March 7, 2009, 12:19 pm by dc-agape.

With the release of all the documents found in the caves of the Qumran Wadi to scholars the Damascus Document (CD) has additions to it that were not available to the 1951 print by Millar Burrows.  Because of this, more fragments of the document can now be studies.  In this post I will relate some of the laws that the authors of the Document felt were needed to be clarified.  These fragments come from Cave 4 and are documents # 266-267, and #270-271.  I think I will keep the order that Michael Wise, Martin Abegg Jr, and Edward Cook  have chosen in “A New Translation: The Dead Sea Scrolls” printed by Harper San Francisco, in 2005.

4Q266 Frag 5 Col 1 (complimented by 4Q267 Frag 5)

This is actually very fragmented but seems to be an introduction to the section of the Document that covers the Laws that must be kept.  It warns about the willful heart and the return to the sins of the ancestors.  But it seems to be directed at the repentant of Israel, the sons of Zadok, and the priests.  Nothing much more than that can be gleaned from this section.

4Q270 Frag 2 Col 1:10 – 2:21

The first column is a warning to those people who sacrifice to satyrs, seek necromancers and mediums, profane the name of YHWH, women who have a bad reputation, and men who sleep with their wives during her menstruation.  But due to the missing parts it actually does not say if these actions are good or bad!  We are to assume that these are all equally bad “sins” in the minds of the authors.

The second column is about the sacrifices to be given to the Aaronites, yes that right, not the Levites, but to the sons of Aaron.  And boy is this a heck of a list.  All the first fruits, from the harvest, including livestock, and even first born children (cash is acceptable).  But not only the first harvest and first born, this includes the first shearing of the flock, and an additional 20% to sin restitution. 

The authors then changes gears to what actions people take that should banish others from society.  These are not laws for the author’s sect, these are laws for all the Israelites.  Some of the actions that deserve banishment are defiling the Holy Spirit (the Blasphemy Challenge), skin disease, unclean bodily discharges, revealing secrets to Gentiles, rebellion against leaders, those that speak lies against YHWH, the slaughter of animals with fetuses, sex with a woman who is menstruating, and homosexuality.  This column fragment ends with a command to the righteous to listen to these words and not fall into the traps listed above.

4Q266 Frag 5 Col 2 (complimented by 4Q267)

Here we get to see what is required of the priests.  The authors start with a requirement that anyone reading from the Book of Law must have a clear, calmly control of their voice.  If anyone read aloud with a harsh voice or too quickly they should “incur the penalty of death”!  And that is one of the nicer punishments.  If any Aaronites are captured by Gentiles his name will be stricken from all genealogies.  The same punishment goes for any Aaronites who would teach false worship practices, or eats food with blood still in it.  That’s one way to keep the riffraff from changing anything!

4Q272 Frag 1 Col 1 (complimented by 4Q266 Frag 6)

This section is about sores and scabs including wounds due to splinters and stone that occur to any Israelite.  The priest is to inspect the wound for size, shape, color, and thickness.  Seven days later the priest is to re-examine the wound.  If it has improved the person is healthy and all is well.  Otherwise, the person has an incurable skin disease.  And we know what happens to them, they are outcasts for the rest of their lives.

4Q266 Frag 6 Col 1:5-16 (complimented by 4Q272 Frag 1 Col 2)

Here are the rules for diseases that affect the hair and beard.  It also includes manly discharges.  The priest is to shave the entire head or beard except the diseased area.  Seven days later the priest is to re-examine the area.  If it has not spread the person is healed.  If not, well we know what that outcome is as well…another outcast.  The man who has a discharge is to be washed with water and anyone who touches him before he bathes must also bath.  Wow, that’s not too harsh a punishment for masturbation!

4Q266 Frag 6 Col 2

Here are the laws for menstruation and child birth.  By having intercourse with a menstruating woman the man picks up her defilement.  If she has a discharge outside of her period she also becomes unclean.  The punishment seems to be equal for all three cases…for eight days they are not allowed to enter the  sanctuary.

The laws for childbirth are very odd.  If the woman has a boy she is unclean for seven days and is required to remain in blood purification for 33 days.  But if she has a girl, she is unclean for two weeks and will remain in blood purification for 66 days.  During this time she is not allowed to eat consecrated food or enter the sanctuary.  So this society actually punished woman for having girls!  It is like it wasn’t YHWH choice whether the woman gave birth to a boy or a girl.  The one caveat for the woman is that if she cannot afford a lamb for the burnt offering she is allowed to use a turtledove or a pigeon.

