The Zaddik-idea and the Zadokite Priesthood
The Zaddik-idea, known chiefly in connection with Kabbalah, is found in various parts of the Tanach. It is also to be found in Qumran literature, apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, and theological speculation centering about the Messiah in the New Testament. It takes its origins from several notices concerning it in Genesis relating to two escape-and-salvation episodes, Noah and Lot. In the first, Noah is identified as an ish-zaddik or Righteous Man (Gen. 6:9).
The context is such that one is comparing the survival of the righteous to the destruction of the wicked, i.e., the zaddikim vs. the resha'im, a dichotomy familiar to students of Qumran. Noah is seen by the Lord as "righteous" in his generation. His righteousness is understood as being synonymous with doing "all that the Lord commanded him to do" (Gen. 6:22 - 7:1). After Noah's miraculous salvation from the flood, a sacrifice is made and a covenant ratified. (We are here not interested in the textual provenance of one or the other of the promises made, since what is under consideration is how Noah was perceived by later generations, not the origins of this perception.)
Aside from being instructed to be "fruitful and multiply and people the earth" (i.e., with zaddikim), the ban on the consumption of meat, which in theory must have been operative since the days of creation, is lifted (albeit to later eyes in a manner that might have seemed temporary), and the stricture to abstain from blood (so zealously discussed in Paul's communications with James' Jerusalem Church in the matter of the conversion of Gentiles) is imposed. It is important to understand that from the inception of the zaddik terminology certain priestly prerogatives adhered to it, i.e., in effect Noah was the first priest. That he was "righteous", as well, was an additional factor in his favour. It is his sacrifice and covenant with God that opens the way for the consumption of meat on a vast scale.
The concomitant to this proposition to the Second Temple mind (the sources relating to it from the First Temple are not extensive enough to make any observations) must have been, -when the sacrifice was no longer operating or it was being carried out by men who were polluted or had discredited themselves - discredited not so much in a genealogical, but in a moral manner - this special Noahic dispensation to consume meat was no longer operative - thus the vegetarianism of such individuals as 'Judas Maccabee and John the Baptist, which has rather been mistaken in the popular mind with a sort of Hellenistic asceticism.
The reasoning processes here are similar to Paul's presentation of Abraham (another of our "duly designated" Zaddikim who is vouchsafed the privilege of sacrificing as if he were a priest) as being before the law and therefore not subject to it, whose "faith" rather "counted" for him as righteousness or in Paul's skillful alteration of the sense, "justified him". The Lot episode simply serves to reinforce the essentiality of the Zaddik in the scheme of creation and his soteriological force as embodied in his own ability to survive. Proclaiming that Abraham has commended his children to "keep the way of the Lord", "to do righteousness and justice", the text poses the basic question, "Will you also destroy the righteous with the wicked (zaddik im rasha)?" (Gen. 19:24-33). This theme is reiterated in the bargaining that ensues until it is decided for the sake of ten just men, ten Zaddikim, God will withhold destruction from the city.
For a literalist, as the Second Temple exegete certainly was, this is a very important conception. Thus, the Zaddikim are not only those who are saved themselves, but also those who bring salvation to others. As the notion of resurrection of the dead developed
Page 2
in the Second Temple period, probably from a literalist understanding of Ezekiel's vivid similes, it became a self-evident truism that the resurrection, when it came, would be of "the just", or "righteous ones", and that those from among the living who would escape the final cataclysmic destruction of all the evil ones in the manner of Noah and Lot (and therefore enter into the Messianic Kingdom) would be the Zaddikim.
"These", in the words of the Zadokite Document, "are the sons of Zadok who will stand at the last days". The Zaddik in his embodiment of Righteous Priest (or, as we shall see, "son of Zadok") would be the one whose confession of sins on behalf of the whole people in the Temple on Yom Kippur would alone be efficacious and of a saving nature. In his capacity as leader of the last times he alone could guarantee to his followers an escape from the imminent catastrophe which was going to overwhelm all the evil ones. From these two episodes taken together comes the notion later on propounded in Proverbs that the Zaddik is the Foundation of the World (Proverbs 10:25) -put in terms of our two episodes: so long as there are Zaddikim (the Lot story supplies the minimum number, though later Jewish Aggadah was fond of augmenting it), Heaven and Earth would not pass away.
