Let them both grow together: Resignation as apocalyptic strategy at Qumran and Capernaum

From first to last, and not merely in epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving, and therefore also revolutionizing and transforming in the present. The eschatological is not one element of Christianity, but it is the medium of the Christian faith as such, the key in which everything in it is set, the glow that suffuses everything here in the dawn of an expected new day.

Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope 16

Earliest Christianity was neither a formula for heavenly salvation after death nor a model of the one God’s ontological relation to the man Jesus Christ; it was, fundamentally, neither Soteriology nor Christology—at least not by the standards of later theologians. Its substance was not the Triune Godhead, its goal was not the redemption of souls from Hell.

Rather, at its base, earliest Christianity was Eschatology; it was an itinerary for successfully traversing time’s end, the impending turbulent future. Its roots were knotted with the multitude of apocalyptic Judaisms that grew up in response to Greco-Roman dominion over Europe and over Asia, the Occident and the Orient. The toppling of this enduring pagan world-order—the imperium of the Devil and his angels—was its prime motivating ambition. The labor pains of the age to come were its immediate horizon.

The creation of philosophically sophisticated theology was not, therefore, Christianity’s original focus or aim. Instead, the preexisting Jewish theology of the second temple period (e.g. Israel’s election, the Shema Yisrael, the Davidic covenant, the resurrection of the dead, etc.) was the stage upon which the drama of earliest Christianity was told—how the God of Israel was about to fulfill his promises by ridding the world of evil and establishing his Messiah’s kingdom over the idolatrous nations.

Of course, theological innovations that distinguished Christianity from other forms of apocalyptic Judaism did bubble up from the cauldron of prophetic excitement brewing in 1st century Judea. Earliest Christianity was not entirely derivative. While novel theories about the Messiah’s identity and his redemptive acts were included in the eschatological itineraries devised by Jesus, Paul, and the Evangelists, these components were subservient to the millenarian εὐαγγέλιον anticipated by many Jews of the time (cf. Mark 15:34, Luke 2:25, 2:38)—the good news about the kingdom’s fast-approaching consumption of the earth. Then, finally, God’s people would govern the οἰκουμένη, having been “saved from their enemies” (Luke 1:71). What made Christianity unique within this landscape, in the beginning, was the conviction that all such hopes underlying apocalyptic Judaism were going to be achieved by a crucified Galilean exorcist—an unlikely (and unseemly) proposition in the eyes of most Jews.

And so, Christian Christology and Christian Soteriology , whatever their later theological content once untethered from the apocalyptic mind, were originally instrumental toward eschatological ends. The chosen one (Greek: christos) would become savior (Latin: soter) when he hurled God’s imperium into the present evil age like a javelin into a rider. The elite Greek theology of succeeding generations—preoccupied with the metaphysics of the Son of God’s Incarnation and Crucifixion—halted this skirmish at the resurrection of the Messiah, and crafted a myth of salvation fit for an epoch of settled and undifferentiated time, salvation from Sin, Death, and Devil, all conceived in the abstract, safely partitioned from the theo-political realities of pagan empire. God’s now long ago assumption of human nature, up to and including death, became the engine of a personal post-mortem redemption that was totally independent of the Parousia of Christ. The end would still come some day, just not anytime soon. Then God would repay every individual who ever lived. But ultimately the Last Judgement was made redundant. Those realms accessible upon death, Heaven and Hell, fulfilled the need for reward and punishment in the here and now. Righteous souls went to heavenly bliss, wicked souls went to hellish torment. The overthrow of the world’s great institutions—”the rulers of this age,” “the principalities and power,” and the mighty imperial city, “Babylon the Great,”—were, of course, not of any pressing importance in Late Antiquity or the Middle Ages. The holy Roman empires of Constantinople and Aachen were to be celebrated, not disdained.

