the area by Essenes and Sadducees mirrors Herod's coordination of the elements of Judaism loyal to Zadokite claims. The fine buildings on the eastern side of the excavations were probably a high priestly residence.(130) Here Essene ascetics were grouped close together with the Sadducean aristocracy, probably because these two combined to supervize and staff Herod's temple. Hence the ascetic quarter had intimate associations with the Sadducean aristocracy.

 

V. THE TRADITIONAL SITE OF THE UPPER ROOM

 

The possible relevance of the ascetic quarter on the southwest hill in Jerusalem to questions of Christian origins is suggested by its location in the immediate vicinity of the traditional site of the `upper room' (Acts 1:13, 2:1 [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Mark 14:15, Luke 22:12 [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), scene of the Last Supper, and gathering place of the post-Easter disciple-group and centre of the events of Pentecost. The oldest part of the present-day Cenacle church, the so-called `David's tomb', lies about one hundred and seventy-five metres to the north from the Essene gate, and has been thought to represent part of a pre-AD 70 Jewish-Christian synagogue.(131) It is, however, more likely to represent a corner-fragment of the `Church of Holy Sion' (Hagia Sion), constructed around AD 340.(132) This Church extended eastward from `David's Tomb' some one hundred metres, into the area which B. Pixner suggests was occupied by the Essene Quarter. The centre of Hagia Sion lies on the perimeter of this area. What weight can be given to the patristic tradition regarding the site of the upper room? The present author would regard it, perhaps alone of all the patristic traditions concerning holy sites in Jerusalem, as worthy of serious attention. William Sanday positively judged the tradition of the site:

 

... I believe that of all the most sacred sites it is the one that has the strongest evidence in its favour. Indeed, the evidence for it appears to me so strong that, for my own part, I think that I should be prepared to give it an unqualified adhesion.(133)

 

The most important patristic testimony to the site comes from Epiphanius of Salamis, who came from Palestine, and who wrote (C. AD 392) that Hadrian found a small Jewish-Christian church on the site on his tour of the East in AD 130:

 

`He found the whole city razed to the ground and the Temple of God trodden under foot, with the exception of a few buildings and of the little church of God, on the site where the disciples, returning after the ascension of the Saviour from Olivet, had gone up to the upper room, for there it had been built, that is to say in the quarter of Zion...'(134)

 

Is Epiphanius' report reliable? His reference to the church is incidental to the context, which speaks for its authenticity; the purpose of the passage is to introduce Aquila as a translator of the Scriptures. Hadrian's illness, and the tour of the East which he undertook as a result of his distress, lead into the account of the foundation of Aelia Capitolina, with which Aquila was involved, on the site of the razed city of Jerusalem. Any writer who sought to give an account of Aquila would have to turn to ancient tradition. Epiphanius' long and rambling account, typical of his style, appears to excerpt an earlier work which is recognizably a church-historical chronicle. The source appears to have centred on events in Jerusalem, so it is most likely a Palestinian chronicle. H. J. Lawlor argued that Epiphanius' account of the flight to Pella in the immediate context of this passage (De mens. et pond. 15) derived from Hegesippus,(135) whom Epiphanius is known to use frequently for his information on Palestinian Christianity.(136)

 

Hegesippus' anti-heretical chronicle represented virtually the standard work on the Jerusalem church, as can be seen from Eusebius' frequent dependence on him for information about Jerusalem Christianity.(137) Hegesippus had dedicated his life to the refutation of heresy by an investigation of the traditions of the church in each of its major centres, as preserved by the established episcopate in each place,(138) compiling a succession list of bishops for Rome,(139) and certainly making the succession in Jerusalem clear in his history of the Jerusalem church, a record which Epiphanius may use.(140)

 

Epiphanius' portrayal of Aquila in the present passage seems to echo Hegesippus' approach. The discipline of the church is the guiding principle. Aquila, an apostate from the Jerusalem community, went astray because of his perverse interest in astrology. Though the `teachers' rebuked him for his error, eventually he had to be expelled.(141) This approach is certainly not unique to Hegesippus, but the account of Hadrian's arrival in Jerusalem most likely stems from his work, the vade mecum on heresy and the Jerusalem church.(142) Hegesippus lived C. AD 115-85, and was a youth in Palestine at the time of Hadrian's visit.(143) After his travels he maintained intimate contact with the Jerusalem Church,(144) collecting the local tradition,(145) and even using Jewish oral tradition.(146)

 

Hegesippus is thus a reliable witness for local tradition concerning the site of the upper room around AD 130. There is some archaeological confirmation of the description of the hill at this time. M. Broshi has excavated substantial remains in the locality,(147) often reaching to the first floor,(148) with no remains above them from the period AD 70-130. These remains probably stood partially free in AD 130, matching the continuation of Epiphanius' account, which speak of `parts of houses in the neighbourhood of Zion'.(149)

How likely is it that the memory of the site of the upper room will have been preserved accurately through the period c. AD 70-130? The annalist Eutychius, patriarch of Alexandria in the tenth century, claims that Jewish Christians returned to Jerusalem in the fourth year of Vespasian (AD 72-73) following the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Rainer Riesner points out that the date of this apparent return makes some sense, suggesting as it does a certain normalization of relations after the last resistance of the Zealots, at Masada, was put down in this year.(150) Eutychius associates the return with the building of a church, and the election of Simon bar-Clopas.(151) Eutychius at least gives a plausible explanation of the origin of the church that was to be found on the site in AD 130.(152) Though we would be unwise to place great weight on Eutychius' late testimony, the early Christian historians do assume that from Simon's time onwards until the founding of Aelia Capitolina there was a Jewish-Christian presence in Jerusalem. Eusebius wrote that it was recorded `that there was a very important Christian church in Jerusalem, administered by Jews, which existed until the siege of the city under Hadrian'.(153) Elsewhere he appears to know of the resettlement of Jews in Jerusalem by the time of Bar-Cochba.(154)

 

Adolf Schlatter argued the case for a general resettlement of Jerusalem between the two wars with Rome, though his evidence, mainly Rabbinic, is not always convincing.(155) B. Lifshitz assumes with older opinion that Jerusalem lay in ruins till the foundation of Aelia Capitolina.(156) However, there are a number of quite credible Rabbinic accounts of scholars' pilgrimages to Jerusalem, to mourn the Temple, during the period.(157) The environs of the city also remained a treasured final resting place for Jews.(158) For the reliability of local memory we need not think of wholesale resettlement, merely of an ongoing attachment to the Holy City amongst Jewish Christians, which led to continuous contact with the city area, some erection of shelter, and commemorative salvage of the earlier centre of the Christian community. This is very much the picture which Epiphanius gives us, making his notice that the site of the upper room was remembered credible. The upper room location was most likely the central premises of the Christian community in Jerusalem throughout the period c. AD 33-67; its memory and recovery is more likely than that of the sites of single events in the life of Jesus (perhaps excepting that of the crucifixion), around which fanciful invention accrued in the era after Constantine's conversion.

 

In this connection it is extremely important to note that after James the Lord's brother and Simon bar-Clopas, a further relative of Jesus' own family, Judas Kyriakos, who lived into the reign of Trajan, figures in bishop-lists as the last Jewish Bishop of Jerusalem.(159) The relatives of Jesus are an identifiable group who may have had a strong interest in preserving the memory of the site from which James of Jerusalem exercized authority into the second century, when Judas continued to assert the family claim. For Jewish Christians after the destruction of the city to remember the site of their earlier centre, and to erect a simple building which helped to preserve knowledge of the site up to AD 1130, is hardly an unlikely occurrence.(160) Irenaeus writes that the Ebionite Jewish-Christians of his day `adore Jerusalem as if it were the house of God';(161) we may assume that, alongside mourning for the destruction of the Temple with their fellow-Jews, Jewish Christians kept alive the memory of the site of their own centre, replete as it must have been with many treasured memories.(162)

 

If the site of the upper room, the central location of earliest Jerusalem Christianity, can be localized to the area of Jerusalem where previously the Essenes of Qumran had established a Jerusalem quarter under Herod, we must ask whether there is any evidence to suggest a connection between these two communities, who appear to occupy the same site successively, with an interlude between. In the view of the present author, plausible confirmation of a connection is to be found through reflection upon the earliest Christian community of goods in Acts 2-6.

 

VI. THE ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY OF GOODS IN ACTS 2-6

 

The community of goods of earliest Jerusalem Christianity appears, from the portrait of Acts 2-6, to have been a characteristic feature of the first church in Jerusalem. However, since indications of formal property-sharing do not reappear in the New Testament period, nor in the history of the early church until the beginnings of Christian monasticism perhaps two centuries later, Luke's report is frequently treated with scepticism. The topographical coincidence of the site of the centre of earliest Jerusalem Christianity with the location of the dwelling place of the Qumran Essenes in Jerusalem c.36 BC-AD 6 suggests a different approach to this feature of earliest Christianity. The attribution of community of goods to the earliest Jerusalem church alone may imply that it derived from a local and limited influence on the Church in its earliest period.(163) There are, in fact, clear indications in Luke's report that linguistic usages and organizational procedures typical of the legislation for community of goods in the Rule of the Community from Qumran (IQS) were employed in the earliest Jerusalem church.

 

Luke twice states that members of the early Jerusalem community had `all things common' and, selling their possessions, donated the proceeds to the apostles (2:44-45; 4:32,34-35). These statements are usually regarded as of secondary historical value, being form-critically distinguishable as the author's stylized summarizing of reports of particular donations of property (4:36-5:11).(164) However, although the collection together of the information in the summary Of 2:42-47 is probably due to the author of Acts, it is likely that he based the reference to `all things common' at 2:44 on reliable source material. Max Wilcox observed that the preceding phrase, `All the believers were together', [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] reflects an idiom of the Rule of the Community meaning `they all belonged to the community', ?? (cf. IQS V.2). The Rule of the Community unusually employs the adverb ?? as a substantive meaning `the community', referring to a form of community-organization characterized by the formal sharing of possessions."(165) Since the following phrase in Acts 2:44 deals with precisely this subject, it appears that when the Semitic tradition passed into Greek (perhaps prior to Luke's reception of it), the technical sense of organized property-sharing inherent in the term ?? was preserved by the addition of the subsequent clause concerning `all things common', [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. Such reinforcement was required since the implication of community of property could not be expressed in Greek with the phrase [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] alone. A similar idiom lies behind a very difficult phrase at 2:47, `And daily the Lord added together those being saved'. Here [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] reflects the Qumran usage ??, meaning `to incorporate into the community' (IQS V-7).(166)

 

The difficult story of Ananias and Sapphira probably reveals employment of the process for incorporation into the community described in the Rule of the Community. The story is usually taken to contradict the view that there was any formal property-sharing in the earliest Jerusalem church, since Peter asserts at Acts 5:4 that Ananias was voluntarily transferring property to the community. His assets belonged to him as much after he sold up as before. However, that Ananias voluntarily chose to surrender his assets does not necessarily imply that no formal property-sharing group existed. There may, for example, have been a property-sharing element or sub-group within earliest Jerusalem Christianity, which the earliest believers could voluntarily enter. Essenism contained within one broad movement both formal property-sharing and more loosely organized communities, as the divergence in property legislation between the Rule of the Community and the Code of Damascus witnesses.