For perhaps the quintessential statement of what has emerged in this short discussion, it is instructive to turn to the Zohar's explanation of the term, "Noah walked (with God". "Noah was a Righteous Man (Zaddik). Assuredly so, after the super (heavenly) pattern. It is written, 'the Righteous One is the foundation of the world', and the earth is established thereon, for this is the pillar that upholds the world. So Noah was called Zaddik (righteous) below. All this is implied in the words 'Noah walked with God', meaning that he never separated himself from Him and acted so as to be a true copy of the supernal (or heavenly) ideal, a 'Zaddik, the foundation of the world', an embodiment of the world's covenant of peace."
Incidentally, this discussion gives us the basis on which to understand the curious statement in the Gospel of Thomas telling the disciples after Jesus' death to go to Jerusalem to James the Zaddik, for whose sake "Heaven and Earth came into existence". It also will allow us to comprehend how the early Church fathers could have thought that James wore the ephod of the High Priest and entered the Holy of Holies, though a discussion of this is beyond the scope of this paper.
Here, too, it does not take a very great leap of the imagination, when combining this notion of the essentiality of the Zaddik with that of his priestly prerogatives, to arrive at a synthesis of what constitutes an efficacious atonement for the purposes of avoiding sins of omission and seeking remission for communal sin, i.e. only the atonement made by a priest/Zaddik can constitute an efficacious soteriological act. Again, to discuss the presentation of Jesus as Zaddik in the New Testament, not to mention his priestly qualifications "after the tell-tale order of Melchizedek", or the "yazdik Zaddik" ideology of Isaiah 53, developed with such telling, if in Palestinian terms illegitimate, effect in Paul's justification theology, is beyond the scope of this paper.
True in Palestinian literature of the period, this idea of the necessity of a priestly Zaddik for an efficacious intervention for redemption from sin is nowhere adumbrated in the straightforward theological manner of Paul, influenced as he was by Greek methods of philosophical presentation; still there is so much jockeying around the notion in much of Second Temple sectarian literature, that it is hard to imagine that some opposition group did not give expression to it in oral form. Certainly, one finds it in the demands of the Zealots (to use Josephus' terminology) in 4 B.C. for a purer priesthood and in much of the Qumran speculation centering around "the sons of Zadok".
In addition to sowing the seeds of the notions of resurrection of the dead and apocalyptic, both important aspects of Zaddik-theorizing, Ezekiel provides the essential definition of the Zaddik in Chapter 18. He does so almost in an antinomian fashion over and against the Law in its most literal exposition, that is, he states the later Ebionite doctrine that certain passages in scripture are not necessarily true and in particular expressly countermands the one which
Page 3
would be the most damaging to the ideology of the Zaddik, the Deuteronomic idea that a man's sins are visited upon his sons. "The man who respects my observances and keeps my laws will not die for his father's sins. Such a son shall certainly live . . . the man who has sinned is the one who must die. A son is not to suffer for the sins of his father, nor a father for the sins of his son."
He also states what essentially becomes the program for later Christianity: "The Zaddik is law-abiding. He does not . . . seduce his neighbor's wife or sleep with a woman during her periods. He oppresses no one, returns pledges, never steals, gives his own bread to the hungry, his clothes to the naked. He never charges usury on loans, etc."
Finally, laying the basis for what must be seen as the program of John the Baptist, a man also referred to as a "Zaddik" in both the New Testament and Josephus, he states, "But if the wicked man renounces all the sins he has committed, respects my laws and is law-abiding and honest, he will certainly live and not die. All the sins he has committed will be forgotten from then on. He will surely live because of his practice of righteousness. House of Israel, in the future I mean to judge each of you by what he does. . . Repent! Renounce all your sins, avoid all occasions of sin, shake off all the sins you have committed against me and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit . . . Repent and live!" It is, according to this view, sin that brings death and the repentance from sins life. One sees here just how essential both the abrogation of the Deuteronomic notion of unjustified suffering and the new doctrine of resurrection of the dead are in this new Ezekielian scheme of the ish-Zaddik.
