Teacher of justice

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The title Teacher of Justice ( Hebrew מורה הצדק Moreh ha-Tzedek) is mentioned in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered near Qumran from 1948 to 1956 . The so-called figure appears there as the leader of a Jewish community called Jachad .

Finding

The title appears 15 times in a few manuscript fragments from the caves near Qumran, especially the so-called Damascus script (CD) and in the Habakuk-Pescher (1QpHab). There this teacher appears as a Torah interpreter who interprets earlier prophecy in the Tanakh with the claim of definitive teaching for his present. He appears as a Torah teacher sent by God, who led the church according to God's will and made it certain of God's grace. He was taught by God himself so that he could interpret the books of the prophets correctly and predict God's coming action. His followers who followed him and lived his teaching would be saved from the final judgment , while those who opposed him would be punished by God.

Explanatory models

Since the Damascus script also mentions a “sacrilege priest” who persecuted the teacher and his followers, the jachad , some researchers assume that the teacher himself was a former high priest of the Jerusalem Temple and, after his disempowerment, was Jewish and critical of the temple Sect founded. This has changed around 160 BC. Withdrew to Qumran and awaited the final judgment there.

These hypotheses are mainly represented today by Hartmut Stegemann , who essentially follows Roland de Vaux , head of the first excavation team in Qumran. In the 1950s, he had put forward the theory that Qumran was the residence of an end-time Jewish sect that was identical to the Essenes mentioned in some ancient sources or a part of them. She owned the scrolls, made some of them and hid them in the caves from the Romans who destroyed the settlement in AD 68. Some recent researchers have questioned the identity of Qumran residents with scroll owners on the one hand and the Essenes on the other since around 1990.

In the 1990s, numerous popular and pseudoscientific theories about the teacher of justice emerged: he was identified with various New Testament characters , including John the Baptist , Jesus of Nazareth, and James . These speculative theses not only presuppose the identity of the jachad with the Qumran residents and scroll owners, but also direct relationships between them and the early Christians. This contradicts the proven age of the script fragments from the caves, which mention the teacher of justice: They are in the first century BC. BC originated.

Relationship to early Christianity

The so-called community rule (1QS) of the jachad required new members to give up ownership, regular ablutions, common meals, an eschatological cultic meal and threatened exclusion in the event of rule violations. A celibacy and a secluded ascetic life she did not ask. However, the teacher of righteousness does not appear in this scripture; while CD shows a detached attitude towards the temple cult, 1QS suggests a leadership role for priests and Levites in the jachad . It is therefore questionable whether these fonts can be assigned to the same special group.

Some New Testament scholars see parallels here with early Christianity , especially with the features that characterized the early Jerusalem community : baptism , breaking bread ( Eucharist ), community of property (Acts 2/4). Even Jesus, as the final interpreter of the Torah, did not appear as the giver of new commandments. However, Jesus and his disciples did not withdraw from the rest of Judaism, but wanted to reform it as a whole. They stayed at the temple and attended Passover .

The Messiah expectation is not uniform in the community texts of the scrolls found at Qumran: Some texts speak of "two sons of oil", others only of a future king of the dispensation. The teacher evidently did not see himself as a messiah.

literature

  • Leonhard Rost : The "teacher of unity" and the "teacher of justice" , ThLZ 78, 1953, columns 143-148.
  • Gert Jeremias : The teacher of righteousness. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1963
  • Otto Betz : The Paraclete. Brill Verlag, Leiden 1963, p. 69ff ( book excerpt online )
  • Paul Schulz: The authority of the teacher of justice in Qumran. Verlag Anton Hain, Meisenheim 1974. ISBN 3445011907
  • Hartmut Stegemann: The Essenes, Qumran, John the Baptist and Jesus: a non-fiction book . Freiburg 1993 ( book excerpt online , English, p. 147ff)
  • Johannes Zimmermann: Messianic Texts from Qumran. (Scientific research on the New Testament) Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3161470575 , p. 504ff ( book excerpt online )
  • Michael Knibb: Teacher of Righteousness , in: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James VanderKam (Eds.): Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Oxford University Press, New York 2000, ISBN 0195084500 , pp. 918–921 (English)
  • Gerd Theißen , Annette Merz : The "teacher of justice" and the "godless priest" , in: The historical Jesus. A textbook. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 3rd edition 2001, ISBN 3525521987 , p. 504ff ( book excerpt online )
  • James H. Charlesworth , James D. McSpadden: The sociological and liturgical dimensions of Psalm Pesher 1 (4QPPSa): Some prolegomous reflections. In: James H. Charlesworth (Ed.): The Bible & the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Dead Sea Scrolls & the Qumran Community: The Princeton Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Baylor University Press, 2006, ISBN 1932792201 , p. 327ff ( book excerpt online , English)
  • LT Stuckenbruck: The teacher of righteousness remembered: from fragmentary sources to collective memory in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In: Memory in the Bible and Antiquity. (Scientific research on the New Testament) Mohr / Siebeck, 1st edition, Tübingen 2007, ISBN 316149251X , pp. 75–94 (English)
  • Hanan Eshel : The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hasmonean State , William B. Eerdmans Co, 2008, ISBN 0802862853 , p. 29ff ( book excerpt online , English)

Web links