 

Anyone who wished to join a fully property-sharing Essene group went through a complex novitiate, at a point during which he entrusted his property to the group, though it remained legally his. It was held for him in a `blocked account' until his transition to full membership.(167) Since in the Palestinian cultural context this progressive entrance procedure was preferred to instantaneous assimilation into property-sharing groups, we must avoid assuming that Ananias was actually losing title to his property when he laid it at the feet of the apostles, or that he was undertaking a relatively spontaneous act of property-donation. Peter's response at 5:4 confirms Ananias' Essene-like candidature. His first phrase, `While it remained, did it not remain your own', refers to Ananias' full title to his assets prior to laying them at the apostles' feet. The present author has argued at length elsewhere that Peter's next words, `and after it was sold, it remained in your power', can refer only to the fact that Ananias retained legal title to his money after it was handed over, even though the community exercized practical control over it.(168) Although this procedure still allowed Ananias to receive back his assets and return to his former position, he unnecessarily attempted to deceive the community (5:3-4).(169)

 

A difficulty with the traditional understanding that Ananias' property-surrender bore no relation to any formal property sharing structures in the community is that it cannot give a precise explanation as to when and how Ananias committed himself to giving the whole sum, and could in consequence be accused of serious deception. The idea of a special vow of dedication in advance of sale, perhaps after the manner of a korban dedication to the temple treasury, made prior to the scene of Acts 5:1-11,(170) cannot be reconciled with Peter's insistence that the proceeds still belonged to Ananias as much after sale as before (5:4).

 

The scene itself records no special declaration on the part of Ananias, which probably implies that the acted ritual itself was unambiguous and constituted the mode of deception. It is often suggested that Ananias' sin was the pretentious seeking of the reputation and standing which others had won by donation of all their property, without reference to any `legal' community norm. In this case, going through the procedure of laying the sum before the apostles alone must have implied an absolute commitment. However, the severity of Peter's accusations (cf. 5:3-4, 9) and the couple's punishment appears excessive unless there was an established and generally understood norm of possessionless discipleship to which the couple had failed to conform. Jesus' call to `leave all' and follow him in discipleship(171) might form a basis for proposing such a generally understood norm, but in the early Jerusalem church such a lifestyle could no longer be based on Jesus' own charismatic call to follow him in peripatetic proclamation. Leaving house and home behind to follow Jesus was necessarily instantan-eous. However, renunciation may have been handled differently in the absence of Jesus, and in a religious community now settled in one place, especially if new influences came to bear on the family of Jesus' disciples in its new location.

 

Essene groups which practised community of goods must have employed a ritual act of surrender of property. This practice must have been nearly two centuries old, and widely understood, by the time of the post-Easter events. The act of renunciation was based on the explicit understanding that all the candidate's property must pass into the community's keeping at the point of entering provisional membership, although all property would be returned if the candidate decided to withdraw before final commitment. The implications and conditions of the act of renunciation would have been fully explained to candidates before the event and would have been well-understood by all who witnessed the ritual, in consequence of both the community's explicit instruction and general cultural understanding. If we hypothesize this kind of meaning and audience understanding of the procedure through which Ananias and Sapphira were passing, we can establish a precise explanation of how the couple deceived the community. To pass through the ritual without giving the full sum, even without a verbal declaration on the occasion that the sum constituted the full value of the sale, would constitute grave deception, since the ritual act indicated the intent to enter a life of complete renunciation, although the candidate's property remained his own until his final decision.(172)

 

There is an apparent contradiction in the third major Acts summary (5:11-14) between verses 13 and 14 (`None of the rest dared join them ... and more than ever believers were added to the Lord'). Daniel R. Schwartz has suggested that this contradiction points to the acceptance of a boundary between `inner' and `outer' groups of believers in earliest Jerusalem Christianity.(173) Rainer Riesner has suggested that Schwartz's interpretation supports an interpretation of Acts 5:4 which restricts the presence of formally organized community of property to an inner group within the early Jerusalem church. The `inner' group would contain those firmly committed to renunciation and community of property. Volunteers for this group were required to make unmitigated surrender of their property. The `outer' group represented an external membership of baptised believers who did not proceed to full integration into the apostles' property-sharing fellowship.(174)

 

Thus there seems to have been a sub-group within the earliest Christian community which held its property in common, a first-century Jewish practice elsewhere recorded only of the Essenes. Luke's account suggests that the earliest Christian community existed in some relation to the old ascetic quarter, which derived from the movement of the Essenes of Qumran to Jerusalem in the reign of Herod. Under the influence of this ascetic, property sharing community, the charismatic renunciation into which Jesus called certain individuals during his ministry was transformed into the legally constituted community of property of an inner group amongst the post-Easter disciples, gathered around the apostles who had earlier entered the life of renunciation, and employing terminology and the provisional entrance-procedure attested otherwise only in the Rule of the Community from Qumran.

 

VII. CONCLUSION: THE BELOVED DISCIPLE'S ROLE IN THE ASCETIC QUARTER AND ITS RESPONSE TO THE BAPTIST AND TO JESUS

 

The re-establishment of the Essene desert site at Qumran must have involved the departure to the desert of a large element, at least, of the population of the Essene quarter in Jerusalem. Later, at least one building in this site appears to pass into the possession of the Jerusalem Christian community in Acts. What group can have remained at the site, during the interim, to transmit organizational and theological influences into the earliest Christian community, and how had it developed in the interim?

 

The removal of many Essenes from the ascetic quarter to the desert site may have been hastened by the brutality of Archelaus, and a certain caprice in his appointment of high priests, but it seems to have been made certain by the coming of direct Roman rule in AD 6. Essenism in the following period felt the time was coming for a military confrontation with the Romans, developing `Zealot tendencies'(175) and producing the War Scroll with its plans for a military campaign.(176) As religious groups respond from their deepest convictions to radically altered circumstances, divisions may occur. Change may be accepted and accommodated, or regarded as compromise, and rejected. Varying priorities lead to varieties of response. The desert site at Qumran was re-occupied by those who felt unable to tolerate direct Roman rule, and perhaps also could not accept their diminishing influence on the power-structure in Jerusalem with the passing of Herod the Great, friend to the Essenes. Alliance past, Qumran now headed for revolt. Since to remain meant to accept a weakening position in the establishment and to submit to Roman rule at close quarters, if a splinter-group continued in Jerusalem it will have been quietist in its approach to politics and, perhaps, fundamentally engaged with the other worldly side of religion.

 

During the alliance of Qumran with Herod, the combination of devoted communal piety and a privileged part to play in Herod's Temple-establishment may have made Jerusalem Essenism attractive to wider circles of Jews than had previously been drawn to the most insular Essene way at Qumran.(177) After the passing of Herod, such Jews as had been attracted to the Jerusalem quarter during its period of greatest influence may certainly have found the harsher, separatist existence of the desert community unappealing. Thus, if a community remained on the site of the old Quarter, it would have embarked on a substantially different social and theological course from the Essenes of Qumran, with a membership which differed significantly in `average type' from the re-established Qumran community.

 

The coincidence of the patristic tradition on the site of the upper room with the location of the ascetic quarter and the evidence of the Acts community of goods together suggest a link between the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem with the Quarter. Furthermore, a plausible Sitz im Leben for the beginning of the Johannine tradition appears, in which three of the five factors outlined at the beginning of this paper immediately cohere. (I) The ascetic group was located in Jerusalem. (2) It was seeded from Qumran, and hence had a Qumranite theological inheritance. This theological inheritance from Qumran may have already undergone some modification in Jerusalem, since the ascetic quarter was substantially independent of Qumran for some two decades or more.

 

The Johannine tradition preserves a Christian version of that already modified inheritance. (3) The ascetic quarter had a long association with the Sadducean hierarchy, since Herod the Great had brought the Zadokites of Leontopolis and the Zadokite loyalists of Qumran together to the same site in Jerusalem, to form the priestly administration of his Temple. The professional association of the ascetic group with the Temple is reflected in the Fourth Gospel's interest in the Temple environs and ritual.

 

The combination of Sadducean links with a Qumranite inheritance at the roots of the Johannine tradition explains the apparent contradiction between the Beloved Disciple's associations with both the Sadducean aristocracy and the Baptist. While we would not expect a Sadducean aristocrat to attach himself to the ascetic Baptist, it is plausible that elements in the ascetic quarter would respond to the Baptist's preaching. The Beloved Disciple may himself have been of a Sadducean family (if John 18:15-16 is to be read in this way), or have been a more ordinary figure whose role in the community led to links with the high priestly clans or to links with those who had relatives amongst these clans. He himself or others of his community had also sought out the Baptist (John 1:35-42). As a quietist group, the community living in the quarter will have stressed its ascetic discipline and property-sharing as a righteous way of repentance pursued to hasten the coming of God's Messiah (cf. 1QS I-III).

 

The Baptist was an ascetic, whose theology centred on true repentance of heart, in anticipation of the working of God's deliverance through the Messiah. His practical advice centred on righteous dealings in matters of property (Luke 3:10-14). Matthew tells us that `Jerusalem and all Judaea and the region around the Jordan went out to him, and were baptised in the river Jordan, confessing their sins' (Matt. 3:5-6). The ascetic quarter had pursued a course independent of the community of Qumran, from which it originally derived, for some two decades or more. Such a relatively isolated course may have predisposed it to place a positive eschatological interpretation on the Baptist's activity. Thus we may account for factor (4) of those outlined at the beginning of this piece, the connection between the Johannine tradition and possibly the Beloved Disciple himself and the Baptist.

 

We find remarkable confirmation from Synoptic evidence of the hypothesis that the Jerusalemite Beloved Disciple was part of the ascetic quarter. Jesus' disciples were directed to find the room where they were to prepare the Last Supper by following a man who would approach them carrying a water jar. If the Beloved Disciple was the host at this meal, he was most likely the `master of the house' to whom the man would lead the disciples and who would provide the room (Mark 14:13-14, Luke 22:11-12). The enigmatic character of Jesus' directions has frequently engaged commentators. For the signal to have worked, it must have been distinctive.

 

Commentators offer the explanation that while men usually carried water in skins, women carried jars. For a man to carry a water jar would therefore be distinctive.(178) However, this explanation alone is hardly sufficient to elucidate the passage. The choice of this signal seems bizarre unless it can be explained by reference to a plausible social context, to the particular conventions and practice of the household to which the man is to lead the disciples. We must also note that the disciples are instructed to speak only to the master of the house, and may have been required to follow the man in silence. There is no positive indication that they spoke with him. Without a plausible social context to elucidate these details, the passage breathes the atmosphere of a spy-romance, the man's water-jar as romantically abstruse as the well-known red roses or inverted copies of Figaro.

 

The signal may have been pre-arranged. The man is to `meet' or `encounter' the disciples as they go into the City ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], v. 14). Jesus could have timed the departure of his disciples so that their entry into the city coincided with a regular duty of the man which involved this task, without his being aware that the disciples were about to meet him; or the man may have set out at a pre-arranged time. We have no information that Jesus had been separated from the disciple group on this visit to arrange the meeting with his strangely secret acquaintances in Jerusalem, but we cannot completely exclude the possibility, or his earlier despatch of a messenger. A messenger could have arranged the departure of the man at a particular time, or merely have warned him or his household that at some point in his regular duties disciples of Jesus would follow him (or any one of a number of males who carried water for the household). Unless the timing of the disciples' arrival were well coordinated, the man might have to wait around for some time; this is possible, but hardly a convenient arrangement, and may suggest that Jesus simply knew that at any time, or at a certain time, a man carrying a water-jar would encounter the disciples on their route. It is thus not possible to be completely clear about how definitely the particular encounter had been pre-arranged in terms of timing. To make real progress in understanding the event, our attention must focus on the method of recognition alone--he carrying by a man of a water jar.