Formerly if the righteous man suffered, it could be because of his ancestors or his children. After Ezekiel's break with this doctrine, the idea of an other-worldly recompense or individual resurrection becomes an inevitable development.
The last section of the Prophet Ezekiel must be understood as the "Zadokite" statement par excellence. It is difficult to think that Ezekiel, or whoever authored this section, was unaware of the possibilities inherent in the play on words between Zadok and Zaddik, especially in view of his previous use of the term, "Zaddik", discussed above. Certainly the exegetes at Qumran understood it in this way, and were far less slow than many modern commentators to grasp this central connection, but then perhaps they had direct oral tradition from Ezekiel's time to aid them.
At Qumran the terminology "son of Zadok" is interchanged with "son of Zedek" and extended and elaborated further into the conception of the Moreh-Zedek. In Qumran exegesis the key phraseology always played on in a given text, when an interpretation is being related to the Moreh-Zedek, is always that of "the Zaddik", so much so that the sectaries seem to have done extremely well in picking up almost every passage in Isaiah and Psalms where the word "Zaddik" appears. Passages they have missed can be found subsequently interpreted in similar fashion in the New Testament and Jewish Christianity.
In addition to possibly assuming Ezekiel was setting out the way for the return of Jesus ben Yehozedek to power, he would not have been unaware of similar plays inherent in the names of two previous High Priests, associated with Jerusalem, one in Abraham's and the other in David's time , i. e., Melchizedek and Zadok. As Zadok was the first high priest to officiate in Solomon's Temple, Jesus son of Yehozedek was the first high priest to officiate in the reconstructed Second Temple. Though all of this word play might simply be coincidental, whether Jesus was an actual or spiritual descendant of Solomon's Zadok is something which must remain questionable despite the official genealogies provided.
The Qumran exegetes were as aware of the possibilities inherent in the terminology, "Melchizedek", as the Christians who followed them (and possibly according to R.H. Charles, the Maccabees preceeding them). Despite difficulties in reconstruction, it cannot be denied that llQ Melchizedek is using "men of the lot of Melchi-zedek" in the same manner that "sons of Zadok" is used in the Zadokite Document, and therefore by reduction, Zadok and Melchizedek correspond in some way.
Page 4
When Ezekiel uses the phrase "sons of Zadok" (40:46 , 43 :19, 44 : 15 , and 48:11), he uses it in contradistinction to another previous group, who, if those who contend a direct genealogical link back to Solomon's Zadok are correct, must be seen as the ongoing "Zadokite" hierarchy.
These "have broken my covenant with their filthy practices". They have admitted aliens "uncircumcized in heart and body to frequent my sanctuary and profane my Temple". Here is a clear proof of the Phineas / Ezra mentality, so important for understanding the later Zealot sectarianism of the Second Temple period (sectarian only after the coming of the Romans and the Pharisaic / Herodian takeover). It is reinforced with, "N0 alien uncircumcised in mind and body is to enter my sanctuary". He alludes to the previous governing priestly establishment with the words, "They have deputised someone else to perform their duties in the sanctuary".
In his midnight journey, taken with the aid of the Holy Spirit (a journey suspiciously similar to Muhammad's Sira): he had already seen "the sons of Shaphan (a family prominent in finding the "Book of the Law" and the reform of Josiah) and others observing all manner of filthy practices ." If this establishment was "Zadokite" before Ezekiel's time, of which there is no convincing proof, then the Zadokites of Ezekiel's usage must differ from them in some way. If it was not, then the terminology is new. Either way, as Ezekiel uses it, it comprises a qualitative element, notably "the levites, the priests, the sons of Zadok" are "those who did their duty in the sanctuary when the Israelites strayed from me." The establishment, including "the sons of Shaphan" are those "levites who abandoned me when Israel stayed far from me to follow idols". These are to be punished by menial service in the temple where "They are to hold themselves at the service of the people" as they used to serve idols before. "They are never to approach me again to perform the priestly office in my presence. . ."