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In coming to grips with the eschatological character of the early Christian movement, the parable of the weeds sown among the wheat is a highly instructive text. It captures much of Christ’s apocalyptic program in vibrant form. Among the parables of Jesus, it is a well-developed allegory, and one that is accompanied by its own interpretive key. Here Christ appears as both the harbinger of God’s kingdom, the sower of the good seed, and as the conductor of God’s kingdom, the vengeful Son of Man who obliterates the wicked.

Beyond providing this apocalyptic overview, a lay of the land as the first Christians saw it, the parable functions chiefly as a fable, a story with a moral lesson; it directs the disciples in their fundamental task at the closing of the age. This practical instruction—”Let them both grow together”—will constitute the primary focus of our inquiry.

In translating and expounding the parable, we will pay special attention to the text’s correspondence with the ideology advanced by the Jewish sect represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls (i.e. the Essenes or Qumranites).¹ The weight of this comparative analysis will demonstrate what has been argued above, that Jesus and his first followers occupied the same conceptual milieu as the Qumranites and other apocalyptic groups, sharing the same core commitments and expectations. This is to say that early Christianity does not represent a break from Jewish millenarianism, a repudiation of Eschatology in favor of Theology, but is a potent variation thereof.

The parable proper (Matthew 13:24-30)

He presented them with another parable, saying: “The kingdom that comes from heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.

Matthew situates the Parable of the Weeds in a pastiche of riddle-stories concerning the kingdom of heaven, concerning, that is, the looming arrival of God’s reign over the earth. These parables associate the coming of the kingdom with the day of God’s judgement.

In some of these parables, mere belief or disbelief in Jesus’ preaching about the coming kingdom is the basis for divine recompense (e.g. the Parables of the Sower, the Buried Treasure, & the Valuable Pearl). One’s fate is determined by his willingness to abandon everything for the sake of the kingdom. In other parables (e.g. the Parables of the Dragnet & the Weeds), justice is doled out simply in favor of the “good” or “righteous” and against the “bad” or “evil.” It should be clear that Matthew has no intention of articulating a coherent doctrine of justification by faith in Christ here. Eschatology is in contention, not Theology.

This collection of similitudes also communicates that the advent of the kingdom at the end of the age will mean abundance and inclusion for some and poverty and rejection for others: weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness for some, an inextinguishable glory like that of the sun for others.

Moving into the parable itself, the kingdom of heaven is likened to a farmer who sows good seed in his field. One is immediately reminded of the agricultural imagery attributed to God and Israel in the Hebrew Bible. God plants his people in the land and manages them like a vineyard: “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land” (Psalm 80:8-9, cf. Isaiah 5:1-7). Is God planting Israel anew?

On the heels of the Parable of the Sower, the mind should also consider the tradition of the prophet who comes to plant God’s word in the hearts of God’s people, often that they might repent before a day of reckoning. Whoever the imagined sower is here (almost certainly Jesus himself), the kingdom begins with a catalyzing act of God—the scattering of seed.

For early Christians, divine initiative as such was witnessed in the wonderworking prophetic tour of Jesus, and in his startling resurrection from the dead.² These indicated that the kingdom of God was indeed at hand. The messianic age was beginning to overtake the “term of years of Satan’s power” like a thief plundering the house of the strongman. God was now at work, making preliminary eschatological commotion and forming a prophetic community who possessed ears to hear it.

At Qumran, the appearance of the Teacher of Righteousness functioned in a similar way. On the eve of the eschaton, the Teacher had been sent to establish the holy remnant community by delivering to Israel God’s End Times instructions. He was God’s sower, his people were God’s seed.

God raised up for Himself men called by name that a remnant might be left to the Land, and that the face of the earth might be filled with their seed. And He made known His Hoy Spirit by the hand of His anointed ones, and He proclaimed the truth (to them).

Damascus Document I.10-15

God told Habakkuk to write down that which would happen to the final generation… And as for that which God said ‘That he who reads may read speedily:’ interpreted this concerns the Teacher of Righteousness, to whom God made known all the mysteries of the words of His servants the prophets.

