Tehachapi News

By: W. E. Gutman

Description: The End of Days?

Rolling in from the Mediterranean, passing over Bethlehem and Hebron, a cluster of rain-swollen clouds surrenders its precious life-bearing gift. It's only a sprinkle but together with the morning dew the welcome shower will energize the date palms and the neatly tended patches of barley and wheat.

Here in the Great Rift, the lowest point on Earth at 390 meters below sea level, grainfield is not the golden ocean of swaying corn that dwarfs the harvester in the Valley of Jezreel or the coastal plains of Sharon. Here men have to stoop and pluck the plant by its roots. The sheaves are short-stalked and sparsely leafed but the ears are full. There will be bread for all.

Amplified by a great stillness hovering over mangled bluffs, riding on the wings of an occasional rush of hot, dry wind, the hoofbeat of a herd of ibexes resonates in the distance. Wary, their scimitar-shaped horns poised like antennae, quivering nostrils probing the scorching updrafts, they come to drink from weatherworn shallow limestone basins. Catching a whiff of danger in the air, they vault from boulder to boulder, leaving a pungent trail of musk behind them.

Down below, dressed in white linen robes, men lost in their apocalyptic incantations descend single-file into a pool fed by runoff rainwater. An ankle-high berm in the center of a steep stairwell separates the cleansed from those still awaiting purification.

Such ritual ablutions, it is written, are repeated when the sun reaches its meridian height and just before it sinks behind the craggy escarpments, casting long cooling shadows upon the old settlement.

A simple meal has been shared, freshly laundered communal vestments distributed. Standing on the top landing of the two-story watchtower commanding the Dead Sea's darkening, glassy surface, a lonely figure bent by age peers at the horizon through slits worked into meter-thick cut stone.

Like the ibexes now resting in their lairs, he too is beset with unease, foreboding. The world is evil, the old rabbi knows. Greed and lust mock the God of all creation.

That such a world should be sundered is obvious. That the end is near seems nowhere more manifest than in this dreadful chasm, halfway between the Bitter Lake and the wretched cliffs disfigured by the sun’s scorching breath.

Was it not in this accursed region, ancient texts recount, in Sodom and in Gomorra, that man laid the scene of God's fury?

What will it be this time? Lightning? Brimstone? An earthquake? There have been fresh tremors. Several aqueducts were badly damaged, their course forever diverted.

Tugging at the old man's soul as no prophecy has done before is the fear that other forces may now be at play. No, the threat comes not from the slumbering peaks of Moab where his anxious gaze has rested. It will descend instead, like a crazed phalanx of scorpions and asps fleeing a fire, from Jerusalem, a day’s journey to the northwest. So far, the Roman occupation of Judaea has been uneventful.

Yet tension between Jews and Romans is high. With hundreds of fabulous deities orchestrating their lives, the Romans view monotheism as an aberration. For their part, the Jews cannot tolerate the blasphemy of idolatry. Jew is disdainful of Roman, Roman is contemptuous of Jew.

Pontius Pilate is outraged at the Jews' defiance of Roman might. Charges of paganism bewilder him. Caligula, his bloodthirsty successor, orders that his effigy be erected in Solomon's Temple, in Jerusalem. His assassination prevents the desecration from taking place.

As calamity follows calamity, the men in Qumran are now sure that the end of days, the day of the Lord, is at hand and that the Messiah, the Anointed One, is coming.

The moon has not yet “turned to blood,” nor have the stars tumbled from their heavenly perch, but destruction is upon the “evil ones” who have cowed Israel and it is time for Yahweh to lead the Sons of Light in their final struggle against the Sons of Darkness.

In preparation for this fateful contest, animated by its urgency, the scribes work from dawn to dusk, from sunset to the cock's earliest crow in the windowless scriptorium. There, they, recopy old manuscripts, mend sacred scrolls and seal them in earthen jars that the younger men will hide in the caves dotting the surrounding cliffs.

One day, the covenanters will return and retrieve their beloved Torah, manuals and commentaries. By then, the old sage tells himself, the Teacher of Righteousness will have defeated Belial, and the Messiah of Aaron and Israel will preside over the sacred meal and divine ordinance will rule the land. But first he and his brothers must disperse.

The exodus will take some south to Masada and the wilderness beyond, perhaps as far as Goshen where the patriarchs once dwelt. Others will cross the Jordan and join caravans up to the fertile valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. Others yet, kindled by a new apostolic fervor, will trek back to western Judaea and Samaria to spread the word.

The year, according to the Jewish calendar, is 3828, which corresponds to 68 BCE and, unbeknownst to these ascetic Jews, descendants of over 15 generations of a pious, fiercely independent Hasidic sect known as the Essenes, this is the last time they will ever see Qumran.

It will take nearly 2,000 years — and a fortuitous act of curiosity — to exhume the Essenes from the cinders of history. Ironically but to no one's surprise, their resurrection would cause great consternation in some circles and set in motion a cascade of stormy debates fed by ego at the expense of scholarship.
Next week: The Treasure Trove.

W. E. Gutman is a widely published veteran journalist on assignment in Central America since 1991. He lives in Tehachapi.