What is being countenanced here is nothing less than a change in the priesthood. The new priestly establishment is to be "ha-levaim ha-cohanim b'nai-Zadok", or to paraphrase in English, "The levites who are bnai-Zadok priests". At this point, if we insert the esoteric exegesis we have suggested, the result is, "those levites who are righteous priests", which accords with Ezekiel 's own words, i .e. those levites "who did their duty to me in the sanctuary" or those among the "sons of Zadok who did not go astray".
An interesting follow-up to what is occurring here, is that when John Hyrcanus assumed the high priesthood, he did so subject to the coming of another prophet who would make a final determination of the situation. Here we have in Josephus' words something of the "True Prophet" ideology which so bedeviled the Second Temple Period and beyond, which shows that it was prophets who determined who served at the Lord's altar, not genealogy, conflicting assertions not withstanding.
The sequence laid down by Ezekiel was theoretically to stand until a final sequence laid down by a coming prophet — thereafter widely known as the "true prophet" in contradistinction to all the lying ones, would be inaugurated. This is the Zadokite priesthood we are delineating here.
I do not claim to be the first to see the basis of the Zadokite priesthood in the notion of the Zaddik. Epiphanius in the fifth century understood the two conceptions to be related, (assuming that what he meant by "Sadducee" is equivalent to what we call "Zadokite").
There can be little doubt, too, that the transliteration "Sadducee" just does not fit the spelling of the name Zadok in the Septuagint. If we ignore for the moment the description of the Sadducee Party, as we have it in Josephus and the New Testament, and see the conception, whatever else it may be, as being equivalent to what is meant in the Dead Sea Scrolls by sons and followers of Zadok, then the incongruencies in spelling drop away, and Zaddouki becomes reducible to Zaddiki just as easily as it does to Zadoki. We shall see that characteristics like "being more strict in judgement" have telling effect here. The Karaites in the Middle Ages , who were styled by themselves and others as "Sadducees", also just as often referred to themselves as "Zaddikim". In this regard ‘the Karaite writer al-Kirkisani does see Jesus as
Page 5
have received only the most cursory examination from scholars. Le Moyne's latest book on this subject, states that such a linguistic derivation is impossible (no reasons given), adding, "Besides . . . . . one cannot see why the Sadducees in their origins or appearance should qualify as being 'just' ... " But even Albright felt it was necessary to go deeper into this conception, promising an article in the future.
Three writers have already done so to a greater or lesser extent, but their work has been almost totally ignored in the rather superficial speculation that surrounds the origins of the Zadokite movement. These are Bowman, North, and Wernberg-Moller. The latter has even spelled out, with unmistakeable precision, the dependence of Zadok on Zaddik.
Bowman, in an article in the 1950's, entitled, "Ezekiel and the Zadokite Priesthood", has shown fairly convincingly that the Aaronid Priesthood originated in the time of Ezra and after, being a conception used to unite conflicting groups of priests, notably the Zadokites and Abiatharites. He has also shown the cruciality of the "zealot"-related claim of the zeal of Phineas for establishing all Zadokite claims, Phineas being a patronym for Zadok. According to this view, the "Zadokite" claims in Ezekiel and the "Zealot/Phineas" claims in Numbers would be identical.
Though a full discussion of these matters is beyond the scope of this paper, I would part company with him on several points. In Nehemiah it is specifically claimed that some of the returning clans making up the priestly courses in Chronicles cannot prove their genealogies; some are even said not to be priestly at all. This alone would prove the artificiality of almost all surviving genealogical records. Herod probably completed the chaos by destroying whatever was left of these records (this in the process of bringing in a new Sadducee priesthood, which I shall call for purposes of identification, "Boethusians", not Zadokites - the New Testament has them as "Herodians").