 

The water jar, correctly understood, points to an intriguing feature of the event. A man cannot be assumed without good explanation to have readily adopted what was typically a woman's role. Some commentators suggest that the reason for the sign was that it would mean that no conversation was necessary, an advantage in view of Jesus' increasingly precarious position.(179) If the pre-arranged sign meant a man unusually and visibly adopting a woman's role, his conspicuousness might defeat such clandestine intent. Hence we must establish why the water jar was selected as the means of recognition, and also how, although it did not draw any particular attention from people around, the jar could function reliably and unambiguously as the signal of recognition.

 

Why did men and women typically use different vessels, and to what social contexts did this relate? The daily fetching of water was undertaken by the women--especially the younger women--of the household. They carried water from the well over relatively short distances and used pottery water-jars, which have relatively small capacity, because of limited physical strength.(180) Abraham's servant, in search of a wife for Isaac, `made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well at the time of evening, the time when women go out to draw water', which they collect in jars (Gen. 24: 11-16). Jacob meets Rachel at the well (Gen. 29:4-12). These women were young, prospective marriage partners. We may compare 1 Sam. 9: 11, where the reference to `young maidens coming out to draw water' also indicates that this duty would typically fall to the younger women, who were fitter and more suited to the task than the older women, and who would also be sent on the errand in consequence of their lesser status within the household. As the one aspect of a woman's domestic role which might take her outside the household, fetching water exposed her to the advances of the strange male. The Samaritan woman (John 4: 7-28), who collected water in a jar (v.28), is older and does not command the respect of any daughters who might fetch water for her. She reveals her lax character by letting herself be engaged in conversation. The disciples of Jesus are surprised that he chose to rest by the well (v.6) since that is what a rogue intent on seduction might do.(181)

 

Men would carry water slung across their backs in a skin, which had very considerable capacity. It was made from a complete, partially tanned goatskin. The apertures where the tail and legs had been were sewn, and an opening left at the head through which water could be dispensed. A man might carry water in this way because of difficult, dry terrain, where the transport of large quantities of water over long distances demanded his physical strength, or to make a living, dispensing it into the jars of women for a charge. In Jerusalem one would normally expect to see the women of the city collecting the plentiful water of Siloam in jars, or men collecting water for sale in skins. If men had to collect water for their own domestic use, they would retain male dignity and make more efficient use of their strength and time by using a water-skin.(182) Hence we can deduce that the figure to whom Jesus directed his disciples, a man carrying a water jar, was something unusual. With this observation we are already close to confirming the inference above that his unusual action was associated in some very particular way with the practice of the household to which Jesus directed his disciples.

 

Jesus' instructions demand circumstances in which a man carrying a water jar might be spotted and might lead the disciples to a particular location, without the event drawing attention from those around, although the water jar functioned as a clear signal for recognition. That the man's water jar alone could be relied on as a reliable mode of recognition shows that all men who carried water jars were associated with only one location in Jerusalem. The reason why the man was carrying water in a jar cannot, therefore, simply be that men often did this when there were no able-bodied women in their households.

 

There might then be any number doing this in a large city like Jerusalem; a single intended destination could not be indicated. If the reason why no women were available to fetch water, however, was that the household consisted principally of celibate males, and certainly contained (for that reason) no younger, fit, and strong women, Jesus' directions could lead unambiguously to one house in the city. The most likely context in which Jesus' instructions could lead unambiguously to one household and no other would be his knowledge that there was only one celibate male quarter in Jerusalem and that it was the practice of this community to assign to some of its male members the routine--otherwise normally assigned to the younger women of a household--of regularly collecting water from Siloam in water jars.

Instead of delegating the task to a few men who hauled water in large quantities in skins, this celibate male community seems to have used a sector of its membership in the light duty (for a man) of collecting water in jars.(183) This may suggest an interest in diligent obedience rather than arduous labour. Nonetheless, the element of humility which the task of collecting water in a jar involved for a male in Mediterranean culture probably indicates that the task of water-carrying was delegated to those in an inferior position in such a community. It was usually those of least status within a household, the younger daughters and female slaves--who attended at the well. The lightness of the vessel, for a male, suggests that boys and youths typically undertook the task in this celibate community. It is relevant to point out in this connection that Josephus tells us that celibate Essene communities practised adoption;(184) hence it would not be unexpected to find boys and youths functioning as servants in a Jewish celibate community. These observations may suggest that the water-carrying duty was delegated typically to those in training, i.e. the novices of the community, many or all of whom may have been quite young.

 

The duty was probably typical of the general errand-running undertaken by novices in the community. The inferior position of the water-carrying male explains both the striking aspect of the Synoptic story that a man was ready to submit himself to a role usually undertaken by a woman, and also the fact that his actions, while unusual enough to function as a signal for recognition, did not give the appearance to the world around of anything clandestine or worthy of special attention. His inferior position may also explain why the disciples may not have addressed him, even as he entered the house, but were instructed to enquire of the master of the household (Mark 14:14). Jesus' instruction may not have been designed to bring his disciples into contact with a particular man whom he knew carried water for this community, but only with one of many who undertook this task. The instruction was principally intended to lead to a particular household, and the particular man who managed that household, who is clearly known to Jesus.

We have confirmation from a different source that there was only one community of ascetic, celibate males in Jerusalem. Although Josephus describes the full course of the city walls, as noted above he indicates only one place called Bethso, where ascetics scrupulously interested in the purity of the Holy City attended to sanitary requirements outside the city walls. Jesus therefore directed his disciples to the ascetic quarter on the southwest hill by a shrewd instruction based on his observation of a feature of the city's life, that the only men of Jerusalem who carried water in jars were celibate males from the southwest hill. It may be that the disciples followed at a distance, in order not to attract attention to themselves and to keep secret the location of the room where Jesus would spend time within the city after dark at the meal.

 

Since the Beloved Disciple was the master of the house in which these celibate male water-carriers lived, Jesus' general instruction nonetheless guided them to a specific individual personally known to him. The personal connection between the two is confirmed by the claims of the Beloved Disciple in the Fourth Gospel.

Thus the hypothesis that the Beloved Disciple was a member of the ascetic quarter on the southwest hill receives remarkable confirmation from the side of the Synoptic tradition. The Beloved Disciple's probable priestly identity is confirmed by his significant role in this community, which would most naturally have been led by priests, as was the community of Qumran from which it was seeded. As one in charge of these premises, he became Jesus' regular host in Jerusalem and his host at the Last Supper--factor (5) of those outlined at the beginning of this piece. He appears as a plausible historical figure, a priestly leader of an ascetic, celibate quarter in Jerusalem, towards which evidence from the sides of both the Synoptic tradition and the Fourth Gospel points.(185)

 

If elements of this ascetic quarter responded to the Baptist, we have an explanation for why the Beloved Disciple stands at the intersection of connections between Jesus and the Baptist, the Sadducees, and an inheritance from Qumran, and why the Last Supper was eaten close to the Essene Gate.

 

The Johannine tradition of the Beloved Disciple is, in fact, the proof that there was a response from the ascetic quarter first to John the Baptist and then to Jesus. Jesus and the Beloved Disciple came together through a common association with the Baptist. The Beloved Disciple then became a regular acquaintance of Jesus in Jerusalem at feast-times. He gives us the Gospel tradition from his own perspective--a two or three year association, maintained by Jesus' regular visits at feast-times, sometimes in secret from connections in Galilee.

 

The Beloved Disciple's priestly connections explain the Gospel's intense interest in the Jerusalem feasts and their spiritual interpretation. Many, or all, of the Beloved Disciple's community may have transferred to the cause of the disciples in Jerusalem, while maintaining their former way of life. The account of the Beloved Disciple's pre-Christian career given in this paper suggests a solution to that most taxing of questions in the study of the New Testament, the reason for the distinctive `spiritual' fashioning of the tradition about Jesus in the Fourth Gospel.

 

The answer here furnished is that the Beloved Disciple had been a longstanding member of a community of ascetics who were devoted to a life of permanent worship and religious contemplation. The Beloved Disciple's habitual life of religious discipline, study, and contemplation was the lens through which his theological vision of the story of Jesus was formed.

 

(1) From Rilke's `Vom moenchischen Leben' (1899), later the first part of his mystical Stundenbuch (1905).

(2) Clement of Alexandria's classic description quoted by Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.14-7.

(3) The mystical interpretation of John extends from the second-century Valentinus to Schleiermacher. William Countryman, stressing this dimension of the Fourth Gospel, entitled his treatment The Mystical Way in the Fourth Gospel (Philadelphia, Fortress, 1987); D. Moody Smith has also recently approved the application of the term `mysticism' to the Fourth Gospel, The Theology of the Gospel of John (Cambridge, CUP, 19(5), pp. 145-46.

(4) The Cana story of John 2:1-11, with its delight in much wine, suggests that the Johannine tradition was not rigorously ascetic at the late stage when our Gospel was written. However, the fact the wedding miracle has the special status of being the first sign which revealed Jesus' glory to the disciples (including those whom Jesus has just acquired from the Baptist, 1:35-42) suggests that Jesus himself had turned elements behind the early Johannine tradition from the Baptist's Nazirite renunciation of wine. Cf. the exchanges of Mark 2: 18-22 (in which both wine and wedding imagery figure) and John 3:25-30, in which the debate about `purifying' (Cf. 2:6) and Jesus' success in baptising is presented from the perspective of the Baptist's group and solved with a (different) wedding image.

(5) John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel (Oxford, Clarendon, 1991), p. 237, Cf. 205 and the powerful argument Of pp. 234-336, which cannot be repeated at length here.

(6) The thesis of this paper develops that of Eugen Ruckstuhl, who argued, principally from the possibility of an Essene calendar behind the problem of the date of the Last Supper in the Gospels and the concentration in the Fourth Gospel of events in southern Palestine, that the Beloved Disciple was a `Mitglied der essenischen Monchsgemeinde in Jerusalem'; `Der Junger, den Jesus liebte', Bibel und Kirche 40, 2 (1985), 77-83, see 82.

(7) M. Hengel, The Johannine Question (London, SCM, 1989), pp. 124-26 (with qualifications as noted above); G. R. Beasley-Murray, John (Waco, Texas, Word Books, 1987) pp. lxx-lxxv; R. E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York, Paulist Press, 1979), pp. 31-34; O. Cullmann, The Johannine Circle (London, SCM, 1976) pp. 63-85.

(8) M. Hengel, Johannine Question, pp. 84, 94-108.

(9) Johannine Question, pp. 127-32.

(10) JSNT 49 (1993) 24, 30-31.

(11) Just as Jesus, who came from the breast of the Father (1:18), was uniquely qualified to speak of the Father.

