Free A History of the End of the World by Jonathan Kirsch Page B

the threats of Roman imperialism. Some Jews, like Josephus himself, made a profitable peace with Rome. Other Jews, like the Zealots, took up arms against Rome in the name of God and country. And a few Jews, whom Josephus calls the “Essenes,” retreated into the wilderness to await the end of the world, when the armies of God would go to war against the armies of Satan.
    Some scholars identify the Essenes with the “apocalyptic community” at Qumran, the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Their urgent expectations are set down in the so-called War Scroll, which envisions a final battle between the “sons of light” and the “sons of darkness,” captained on one side by the archangel Michael and on the other side by the demonic figure known as Belial. 81 Here is yet another example of how the raw material of the Bible was mined by the apocalyptic authors for new and revolutionary meanings—“Belial” appears nowhere in the Bible itself except as an abstract noun “whose meaning is probably ‘worthlessness,’” but he is conjured up in the apocalyptic tradition as “the supreme adversary of God.” 82
    Still, we simply do not know whether the authors of Daniel, the first book of Enoch, and the Dead Sea Scrolls were members of the same movement in early Judaism—or whether they were worthy of being called a “movement” at all. Scholars can only speculate whether the “Pious Ones” ( hasidim ) who are mentioned in the Book of Maccabees, the “Wise” ( maskilim ) who are mentioned in Daniel, and the Essenes who are mentioned by Josephus are different names for the same people. Thus, for example, the Dead Sea Scrolls were once confidently ascribed to the Essenes, but more careful scholars refer only to “the Qumran sect” and wonder out loud if and how they were linked to the other apocalyptic communities of ancient Judaism. 83
    What they have in common, however, is clear. All of these men and women felt estranged from—and, in a real sense, betrayed by—the world in which they found themselves. Even when they were not prevented from practicing the pure and rigorous strain of Judaism that they embraced, they felt insulted and injured when their fellow Jews failed to do the same. And so, when they contemplated a Jewish king who took the name of a pagan conqueror, or a Jewish high priest who schooled youngsters in how to compete naked in Greek athletic games, or any number of Jewish parents who neglected to circumcise their sons, their true belief instructed them that they were beholding yet another manifestation of what the Bible condemns as “the abomination of desolation.”
    For such men and women, then, the apocalyptic idea was both a balm and a liquor. Today you are oppressed and persecuted, they are told by the apocalyptic texts, but tomorrow your oppression and persecution will end because the whole world will end. And, what’s more, they are encouraged to look forward not only to relief from suffering—a messianic hero and his army of holy warriors who will defeat the demonic arch-villain and his army of evildoers—but also revenge against those who made them suffer in the first place. Thus, the end of the world is the occasion for a resurrection of the dead, the Day of Judgment, and the meting out of punishments and rewards.
    Above all, the apocalyptic tradition was addressed to an audience of men and women who regarded themselves as outsiders and victims even if they were not actually suffering oppression or persecution at any given time and place. Apocalyptic writings reflect “the experience of alienation [in] times of crisis,” according to a certain conventional wisdom in scholarship, but John J. Collins reminds us that “alienation, and crises, may be of many kinds,” including “culture shock,” “social powerlessness,” and “national trauma.” 84 By the first century of the Common Era, all three kinds of crisis were afflicting the Jewish world where the