8/21/2026 – This post contains a ChatGPT response about the hypothesis that Onias III or IV was the Teacher of Righteousness in the Qumran scrolls
Prompt – Which critical bible scholars propose that Onias III or IV was the Teacher of Righteousness in the Qumran scrolls? Cite all sources in line.
Yes. There are critical scholars and researchers who have identified the Qumran Teacher of Righteousness (Moreh ha-Ṣedeq) with Onias III, and a smaller number who have connected the figure with Onias IV or another son of Onias III. The two proposals, however, have very different scholarly pedigrees.
The important distinction is that Onias III is a historically serious proposal in the academic literature, whereas the Onias IV identification is much more marginal. There is also an intermediate proposal identifying the Teacher with a different son of Onias III, usually reconstructed as Simon III.
Onias III
The classic critical scholar associated with the identification is Harold H. Rowley.
Rowley first proposed identifying the Teacher of Righteousness with Onias III, the last legitimate Zadokite high priest, in The Zadokite Fragments and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1952), pp. 67–70. He associated the Teacher with Onias III and the Wicked Priest with Menelaus, Onias’s successor as high priest.
Rowley’s reconstruction was roughly:
| Qumran figure | Historical figure proposed by Rowley |
|---|---|
| Teacher of Righteousness | Onias III |
| Wicked Priest | Menelaus |
| Man of Scoffing / Spouter of the Lie | Antiochus IV Epiphanes |
| House of Absalom | Tobiad family |
Rowley continued defending the general second-century BCE framework in his 1957 article, “The Teacher of Righteousness and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 40 (1957): 114–146. A contemporary summary of the article notes that Rowley considered the second century BCE chronology preferable and ultimately proposed Onias III for the Teacher.
A particularly important later supporter is Russell Gmirkin. Matthew Collins’ survey of the scholarship states explicitly that Gmirkin, in studies published in 1998 and 2000, agreed with Rowley’s central identification of Onias III as the Teacher of Righteousness and Menelaus as the Wicked Priest. Gmirkin interpreted Onias as a leader of the conservative Hasidim and the Qumran opponents as the pro-Hellenistic faction.
Stephen Pfann is also listed as supporting the Onias III identification. Collins specifically says “so too Pfann 2004” immediately after discussing Gmirkin’s identification of Onias III as the Teacher.
There is also a more recent, non-mainstream proposal by David A. Pardo, who explicitly argues that the murdered Onias III was the first Teacher of Righteousness, with the title subsequently transmitted to later figures in the movement.
So, for Onias III, the identifiable proponents include:
- H. H. Rowley
- Russell Gmirkin
- Stephen Pfann
- David A. Pardo (a much more recent and idiosyncratic proposal)
The first three are considerably more significant for the history of Qumran scholarship than Pardo.
Onias IV
The situation with Onias IV is substantially different.
The strongest explicit identification I found is Robert Feather, author of Black Holes in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In an interview reproduced in the book, Feather says directly:
“I think it was Onias IV”
when asked whether Onias IV was the Teacher of Righteousness. He associates Onias IV’s deposition, flight to Egypt, establishment of the temple at Leontopolis, and relationship to Menelaus with the Qumran accounts of the Teacher and Wicked Priest.
Feather’s reconstruction is quite specific. He argues that:
- Onias IV was the legitimate Zadokite high-priestly claimant.
- He was displaced by a rival high priest.
- He fled to Egypt.
- He established the temple at Leontopolis.
- His movements correspond to the Qumran Teacher’s history.
- The rival high priest Menelaus corresponds to the Qumran Wicked Priest.
Feather therefore sees the Onias IV/Menelaus identification as a way of making the chronological and biographical details of the scrolls converge with the historical record.
However, I would not characterize Feather’s proposal as a mainstream critical consensus. It is a minority reconstruction, and it is considerably less represented in the standard scholarly literature than the Onias III hypothesis.
The important “third option”: a son of Onias III, but not necessarily Onias IV
There is an especially interesting proposal by Paul A. Rainbow that needs to be distinguished from the Onias IV hypothesis.
Rainbow’s 1997 article, “The Last Oniad and the Teacher of Righteousness,” Journal of Jewish Studies 48 (1997): 30–52, argued that the Teacher was a son of Onias III. But Rainbow did not simply identify him with Onias IV.