(12) Cf. R. E. Brown, Community of the Beloved Disciple, pp. 31-32, who points out that if the Beloved Disciple were a fictional character, the distress of the community over his death at 21: 20-23 would be either `deceived or deceptive', and that elements of the text which concern the superiority of the christological and ecclesiological insights of the Beloved Disciple over those of Peter (see pp. 84-87) would be ineffective. Hengel too argues that the `ideal' functions of the Beloved Disciple in the Gospel do not mean that he is not an historical figure, Johannine Question, pp. 78-80.

(13) The connections with Ephesus are discussed in M. Hengel, The Yohannine Question, pp. 2-4, 7, 25-26, 122. The place-names peculiar to John amongst the Gospels are well-known: Cana, Tiberias, Sychar, Joseph's field, Jacob's well, Mount Gerizim, Aenon near Salem, Bethany beyond Jordan, Ephraim. On John's accurate knowledge of Palestinian places and customs cf. R. E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, I (Anchor Bible, New York, 1966), p. xliii.

(14) The Pool of Bethesda, the Pool of Siloam, Solomon's Portico, the Wadi Kidron. Local knowledge also seems to lie behind the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, at Bethany near Jerusalem, the high priest's house, the pavement `Gabbatha', and the account of the garden of Jesus' tomb. Cf. e.g. C. H. H. Scobie `Johannine Geography', Studies in Religion 11 (1982), 77-84, and the discussion of J. A. T. Robinson, The Priority of John (London, SCM, 1985), pp. 48-59.

(15) E. Ruckstuhl, Bibel und Kirche 40, 2 (1985), 78 lists 3:1-2, 7:50-52, 19:39 (all Nicodemus, a member of the Jerusalem establishment); 5: 2-9 (the miracle at Bethesda); 9:1-7 (healing at Siloam); 10:22-23 (the feast of the Dedication of the Temple); 10:40 (Jesus returns to the Baptist's area of activity across the Jordan); 11:1-46 (the raising of Lazarus at Bethany); 11:47-54 (the decision of the Sanhedrin to kill Jesus); 11:55-57 (the chief priests and Pharisees enquire about Jesus' whereabouts before Passover); 18:1-3 (Jesus goes to a garden beyond the Kidron valley); 18:13-24 (the hearing before Annas); 19:20-42 (Jesus is crucified near the city; the cross inscription in three languages; the request of the high priest to have the inscription removed; distribution of Jesus' clothes and casting lots for the seamless robe; Jesus' mother and the Beloved Disciple before the cross; blood and water from the side of Jesus; Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus lay Jesus' body in the tomb). Various of these traditions figure in the discussion below. On the original `Jewish-Palestinian home' of the author of the Fourth Gospel cf. Hengel, Yohannine Question, pp. 109-14.

(16) Robinson, The Priority of John, p. 40.

(17) J. H. Charlesworth, `A critical comparison of the Dualism in IQS III. 13-4: 26 and the `Dualism' Contained in the Gospel of John', in his John and Qumran (London, 1972), pp. 76-106, cf. especially pp. 103-104.

(18) See n. 5 above.

(19) A. Jaubert, La date de la Cene (Paris, Gabalda, 1957), English translation, The Date of the Last Supper (New York, Alba House, 1965); `The Calendar of Qumran and the Passion Narrative in John' in Charlesworth, John and Qumran, pp. 62-75. See further n. 46 below.

(20) O. Betz, Der Paraklet, Fursprecher im haretischen Spatjudentum, im Johannesevangelium und in neugefundenen Gnostischen Schriften (Leiden, Brill, 1963), cf. the discussion of A. R. C. Leaney `The Johannine Paraclete and the Qumran Scrolls', in Charlesworth, John and Qumran, pp. 38-61.

(21) The polemical interest is clear at 1:9; 1:15; 30; 1:19-24; 3:28-29; 3:30; perhaps not, as has been suggested, at 10:41. It is not clear that the Baptist group which is opposed went so far as to claim John as the Messiah; to refuse to join the Christian community may, however, have appeared as such a counter-claim to Christians (cf. 3:22-26, perhaps Acts 19:1-7), though a comparison of 5:35 with 1: 8 is suggestive. Robinson, Priority, pp. 170-73 opposes W. Baldensperger's deduction that John was held by his followers to be the Messiah, Der Prolog des vierten Evangeliums: sein polemisch-apologetischer Zweck (Tubingen, 1898).

(22) Cf. e.g. R. E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple, pp. 30-31; W. H. Brownlee `Whence the Gospel According to John', in Charlesworth, John and Qumran, pp. 166-94, especially p. 174; R. Schnackenburg, Das Johannesevangelium, I (Freiburg, Herder, 1965), pp. 134-35.

(23) The location of John's ministry in the wilderness of Judaea, and its interpretation as the fulfilment of Isa. 40:3, bears comparison with IQS VIII. 1314; cf. C. H. H. Scobie, John the Baptist (London, SCM, 1964), pp. 32-48. His diet may have been that eaten by an Essene living outside a community context, cf. S. L. Davies, `John the Baptist and the Essene Kashruth', NTS 29 (1983), 569-71.

(24) Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel, p. 235.

(25) In favour of the identification are R. E. Brown, Community of the Beloved Disciple, 33; O. Cullmann, The Johannine Circle (London, SCM, 1976), pp. 71-72; Richard Bauckham, `The Beloved Disciple as Ideal Author', JSNT, 49 (1993), 21-4.4. Since we should expect to find the sons of Zebedee together, there is little possibility that the figure here is John the son of Zebedee, cf. Bauckham, ibid., p. 25.

(26) Cf. Hengel, Johannine Question, p. 79.

(27) Cf. n. 24 above.

(28) C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John (London, SPCK, 1978(2)), p. 526, points out that the collateral form [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] may mean `kinsman' or even `brother', comparing Iliad 15.350 [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] `brothers and sisters'; `It would therefore be unwise to dismiss the acquaintance between the disciple and the high priest as slight'.

(29) This is its meaning in the LXX, cf. 4 Kgdms. 10:11; Pa. 55:13-14; Job 19: 14.

(30) R. H. Strachan, The Fourth Gospel (London, 1941(3)), p. 84.

(31) On recipricity in friendship, cf. Paul Millett, Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens (Cambridge, CUP, 1991), pp. 116-26; Mary Whitlock Blundell, Helping Friends and Harming Enemies (Cambridge, CUP, 1989), pp. 44-47; Gabriel Herman, Ritualised Friendship in the Greek City (Cambridge, CUP, 1987), see index.

(32) Cf. C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St John, p. 525: `For this statement we have no authority other than John's. It is in itself entirely credible'.

(33) Josephus, Ant. 18.2.1 [subsections] 26-35.

(34) Cf. C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St John, p. 524. Luke is also aware of Annas' powerful influence, though his wording at Luke 3:2, `in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas', is imprecise. Similarly, `Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas' at Acts 4:6 is not the happiest description, since Caiaphas, rather than Annas, was properly high priest. Barrett comments `Luke seems to confuse Annas and Caiaphas in this office, or at least to express himself obscurely'. However, it may be that Luke is influenced by a custom of continuing to refer to former high priests as `High Priest' after they have left office, cf. K. Lake and H. J. Cadbury, The Beginnings of Christianity, IV (London, Macmillan, 1933), pp. 41-42.

(35) The literature is reviewed in C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John, pp. 533-35, and C. Rowland, Christian Origins (London, SPCK, 1985), pp. 1 68-72. Note especially A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford, 1963), pp. 1-47.

(36) F. C. Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission (Edinburgh, 1906), p. 248. An older advocate of the idea that the Beloved Disciple was a Sadducee was H. K. Hugo Delff, Die Geschichte des Rabbi Jesus von Nazareth (Leipzig, 1889), pp. 67-96; also his Das Vierte Evangelium, ein Authentischer Bericht fiber Jesus von Nazareth (Husum, 1890); Neue Beitrage zur Kritik und Erklarung des Vierten Evangeliums (Husum, 1890).

(37) Cf. his repeated, formulaic summary of Jesus' opposition as `Pharisees and Sadducees', Matt. 3:7; 16:1, 6, 11, 12; 22:34. Sadducees, alone, also appear at 22:23, following Mark 12:18.

(38) To allow, in the light of the contents of the Pentateuch, that Acts 23:8 probably implies a very restricted acceptance of heavenly beings seems preferable to the position of S. T. Lachs that the denial of `angel or spirit' refers to Sadducean exclusion of the possibility of human after-life in a `spiritual body', `The Pharisees and Sadducees on Angels: A Reexamination of Acts XXIII 8', Graetz College Annual of Jewish Studies 6 (1977), 35-42.

(39) R. Bauckham, JSNT 49 (1993), 27, notes that the unnamed figure of 18:15-16 `is hardly introduced in such a way as to encourage the reader's identification of him with the Beloved Disciple'.

(40) The letter is preserved in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.24.2-7.

(41) R. Bauckham, `Papias and Polycrates on the Origin of the Fourth Gospel', JTS, NS, 44 (1993), 24-69, 36, see discussion 34-36.

(42) Cf. M. Hengel, Die Johanneische Frage (Tubingen, Mohr, 1993), pp. 33-37 (The Johannine Question, p. 7).

(43) R. Bauckham, JTS, NS, 44 (1993), 43.

(44) J. Jeremias pointed to the possibility that the Beloved Disciple may have functioned as high priest on the day of atonement, and hence had worn the high-priestly regalia, as a substitute, according to the practice attested in Mishnah Yoma 1.1 of keeping another priest in readiness in case the high priest rendered himself cultically ineligible, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (London, SCM, 1969), p. 157. D. E. H. Whiteley, `Was John written by a Sadducee?', Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt, ed. H. Temporini & W. Haase, series 11, Vol. 25, part 3 (Berlin, De Gruyter, 1985), pp. 2481-2505, accepted this proposal, making the suggestion that the Beloved Disciple may, as a younger member of the high-priestly family, have substituted on an occasion when Caiaphas had preferred not to undergo the rigours of the ceremonial (p. 2497). Bauckham's proposal may have made these suggestions redundant. However, if the Beloved Disciple was a longstanding member, as this piece argues, of an ascetic quarter in Jerusalem with Sadducean connections and scrupulous standards of purity, he and others in the community may have formed natural substitutes over the preceding two generations whenever the danger presented itself that the high priest was unfit for duty.

(45) D. E. H. Whiteley, `Was John written by a Sadducee?', ANRW 11.25.3, pp. 2481-2505.

(46) H. Grotius, Annotationes in Novum Testamentum, Denuo emendatius editae, ed. W. Zuidema, 9 vols., 1826, vol. 4-5, p. 253 (on John 18:15). Grotius here identifies John 13 with the Last Supper. Of course, this identification is questioned, because of the absence of the eucharistic words of institution in John at this point and the presence in John of the ritual of the footwashing, which is absent from the Synoptic Last Supper. Moreover, while in John this meal is definitely not a passover meal, in the synoptics the Last Supper is most definitely understood as a passover meal. This complex problem (for a solution see e.g. Jaubert, above n. 19), however, does not affect the argument presented here, since it is still most likely that either the same meal is described or that the two meals were taken in the same premises. The arguments presented below to explain the unusual sign of recognition in Mark 14:13 (a man carrying a water jar) support the assumption that if John 13 is not the Last Supper, it is nonetheless a meal taken in the same location (with the only celibate male community in Jerusalem) since, as the argument of this whole piece shows, the Beloved Disciple (the host at the meal) appears to have been a member of this celibate male community in Jerusalem.