Even much more striking in this regard, the Book of Ezra gives Ezra the same genealogy as Jesus ben Yehozedek, a patent impossibility, which is in itself revealing, for it shows something of the scramble in this period to get the right genealogy. It is about as reliable as the two conflicting genealogies in the New Testament for Jesus, which give a different father for Shaltiel.
In Ezra' s case, it is also clear that the Phineas-related Zealot claim (which Bowman identifies with the Zadokite) is for perhaps the first time being employed, since in his "zeal" for the law he causes backsliders (including those from the highpriestly family, one of whom he exiles North, which is probably the inception of the Samaritan Zadokite line) to put away their non-Judaean wives or be excommunicated. (Phineas would have slain them, but Ezra probably had not the authority to go this far.) Mattathias the Hasmonaean, of course, is depicted as doing just this, and on the altar no less, whatever altar it could be in Modein.
It also shows there was some question as to exactly what comprised a high priest in Ezra ' s time, and Ezra is clearly being put fomard as one, though Jesus' Zadokite family is by this time entrenched in Jerusalem. He presides at ceremonies, and all in all seems above the high priests, acting as a kind of Nehemiah-like Nasi. Yet the fact that he is supplied with a proper highpriestly genealogy (no matter that it is the same as Jesus'; Jesus' too, is impossible in terms of generation counts) shows there were some anyhow who saw him as a kind of high priest, and certainly he had power over the high priest.
The missing link between the two conceptions of the high priesthood - the "Zealot" and the "Zadokite" - is to be found in the Hebrew version of Ecclesiasticus in a portion which has not been preserved in the Greek for obvious reasons. This work very pointedly develops towards extolling the priestly qualifications of Simeon the Zaddik, a key figure as all lines of tradition seem to go back to him (as they do earlier to Ezra).
In the all-important final section "In Praise of Famous Men" ("anshei-Hesed" in the Hebrew) beginning with Noah the Zaddik and ending with Simeon, this document often thought of as being "Sadducee", provides a list of such "Hassidim" echoed in similar rehearsals in Wisdom, Jubilees, and the Zadokite Document, who must be identifiable with Zaddikim (the terminology is used interchangeably at Qumran as it is in Isaiah and Psalms). Similar [unreadable - misplaced original typewritten text on its scanner caused page 5 pdf text to be below the border of its page]
Page 6
of Enoch. Because in this section of Ecclesiasticus Zadokite and Zealot claims are linked and centered around identifiable Zaddikim or Hassidim, this book constitutes a kind of passport of priestly claims in the Second Temple period, and is to be found in most all centres of sectarian activity, i.e., Zealot, Essene, Karaite, and Christian, all of which are non-Pharisaic, which is the reason for its exclusion from the Tanach canon as it has been transmitted by Rabbinic tradition.
Onias the Just or Onias the Zaddik is the last righteous High Priest before the Hasmonaean succession. As far as 2 Macc. is concerned, anyhow, and demonstrably Daniel and Enoch (including those portions found at Qumran), the succession cannot and does not follow the blood line, whatever modern scholars would have us believe, since Onias' brother Jason is implicitly excluded from it because of his "Godlessness" and "impiety" (2 Macc 4:13). In just the opposite manner, Onias the Zaddik is a man through whose "piety" (hesed) the law was observed "as perfectly as possible" (n.b., the Qumran and N.T. overtones). At this point, not only do we have a Zadokite claim in the sense we have expounded it being made on his behalf, but what we should term also a "Hassidaean and a "Zealot", since the text also calls him "zealous" for the law, though all these terminologies as the reader by now suspects are simply variations on the same theme. At Qumran, besides the employment of such vocabularies, "Ebionite imagery is also introduced. It is also noteworthy that the same term is used to describe him coz or macoz le-amo, as Eusebius via Hegesippus uses to describe James the Zaddik the brother of Jesus, already discussed above, i.e. "protector of his fellow countrymen", or in James' case, "protection of the people".
