| ||
NOTE: From time to time, I hope to do one-page introductions to topics related to the Bible and Christianity that people may not know about. (Since I’m long-winded, for each one I’m limiting myself to one double-spaced page in Word.) You can see my previous one-page take on biblical theology here. Beginning in 1947, fragments of hundreds of scrolls were found in 11 caves near the Dead Sea in Israel, apparently hidden there by a group that lived nearby at Qumran. Some of the scrolls are Old Testament manuscripts, but others are sectarian texts revealing a group of “Covenanters,” a pre-Christian Jewish reform movement who obeyed Torah as interpreted by their “Teacher of Righteousness,” and who believed (much like early Christians) that their community fulfilled OT prophecy. Above all, the Qumran Covenanters were Jews, and their concerns were those of second temple Judaism. The Temple was all-important, but God’s presence there (Deut 12:5-7) depended on the Temple’s holiness –– requiring ritual purity, a correct sacrificial calendar, and a proper priesthood. The Covenanters saw the Jerusalem priesthood as (ritually) corrupt, so they moved to the Dead Sea, where their Community functioned as if it were the Temple. Righteousness (i.e., strict obedience to Torah) replaced animal sacrifices to make atonement for the land. Much like Paul, the Covenanters believed that humans were incapable of righteousness on their own, but that God, in his righteousness, forgave them and led them to righteous conduct. The covenanters were harshly apocalyptic. God had predestined humanity into two groups: Sons of Light (themselves) and Sons of Darkness (everyone else). At the end of days (which they expected imminently), the Sons of Light would march forth and conquer the world, destroying everyone from the “dominion of Belial.” The scrolls have a twofold significance for Christians: (1) the OT manuscripts are a thousand years older than what we had before; and (2) many of the ideas are startlingly similar to later Christian teachings. Against the common tendency to contrast Christianity with Judaism, the scrolls show just how Jewish the New Testament really is. Feel free to ask me any questions, factual or otherwise. |
August 9th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
“Teacher of Righteousness” = “Righteous Teacher”?
Come on, Scott, toe the party line.
August 9th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Crap! I’ve been reading too much Schiffman . . . and Vermes, and García Martínez.
Funny thing is, I didn’t even think about it when I wrote it, which probably means I’ve absorbed some of the stuff I’ve read this year. Whew.
For those who have no idea what’s going on, both OT Hebrew and NT Greek can use an “of” phrase (i.e., “of righteousness”) to serve as an adjective. Sometimes that makes certain phrases ambiguous, which is all a part of the fun.
August 10th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Indeed, it sounds like you’ve been reading too much of everyone but JHC. Therein can be found your problem.
August 11th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Ive heard it proposed that Jesus may have spent some time in this community during the “missing years” before his public ministry. The suggestion is that the “similarities” noted between the Qumran community and Christianity are actually Jesus’ adaptations from this formative experience. However, I’ve also read that most biblical scholars no longer treat this thesis as probable — that is, they do not believe Jesus spent time in this community. I would be happy to hear an informed opinion on this one. Thanks.
August 11th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Charles, I’ll take my best shot at this. (Maybe jsoyars can correct me if I’m misrepresenting anything.)
Bible scholars recognized from the start that the scrolls provide great background for understanding Jesus’ context, but I’m not sure a lot of reputable scholars ever really thought Jesus knew the folks at Qumran.
There’s no hard evidence for it, which means the main reason for someone to push that thesis is to sell books.
It’s true that there are similarities between Qumran on the one hand and Jesus and the early church on the other. For example, members of the Qumran community shared their possessions, had strong apocalyptic expectations, and anticipated a messianic banquet at the end of time.
However, the sharing of property appears to have taken place at a sort of compound, where they handed over all property to a community clerk, who doled it back out as needed (though this point is debated, I think). Their apocalyptic expectation was for a battle beginning from Jerusalem, in which they would march forth and kill everyone else in the world. And their messianic banquet was presided over by two messiahs, one a priest and the other a king.