(47) H. L. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, vol. 4, part 2 (Muchen, Beck, 1928), Excursus 24, 6 11-39.

(48) Whiteley, `Was John written by a Sadducee?', ANRW II. 25.3, p. 2494.

(49) Peter would take the place of honour in view of his principal status amongst the disciple group, as reflected early in Acts (1:15-22; 2:14-40; 5:1-10 in events which took place in the immediately succeeding period. Simon's pre-eminence in the disciple-group probably originated with Jesus, since it may be implied in Jesus' renaming him [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the Aramaic equivalent of [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], `rock' (cf. Gal. 1:18, 2:11,14; 1 Cor.15:5; [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Mark 5:37; 8:27,33; 9:2,5; John 1:42). The origin of the renaming with Jesus, and its significance, is suggested by comparison with earlier and later versions of the `community as temple building' tradition. Jesus' choice of imagery is similar to, but significantly divergent from, that of 1QS VIII.1-14, in which the `twelve... and (or including?) three...' founding members of the Qumran community are collectively the foundation-stones of the spiritualized temple and the `tested stone' and `precious cornerstone' of Isa. 28:16. Jesus cannot have been completely ignorant of this longstanding device of calling the founding members of a community foundation-stones of the temple (this section of 1QS relates to the founding of Qumran c. 152 BC). Jesus indicated, by limiting the picture of `rock' to Simon Peter alone, Peter's role as his deputy or second-in-command, a role which emerges immediately in the opening chapters of Acts but is later submerged by the claims of Jesus' family in the person of James (cf. Acts 12: 17; James forcefully sums up at the `apostolic conference', 15:13-21, and is dominant at 21:17-18). Jesus' changed version of the rock image may reflect his distance from learned tradition. Later tradition is usually concerned to make Jesus himself the single stone of Isa. 28:16 (1 Pet. 2:6; Eph. 2:21; Cf. 1 Cor. 3: 9-15), thereby excluding any unique role for Peter. The apostles collectively form a group of foundation-stones in Eph. 2:20 (with the prophets) and Rev. 21:14 (for the city-walls), reassertions of the scholarly building picture (cf. the gates named after the twelve tribes in Ezek. 48:30-35, 11 QTemple XL. 13-20, 4Q365, 4Q554) distant from Jesus' image. The exception in later tradition is Matt. 16:17-19, where Peter is the rock which plugs the jaws of Sheol, on which the temple is built (cf. Isa. 28:14-16; Mishnah Yoma 5:2; pYoma 42C; Yalqut Shim'oni on Genesis 120 [on Gen 25.22]). This picture is closer to Jesus' re-naming of Simon alone as Kephas (and Jesus' role as temple-builder rather than foundation in Mark 14:58) than the images of the epistles and Revelation, and is at least as early as the beginning of the '50's (as the terms `reveal', `son', and `flesh and blood' in Gal. 1:15-17 suggest, cf. R. Pesch, Simon Petrus [Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1980], pp. 99-100). Since Peter's pre-eminence is apparent from the renaming alone, however, there is no reason to assume that the picture of Matt. 16:17-19 has been projected back onto the earliest community at the beginning of Acts. The Matthean text may indicate that a particular group of churches (in Syria?) claimed special status by virtue of their connection to Peter, but this does not mean they developed the idea of Peter's pre-eminence out of thin air. On the renaming see recently Christian Grappe, Dun Temple a l'autre. Pierre et l'Eglise primitive de Jerusalem (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1992) pp. 87-115. Whiteley's claim for Judas' special status after Peter amongst the disciples must compete with that of James and John, who with Peter join Jesus in the story of the transfiguration (Mark 9:2). Their epithet `sons of thunder' (Mark 3:17) may, however, be more in the character of a jest (cf. their vengeful attitude in Luke 9:54). Peter always figures at the head of the disciple-lists in the Gospels, but the position of James and John varies (following Peter in Mark 3:16-19 but later in Matt. 10:2-4 and Luke 6:14-16). Whiteley's argument about the seating arrangements works sufficiently for the argument of his piece if hierarchy within the disciple-group did not extend beyond Peter, since Judas may anyway have been reclining next to, or not far from Jesus.

(50) The ease with which Jesus passes the morsel to Judas at 13:27 makes Whiteley's seating of Judas next to Jesus attractive, although the secrecy implied in verse 28 strictly has to do only to the exchange between the Beloved Disciple and Jesus in 13:25-26.

(51) Although A. Jaubert's calendrical theory (see n. 18 above), if accepted, would solve the tension between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel and allow the Last Supper to be in fact a passover meal. Robinson, Priority, pp. 125-26 points to H. Scott Holland's listing of subtle points in the Synoptic tradition which suggest Jesus' earlier familiarity with Jerusalem, The Fourth Gospel (London, 1923), p. 131, Cf. p. 133.

(52) See further section VII below.

(53) It might be objected that the disciples would, were this the case, have known the room of the Last Supper from previous visits with Jesus to Jerusalem. However, according to John 7:1-9 Jesus went up to Jerusalem on at least one occasion without the knowledge of his family. Jesus rejects their counsel to make demonstration of his powers to his disciples in Judaea (7:3). The implication of 7:10 where Jesus subsequently goes `not publicly but in private' to Jerusalem, is that Jesus did not take a party of adherents with him on at least this occasion. The refusal also suggests that early in his ministry Jesus avoided appearance in Jerusalem with a group large enough to draw attention. There may also have been fluidity in any accompanying group. The awe of a disciple of Jesus at the large stones of Herod's temple platform and the grandeur of his buildings (Mark 13:1-2) may suggest that this individual had not visited the Temple before. That Jesus `did not trust himself' to some who believed in him at John 2:23-25 also suggests that Jesus made no attempt to organize support in Jerusalem. Thus the unnamed disciples delegated with the task of finding the upper room at Mark 14:12-16 may not have previously accompanied Jesus to Jerusalem.

(54) It might be objected that since the priestly aristocrat Josephus claimed to have spent a time training with the Baptist-like ascetic Bannus, such a crossing of social boundaries should not surprise us (Vita 2 [sections] 11). However, we have no record of Bannus making any public criticism of public figures, and Josephus' claim to have spent three years training with this desert ascetic is in any case not entirely credible. We must have regard for the vanity Josephus reveals in his autobiography (e.g. 2 [sections] 9, the chief priests and the leading men of the city consulted him as a fourteen year-old), the general esteem which a claim to have sought wisdom through an ascetical training would hope to engender, and the credence he seeks for his own support of Pharisaism by claiming to have tried out all the sects of Judaism (2 [sections] 10). His claimed prophetic powers are probably similarly spurious (BJ 3.8.9 [subsections] 399-408), invented especially to legitimate Vespasian's own accession after the event. At best they only indicate Josephus' shrewdness at his arrest. Ashton makes similar points about Josephus, Understanding the Fourth Gospel, 236 note.

(55) The hypothesis excludes the possibility of the identity of the Beloved Disciple with the apostle John, but is consistent with seeing him as the principal bearer of tradition in the `Johannine school', and even as the principal author behind the Gospel.

(56) B. Pixner, `An Essene Quarter on Mount Zion?', Studia Hierosolymitana in onore di P. Bellarmino Bagatti, I, Studi archelogici, Studium Biblicanum Franciscanum, Collectio Major, 22 (Jerusalem, 1976), pp. 245-84, also reprinted separately (Jerusalem, Franciscan Printing Press, 1976); `Das Essenerquartier in Jerusalem und dessen EinfluB auf die Urkirche', Das Heilige Land 113 (1981), 3-14; `The History of the "Essene Gate" Area', ZDPV 105 (1989), 96-104; Wege des Messias und Statten der Urkirche (ed. R. Riesner, GieBen/Basel, Brunnen, [1994.sup.2]), pp. 118-207, 327-34. Robinson, Priority, 66, connected Pixner's acceptance of the traditional site of the upper room and his thesis of an Essene quarter on the south west hill in Jerusalem with the roots of the Johannine tradition.

(57) The present author would also urge this modification to Rainer Riesner's nonetheless excellently argued case for an Essene quarter in Jerusalem, `Das Jerusalemer Essenerquartier und die Urgemeinde', ANRW II, 26.2 1995, 1775-922. The designation `Essene' is really only appropriate if a particularly broad interpretation of the term is followed, which could include groups separated from Qumran (as this community appears to have been) and capable, despite a probable abiding conservatism in matters of purity, of integration into the followers of Jesus (as Riesner himself believes). Present New Testament scholarship does not commonly employ the term Essene so broadly.

(58) Cf. Josephus, `They occupy no one city, but settle in large numbers in each', BJ 2.8.4 [sections] 124; Philo, `every city and village', Hypothetica III. When Philo gives a different opinion, Quod. omn. 12 [sections] 76, where the Essenes are said to live in villages and to avoid the cities, he is imposing the literary topos of flight from cities, which is a standard component of accounts of the primeval age of innocence, the `Golden Age' (cf. Plato, Legg. 667B), and is hence attributed to the Essenes since they have regained primeval innocence and simplicity.

(59) Cf. R. Riesner, `Essener und Urkirche in Jerusalem', Bibel und Kirche, 40, 2 (1985), 64-76, see 73.

(60) R. Riesner, ibid., thinks this reference signifies a Jerusalem Essene Quarter.

(61) Bibel und Kirche 40, 2 (1985), 70.

(62) A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (Edinburgh, 1901) 11.2, 215, n. 16.

(63) Cf. F. J. Bliss and A. C. Dickie Excavations at Jerusalem 1894-1897 (London, 1897), PP. 16-20, 26-28.

(64) On the dating of the remains of the Essene gate see Bargil Pixner, Doron Chen, and Shlomo Margalit, `Mount Zion: The "Gate of the Essenes" Reexcavated', ZDPV 105 (1989), 85-95; metrological researches are helpful in dating the lowermost threshold; it measures 2.66 metres wide, nine standard Roman feet (Of 0.2957 metres), or six standard Roman cubits, showing that the gate cannot have been an original part of the Hasmonean wall (87); pottery below the paving slabs within the gate is Herodian in character, not later than AD 70 (87). B. Pixner, `The History of the Essene Gate Area', ZDPV 105 (1989), 96-104, notes that Professor B. Mazar observed that the excellent workmanship of limestone slabs which line a channel which passes below the gate points to the workmen of Herod the Great (97). Pixner also points out (98) that the pottery below the paving slabs may be later than the gate itself, since Agrippa II undertook street paving operations to employ the workmen left jobless by completion of work on the Temple, Josephus Ant. 20 [sections] 22. On the identification of Josephus' `Essene Gate' with the recently reexcavated gate see R. Riesner, `Josephus' "Gate of the Essenes" in Modem Discussion', ZDPV 105 (1989), 105-109.

(65) Mathias Delcor, `A propos de l'emplacement de la porte des Esseniens selon Josephe et de ses implications historiques, Essenienne et Chretienne. Examen d'une theorie', in Zdzislaw J. Kapera (ed.), Intertestamental Essays in Honour of Josef Tadeusz Milik (Krakow, Enigma Press, 1992), Pp. 25-44, 30.

