Sons of Light, Sons of Darkness...
Hey, Everyone! So I’m back from our most recent little adventure. Details will follow in due time. Meanwhile, I’m picking up where I left off with Michael The Archangel ~ cheers, mjt
Okay, I left off last time with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were (apparently) from the library of a dissident Jewish group living at the Qumran settlement. The Scrolls are simply astonishing. They include much which seems to have been the ideology of the Qumran order itself, but also works which just seem to have been popular among literate people in Judah at the time.
About the photo: This is a portrait of St. Michael overthrowing Lucifer by the Spanish painter, Ignacio de Ries (1612 – 1661?). The painting is currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is believed to be in the public domain.
All of the texts seem to date from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, or just before the Roman-Jewish Wars. They include copies of nearly every book of the Hebrew Bible (all except Esther), sometimes in multiple versions. Alongside these are works that aren’t in our Bibles, like 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Book of Tobit--and particularly, The War Scroll. This last is an extraordinary book in which we read that sometime in the future, The Sons Of Light (righteous humans and their allies, the Angels) will battle with The Sons Of Darkness (evil humans and fallen Angels), after which evil will be destroyed, and then God’s rule will be established on earth.
Michael is named only a few times in the Scrolls. The Essenes, and presumably the Qumran inhabitants as well, seem to have had a religious prohibition against naming angels--just as some of today’s particularly pious Jews sometimes hesitate to say the name Yahweh aloud and use a circumlocution instead --viz.“HaShem,” meaning “The Name.”
But even so, he is all over the Scrolls, albeit under different titles and names. In the War Scroll, he is “the Prince of Light” (Sar ha-'Or), the leader of the angels in battle. Scholars believe he may also be “The Angel of Truth,” “The Great Prince,” “Melchizedek,” and on and on and on.
Most amazingly, there is a fragment in the Scrolls which seems to be a prayer authored *by* Michael himself, or at least he is said to be the speaker of the prayer. There isn’t much left of the document. It is almost impossible to read. But in it, he first identifies himself as, “I, Michael, prince of Angels...” He then addresses God, or maybe other angels, and asks for Israel to be protected from its enemies.
This is pretty dramatic. Here we have Michael, but not just as a character. He is an actor. We hear him speak. The point being that by this time, Michael is well-established in Jewish thought and lore, and he is fully formed. He has a personality. He has goals. He has means. And he has relationships...with God, with other Angels, and with humans.
Moving on...
Time passes. Things get worse. The popular temper turns nasty. The Temple and the priestly establishment are despised. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes were increasingly alienated from each other. Herod the Great died in 4 BCE. His son, Archelaus, was so inept and so unpopular that the Romans simply removed him and Judea became just a part of the Roman province of Syria. The Judean people were probably relieved to be rid of Archelaus, but it was a bit galling to go from being an independent kingdom to just a piece of a larger province. There were angry murmurings in the night.
Then, about 6BCE, when Judea was officially annexed by Rome, there appeared a new group -- the Zealots. They were young revolutionaries, dreaming of a new Israel, purified of Greeks and Romans, with a cleansed Temple and a reformed Priesthood...and they were more than willing to lay down their lives to get them. Or, more precisely, more than willing to lay down someone else’s life to get them.
They seem to have gotten their start as a kind of tax-revolt, but slowly they would develop into a religious-nationalist movement, eager to use violence if it could, and a serious problem for the Roman and other authorities. And, decades later, when the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE) broke out, it would be the Zealots who would take the lead.
Even more frightening was another group, maybe a spin-off from the Zealots, who were known simply as the knife-men, the “Sicarii,” a band a terrorist assassins who targeted Romans and Hellenizing Jews, and, anyone whom they just didn’t like.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Jewish-Roman Wars are still fifty years in the future.
And we still have to get back to Michael...
Plus, a very big name, indeed.
More to come.
Copyright©2026 Michael Jay Tucker
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~mjt
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