The Teacher of Righteousness in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Abstract

The Dead Sea Scrolls witness the social, ideological and eschatological world of the Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period, mainly the environment of the Essene movement. It is outstanding the leading figure of the Teacher of Righteousness, charismatic and unifying leader of the Essen community. We don’t know his name, nevertheless, it is almost certain that he was no other than the legitimate, but ousted, High Priest of the Temple of Jerusalem from 159 - 152 B.C. This High Priest was silenced both in the biblical and rabbinic sources. The history of the messianic tradition expounded by the Teacher of Righteousness, and by his successors in the leading role of the community, developed the messianism mentioned in Is 53, setting up the bases for a Jewish precedent of a kind of messianism thought up to now as exclusive and unique for the primitive Christianism