Instead, Rainbow reconstructed the son as Simon III, following what he regarded as the alternating naming pattern in the Oniad family. A later scholarly dissertation summarizes Rainbow’s proposal this way: Rainbow assumed Onias III had a son and “proposes an identification with ‘the Teacher of Righteousness,’” naming him Simon III; Émile Puech subsequently supported this general identification and likewise proposed that Simon III was the high priest during the disputed intersacerdotium of 159–152 BCE.
The scholarly literature therefore contains an interesting cluster of Oniad hypotheses:
| Proposed Teacher | Principal proponents | General idea |
|---|---|---|
| Onias III | H. H. Rowley; Russell Gmirkin; Stephen Pfann | The deposed Zadokite high priest is the Teacher |
| Onias IV | Robert Feather | The son of Onias III who fled to Egypt is the Teacher |
| Simon III, son of Onias III | Paul A. Rainbow; Émile Puech | The Teacher was another son of Onias III, active during the intersacerdotium |
| Unnamed high priest of the intersacerdotium | Hartmut Stegemann; others | The Teacher was the legitimate/de facto high priest during 159–152 BCE |
The last two are particularly important because they show why simply saying “the Onias theory” can be misleading. Rainbow and Puech locate the Teacher within the Oniad succession but do not identify him with Onias IV. The scholarly literature explicitly distinguishes Rainbow’s proposal from the Onias IV identification.
Why Onias III became such an attractive candidate
The attraction of the Onias III theory comes from several striking correspondences between the scrolls and the historical situation.
The Teacher is portrayed in the Qumran pesharim as “the Priest,” and Jerome Murphy-O’Connor notes that this is normally understood as a titular reference indicating a high priest. The Teacher was also a founder/organizer of the community, possessed authoritative interpretation of Torah, suffered persecution from the Wicked Priest, and eventually died.
Onias III fits some of those characteristics exceptionally well:
- he was the legitimate Zadokite high priest;
- he was displaced by the Hellenizing Jason;
- he was subsequently killed at the instigation of Menelaus;
- Menelaus became the illegitimate/non-Zadokite high priest;
- the resulting conflict fits a Qumran polemic centered upon priestly legitimacy.
That is why Rowley’s proposal proved so influential. Collins describes it as the pre-Maccabaean hypothesis and notes that later Gmirkin and Pfann retained the central Onias III identification.
But there is a major chronological problem
The strongest objection is chronological.
Jerome Murphy-O’Connor argues that the Teacher’s association with the Wicked Priest points toward a period around the middle of the second century BCE. He identifies the Wicked Priest, with some probability, as Jonathan Maccabeus, which would put the Teacher’s activity considerably later than the death of Onias III.
This is why another line of scholarship places the Teacher in the 159–152 BCE intersacerdotium, the period when there was no officially recognized high priest. Hartmut Stegemann, for example, proposed that the Teacher was the high priest during this period; other scholars, including Rainbow and Puech, developed related proposals.
This chronology is actually one of the main reasons the Onias IV theory has some appeal: Onias IV could potentially bridge the gap between the Oniad displacement and the later development of the Qumran movement. Feather explicitly uses the chronology of the Damascus Document to argue for Onias IV.
Bottom line
If by “critical Bible scholars” you mean recognized academic scholars of the historical-critical/Qumran field, I would rank the proposals this way:
Onias III — a historically important minority hypothesis
- H. H. Rowley — original major proponent.
- Russell Gmirkin — later substantial defender.
- Stephen Pfann — also identified with the proposal.
- Others have considered or defended aspects of it.
Onias IV — a much more marginal hypothesis
- Robert Feather is the clearest explicit proponent I can document.
- I would be cautious about attributing the Onias IV identification to major Qumran specialists such as Stegemann, Puech, Murphy-O’Connor, or Rainbow; their proposals generally concern an unnamed high priest, Simon III, or another son of Onias III, rather than Onias IV specifically.
Son of Onias III other than Onias IV
- Paul A. Rainbow — Simon III.
- Émile Puech — independently develops the Simon III identification and connects him with the intersacerdotium.
So if your underlying question is “Was the Teacher of Righteousness possibly an Oniad?”, the answer is definitely yes—that is a real strand of critical Qumran scholarship. But if the question is specifically “Who argues that the Teacher was Onias IV?”, the list becomes quite short, with Robert Feather being the clearest explicit example I can substantiate.
One further point is potentially important for your earlier question about multiple naming systems and Jesus’ brothers: the Onias III → Onias IV → possible Simon III succession illustrates exactly how dangerous it can be to assume that a person’s bynames, alternate names, patronymics, and dynastic names necessarily refer to separate individuals. The Qumran/Oniad debate itself provides a useful ancient-world case study of that problem.
