21 July 2023
I've gotten some comments and questions about recent posts.
Pacifism is not a doctrine; it's a path. It's a collection of assumptions about human nature; it's a commitment to getting things done a certain way. It's neither right nor wrong. What's wrong is trying to assert it as a teaching of Christ. Jesus had no problem with His disciples carrying weapons. His objection to the one time Peter used it in the Garden of Gethsemane was not what most people read into it. Jesus quoted a very old proverb for which the main point was that choosing to operate by human political means (warfare in that case) bore certain liabilities that Jesus wanted to avoid. His Kingdom has always been otherworldly.
That means there are times and places where we might look like pacifists. The question is not the actions themselves, but whether they are appropriate for the occasion. Jesus cracked a whip; that's not a pacifist choice.
What Scripture hammers on is not violence itself, but the cause. Thus, if you are under persecution for your faith, that puts the action into God's hands. Take up your cross. But for just about any other motivation for violence against yourself, you will need to check your convictions. Defending your family against crime seems a very sensible expectation.
Frankly, you should check your convictions often, polling them about various imaginary scenarios. You will certainly get some wrong, because convictions aren't always that clear for everyone. Still, the practice of trying to understand your own convictions is a necessity for covenant living.
It's not that hard to figure out. Ask yourself: What would I do if…? I've said that your conscience is the interface but is not conviction in itself. Rather, it's the part of your fleshly nature that can learn from conviction, but you must demand that it listen. This is part of what the Old Testament Hebrew culture promotes in those times of contemplation. Get yourself away from mental distractions and probe your own internal sense of necessity about various scenarios. It works better if you try to envision yourself in someone else's shoes, walking through some experience you hear or read about.
If you are going to embrace pacifism, do so because your self-examination discovers that's what God designed you to be. Never assume that it's the best answer for everyone, but that it's His answer for you. Then learn how to do it right. A real pacifist will fight pretty hard for certain things; it's about the methods, not the morals.
And this brings up the issue of the Essenes again. They are never mentioned in Scripture, but some things that Jesus and other New Testament figures said seems to point to them. There is a lot of confusion because there are few basic sources from that time period that mention them: Josephus in his histories (the primary source), Philo of Alexandria, Pliny the Elder, and Epiphanius who was an early Christian writer. Other sources only mention them in passing. There is a limited consistency between the primary sources.
The problem is that the label "Essene" seems to have been associated with several different groups, some of whom are quite different from each other. The net result is that the bulk of what we know about the Essenes means it's almost certain they were not the folks who lived in Qumran. There is a huge controversy about how the Qumran scrolls were kept under tight control by a handful of Catholics for some 50 years. Whatever they had revealed initially turned out to be very biased and not at all what the scrolls themselves actually say. My understanding is that the association of the scrolls with the Essenes was part of their deception.
Best we can tell, the Essenes were essentially pacifist, while the Qumran community had strong military defenses and a weapons forge. Also, the Qumran Scrolls included a community guide to warfare. That's just one example.
We have a fairly consistent outline of what the Essenes taught and believed. While some things overlap with Qumran, it's mainly the matter of separatism as a path, not as a doctrine. From what we can tell historically, the Qumran community was more like the zealots who died at Masada.
And Qumran was not the only such facility in that part of the Judean Wilderness. There is little doubt that John the Baptist must have spent some time with them. However, to say they influenced him would be an oversimplification. Too many people would assume that means John's ministry was an outgrowth from those communities. There are some similarities, but also some very significant differences, and it is the kind of differences that tell us he was wholly independent. For example, John's diet was exceedingly strict, more so than the various Qumran type groups, who in turn were different from what we know of the Essenes and their dietary rules.
And it's for sure that Jesus knew about the Essenes and was aware of the various western Dead Sea communities above En Gedi all the way to the mouth of the Jordan, including Qumran. The biggest problem is that the Essenes didn't call themselves by that name, and the Qumran folks seem to have called themselves several different other names.
Part of the challenge here is that the written Hebrew language didn't have vowel symbols until centuries after Christ. It doesn't help that Hebrew itself tends to be flexible on what vowels one might use in pronouncing some words. That includes names, and nicknames in particular tend to vary. One nickname applied to the folks in Qumran looks and sounds very much like the Hebrew word translated into English as "Nazarene".
Thus, we can see how the early Christians were sometimes labeled as part of the Qumran community, which was known to be antigovernment, both against the Roman imperial government, and the ruling parties of Sadducees and Pharisees. Some of the Twelve seemed highly influenced by the Qumran types. Meanwhile, we've already noted the Essenes were thoroughly non-political and pacifist, which also influenced some of the Twelve.
The connections and boundaries are murky. Get used to it.
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