(66) The naming of the gates of Jerusalem after groups which live in the immediate vicinity of the gate within the wall is attested in other periods of the city's history. Until 1967 the nearby gate into the old city had been known since the nineteenth century as Bab el Maghreb because of a settlement of Muslims from Maghreb in North Africa, who established themselves just inside the wall, cf. B. Meistermann, New Guide to the Holy Land (London, 1923), P. 213 (reference from Pixner). At the time of the crusades, David's Gate (i.e. the Zion Gate) in the southwest comer of the city became known as the `Pisans' Gate, named after the twelfth-century crusaders from Pisa who later established their settlement behind it, cf. the woodcut of Jerusalem in 1492 reproduced in M. Avi-Yonah, A History of the Holy Land (London, probably 1969), P. 231.

(67) B. Pixner, `An Essene Quarter on Mount Zion?', Studio Hierosolymitana, I (Jerusalem, 1976), pp. 245-84, 256; J. Schwartz, Crops of the Holy Land (Jerusalem, Luntz, 1900), P. 335. R. Riesner, Bibel und Kirche 40, 2 (1985), 71, points out how early J. Schwartz made this observation; see J. Schwartz, Dos Heilige Land nach seiner ehemaligen und jetzigen geogrophischen Beschaffenheit, ed. I. Schwartz (Frankfurt am Main 1852), p. 206 Riesner, ANRW II, 26.2, 1806, points out that the observation goes back to Schwartz's Hebrew original text, [T.sup.e] bu'ot ha-'Arets (Jerusalem, 1845), p. 334.

(68) G. Dalman, Jerusalem und Sein Gelande (Gutersloh, 1930), p. 307.

(69) S. Merrill, Ancient Jerusalem pp. 67-68.

(70) E. Robinson, Palastina und die sudlich angrenzenden Lander, II (Halle, 1841), p. 118.

(71) Y. Yadin, `The Gate of the Essenes and the Temple Scroll', in his Jerusalem Revealed. Archaeology in the Holy City 1968-1974 (Jerusalem, 1976), pp. 90-91.

(72) Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll, I, Text and Commentary (Jerusalem, 1983), pp. 199-200, 294.

(73) Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll. The Hidden Law of the Dead Sea Sect (London, 1985), p. 180.

(74) J. A. Emerton, `A Consideration of Two Recent Theories About Bethso in Josephus's Description of Jerusalem and a Passage in the Temple Scroll', in W. Claasen (ed.), Text and Context. Old Testament Studies for F. C. Fensham (Sheffield, JSOT Press, 1988), PP. 93-104, see pp. 100-101

(75) Riesner, ANRW II, 26.2, 1807.

(76) An Essene Quarter on Mount Zion?, 256.

(77) Yadin's own translation, `[so that] it will [not] be visible at any distance from the city, three thousand cubits', Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll, I (1983), P. 294, is better interpreted in this fashion. The approach of the Temple Scroll text is to be distinguished from that of the War Scroll which defines a distance between the camps of two thousand cubits within which apart from the immediate vicinities of the camps constitutes as a whole the `place of the hand'. The preposition ?? in IQM 7.6-7 is to be translated `for': `There shall be a space between all their camps for the place of the hand of about two thousand cubits, and no unseemly thing shall be seen in the vicinity of their encampment', cf. Pixner, An Essene Quarter on Mount Zion?, 257, pace Yadin, The Temple Scroll, I (1983), p. 295. Warriors are only required to walk a respectful distance from the camps. The purpose of the regulation is again the question of visibility in the first instance.

(78) Josephus, BJ 2.8.9 [subsections] 147-49, Cf. 2.8.5 [sections] 128.

(79) C. Conder, `The Rock Scarp of Zion', Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statements 1875, pp. 81-89, see p. 84, cf. R. Riesner, Bibel und Kirche 40, 2 (1985), 72.

(80) Cf. the plan of R. Riesner, ANRW II, 26.2, 1795.

(81) B. Pixner, `Unravelling the Copper Scroll Code. A Study of the Topography of 3Q15' Revue de Qumran 11 (1983-86), pp. 323-67.

(82) Prof. Martin Hengel, who kindly read and commented on this article, has informed the author that Essene graves have recently been found in the southeast of Jerusalem. This find will strengthen the hypothesis of an Essene presence in Jerusalem.

(83) Cf. R. De Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (London, OUP, 1973), pp. 21-34.

(84) R. De Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 22.

(85) J. T. Milik, Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judaea (London, SCM, 1959), p. 52.

(86) J. H. Charlesworth, `The Origin and Subsequent History of the Authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls', Revue de Qumran 10 (1980), 213-33, cf. 224-27.

(87) On the Parthian invasion and the conflict between Herod and Antigonus, cf. E. Schurer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ 1, rev. and ed. G. Vermes and F. Millar (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1973), pp. 251-52, 278-86.

(88) Josephus Ant. 14-13-10 [subsections] 365-66 `And being fearful that the people might restore Hyrcanus to the throne, he went up to him where he was being guarded by the Parthians, and cut off his ears, thus taking care that the high priesthood should never come to him another time, because he was now mutilated, and the law requires that this office should belong only to those who are sound of body'; `Hyrcanus threw himself at the feet of Antigonus, who with his own teeth lacerated his suppliant's ears, in order to disqualify him for ever, under any change of circumstances, from resuming the high priesthood...', By 1.13.9 [sections] 269-70.

(89) The precise political situation in relation to Rome in this period is unclear, cf. Schurer-Vermes-Millar, The History of the Jewish People I, pp. 267-80.

(90) Josephus, Ant. 15.10-4-5 [subsections] 372-79.

(91) Cf. the divisions suggested for Herod's reign in Schurer-Vermes-Millar, The History of the Jewish People I, p. 296.

(92) E. Bammel, `Sadduzaer und Sadokiden', Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 55 (1979), pp. 107-15, Cf. 114.

(93) R. Riesner, `Das Jerusalemer Essenerviertel. Antwort auf einige Einwande', Intertestamental Essays in honour of Josef Tadeusz Milik, ed. Zdzislaw J. Kapera (Krakow, Enigma Press, 1992), points to the theory of M. Delcor that the Temple Scroll influenced the design of the Herodian Temple, `Is the Temple Scroll Source of the Herodian Temple?', in G. J. Brooke, Temple Scroll Studies (Sheffield, JSOT Press, 1989), pp. 67-90.

(94) Josephus, BJ 2.7.3 [sections] 113; Ant. 17.8.3 [subsections] 345-48.

(95) Cf. Otto Betz, Offenbarung und Schrifterforschung in der Qumransekte (Tubingen, Mohr, 1960), pp. 99-109.

(96) Cf. Josephus, Ant. 17.13.2 [sections] 342; BJ 2.7.3 [sections] 111 (`great brutality'). On hearing accusations from a Jewish delegation, Augustus summoned Archelaus to Rome and banished him to Gaul. Jodi Magness has recently challenged De Vaux's chronology of the gap in occupation at Qumran, `The Chronology of the Settlement at Qumran in the Herodian Period', Dead Sea Discoveries 2 (1995), 58-65. Magness wishes to reduce the gap in occupation to a few years following the deposit of the hoard of Tyrian tetradrachmas, the last of which dates to 9/8 BC (62-63). However, a lynch-pin of her argument is her claim that it is impossible to explain the abandonment of the site for over thirty years, followed by its reoccupation by the same group (shown by the same employment of individual buildings). She also finds it impossible to answer the question `Where did the community go for thirty years?' (60-61, cf. 63). Magness' case is not persuasive since she does not consider the political context of Herod's reign as expounded in the above section as an explanation for the movement of the Qumran community for a lengthy period to Jerusalem, the significance of the archaeological evidence that the Essene Gate was let into an earlier, Hasmonean wall early in the Herodian period, the time when the Qumran site was abandoned, and the indication of the transition to conflict in the story of Simon the Essene's prophecy of Herod Archelaus' downfall. Magness' argument that the Tyrian horde indicates that the site was in use up to 9/8 BC does not carry conviction, since, as she admits, the horde was located above the earlier period of occupation (Ib) and below the subsequent occupation (period II). This surely indicates that the horde was hidden during the period of abandonment, as De Vaux argued; it was not, after all, reexcavated, though on Magness' hypothesis the site was reoccupied after a very short period by the same group which had buried it (62).

(97) On their passing, Josephus calls the Hasmonean dynasty `a splendid and renowned house because of both their lineage and their priestly office, as well as the things which its founders achieved on behalf of the nation', Ant. 14-16 [sections] 490.

(98) Josephus, BJ 1.64 [sections] 358.

(99) Josephus, Ant. 15.1.2 [subsections] 5-6.

(100) Josephus, Ant. 14.9.4 [sections] 175.

(101) Bammel, `Sadduzaer und Sadokiden', p. 108.

(102) Josephus, Ant. 12-9.7 [sections] 387.

(103) Cf. Josephus Ant. 13-3.1-3 [subsections] 62-73 (`In this desire he [Onias] was encouraged chiefly by the words of the prophet Isaiah, who had lived more than six hundred years before and had foretold that a temple to the Most High God was surely to be built in Egypt by a Jew', trans. R. Marcus, Loeb edition). Isa. 19: 19 reads `In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord'. ??, `city of destruction' in verse 18 has the textual variant ??, `city of the sun'; Leontopolis was in the district (nome) of Heliopolis, north east of Memphis and 6 miles north of Cairo, to which `city of the sun' may be a reference. Most Septuagint manuscripts give [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], implying a reading of ??, and a reference to the Zadokite lineage of the Oniad high priests who ministered at Leontopolis. O. Kaiser, Isaiah 13-39 (London, OTL, 1974), p. 107 n., thinks `a later alteration, dogmatic in purpose, of an original "City of Righteousness" into "City of Destruction" is more probable than the reverse'. The present Arabic name for the site, Tell al-Yahudiyya, testifies to its historical Jewish links.

(104) Josephus, BJ 7.10.4 [subsections] 433-36.

(105) The founding can be dated to around 150-40 BC, cf. R. De Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 116; G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls. Qumran in Perspective (London, Collins, 1977), p. 151.

(106) Cf. H. Stegemann, Die Entstehung der Qumrangemeinde (Bonn, 1971), p. 224.

(107) `The Qumran sect in Relation to the Temple of Leontopolis', Revue de Qumran 6 (1967), 55-69.

(108) Cf. Bammel, `Sadduzaer und Sadokiden', 107; cf. Schurer-Vermes-Millar, The History of the Jewish People, III-1, pp. 405-406.

(109) `The Pharisaic-Sadducean Controversies about Purity and Qumran Texts', JJS 31 (1980), pp. 157-70.

(110) Cf. L. H. Schiffman, `The New Halakhic Letter (4QMMT) and the Origins of the Dead Sea Sect', Biblical Archaeologist 53 (1990), 64-73; also his `The Sadducean Origins of the Dead Sea Scroll Sect', in H. Shanks (ed.) Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York, Random House, 1992), pp 35-49. Schiffman makes distinctions between those who appear in Rabbinic sources as Sadducees and the Sadducees identified in Greek sources.

