Luke, servant of God;
To Antipas, servant of the people, and to Rufinus, nobleman of Pergamum;
Greetings.
The report of the Pergamene gladiatorial contests in honor of the noble Drusus makes clear that the spectators who had gathered for the event had no cause for disappointment, receiving what they had expected from the event. Rufinus, you should be pleased that your efforts to provide a grand spectacle were met with success. Informal accounts within Ephesus unanimously praise the event, suggesting that it will ensure the stature of Pergamum and the renowned host of the gladiatorial contests for some time to come. I will deposit the official report in the Ephesian archives.
Your letter, Antipas, caused me to rejoice when reading of your plans to send me a digest of your discussions of my monograph on Jesus. It would please me greatly to discuss the significance of the story with ones as diligent and attentive as you have shown yourselves to be. So I look forward to this dialogical enterprise and, if you so wish, commit myself to you as loyal friends in this partnership. You have witnessed many deaths recently, honorable noblemen of Pergamum; I recommend that you now consider the meaning of death in relation to the life of this simple Nazarene, who has changed the lives of many.
Let me respond, then, to the points you raised regarding John the baptizer. Here in Ephesus there is a community of Christians that includes within its constituency a significant number of people who previously followed the way of John the baptizer. Without regard for their personal fortune, they continue to speak the truth of God to whoever will listen. I have met with this group of Christians on several occasions, although the gathering of Christians with whom I am most closely associated here in Ephesus was originally founded by my friend and teacher, Paul of Tarsus, with whom I traveled extensively throughout the empire. But I have strayed from my point, which is simply that the baptizer’s influence is still evident to this day, even in Ephesus, far separated from John by time and distance.
You are right to perceive some similarities between the baptizer and the somewhat idiosyncratic group of Jews based on the shores of the Dead Sea. The community of these devout separatist Jews is no longer in existence. But it did not disband. It was destroyed by the Roman troops during the Jewish uprising against Rome. This community on the shores of the Dead Sea resembled a larger group of Jews, the Essenes, a movement whose significance has greatly decreased since the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. Although there may still be some active members, I have no evidence of this.
From my previous travels throughout the region of Judea and from my reading of Josephus, I estimate that the Essenes had numbered about four thousand, with a notable presence in most of the towns of Judea and in one area of Jerusalem. One of Jerusalem’s city gates was known as the Essene Gate. Although they berated the Jerusalem aristocracy and priesthood for their corruption and illegitimacy, the Essenes nonetheless continued to offer sacrifices at the Jerusalem temple. They were also critical of the way in which the Jerusalem temple was regulated by the priests according to a lunar calendar of 354 days per year, instead of their preferred solar calendar of 364 days, precisely 52 weeks. For the Essenes, the Jewish festivals as observed in Jerusalem were held on the incorrect days of the year and were out of alignment with the heavenly observances of those days.
The Essenes also instituted a closely prescribed system of initiation, with a three-year period of probation in order to prevent impurities from contaminating their membership. During the first year, one had to live according to the patterns of an Essene lifestyle but outside an Essene community. In the second and third years of probation, one could immerse oneself in the members’ ritual baths but could not share in the common fellowship meals. Final admission into the movement involved taking serious oaths and the threat of complete expulsion if one did not strictly obey the elders and the corporate rules. Entrants turned all their property over to an Essene community. Each month, two days’ wages were to be contributed simply for the purpose of supplying charity to their own members and to others in need. In the war against Rome, many of their members were active in the rebellion, with one of their number, known as John the Essene, being a renowned military governor of rebels in Thamna.
Most of these characteristics were shared by the community on the shores of the Dead Sea. Its members, however, formed a stricter faction within the larger Essene movement. The community would have consisted of two hundred people at any given time. These members were instructed in the teachings of the community’s founder, who was known as “the teacher of righteousness” and who had revealed to the community the true meaning of the holy writings, or so the community believed. The solar calendar of 364 days was strictly observed in this community, an act that put its members at odds with the Jerusalem high priesthood, which they considered to have become irredeemably corrupt. These pious ones considered the temple sacrifices to be worthless and saw their own lifestyle of prayer and radical obedience to the law as a means of atonement for themselves and the land. The community members thought of themselves as the embodiment of God’s pure people, since they alone had remained obedient to the God of Israel. Their community represented the true priesthood, and their community embodied the true temple. And so they waited in the wilderness, eagerly preparing for and expectant of the time when God would inaugurate his reign in association with his holy ones. They had long foreseen themselves involved at a future time in a great battle against Rome, fighting alongside the angelic hosts against the forces of darkness that included the forces of evil, the gentile nations, and the majority of Jews. The God of Israel was to take action to cleanse the corrupted land and temple. Under his oversight, the community would take control of the city of Jerusalem, implement the correct calendar, restore a legitimate priesthood, rebuild the temple according to its own architectural plans, and initiate patterns of lifestyle that were tightly controlled by purity regulations.