4Q266 Frag 6 Col 3 + 4Q270 Frag 3 Col 2 (complimented by 4Q267 Frag 6)

These are more laws about the harvest, gleaning and tithes.  It covers the harvests from grapevines, olive trees, and the field.  To say the least this one section is very disjointed and fragmentary.  It also uses the archaic measurements of seah (1.5 gallons/7 liters) and ephad (4.65 gallons/21.1 liters).  Thanks to convert center for the conversations.

4Q271 Frag 2:1-6

This fragment continues the required tithes, this time including the threshing floor. With the commandment that no one should set anything aside or use any product of the harvest until a priest could bless it.  That’s making sure you get the correct tithe!

4Q271 Frag 2:8-13

The first laws are about Gentile objects and things touched by a corpse.  The fear that Gentile might have used any object in the devotion to pagan worship required that only items purchased from Gentiles that were “straight from the furnace” could be brought into the “zone of purity”.  In the case of materials that had touched a corpse, these thing could not be used unless sprinkled according to specific regulations.  Fragment 2 ends with an odd requirement anyone who is unclean when he sees the sunset.  But any young man, below a certain age, this does not apply to.

4Q271 Frag 3:1-15

This is the last of the fragmentary Laws.  But numerous different topics are discussed.  Fragment 3 covers four different laws.  The first is about repayment of debts.  In the year of the Jubilee his debts will be released by YHWH himself.  Why can’t we have that?  Then the commandment that men and women should not dress alike is addressed.  The third law in this fragment is about business transactions including betrothals.  Anything that an Israelite sells, they must confess all the defects to the purchaser.  This includes betrothals of a daughter.  It also includes a requirement that the betrothal must be of proper status.  The authors use examples that are wrong such as plowing with an ox and an ass, or the mixing of wool and flax.  Marriage to a woman of ill-repute is the last law that is commented on in the fragments.  I love that the translators use the phrase “do the deed”.  A man can marry such a woman if she is examined by dependable and knowledgeable women prior to the marriage.  But her prior “deed” should not be revealed to the public.

Posted in Damascus Document, Dead Sea Scroll, Readings | Print | 1 Comment »

March 7, 2009, 8:26 am by dc-agape.

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As I have continued describing some of the reasons that I became an Atheist, I have left this one out.  One reason that I have left it out was that it relates only to the Christian YHWH.  No other religion claims that the “undesirables” of society were to be treated with great friendship and respect.  Only Jesus did this, only Christians claim to be like Jesus.  The Buddha, and Buddhism itself, does have a response to this topic, but it is not a positive one (Taiwan News).  Neither philosophy nor any religion has ever put the weak, the poor, the outcast at the top of the list of people to treat as equals, yet that is exactly what Jesus did:

Matt 21:31 “Which of the two did what the father wanted?” “The first,” they said. Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collector and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.

Later he goes even further and makes the “outcasts” a least one magnitude greater than “righteous”:

Luke 15:7 I tell you in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

The second reason that I have not covered this topic yet is that it is quite complex.  It will most likely take me at least three posts to cover all the verses in the Gospels about how Jesus treats the outcasts.  And that is without using the repetitive stories in more than one Gospel.  The final reason is that it does not leave “christians” in a good light.  In fact, it makes the farce of the entire Christian religion so obvious that many will be offended.  But then the Book of James does have something to say about that:

Jam 4:4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God?  Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

The topic of “being a friend to the world” requires its own numerous posts.  But I am doing the same thing as James points out.  This blog has not been created to be friend the worldly christians.  In fact, this blog was created because of the worldly christians.  But that too is for a different post.

In this post I want to cover the stories and parables that Jesus used in the Gospel of Matthew to show how the “outcasts” of society were to be treated.  I used Matt 21:31 at the beginning of this post, I will return to it at the end.  Let’s start with one that shows there is no difference between the outcast and the righteous: Matt 5:43-48 (I won’t repeat the entire section here, but I will use most of the important points that Jesus makes).  Here Jesus makes the comparison between the Jewish outcast and the Jewish “faithful”.  This is part of The Beatitudes that is rarely repeated, due to its more demanding tone.  He starts with how the sun and rain are shared by all people.  The meaning of this is simple…we all live here; we all experience the same earthly conditions.  But then he gets more “in your face”.  These two are worth repeating verbatim:

Matt 5:46-47 If you love those you love you, what reward will you get?  Are not even the tax collectors doing that?  And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others?  Do not even pagans do that?

