Identity of Key Figures in the Dead Sea Scrolls

(1) The Standard Model

The Wicked Priest
Who was the Wicked Priest? History records that Jonathan Maccabaeus, after driving the Ptolemies out of Judea, served as high priest from 152 to 145 B.C.E. before being captured and killed by a Syrian general, Trypho.

"This history agrees very well with the hints the commentators give. The Wicked Priest started well, they say, then went wrong. He became High Priest, yet was not a descendant of Aaron, and he accepted the post from a foreigner. His death, too, occurred at the hands of others, 'they took revenge on his body', in a way which might echo Trypho's deeds."
     - Alan Millard, Discoveries From the Time of Jesus

Teacher of Righteousness.
"Brownlee (130) asserts that the Teacher of Righteousness arose shortly after the Maccabaeans gained victory according to the following scenario: John Hyrcannus 135-105 BC turned from the devout hasidim (holy ones) to the Sadducees. When he was rebuked by the Teacher, he persecuted the Teacher and inveigled the Pharisees into supporting him. His son Alexander Jannaeus 103-76 BC persecuted the Teacher who fled to the region of Damascus 'They drove me from my land like a bird from its nest; and all my neighbors and friends are driven far from me'."
     - Chris King, "The Apocalyptic Tradition"

"In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness."
     - Jeremiah 23:6

"The Essene [Yahad] founder called himself the Righteous Rabbi, a title close enough to Jeremiah's Yahweh's Righteousness to indicate that he saw himself as the messiah of Jeremiah's prophecy [c. 250?]. His followers accepted him as such and did not abandon that belief even after his execution in 103 B.C.E. [forty years after the death of Jonathan Maccabaeus] Rather than acknowledge that their messiah was totally and permanently dead, the Essenes [Yahad] maintained for the 170 more years that they remained in existence that their Righteous Rabbi would fulfill his messianic function of deposing the Hasmoneans (or, after 63 B.C.E., driving out the Romans) and making himself king of Judah, at the time of his 'Second Coming'."
     - William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus

(2) The New Model

Support of the Hasmoneans
"...The idea that the Qumran group - Essenes or some other persuasion - originated in the second century B.C.E. out of opposition to the Hasmonean takeover of the high-priesthood is crumbling. The newly released scrolls offer this notion no support. In both old scrolls and new there are indeed many references to the corruption of Israel's rulers - to their rapacity, to their greed, to their complicity in the profanation of holy sites - but not a single passage objects to the high priest's line of descent. In fact, a close reading of Josephus will reveal that only the Pharisees ever objected to a Hasmonean as such holding the high-priesthood (Ant. 13.288-292)."
     - Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (1996) p. 26

The feud between the priesthood and the Pharisees turned bloody during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus.

"If a man is a traitor against his people and give them up to a foreign nation, so doing evil to his people, you are to hang him on a tree until dead."
     - Temple Scroll 11QTemple 64:7-8

"It so happens that Alexander did crucify eight hundred men for the crime of siding with the Greek king Demetrius III and inviting him to invade Judea."
"We already know that the Qumran sect hated the Pharisees, but it is now apparent that Alexander, the sworn enemy of the Pharisees during his reign, was a hero to the sect. The sect, in other words, heartily approved of Alexander's crucifying eight hundred Pharisaic rebels."
     - Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (1996) p. 27

In Praise of King, (4Q448) a difficult script a scrap of leather, "is a poem in honor of a king of Israel known as Jonathan; the vital opening portion reads 'For Jonathan the king' and goes on to say 'and all the congregation of Your people Israel, which have been dispersed to the four winds of the heavens, let peace be on all of them and Your kingdom' B:2-8). Yardeni [who deciphered the script] and her colleagues, Hanan and Esther Eshel, believe that the text refers to the Hasmonean ruler Alexander Jannaeus (Hebrew name: Jonathan), who was the first Hasmonean officially to style himself as 'king'."
     - Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (1996) p. 26

"4Q448, which mentions King Jonathan (i.e., Alexander Jannaeus), was misunderstood. This text is against King Jonathan, as has been shown, e.g., by Emmanuelle Main, 'For King Jonathan or Against? The Use of the Bible in 4Q448,' in Biblical Perspectives: Early Use and Interpretation of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. M.E. Stone and E.G. Chazon; STDJ 28; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 113-35 and by Andre Lemaire, 'Le Roi Jonathan a Qoumran (4Q448, B-C),' in Qoumran et les Manuscrits de la mer Morte: un cinquantenaire (ed. E.-M. Laperrousaz; Paris: Cerf, 1997) 57-70."
     - Stephen Goranson (CrossTalk - 4 Jan 1999)

Historical Names in the Scrolls
"Josephus describes only one possible period of rising Pharisaic power in the Hasmonean period: the reign of Salome Alexandra, the widow of Alexander."
     - Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (1996) p.29

"Now [Salome] Alexandra hearkened to them to an extraordinary degree...These Pharisees artfully insinuated themselves into her favor by little and little, and became themselves the real administrators of the public affairs: they banished and reduced whom they please; they bound and loosed men at their pleasure: and, to say all at once, they had the enjoyment of the royal authority...While [Salome Alexandra] governed other people, the Pharisees governed her."
     - Josephus, War 1.110-112

An Annalistic Calendar is a fragmentary work where only phrases indicate the era referred to. "The phrases are: 'Shelomiziyon came...,' referring to Queen Salome Alexandra by her Hebrew name; 'Hyrcanus rebelled against Aristobulus,' referring to the sons of Salome and Alexander, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II; and 'Aeimilius killed,' referring to the Roman general Aemilius Scaurus, who led the armies of Pompey into Judea in the 60s of the first century B.C.E.
"...Salome reigned from 76 to 67 B.C.E., during which time her eldest son Hyrcanus was high priest. Aristobulus was king and high priest from 67 to 63 B.C.E., when the Romans arrived. A confused period ensued, with Roman dominion overlaying first civil war, then continuing general discord between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus and their followers. This confusion continued until 37 B.C.E. with the rise of Herod the Great."
     - Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (1996) p. 30

The Wicked Priest
"...In view of the anti-Pharisaic cast of the scrolls, Hyrcanus II is the best suggestion for the Wicked Priest.
"As for the Man of the Lie, it appears from a close reading of the sources that he was probably the head of the Pharisaic party. Rabbinic sources preserve the name of a prominent Pharisaic leader of the first century B.C.E., a man who was noted both for his violence and for his success in winning approval for his views: Shimeon ben Shetah. He may have been a brother or more distant kinsman of Salome Alexandra....Shimeon was able and apparently willing to sentence people to death, and one story tells of his hanging eighty women in Ashkelon for witchcraft. from the Pharisaic perspective, the era was remembered as that of 'Shimeon ben Shetah and Queen Salome,' and it is said that during this golden age 'wheat grew to the size of kidneys, barley to that of olive berries, lentils to that of gold dinarii'."
     - Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (1996) p. 31

Teacher of Righteousness
"...The Teacher of Righteousness began his ministry late in the second or early in the first century B.C.E., perhaps during the reign of Alexander [Jannaeus]. After the Pharisees came to power under Salome, they persecuted the Teacher's group, which was sympathetic to the Sadducean establishment, eventually hounding the Teacher into exile. When Hyrcanus II became king, he renewed his efforts to destroy the Teacher and his group."
     - Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (1996) p. 32