In some ways, Antipas, you are right to notice a degree of resemblance between John the baptizer and this devout community. John operated in the Judean wilderness, the same geographical terrain in which the Dead Sea community had chosen to operate (although John operated farther north). Both John and this community manifested ascetic tendencies. They both made much of water baptism. Both had priestly connections of some sort (although this might have been lost over time within the Dead Sea community). They both believed that the priestly leadership of Israel was corrupt to the core. Both thought that forgiveness from God and right standing with him were possible apart from the temple apparatus in Jerusalem. They both found the same text from Isaiah to be a programmatic text: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God” [Isa. 40:3]. Both believed that they lived in the time when the fulfillment of the promises of Israel’s God would begin to transpire and that God’s judgment on Israel was imminent, making repentance an urgent matter.
But these similarities can be overdone, since there were significant differences between them as well. Although some followed his lifestyle and teachings, John operated alone, as an isolated individual, apart from a community. He was intent on directly calling the nation to repentance, whereas the Dead Sea community preferred to withdraw from what its members saw as the polluted majority of Israel, having as little contact with others as possible and keeping its views hidden from outsiders. Unlike this community, John permitted the clean and the unclean, the sinners and the righteous, to come into contact with him. This may explain why even tax collectors and Roman soldiers approached John for instruction. You are probably correct to think that John’s own father might have had difficulty accepting John’s methods of dealing with sin and uncleanness. Whereas the Dead Sea community practiced baptismal washing to effect the purification of the body, John’s rite of baptism was to effect the forgiveness of sins and bore resemblance to proselyte baptism, which was a ritual practiced only for the benefit of the unclean gentiles. In John’s view, the Jewish nation needed more than remedial attention to minor problems; it needed to start afresh before God. All people were invited to the radical challenge, regardless of whether they were seen as clean or unclean, righteous or sinner. In this way, John the baptizer is much like the Jesus whose story you have before you. Both were men of honor, I believe, who lived and died committed to the ways of the good and the right.
I have kept Stachys a day longer than usual in order to respond properly to your insightful points regarding John and his relationship to this group and to Jesus. While I researched and dictated my response, Stachys made himself a benefit to Calpurnius’s household.
I very much enjoy hearing how you are reading my monograph and will look forward to receiving a digest of material in due course. I will endeavor to respond appropriately to your digests. I also trust that the Spirit of God will enlighten you as to the significance of Jesus’s life. In my experience, one cannot become familiar with the story of Jesus without also being challenged by it. In fact, let me suggest to you, friends and partners in discussion, that you track down some of the followers of Jesus who live in Pergamum and ask to attend their gatherings. Some Christians gather in the house of Antonius, as you already know. Their corporate life will itself testify to the veracity of my monograph. Another group of Christians also meets in Pergamum, although I know very little about their gathering except that it meets in the house of Kalandion, a prominent citizen, who must be the same Kalandion who assisted in the organization of the recent Pergamene gladiatorial contests. No doubt he would welcome your presence in their gathering.
May God bless you.2
1. Antipas’s father, Herod the Great, was an Idumean, and his mother, Malthace, was a Samaritan. Therefore, Antipas’s Jewish heritage was weak, with Idumeans and Samaritans being looked upon by Jews as having compromised the bloodline of Jews.
2. Speculative dates for this correspondence might be as follows: Stachys departs from Pergamum on the morning of 25 March, arriving in Ephesus on the afternoon of 28 March, staying for one additional day; Stachys leaves Ephesus for Pergamum on the morning of 30 March, carrying Luke’s reply and arriving in Pergamum on 3 April.