In the simplistic way most Dead Sea Scroll research has progressed, the Maccabees are usually taken to be a priest line that "usurped" the high priestly role from a previous more legitimate one, but this is quite clearly at odds with almost all the available evidence and is only propounded to aid a theory ‘of identification that would cast one or the other of the Maccabees as illegitimate and as appropriate candidates for the "Wicked Priest".
In the Book of Daniel, which must be considered a contemporary report on these events, there is no interruption seen between the death of Onias and the rising of the Kedoshim ("Saints"). In the Book of Enoch, no interruption is signalled between the death of the Simeon/Onias line and the rise of Judas, and this in passages extant at Qumran. In Maccabees I, much is made of the Phineas-style Zealot behaviour of Mattathias, which Bowman identifies as the Zadokite covenant. In any event, the family is pointedly identified as being of the course of Jehoiarib, the first and principal priestly clan. There can be little doubt this is a Zadokite clan. Perhaps it was to claim indisputable Zadokite descent that the Maccabees claimed attachment to the first course, since there nowhere exists any delineation of which clans are Zadokite and which Abiatharid, i.e., Eleazarid and Ithamarid.
As far as Judas is concerned, it is always ignored by commentators that he was "elected" to the High Priesthood three times, a typical "Zealot" procedure, when they identify Jonathan as the first Maccabee to hold the high priesthood. It is perhaps more accurate to say Jonathan is the first Maccabee to accept the high priesthood from foreign hands, a thing abjured by Mattathias, Judas, and later John Hyrcanus and probably the sine qua non of a proper "Zadokite". There can be little doubt that Judas presided over the cleansing of the Temple in the manner of a high priest (an action inspiring the similar episode relating to Jesus in the New Testament, where the same "Zealot" claim is raised for Jesus, i.e., "Zeal for my Father's House consumes me"). But Judas is clearly also a Zaddik. Second Maccabees identifies him as such in no uncertain terms , saying that he and nine other Zaddikim went into the wilderness and lived on berries and roots to avoid defiling themselves. It will immediately be clear to those sensitive to the Zaddikite symbolism, that all of what was earlier stated relating to "the Zaddik the foundation of the world"
Page 7
Maccabees II, also, gives a pointed reminder that Judas is a direct successor to Onias the Just, if any such reminder were by now necessary. Schematically, the book opens in praise of Onias' piety, his saintly acts, and his role as Zaddik or "shield of the“‘people". It closes with Onias together with Jeremiah personifying "the Ancient of Days", handing the messianic sword of the battle priest/Zaddik (the messiah zidkeinu of common Jewish prayer) to Judas. There is no interruption signaled and indeed there was none, despite the flight of Onias IV to Egypt. The same Zadokite and Zealot priestly claims are being put forth for Simeon the Zaddik, Onias the Zaddik, Mattathias, and Judas, as indeed they are later to the discerning eye for Jesus and his brother James in the New Testament and early Church Literature.
The notion of a genealogical succession we owe to an imperfect understanding of Chronicles fostered by Josephus, who indeed had much to lose and be embarassed about if the truth were out. On the other hand, Josephus may have been so ignorant or simply considered so untrustworthy that the esoteric understanding of these matters was never communicated to him or escaped him.
One or two historical notes are crucial here. What party the Maccabees belonged to has been debated. According to this view there can be little doubt that originally they were Sadducees. The discrepancy between Maccabees I and Maccabees II concerning whether Judas was leader of the Hassidaeans, "everyone a stout fighting man, a volunteer on the side of the Law," is also relatively easily resolved following this View. The Hassidaeans are the party of apocalyptic, par excellence, as most commentators have easily grasped, probably responsible for literature like Daniel, Enoch, and the like. As such, they are also Zadokite (in the sense of Zaddikite) and therefore certainly related to the foundations of the Zealot movement and Christianity. Judas is undeniably their teacher and leader. This group is undisputably linked to the sectaries at Qumran, as most commentators have surmised in their rather simplistic adherence to Essene-theorizing.