Pesher Habakkuk VII.1-5

Interpreted, this refers to the Teacher of Righteousness, who expounded the law to God’s council and to all who freely pledged themselves to join the elect of God.

Pesher Micah I.6-7

Interpreted, [this] concerns the priest, the Teacher of [Righteousness whom] God chose to stand before Him, for He established him to build for himself the congregation.

Pesher Psalms III. 14-16

But while people were asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds in the midst of the wheat and then departed. So when the crops came up and bore heads of grain, then also the weeds appeared.

Upon the presentation of the grain, there are just as many weeds in the farmer’s field—that is, opposition to Jesus’ word—as there are heads of wheat. Jesus must therefore provide an explanation for his lackluster success as a prophet in Israel. The arrival of his message has occasioned not merely good, but bad as well.

And so, as the parable purports, hostility to Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom comes not from the machinations of God, nor is it the result of arbitrary fate, and neither is it the byproduct of an incompetent sower. Rather, God’s enemy, perhaps the Devil, or one of Satan’s agents, has sought to sabotage the kingdom of heaven, filling its field with rebels. This is the cause of the weeds.

The verse in question also establishes the temporal location from which the drama of the parable will unfold. The seeds have been sown, their heads have emerged. The time of the harvest is not far off. It is here at the beginning of the ripening process, at the time of the firstfruits, that the slaves will inquire of their master and he must answer. While the weeds may have been indistinguishable from the wheat previously,³ now their presence is undeniable.

If then the parable associates the present moment with the nearing of the harvest, the New Testament consistently situates itself in “the last days” and at “the final hour”—on the cusp of the eschatological transformation. For Matthew, as well as for Paul, some who heard Jesus preach would live to see the kingdom of God come in power at the parousia of the Son of Man. Even if not quite that quickly, Christ was nevertheless on his way to judge the world “soon,” and unambiguously so: “The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert” (1 Peter 4:7). The Lord’s initial urgency did not fail among his later followers: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15)… “The nations raged, but your wrath has come; so too the time for judging the dead, for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints… and for destroying those who destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:18).

The Jews of Qumran found themselves in a similar temporal position. The advent of the Teacher of Righteousness had inaugurated the End Times. Members of the Teacher’s sect, now isolated from greater Jewish society, devoted themselves to scripture and asceticism as they prepared for the ultimate battle between good and evil. They too were God’s elect, those who saved themselves from “this [last] crooked generation” (Acts 2:40).

So the slaves of the master came and said to him, ‘Lord, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’

These two questions, along with the third in the following verse, disclose the parable’s true rhetorical priorities. The master, that is, Jesus, assures his slaves, that is, the disciples, that he did indeed perform his task as sower as he intended. His seed was neither corrupted nor compromised. Rather, the bad seed that now encloses the good seed originates in another: “An enemy has done this.” Any anxiety relating to the power and goodness of the master is henceforth dispelled. Indeed, given the conceptual framework of apocalyptic Jews, the scheming of Satan against God and his followers was to be expected, especially in the last days.

You (i.e. God) have created Belial (i.e. Satan), the angel of malevolence, for the pit; his [rule] is in the darkness and his purpose is to bring about wickedness and iniquity. All the spirits of his company, the angels of destruction, walk according to the precepts of darkness.

War Scroll XIII.10-13

And the slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No, for when you collect the weeds you will uproot the wheat along with them…

The slaves expect the master to send them out into the field at once. Surely the weeds of the enemy must be removed so that the master’s wheat can flourish unhindered. Should not God’s people destroy those who defy them and their deity? Is that not what the heroes of old did?

If you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell.

Numbers 33:55

As with many of Jesus’ parables, however, there is a unexpected and provocative turn. The master orders his men to stand down, not for the sake of the weeds, but for the sake of the wheat. The uprooting of the one, so he says, will precipitate the destruction of the other. How can this be?