Also, the Qumran sect had a particular form of hierarchy by which members were ranked: each year, each member was evaluated according to his insight (knowledge of Torah as interpreted by the sect) and his deeds (obedience to Torah and the sect’s rules). The goal appears to have been to sift the holiest people to the top, so that a group of them called the “men of perfect holiness” could function as the Holy of Holies (since the whole Community was regarded as the Temple) to make atonement for the land.
I suppose this kind of hierarchy isn’t all that different than what Christians have had in various times and places. But still, it’s a far cry from Jesus kneeling to wash his disciples’ feet.
Perhaps most importantly, the Qumran sect had a pronounced focus on holiness, especially as it involved ritual purity and strict observance of Torah. Personally, I’m persuaded that Jesus was an observant Jew who did not break purity laws flippantly. Nevertheless, his touching of lepers and corpses, his dealings with gentiles, and his dinners with tax collectors and prostitutes would not have been admired by the sect at Qumran.
In theory, I suppose someone who wanted to conjure up a connection could say that Jesus was reacting against the exclusivity of Qumran by taking their ideas and opening them up to a broader audience. The problem with that is, ideas about apocalyptic war and messianic banquets weren’t unique to Qumran.
It makes more sense to see Jesus and the Qumran Covenanters as unconnected Palestinian Jewish reformers working more or less in a common context. It is of course it’s possible that Jesus knew the Qumran sect. But if he did, he probably didn’t like them very much.
August 12th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
For what it’s worth, most serious scholarship rejects the idea that Jesus himself spent time at Qumran, although the possibility of indirect (or perhaps even direct) contact with Qumran or similarly minded Essenes in the Essene Quarter in south Jerusalem is plausible. However, numerous serious scholars have advanced the hypothesis that it was in fact John the Baptist who inhabited the community at Qumran for a brief period, having sworn a vow to Yahad, which he later denounced. This hypothesis (i.e., a Qumranic influnece on John the Baptist, whose group subsequently influenced Jesus and his movement) attempts to address specific ideological “similarities” between the three groups, although it is only that — one hypothesis among many.
August 13th, 2007 at 4:45 am
Thank you both. Your answers are much appreciated.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:18 am
very interesting discussion. not exactly the type of content that is gone over in Sunday school.<br/><br/>could you recommend any reading material that would provide a general history on the scrolls?
August 15th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Probably the best bang for your buck is the Penguin Paperback volume by Geza Vermes called The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (isbn 0140449523, $13.60 new on Amazon). It has a 90-page introduction that covers the scrolls’ discovery, their historical context, and how people interpret the history of the Qumran Community. Plus, it has all the texts of the actual scrolls so you can look more closely at the ones that sound interesting.
(I should note, Vermes’ book and most of the ones like it only include the non-biblical scrolls. For a critically reconstructed volume of the biblical scrolls, look at The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, by Abegg, Flint, and Ulrich (isbn 0060600640).
The most interesting scrolls for someone who’s not a specialist are probably the Community Rule (1QS), the Damascus Document (CD), and the Rule of the Congregation (1QSa — Vermes calls it the “Messianic Rule”). These give an outline of some of the Community’s beliefs and practices.
After that, the Pesher (=commentary) on Habakkuk (1QpHab) and the War Scroll (1QM) are slightly more technical texts that are fascinating as well. A lot of the language is cryptic (in the Habakkuk Pesher there’s lots of talk of the Wicked Priest, the Kittim, and the Spouter of Lies, but Vermes sorts out what these might mean in his introduction under The History of the Community
All five of these are in Vermes’ volume, and in any other book that claims to include the main scrolls.
Another book that’s very clearly written is James VanderKam’s The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (“Today” being 1994). It doesn’t have the scroll texts themselves, but it outlines what the main ones have to say, plus it has a good 25 pages on the relationship between the scrolls and Christianity, which Vermes (who is Jewish) touches on for only a couple of pages. You can get VanderKam’s book used for less than $5.
October 6th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Thank you for sharing!
November 10th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
[…] literature in the centuries before Jesus. Much of that literature (especially 1 Enoch and the Dead Sea Scrolls) is heavily influenced by apocalyptic […]