However, there are a group of breakaway Hassidaeans (therefore those who see Pharisees as being descended from the Hassidaeans are also correct), who are depicted l Macc., but the terminology "Pharisee" has hot been employed, because the book emanates from a Pharisee milieu. The distinction is quite clear; the breakaway Hassidaeans or Pharisees are willing to accept the appointment of a High Priest through foreign hands (accordingly, Jonathan and Simon must be seen as Pharisees, followed by Hyrcanus and the Herodian and Procuratorial high priests); the purist Hassidaeans or "Zadokites" repudiate such a procedure and view only a native priesthood as authentic. Along these lines one must group Judas, later John, Alexander, Honi (n.b. his denunciation of the Pharisees and Espousal of the Zealot line), John the Baptist, Jesus, James , etc.
The Sadducees who appear after Herod takes power are not the same as the Sadducees who existed before them, and therefore I refer to the latter as "Boethusians", who are a kind of Phariseeizing Sadducee group, i.e., they accept appointment of high priests by foreigners. By the time of John the Baptist, we are no longer talking about a party in the official orbit, as its activities are by this time circumscribed and illegal (i.e., from the time of Judas and Zadok onwards).
From this point we are correct in talking about an opposition priesthood, i.e. centering about the Zaddik or Moreh-Zedek of any given generation (a kind of hidden Imam to use Islamic terminology, which indeed is directly related to it, or for a modern parallel, a Khomeini-like movement.) This is the movement that gives rise to the literature at Qumran. It is an underground movement of vast proportions that later moves into Kabbalah, Jewish Christianity, Islam, Shiism, and Karaism, not to mention an assortment of other groups and sects. The central notion of the whole is the Zaddik-idea and the Zadokite priesthood which later moves on into other variations like that of Melchizedek and the Islamic imamate.
Let us now finally look at the Qumran documents and see how all these claims are put together. In the Zadokite Document where Ez. 44:15 is expounded, "the holy men of former times", who must be seen as identical to the anshei-Hesed of
Page 8
Ecclesiasticus, "whose sins God forgave and who justified the Righteous (yazdiku zaddik) and condemned the wicked (yarshi 'u resha'im)" (notions running close to Paul's theology centering about Jesus and based on similar terminology in Isaiah 53) are designated as equivalent to "the sons of Zadok". Associated with both of these is a conception of predestined pre-existence as we have it in regard to the Zaddik in the Zohar and the Gospel of Thomas (translated in the Gospel of John with regard to Jesus into the Logos-doctrine). Not only has God "foreknown" the "ways of the wicked" from before the beginning of the world . . . Their end has always been predetermined . . . Nevertheless in all of their generations He has ever raised up for himself duly designated men so that He might provide survival for the earth and fill the face of the world with their seed". Here allusion is made not only to the first Zaddik, Noah, but to the role and function of the Zaddikim in the world. In the next sentence the Zaddik-idea is linked to the Messianic with the words, "And to these has He ever revealed his holy spirit at the hands of his Anointed One. . . . , and He has clearly specified who they were."
Finally in the passage identifying "the Sons of Zadok" with "the elect of Israel who shall stand in the last days", it is stated that "their names have been specified, the families into which they are to be born, the epochs in which they are to function. . . .", a clear presentation of the notion of the pre-existent Zaddik. This is further echoed in the Hymns with the words "you established their destiny before ever they were." "Before ever my father begat me, you knew me, from the womb of my mother you showered me with holiness". "For my father knew me not and my mother abandoned me to you; you are a father to all the sons of truth." "You alone created the Zaddik, and established him from the womb . . You have maked the spirit of the Zaddik (ruah Zaddik) . . . and no man can be justified except through you. Therefore I implore you be the spirit which you gave to perfect your pieties (Hasadeicha) to your Servant purifying me by your Holy Spirit (ruah Kedosheicha) . . . " These statements not only combine the zaddik-idea with the sonship idea against a background of justification theology, but also provide us with an idea of how both Eusebius and Epiphanius could have considered one such Zaddik/Moreh-Zedek, James, "a Nazirite from his mother's womb."