Here we must anticipate the allegorical significance of the weeds and specify their identity within the socio-political context of second temple Judaism broadly and early Christianity in particular. In the parable’s agricultural confines, the weeds sown by the enemy are all those entities that stifle the men and materiel of the kingdom. As far as a farmer is concerned, bad seed suffocates or even poisons good seed.

Later on, in the parable’s interpretation, the weeds will come to signify real-world players. The tares are “all evildoers” and “all causes of sin.” What groups and institutions did apocalyptic Jews view in this way?

In their pesher (i.e. interpretation) on the book of Habakkuk, and in many other scrolls, the men of Qumran answer this question. For them, and for Jews like them, the idolatrous Kittim (i.e. Romans) were equated with the Babylonians of the prophet’s day, a revenant pagan empire come to trample down God’s people, mock God’s laws, and, perhaps, demolish God’s temple: “They come from afar, from the islands of the sea, to devour all the peoples like an eagle which cannot be satisfied… To capture the fortresses of the peoples, they encircle them with a mighty host, and out of fear and terror they deliver themselves into their hands” (Habakkuk III.10-13, IV.7, cf. Luke 21:20). For those awaiting the Messiah’s aid at Qumran, Rome, this fiercest of all Gentile empires, was the great and final obstacle to God’s plans for Zion’s dominance in the world.

I saw that the eagle flew with its wings, and it reigned over the earth and over those who inhabit it. And I saw how all things under heaven were subjected to it, and no one spoke against it—not a single creature that was on the earth…

The lion said to the eagle: ‘Your insolence has come up before the Most High and your pride to the Mighty One. The Most High has looked at his times; now they have ended, and his ages have reached completion…’

The angel said to Ezra: ‘The eagle that you saw coming up from the sea is the fourth kingdom that appeared in a vision to your brother Daniel.’

2 Esdras 11:5-6, 43-44, 12:11

Fortunately for the Essenes, on the “day of revenge by the sword of God,” the “king of the Kittim” and “all the host of Belial” would gather for battle against the righteous men of Israel (War Scroll XV.1-2). There the reign of the pagans, and their lord, the Devil, would come to a climactic end: “On the day of judgement, God will destroy from the earth all idolaters and wicked men” (Habakkuk XII).

In sum, for Jews of an apocalyptic bent, pagan empire constituted a panoply of weeds overrunning God’s field. The wheat—the true ἐκκλησία of God—was hemmed in on all sides by expansive, entrenched, obstinate, and undesirable vegetation.

Ezra said: ‘O Lord, these [Gentile] nations, which are reputed to be as nothing [by You], domineer over us and devour us. But we your people, whom you have called your firstborn, only begotten, zealous for you, and most dear, have been given into their hands. If the world has indeed been created for us, why do we not possess our world as an inheritance? How long will this be so?’

2 Esdras 6:57-59

The early Christians, of course, shared this basic posture toward the current order. If God’s name was to be honored on earth as it was in heaven, the heathen regime, chiefly the divine emperor in Rome, had to be deposed. As Paul says to a host of idolaters in Athens: “While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31). The Roman system that executed the first and second and third generations of Christian leaders on behalf of demonic gods was destined for destruction in the foreseeable future. Vindication was coming.

Also represented among the weeds were traitorous Jewish factions that effectively shut out the righteous remnant from the synagogues and the Temple (cf. John 16:2, Revelation 2:9, 3:9). Under the tutelage of the “Wicked Priest,” the “arrogant man” who “seized wealth without halting” prophesied in Habakkuk 2:5, for instance, the reigning priestly establishment persecuted the saints of Qumran and instituted a false temple rule. Similar to the fate of John the Baptist and Jesus, the henchmen of the Wicked Priest tortured Qumran’s hero, the Teacher of Righteousness: “They inflicted horrors of evil diseases and took vengeance upon his body of flesh.” The Dead Sea sect looked forward to the dispossession of these evildoers, these men of darkness: “In the last days, their riches and booty shall be delivered into the hands of the army of the Kittim.” For the first Christians, of course, damning threats were made against those Jewish kinsmen who did not want Jesus to reign over them: “Bring them here and slaughter them before me” (Luke 19:27).

