Religion: Out of the Desert

(7 of 10)

When did this happen? One possible answer centers around a foreign invader of Israel characterized by the scrolls as the Kittim. It would obviously make a considerable difference whether this term meant the Syrians (who dominated Israel from 198 B.C. to 141 B.C.) or the Romans (from 63 B.C. on). This one problem provides a perfect example of the kind of puzzle the scroll scholars are up against. The Kittim, according to the scrolls, are "swift and men of valor in battle." go "over smooth ground" and "trample the earth with their horses and with their animals; and from afar they come, from the coasts of the sea." They "sacrifice to their standards, and their weapons of war are the object of their worship." Exponents of the theory that the Kittim are the Syrians see the "smooth ground" as meaning alternately a plain, a level road, the plateau east of the Dead Sea—or merely that they were unopposed. They identify the "animals" with which they trample the earth as the war elephants of which the Syrians were proud. But since the Hebrew language has a word for elephant, others ask, why did the scroll not use it if elephant were meant? As for the passage about worshiping their standards—Syrians, it is claimed, did this as well as Romans.

One scholar who thinks the Romans are the Kittim renders the "smooth ground" as "liquid plain," i.e., water. A scroll statement that the Kittim horsemen "fly like a vulture" is connected by the pro-Roman faction with the Roman eagle. The question of offering sacrifice to the standards is not as clear an argument for the Roman identification as it seems at first; it is doubtful whether the legions actually offered sacrifices to their standards before the time of the empire.

With just this kind of historical detective work, the scholars have moved in on the dramatic cast of characters offered in the Habakknk commentary. The leading members of the cast are the already famed Righteous Teacher, a spiritual leader with special inspiration from God, and his persecutor, the Wicked Priest, a sacrilegious, murdering, despoiling drunkard who comes to a bad end. There are probably subsidiary villains, referred to as the Man of the Lie and the Preacher of the Lie (though it is possible that these are additional epithets for the Wicked Priest). In the background is the House of Absalom, a group that betrayed the Teacher.

Teacher v. Priest. Scholars are trying ceaselessly to cast these shadowy roles with known actors on the stage of history. In an erudite and fascinating game, high priest after high priest has been tried for the roles:

¶ Some scholars have identified the Man of the Lie as Antiochus Epiphanes, who in 175 B.C. became King of Syria, and thus ruler of Palestine. Determined to force Hellenism on the Jews, he marched an army into Jerusalem (with the help of a Hellenic fifth column) and deposed High Priest Onias III—a possible Righteous Teacher under this theory. Thus the Wicked Priest becomes one of Antiochus' appointees, Menelaus, who went to work enthusiastically forcing Greek clothes, games and gods on the Jews. Under the priest Mattathias and later his son Judas Maccabeus ("The Hammer"), the old-line Israelites rose to defeat the Syrians and slaughter many of the Hellenistic Jews.