In the Zadokite Document the esoteric aspects of Ezekiel's "Zadokite" priesthood are heightened and stressed to the extent that others who would term themselves "Zadokite" by some more genealogical yardstick, for instance the compromised priesthoods functioning under both Herod and the Procurators, could hardly be considered Sadducee or Zadokite at all. In this manner, the law-oriented, xenophobic righteousness of Ezra and Ezekiel is pushed to its final extreme.
In their rendering of Ezekiel 44:15 any difficulties inherent in the phrase Ha-Leva'im Ha-Cohenim B'nai Zadok are eliminated, as waw's are added between the nouns, splitting the appositives and breaking the genitive constructs, so that the singular nominative is separated out for exegetical purposes into three distinct categories. Often great liberties are taken with textual material in this way at Qumran in the interests of a certain exegesis, as they are in the New Testament, and in this case it is fairly certain the passage in question is not being reproduced with precision, but rather, fairly carelessly from memory, as various other parts, unimportant to the general thrust of the passage, are also omitted.
"Priests" are defined as "the penitents of Israel who went out from the Land of Judah"; "Levites" are those who attached themselves to them (the text is defective here); "the sons of Zadok are the elect of Israel waiting at the end of days . . . the saints through whom God forgives, justifying the righteous and condemning the wicked ." According to this presentation, priests are not priests at all. On the contrary, it is specifically noted that they are ordinary Israelites, i.e. , they are not Zadokites; they are not even Aaronic. They may be, but this is not the distinguishing characteristic. The distinguishing characteristic is simply that they are
Page 9
"penitents" (terminology reminiscent of John‘s activities). As we pointed out concerning Ezekiel, the thrust here is qualitative rather than genealogical. "The sons of Zadok" according to this document are quite clearly the quintessance of their generation and the highpoint of the whole ideology. They are the "saints" (a direct appositive) or the Zaddikim who will "stand" or "wait" (or perhaps even "be resurrected") in the last days or at the end of time. They are "the sons of Zedek" (or "the sons of your truth", as the hymns put it) - all this against a very carefully adumbrated "righteousness of works" i.e., the ma'aleihem so often referred to in the Hymns and echoed not surprisingly in the letter of James.
To sum up: the beginning of the Qumran orientation is to be found in a succession of Zaddiks, starting with Simeon the Zaddik or before, coming down through his son, the martyred Onias, Judas surnamed the Maccabee (a title also alluded to in the Qumran Hymns). They are associated in some way with the origins of the Hassidaean movement, probably a pseudonym of the original Zadokite in the sense of the followers of the Zaddik or Zaddikim. Both kinds of usages appear liberally at Qumran, especially in the Hymns and Pesherim, not to mention the terms "Ebionim" and "Kedoshim", and various combinations of these like the "Ebionei-Hesed". At Qumran, Ezekiel's ambiguous statements about this priesthood have been opened up to include all Israelites, and the genealogical thrust, if he ever intended one, has been completely discarded. The "sons of Zadok" aspect had been deliberately distorted to produce the meaning of those who are saved in any and all generations.
That is we are dealing with a heavenly priesthood (Eisler would have it an "opposition" one) of Righteous Ones as well as an earthly one, "waiting", "standing", or resurrected to function at the end of days. The step from here to the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek in Christianity is not a very great one.
Whether these Qumran documents pertain to the second and first centuries B.C., as scholars have attempted to argue, or the first century A.D. is not the question. It is important only in so far as understanding when the notion of a "son of Zadok" was no longer taken genealogically, but allegorically, and linked to the Zaddik-idea as we have expounded it at the beginning of this paper. That it was at some point taken completely allegorically, having no relation to the Zadok of David's time whatsoever, is unquestionable.
Topic: The Zaddik-idea and the Zadokite Priesthood - Prof. Robert Eisenman (Read 5132 times)