If then these are the “weeds” depicted in the parable—corrupt Jewish leadership and blasphemous pagan overlords—why does the master prohibit his slaves from destroying them? Why does the elimination of the weeds effect the elimination of the wheat?

During the period of Roman rule over the Mediterranean, Jewish attempts to overthrow the pagans and their clients uniformly ended in catastrophe. Prophets like Theudas and the Egyptian were swiftly dispatched, and those who rebelled against the Empire were cut down, drowned, or crucified, their ringleaders executed in Rome by ceremonial triumph. Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, was known to antagonize Jewish sensibilities and then slaughter those who dissented to such treatment. The greatest disaster of them all, Israel’s war with Rome, resulted in the starvation, crucifixion, and enslavement of tens of thousands of Jews. The temple cult in Jerusalem was abolished. Every effort to purge the heathen impurity from the land, and oust the Jewish sinners who were allowed to thrive therein, resulted in the massacre of the zealous. God was not cooperating with his soldiers.

This litany of failed insurrections redirected some Jewish groups onto a different path, but one still leading toward eschatological glory, the kingdom of God. The sect at Qumran, for example, passively awaited God’s punishment of the Gentiles and their managers in Jerusalem, all while holed up in the desert. In their community rule, these Essenes promise to refrain from acts of retaliation against the wicked until the arrival of God’s wrath: “I will pay no man the reward of evil; I will pursue him with goodness… I will not grapple with the men of perdition until the day of revenge.” Forbearance of injustice became emblematic of true Law observance. Their commentary on Psalm 37:8-9, a psalm of great significance also to Jesus, states the following:

“Relent from anger and abandon wrath. Do not be angry; it tends only to evil, for the wicked shall be cut off.” Interpreted, this concerns all those who return to the Law, to those who do not refuse to turn away from their evil. For all those who are stubborn in turning away from their iniquity shall be cut off.

Pesher on the Psalms II.2-4

Suffering on behalf of the Law, in keeping with the pattern set by the Teacher of Righteousness, became the narrow path of salvation.

“But the righteous shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4). This concerns all those who observe the Law in the House of Judah, whom God will deliver from the House of Judgement because of their suffering and because of their faith in the Teacher of Righteousness.

“Shall not your oppressors suddenly arise and your torturers awaken; and shall you not become their prey? (Habakkuk 2:7) [Interpreted, this concerns] the [Wicked] Priest who rebelled [and violated the precepts [of God… to command] his chastisement by means of the judgements of wickedness. And they inflicted horrors of evil diseases and took vengeance upon his body of flesh… God delivered [the Wicked Priest] into the hands of his enemies because of the iniquity committed against the Teacher of Righteousness and the men of his Council.

Pesher Habakkuk VII-IX

Another group of Jews, perhaps similarly minded, provoked by Pilate’s cruelty, fell prostrate before him, offering up their necks to the sword, if only the prefect would retract his violation of the Law (Josephus, Antiquities 18.55).

Collaboration with the enemy was another course of action taken by some Jews—typically those who had no interest in apocalyptic grandeur. Those entrusted with the management of the Jewish nation such as the priestly guilds were drawn to this approach. Josephus himself, one of history’s great defectors, was so invested in the project of collaboration that he attributed scriptural prophecies regarding the Messiah and his kingdom to the Roman imperial dynasty that sacked Jerusalem in AD 70. Perhaps syncretistic efforts like these could establish an edifying compromise between Jewish faith and Roman hegemony.

