Zosimus and the Blessed Ones

The chapters before and after the history section describe Zosimus’ bizarre journey. The monk travels on the back of an animal to the sea, where he sees a cloud over the ocean. Two giant trees reach down and carry him across the water to a hidden island in the midst of the cloud. The “Blessed Ones” that Zosimus encounters here are at peace, fed by fruit trees at regular intervals and oblivious to time. They appear naked but are actually “covered with a covering of glory” (History of the Rechabites 12:2; trans. Charlesworth, “History of the Rechabites,” 456–57).

In spite of the potentially Edenic, “prelapsarian” paradisiacal quality of this vision of naked innocence, the Blessed Ones are not immortal. They describe how angels convey their souls to heaven when their appointed time of death arrives (chapters 14–15). As a soul “ascends up to God with joy” (History of the Rechabites 15:9; trans. Charlesworth, “History of the Rechabites,” 459), it is physically visible to the community: “The appearance of the soul when it leaves the body is the likeness of a glorious light, and formed and imprinted in the likeness and type of the body, and it is spiritually flying” (History of the Rechabites 15:10; trans. Charlesworth, “History of the Rechabites,” 459; compare Dan 12:1–3; 2 Baruch 49–51; Jubilees 23:11–31; 1 Thess 4:13–18; 1 Cor 15).

The text also purports to describe the enlightened spiritual state of the Blessed Ones, thereby encouraging readers to live lives of devotion and purity. Verses 12:14–16 read, “And let this history be for you the salvation of your lives. Have regard to us in your hidden thoughts, be imitators of our way of life, pursue peace, cherish the love that is unchangeable, and love purity and holiness. And you will be made perfect in all good things and inherit the kingdom of God.”