So here Jesus uses two types of outcast to show the “faithful” how as followers of YHWH these people need to stand out in a crowd not just be a crowd.  Today’s christian could learn a lot from these verses. 

The next verse in the Gospel of Matthew I want to use is the tried and true story of Levi the tax collector. 

Matt 9:10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples.

This caused a stir among the “righteous”.  They wondered why Jesus would be making himself “unclean” by eating with “sinners”.  So here Jesus is not worried about “his image”, he is not worried about “who he is seen with”.  Instead he tells the Pharisees this:

Matt 9:12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick.

Jesus was telling the crowd that his purpose was to attend to the needs of the “sinner” not the “righteous”.  “To be like Jesus” is to do the same thing.  But do notice one thing…he did not require the people (“sinners”) to listen to him preach before they ate with him!  In fact, Jesus did not preach to the “sinners” at all, he rebuked the “righteous”. 

The next verse I want to use is this one:

Matt 11:19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and “sinners”’.  But wisdom is proved right by her actions.

Here Jesus is not only saying that it is his purpose to attend the need of the “sinner” but that it was the wisest thing to do.  It is the actions that a person takes that prove how wise the person is, not what they says.  Christians should take that to heart, lots of talk without action is meaningless.  Show your wisdom by your actions.  Do something, anything would be better than sitting on your ass!

Finally I will return to Matt 21:28-32.  This is the Parable of the Two Sons.  A father asks his sons to work in the fields, but both tell him “I will not”.  One later reconsiders and does as he was told.  Jesus compares the “righteous” leaders of the Jewish religion to the tax collector and the prostitutes and found the “sinners” were better people than the “righteous” leaders.  He was talking about repentance, but today there is no difference between the “righteous” leaders and the “sinner”.  Yet one is “high and mighty” and wants to control the actions and thoughts of the multitudes. 

This is why I became an Atheist.  It was not because I was gay, even though that did make me an “outcast” amongst the “christians”.  But it was the examples that Jesus used to compare the “righteous” to the “sinner” and the way Jesus treated the “sinner” that made me realize that whatever and if ever Jesus truly did teach these things…christians have completely ignored his teachings.  They are not Christ-like, and hence they are not Christians.

Some will say that I fell away because of the treatment I received from “bad christians”.  But it is actually the complete opposite.  For a very short period I saw the “kingdom of God” while part of the ICOC.  It almost existed!  But then I found out that what I thought I saw was only a mirage, the closer I got, the image either faded away or retreated.  I realized that if YHWH existed, and if Jesus was sent here to earth, then the Holy Spirit had to exist.  Yet I saw no sign of the Spirit, everything I saw was just humans trying to follow an imaginary set of rules and regulations.  These rules were completely arbitrary, some people could break them and some people were not allowed to break the exact same rule.  If the Holy Spirit were active and existed then this would have been the outcome:

Acts 5:1-11 

When the Spirit of the Lord was tested in the Book of Acts by Ananias and Sapphira, it did something about it.  There is not such action in the Churches today, which means that there is not Spirit of the Lord in the Churches today.  This can only mean one thing…there is no Spirit, and without the Spirit there is no Jesus, and without Jesus there is no Christian YHWH. 

But there is another sign that the Spirit is not in the Churches.  And that sign is what this post is about.  The outcasts have not been cared for by the “Christians”.  There is little to no attempt to eat with the “sinners”.  In fact, it is the exact opposite.  Hate speech fills the newspapers, television, and internet about abortionist, homosexuals, and evolutionary scientist.  And that Hate speech is spewing from “Christians”.  The homeless are forced to listen to sermons and pray before they are allowed to eat.  The widow is milked for every penny she has by preachers using the Bible and this verse: Mark 12:42-44.  These are not the actions of a disciple of Jesus; these are the actions of vile creatures that can barely call human.  They twist the very religion they claim to belong to their own desires.  I will leave with this quote from Susan B Anthony:

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

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