The praxis taught by Jesus, however, most closely resembles the form of non-retaliatory apocalypticism found at Qumran. For Jesus, the sons of light would thwart the present evil age and awaken the God of Israel by accruing innocent suffering, as lambs led to slaughter. The meek would inherit the earth, the merciful would receive mercy, and the peacemakers would be called God’s children. He commanded his disciples to “not resist an evildoer” and to voluntarily take up the Roman cross, an implement of execution reserved for haughty slaves. Public torment of this kind was the inevitable outcome of announcing the impending termination of Roman rule. Those who lost their lives in this way, Jesus said, would find life and honor in the age to come. The first in the world would become the last, and the last in the world, particularly those crucified for the sake of righteousness, would become the first. God had abandoned militant patriots in recent times, but he would not abandon his servants who conformed to the image of his crucified but resurrected Son.

Lastly, some pseudo-collaborative elements also appear in Jesus’ ethical program. His disciples were to relinquish their goods to the unscrupulous borrower and the extortioner (Matthew 5:40-42, Luke 6:29-30, 6:35, cf. Psalm 37:21), and to carry a Roman soldier’s gear a second mile when compelled to go one mile (Matthew 5:41). Persecutors such as these were to be fed and blessed just as God gives sun and rain to nourish the crops of the wicked (Matthew 5:43-48, Luke 6:32-36, cf. Romans 12:20). Acts of non-retaliation and mercy would not only shield the Christian community at large from the annihilating ire of the empire, they would secure and, indeed, hasten God’s judgment on behalf of the longsuffering righteous. This was the strategy.

Returning then to the parable, and in summary, the master’s outrageous refusal to uproot the weeds of the field originates in an apocalyptic skepticism regarding revolutionary action. God’s kingdom was not seizable by human force. The domain of darkness had no vulnerability to the sword. Divine intervention on the scale of the Exodus or the Flood was necessary. Anything else would lead only to the destruction of the wheat.

Allow both of them to grow together until the harvest, and at the time of the harvest I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be eaten by the fire, but gather the wheat into my barn.'”

The inaction of the slaves will, in accordance with the master’s plan, allow the weeds and the wheat to grow together—surely a difficult situation for the righteous. Matters of justice, retribution, and vengeance are to be postponed; God is about to commence the harvest. Separation must wait until the day of the harvest: then the wheat will go into the master’s barn, a place of preservation for that which is valuable, and the weeds will go into the furnace, a place of destruction for that which is worthless (cf. Matthew 3:12, 13:49-50).

The parable’s interpretation (Matthew 13:36-43)

Much of the parable’s allegorical interpretation has been rehearsed above. We need only take note of a few clarifications.

And his disciples came to him, saying, “Make clear to us the parable of the weeds of the field.”

The request and explanation format puts us squarely in the genre of Jewish apocalyptic. Jesus takes on the role of angelic messenger who interprets the “vision” (i.e. the parable) as a picture of how things really are and what things must soon come to pass.

He answered, saying, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the sons of the kingdom; the weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.

A slew of apocalyptic images now furnish the parable’s mundane story world, much as we expected.

The sower is the Danielic Son of Man, the heavenly agent of the eschatological judgement in earliest Christianity. As the sower of good seed, he prepares a people for the age to come, but is not yet engaged in the execution of God’s wrath.

The field is “the world” (ὁ κόσμος), that is, all of creation adorned by God. The apocalyptic drama at hand takes place on a stage not merely of Israel, but of the whole world. This justifies our inclusion of the Roman empire among the weeds of the field.

The good seed or wheat are those who repent and believe the gospel of the kingdom. They are “sons” of this kingdom because they will inherit its rule when the harvest is ready. 

The weeds are those aligned with Satan, the angel of malevolence, the evil one. They are his sons because they obey his will by persecuting the sons of the Most High God. At Qumran, such people were known as the “sons of darkness” or the “men of the lot of Satan.” These parties, in operating according to their diabolical nature, opposed God’s people and suppressed God’s truth.