(111) For ways in which Baumgarten's position may be accepted and developed without approving Schiffman's opposition to the Essene identity of the Scrolls, cf. J. C. Vanderkam, "Me People of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Sadducees or Essenes?', in Shanks, Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, 50-62, and The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (London, SPCK, 1994), pp. 93-95; E. M. Cook, Solving the Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Carlisle, Paternoster, 1994), pp. 111-16; O. Betz and R. Riesner, Jesus, Qumran and the Vatican (London, SCM, 1994), pp. 36-49. The present piece cannot consider the now burgeoning literature on the remaining, competing theories of Qumran origins. The general tendency to push the origins of Essenism earlier than the `standard model' of Qumran origins here outlined does not substantially effect the present argument. The approach makes Qumran Essenism one element within a broader Essene movement. This does not count against the proposals in this piece concerning the relations of Herod with either Qumran or the broader Essene movement, since he does not appear to have treated the two in different ways. For a useful summary see Timothy H. Lim, The Qumran Scrolls: Two Hypotheses', Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 21 (1992), pp. 455-66.

(112) With Cleopatra's assistance; Josephus, Ant. 15.2.4 [sections] 22; 15.3.1 [sections] 40.

(113) Josephus, Ant. 15.3.3 [subsections] 50-56.

(114) Joseph Klausner, Ha-historiyah shel ha-Bayit ha-Sheni, Vol. IV (Jerusalem and Tel-aviv, 1924), p. 21. Although Josephus says that Ananel came from Babylon, Klausner identified Ananel with the high priest `Chanamel the Egyptian' at Mishnah Parah 3.5. Cf. R. Marcus & A. Wikgren, Josephus (Loeb Classical Library), Vol. VIII, 13.

(115) J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (London, SCM, 1969), p. 192.

(116) Cf. cf. Schurer-Vermes-Millar, The History of the Jewish People, III. 1, 48.

(117) Josephus, Ant. 14.8.1 [subsections] 127-32.

(118) `Es war sein Meisterstreich gegen die Fortdauer des Hasmonaischen Einflusses...', Bammel, `Sadduzaer und Sadokiden', p. 110.

(119) Cf. Schurer-Vermes-Millar, The History of the Jewish People, II, 229 n. 6 and 230 n. 10.

(120) Jewish Encyclopaedia IX, p. 659.

(121) Talmud bPes. 57a, `Lift up your heads, O ye Gates, and let Ismael ben Phabi, son of Phinehas, enter and serve (i.e. in the office of high priest)', cf. Bammel, `Sadduzaer und Sadokiden', 109. The sense of the reference may not merely be Phinehas-like zeal.

(122) Josephus, Ant. 1 5.9.3 [sections] 320, cf. Bammel, `Sadduzaer und Sadokiden', 109. On the confusing references to him as Boethus, cf. E. M. Smallwood, `High Priests and Politics in Roman Palestine', JTS, NS, 13 (1962), 14-33, see 32-33.

(123) Cf. Bammel, `Sadduzaer und Sadokiden', 109. Josephus says that Herod was smitten with the girl, and that in order to make her a fitting bride, appointed Simon to the high priesthood (Ant. 15.9.3 [sections] 321). Herod's passion was probably feigned for political ends, if in this instance romance was not a convenient vehicle of policy. Was the intention of the marriage to gain an heir who might be acceptable as high priest?

(124) Cf. Schurer-Vermes-Millar, The History of the Jewish People, II, 230 n. 9.

(125) Cf. Schurer-Vermes-Millar, The History of the Jewish People, II, 234.

(126) The weakness of B. Z. Wacholder's hypothesis of Zadok the disciple of Antigonus of Soko as the founder of the Qumran sect, see his The Dawn of Qumran (Cincinatti, 1983), is that this view defuses the high priestly overtones of such phrases as `the sons of Zadok' and especially `the sons of Zadok, the priests' (cf. 1 QS V.9) in the Dead Sea Scrolls. These associations arise from Ezekiel 40-48. The claim that the tomb of this Zadok is referred to in the Copper Scroll (IX. 2-7) is weak, since if first-century Jews could claim to know the location of David's tomb (Acts 2:29) they could just as easily claim to know the tomb of the original Zadok, high priest in David's day. Wacholder's other piece of evidence, the phrase `until the rise of Zadok' at CD V.4, clearly refers to the original Zadok, since David is mentioned in the following line. Wacholder denies any possibility that `Sadducees' and the passages on `Zadokites' in Rabbinic literature are to be related, and insists that the Essenes `were ideologically far apart from the Sadducees' (136). However, these statements take no account of Bammel's earlier thesis of a Sadducean-Essene alliance in the time of Herod.

(127) Zadokite lines from Qumran may have provided those high priests of the period with no definite association with the Egyptian families. These may, however, have been wiped out when the desert site was destroyed.

(128) That of the Kathros family, i.e. the family of Simon ben Cantheras son of Boethus (high priest AD 41-?, cf. Schurer-Vermes-Millar, The History of the Jewish People, I, 231) has been conclusively identified, and other prestige dwellings in the area probably belonged to the high priests; cf. N. Avigad, `Excavations in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, 1969-7,' in Y. Yadin, Jerusalem Revealed (Jerusalem, 1976), pp.41-51, see 46-47; also Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (Oxford, 1984), pp. 95-139.

(129) Cf. Johann Meier, `The Architectural History of the Temple in Jerusalem in the Light of the Temple Scroll', and Mathias Delcor, `Is the Temple Scroll a Source for the Herodian Temple', in George J. Brooke (ed.) Temple Scroll Studies (Sheffield, JSOT Press, 1989), pp. 23-62, 67-89.

(130) Immediately north of the Cenacle, on the traditional site of the `House of Caiaphas'), cf. M. Broshi, `Excavations in the house of Caiaphas', in Y. Yadin, Jerusalem Revealed, 57-60. On the southern side there was a public building of some sort.

(131) M. Avi-Yonah and J. W. Hirschberg think `David's tomb' was originally a Jewish synagogue, see Hirschberg, `The Remains of an Ancient Synagogue on Mount Zion' in Y. Yadin, Jerusalem Revealed, 116-17. B. Bagatti deduced from Christian graffiti that it was an early Jewish-Christian synagogue, The Church of the Circumcision (Jerusalem, 1971), pp. 120-21. However, the graffiti are probably the work of pilgrims in the Byzantine era, cf. J. E. Taylor, Christians and the Holy Places (Oxford, Clarendon, 1993), p. 216.

(132) The interpretation of `David's tomb' as a fragment of Hagia Sion is followed by J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem as Jesus Knew It (London, 1978), pp. 170-71, and fully worked out by J. E. Taylor, Christians and the Holy Places, pp. 213-17.

(133) W. Sanday, Sacred Sites of The Gospels (Oxford, 1903), pp. 77-78. Sanday based his conclusions on the exhaustive survey of patristic traditions by Theodor Zahn, `Die Dormitio Sanctae Virginia und das Haus des Johannes Markus', Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift 10 (1899), 377-429.

(134) Epiphanius, De mens. et pond. 14, here largely following Sanday's translation from the Greek, Sacred Sites of The Gospels, 82. A Syriac version is also extant; see the translation and analysis of [sections] 54c in J. E. Dean Epiphanius' Treatise on Weights and Measures (Chicago, 1935), p. 30. The Bordeaux Pilgrim gives a picture of the southwest hill in AD 333, prior to the construction of Hagia Sion, largely confirming Epiphanius, though he identifies the sole building as one of the seven synagogues which tradition has it once existed on the site, a tradition which Epiphanius also mentions in this context, cf. H. Donner, Pilgerfahrt ins Heilige Land (Stuttgart, 1979), pp. 57-58. The pilgrim's solitary synagogue is taken as a reference to the Christian church observed by Hadrian by B. Bagatti, The Church from the Circumcision (Jerusalem, 1971), 1313. 117-18, and B. Pixner, `Church of the Apostles found on Mt. Zion', Biblical Archaeology Review 16 (1990), 16-35, see 23-28. See further below.

(135) Eusebiana (Oxford, 1917, rp. Amsterdam, Philo Press, 1973), pp. 28-34, 101-102.

(136) Cf. Th. Zahn, Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons VI (Leipzig, 1900), pp. 258, 261-62; Lawlor also detected use of Hegesippus by Epiphanius at Haer. 27.6; 29.4,7; 30.2; 78.7, 13, 14, cf. Eusebiana, 5-11, 14, 34-35, 73-84, 98-107; R. Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1990), pp. 76-79.

(137) Cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.23.4-19; 3.11-12; 3.20.1-2; 3.32; 4.22.

(138) Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.22.1-3.

(139) Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.22.3. Epiphanius found his Roman bishop-list in `certain memoirs' (Haer. 27.6) which are certainly those of Hegesippus, cf. J. B. Lightfoot Apostolic Fathers, I, S. Clement of Rome, I (London, 1890), pp. 328- 32, and Zahn, Forschungen, VI, pp. 258-61.

(140) Epiphanius, Haer. 66.20, Cf. Zahn, Forschungen, VI, p. 290. R. Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church, p. 72, points out that since Epiphanius lived much of his life in Palestine, he may have had various sources for this list.

(141) Epiphanius, De mens. et. pond. 15.

(142) Cf. H. J. Lawlor, Eusebiana, 28-35.

(143) He had experienced the catastrophe of the Bar-Cochba revolt personally. Cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.8.1-4 and Zahn, Forschungen, VI, 250-54.

(144) He refers to it as the church, Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.22.4-5.

(145) Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.22.8.

(146) Zahn guessed that Epiphanius intentionally avoids naming his source because Hegesippus had brought the name of Panther--unwittingly, from Jewish polemic against the virgin birth--into association with the family of Jesus, thus becoming an undesirable author. No source actually attributes the name Panther to Hegesippus, however. Cf. Zahn, Forschungen, VI, pp. 262, 266-69. Hegesippus is known also to have used the Jewish-Christian Gospel to the Hebrews, and Hebrew and Syriac sources, cf. R. Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church, p. 80.

(147) Cf. M. Broshi, `Excavations on Mount Zion, 1971-1972', Israel Exploration Journal 26 (1976), 81-88.

(148) I am indebted to Dr Rainer Riesner for this observation.

(149) Epiphanius, De mens. et pond. 15.

(150) R. Riesner, Bibel und Kirche 40, 2 (1985), 68. The sensible date is interesting, since Eutychius is a not always a good chronographer, cf. M. Breydy, Etudes sur Sa'id ibn Batriq et ses sources (Turnhout, 1983), pp. 24-28.

(151) `Then the Christians, fleeing from the Jews, crossed the Jordan, and there established their seat. When they heard that Titus had destroyed the city of the rebellious Jews, they returned to the now desolate Jerusalem, building there a church for themselves and nominating their second bishop Simon bar-Clopas. Clopas was the brother of Joseph who brought up our Lord Jesus Christ. This happened in the fourth year of Vespasian. He [bar-Clopas], however, was killed by the Emperor Trajan after having exercised this office for twenty-six years'. Eutychius, Annales 343 (PG 111, 985).

(152) Eusebius' accounts of the election of Simon after the destruction of Jerusalem (Hist. eccl. 3.11, 4.22), which derive from Hegesippus, imply that the Church regathered around Jerusalem to elect or to reaffirm the election of Simon, although the city is not specifically mentioned as the place of gathering. Hence there is reason to believe that Eutychius' portrayal of events need not be wide of the mark.