The Levites shall curse all the men of the lot of Satan, saying: “Be cursed because of all your guilty wickedness!” May [God] deliver you up for torture at the hands of the vengeful avengers!

Qumran Community Rule

The harvest is the close-at-hand conclusion of the present evil age; the day in which the Messiah of apocalyptic hope punishes the wicked and saves the poor so that God’s kingdom can proceed in peace and justice.

The reapers of the harvest are the angels, the classic instrument of eschatological rescue and vengeance in second temple Judaism (cf. Jude 1:15-16).

You will muster the [hosts of] your elect, in their thousands and myriads, with your holy ones [and with all] your angels, that they may be mighty in battle, [and may smite] the rebels of the earth by your great judgements, and that [they may triumph] together with the elect of heaven.

War Scroll XII.4-6

Just as the weeds are collected and eaten by fire, so will it be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all practitioners of iniquity, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The weeds are those who work evil and also the “causes of sin” (τὰ σκάνδαλα) that provoke the faithful to disaffection. These are the obstacles that compel believers to “fall away” (σκανδαλίζεται) from their commitment to the kingdom. They include the evil one himself, who is the source of all temptation, persecution on account of the word, the concerns of the age, and deceitful riches (Matthew 13:18-23). Likewise, the “three nets” deployed by the devil Belial “as kinds of righteousness” to catch Israel are “fornication, riches, and profanation of the Temple (Damascus Document IV.15-20). Here at the end of the age, Satan lays many snares for the people of God, to sway them from their true loyalty. Would it not be better to conform to the world that is then to long for a world that is not?

Then the righteous will shine out like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

Now divorced from the weeds, and housed in the barn, the wheat achieves its glorious telos as the guarded possession of the master, the capital for God’s bread-making. The righteous thus rise upon the kingdom of God like the sun rises upon the earth, unmatched in majesty, fame, vitality, and power (cf. Daniel 12:2-3). The inhabitants of the new age walk by their light. So ends the parable. So ends the apocalypse.

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The immense challenge posed by the Parable of the Weeds today is not, in the first place, How might Christians refrain from pulling up the weeds plaguing their own, much different, world? The immense challenge posed by the parable today, now two thousand years on, is the challenge of Eschatology: How might Christians salvage the apocalyptic faith of Jesus?

For theologian Jürgen Moltmann, this could be achieved by channeling imminent eschatological hope toward liberation in the present moment. Through their faith, hope, and love, Christians must take an active role in the manifestation of God’s future promises in the world. This outpouring of the church is, in some mystical sense, the long-expected Parousia of Jesus, the resurrection of the dead in Christ.

Despite his recognition of apocalyptic eschatology as the founding principle of earliest Christianity, Moltmann resolves the dissonance generated by the delay of the Parousia in the same ways Christians long have. In Moltmann, as in Medieval Europe, expectations of immediate and concrete cosmic transformation are marginalized in favor of some system of social justice or personal holiness, each reaching out toward the life of the world to come. Christians formulate these sophisticated theories to diffuse the recurring words of the New Testament—”the end of all things is near”—but never attempt such redirection when confronted by similar sentiments in the Dead Sea Scrolls. They don’t need to.

Two options remain. Either locate the fulfillment of apocalyptic expectation in past history, no doubt a tall order, or dispense with Eschatology, and thus with Christianity, altogether. This is the fundamental challenge that lies before the Christian theologian today, one brought on by critical scholarship of the Bible—aided, itself, in no small part by the discovery of a treasure trove of texts in the caves of Qumran. For better or worse, the fate of the man who taught in parables of a coming kingdom at Capernaum is now bound up with the fate of those disciples who eagerly awaited the day of God’s war against the Kittim at Qumran. Perhaps all roads lead to Rome—What was its fate?

1—Translations of the Hebrew from Geza Vermes’ The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English.

2—And much later, the war with Rome and the destruction of the Temple.

3—See Theophratus’ Historia Plantarum 8.7 where he discusses weeds that look similar to wheat.