(153) Eusebius, Dem. ev. 3.5 [sections] 124d. He probably has writers like Hegesippus and Julius Africanus in mind.

(154) Eusebius, Dem. ev. 6.18 [subsections] 285-96.

(155) A. Schlatter, Synagoge und Kirche bis zum BarKochba-Aufstand (Stuttgart, 1966), pp. 69-86.

(156) B. Lifshitz, `Jerusalem sous la Domination Romaine', Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt, eds. H. Temporini and W. Haase, Series 11, vol. 8, pp. 444-89.

(157) Talmud bMakk. 24b; bBerak. 3a; jHag. 2-77b (59), cf. Koh. Rabbah 7.8. Further Schlatter, Synagoge und Kirche bis zum BarKochba-Aufstand, pp. 73-78. Commenting on the phrase `deeds of loving-kindness' in Aboth 1.2, the saying of Rabbi Nathan (Avot de Rabbi Nathan, version A chapter 4) says: "`Woe to us!" Rabbi Joshua cried, "that this, the place where the iniquities of Israel were atoned for, is laid waste!" `My son, Rabban Yohanan said to him, "be not grieved; we have another atonement as effective at this. And what is it? It is acts of loving-kindness, as it is said, For I desire mercy and not sacrifice".'

(158) Semah 10 cf. A. Buchler, The Economic Conditions of Judaea after the Destruction of the Second Temple (London, 1912), p. 17.

(159) Judas is identified with the surname Quiriaci in a Latin martyrology and was even remembered to have written a book, cf. the extensive treatment in A. Schlatter, Synagoge und Kirche bis zum BarKochba-Aufstand, pp. 44-53. Hegesippus told a story of relatives of Jesus examined in the late first century during the reign of Domitian, cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.19-20. Their calculated affirmation of the heavenly nature of Christ's kingdom may indicate lessons learned through encounters with Roman soldiers of the garrison stationed on the razed site of Jerusalem.

(160) The reasonable claim that Jewish-Christians may have preserved the memory of the site with the construction of the church which, according to Epiphanius, was seen by Hadrian, must be carefully distinguished from the untenable view that this building is that still commemorated as `David's Tomb' in Jerusalem. J. E. Taylor has successfully extended the archaeological refutation of the latter claim, but takes scepticism too far in denying on socio-economic grounds the possibility of Zion as the site of the upper room, Christians and the Holy Places, pp. 208, 218-19. She holds that the early Christians, `not an upper-class movement', cannot have occupied a centre on the southwest hill, adjacent to the high priestly houses: `This was Jerusalem's Belgravia, not its Bethnal Green' (p. 208); `If Christians met on Mount Zion during the first century, this would have been inconsistent with what we know about their socio-economic characteristics' (p. 219). B. Pixner has pointed out, in objection to Taylor, that there was an area of poorer dwellings on the southwest hill, as well as grand housing, Wege des Messias und Statten der Urkirche (ed. R. Riesner, GieBen/Basel, Brunnen, [1994.sup.2]), pp. 402-407. Taylor leans too heavily on the now rarely supported assumption that the origins of Christianity were exclusively lower-class. She ignores in particular the Fourth Gospel's highly relevant testimony to a connection between the Beloved Disciple, an adherent of Jesus, and the high priest (18:15), and to Jesus' entertainment of Nicodemus (3:1-2). All the Gospels affirm Joseph of Arimathaea's interest in Jesus' fate (John 19:38; Mark 15:42-47; Matt. 27:57-61; Luke 23:50-56). Luke knows of the wealthy `Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward', clearly an elite personality (8:3). We know that early Christianity was typically spread in the Pauline mission by means of the protection of wealthy patrons, especially through the use of their houses for meetings, cf. G. Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1982), pp. 73-96. Taylor underplays this often crucial aspect of early Christian social structure (despite a momentary concession of it, p. 218). The Beloved Disciple's role as a host to Jesus and his disciples and acquaintance with the high priest suggests that the earliest Church in Jerusalem may have survived precisely because of protection from respected figures close to the ruling elite. The Johannine tradition, connected at its roots with a particular style of Jerusalem Christian piety, as this piece argues, gives within the Gospels the greatest evidence of such social connections. When Taylor claims that `we have no way of assessing the historical reliability' of Epiphanius' testimony (p. 212), she fails to pose the question of his sources, essential since he is widely recognized as an unoriginal collator of earlier materials; to stress the absence of testimony from Eusebius (pp. 208-209) is only to argue from silence. Taylor objects to the acceptance by Bagatti and Pixner (see above) of the Bordeaux pilgrim's reference to a lone `synagogue' in AD 333 and earlier attestation of Epiphanius' `little house of the community of God', conceding only that this is `just possible' (pp. 210-12). However, a case can be made for the Bagatti-Pixner equation. A fourth century gentile pilgrim may have taken a Jewish-Christian building of the late first century as a synagogue, especially if very small and of unusual appearance due to the salvage circumstances of its construction. The letter of James, highly Jewish in character, calls a Christian meeting (-place?) a `synagogue' (2:2), which may contain implications for the appearance of early Jewish-Christian buildings. If the building was kept up by a conservative Jewish-Christian strand, its worshippers may have appeared to the pilgrim more Jewish than Christian.

(161) Adv. haer. 1.22 Harvey; ANCL 1.26.2.

(162) ... On the basis of the devotion to Jerusalem which Irenaeus observes, we may also assume that Jewish Christians kept the habit of prayer facing towards Jerusalem.

(163) Cf. Brian J. Capper, `Community of Goods in the Early Jerusalem Church', ANRW II, 26.2, 1995, 1730-74.

(164) Cf. E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles (Oxford, Blackwell, 1970, pp. 190-96.

(165) M. Wilcox, The Semitisms of Acts (Oxford, Clarendon, 1965), PP. 93-96.

(166) M. Wilcox, The Semitisms of Acts, pp. 96-100.

(167) IQS VI.18-20.

(168) Cf Brian J. Capper, `The Palestinian Cultural Context of Earliest Christian Community of Goods' in R. Bauckham (ed.), The Book of Acts in its Palestinian Setting (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1995), PP. 317-51, see pp. 337-40; "`In der Hand des Ananias..." Erwagungen zu IQS VI.20 und der urchristlichen Gutergerneinschaft', Revue de Qumran 12 (1986), 223-36.

(169) Cf. how a regulation governing lies in matters of property follows immediately after the description of the Essene novitiate at IQS V1.24-25.

(170) Cf. K. Lake and H. J. Cadbury, The Beginnings of Christianity I, The Acts of the Apostles IV, Translation and Commentary (London, Macmillan, 1933), p. 50.

(171) E.g. Mark 1:18, 20; 10:17-22; Matt. 8:18-22; 9:9; Luke 12:33; 14:33.

(172) Cf. further Brian J. Capper, `The Interpretation of Acts 5.4', JSNT 19 (1983), 117-31, especially 118-25, 128.

(173) Daniel R. Schwartz, `Non-joining Sympathisers (Acts 5-13-14)', Biblica 64 (1983), 550-55.

(174) R. Riesner, `Essener und Urkirche in Jerusalem', Bibel und Kirche 40, 2 (1985), 64-76, see 75-76.

(175) Following J. T. Milik, who entitles his section on Essene history 4 BC-AD 68 `Essenisim with Zealot tendencies', Ten Years of Discovery, 94-97.

(176) Following the view of a Roman date for the War Scroll, cf. Y. Yadin, The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons or Darkness (Oxford, 1962); cf. Schurer-Vermes-Millar, The History of the Jewish People, II, 588; Charlesworth, Revue de Qumran 10 (1980), 228-29, esp. 228, n. 67; P. R. Davies, Qumran (Guildford, 1982), pp. 118-25.

(177) More rigorous Pharisees, for example, may have been attracted. It is possible that the Menahern who appears as Shammai's immediate predecessor at Mishnah Hag. 2.2 (`Hillel and Menahem did not differ, but Menahem went forth, and Shammai entered in...') is to be identified with Menahem the Essene prophet (cf. L. Ginzberg, On Jewish Law and Lore [Philadelphia, 1955], 96-102) who figured (see section III above) as key to the alliance of Herod with the Essenes. J. Neusner sees no merit in the identification, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, I, The Masters (Leiden, Brill, 1971), p. 185. However, the explanation in the Babylonian Talmud that Menaham's departure was `to the king's service' (bHag 16b) and the Palestinian Talmud's notice that Menahem went forth with eighty pairs of disciples dressed richly in silk (jHag 2.2; on the text-critical problem cf. Neusner, op. cit., 184-85) may give evidence of the involvement of the Mishnaic figure with Herod, and hence his identity with Josephus' Menahem. The tradition may preserve a memory of the transference of Pharisaic scholars to the Jerusalem Essene Quarter in the time of Herod.

(178) Cf. D. Nineham, Saint Mark (London, SCM, 1977), p. 377; I. H. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (Exeter, Paternoster, 1978), p. 791; J. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV (New York, Doubleday, 1985), p. 1383; and many others.

(179) W. L. Lane refers to the warrant for Jesus' arrest at John 11:57, The Gospel According to Mark (London, Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1974), p. 499.

(180) Cf. the etching and description of everyday life in W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book (London, Paternoster, 1859), pp. 575-76.

(181) Modern cultural anthropologists have observed these features in Mediterranean society, for example amongst the Sarakatsiani, a group of transhumant shepherds in the Epirus region of Greece, cf. J. K. Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage. A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community (Oxford, 1964), p. 86.

(182) Male servants are sent for water at Jer. 14:3, but this may refer to the special circumstances of a drought. They would probably have used waterskins.

(183) We may compare how soon after in the Jerusalem Christian community young men' naturally assume the practical duties of carrying out and burying Ananias and Sapphira, Acts 5:6, 10.

(184) `Marriage they disdain, but they adopt the children of others, while yet pliable and docile, and regard them as their kin and mould them in accordance with their own principles', BJ 2.8.2 [sections] 120.

(185) It may be asked why the Fourth Gospel depicts Jesus placing his mother in the care of the Beloved Disciple rather than of his own brothers (19:25-27). It is possible that the brothers were at the time of crucifixion opposed to Jesus' actions, but there may be further reasons for Jesus' choice. As a respected Jerusalem resident, leading an honoured ascetic group, the Beloved Disciple could offer Mary immediate and safe accommodation. His religious conventicle may have been able to absorb older women into its structure, as celibates under a strict religious discipline, who were allowed to depend on the community for their welfare. An order of women past child-bearing age would present few problems of moral or ritual purity. We may compare Philo's account in his De vita contemplativa of the parallel male and female celibate orders of the Therapeutae. Such an order of women in the Beloved Disciple's community would be relevant to the interpretation of the group of `Hebrew' widows implied by Acts 6:1-6 and the `Hellenist' widows (perhaps not members of such an order) over whom they seem to hold priority. The order of older, celibate women into which Mary would have been integrated would have a more enclosed character, and would not have been sent out on the usual female duty of water-carrying discussed above, which seems to have been laid upon males (presumably most often young male novices) only.

 

Capper, Brian J.. "'With the oldest monks...' light from Essene history on the career of the beloved disciple? (John)." The Journal of Theological Studies. 1998. Retrieved February 11, 2011 from accessmylibrary: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-20743791/oldest-monks-light-essene.html