The Jewish Annotated New Testament (164 page)

A total of eleven “scroll caves” were discovered near the site of Qumran, and these were found to contain upwards of eight hundred fragmentary manuscripts. A vast proportion of these highly fragmentary manuscripts were found in Cave 4, directly across a wadi or seasonal watercourse from the site of Qumran. Subsequent study identified among these manuscripts evidence for every book of Tanakh except Esther; major fragments of previously known pseudepigrapha such as
1 Enoch
and
Jubilees
; and a wide variety of previously unknown scriptural expansions and scripture-like texts. Finds included additional sectarian rule texts, scriptural commentary, hymns, and prayers as well as an array of calendars and previously unknown legal texts. Notably absent among these texts, which extended until the site’s destruction in 68 CE, were books of the New Testament or other early Christian literature. Some Greek fragments from Cave 7 (esp. 7Q5) were speculatively identified as fragments of the Gospel of Mark, but scholars now believe that 7Q5 and related fragments are Greek translations of the book of
1 Enoch
.

Theodor H. Gaster (1906–92) published an early translation of more than a dozen core texts in
The Dead Sea Scriptures
(1956). He saw the scrolls as “the library of an Essene monastery or meeting-house at Qumran” but noted that the texts reflected the larger “religious repertoire of the Essene Brotherhood.” He further acknowledged that the scrolls “help us to reconstruct the spiritual climate of early Christianity and throw light especially on the mission of John the Baptist and on the constitution of the primitive Church.” Gaster’s study reflects the field’s early attention to parallels with New Testament texts. He noted such general similarities between the scrolls and the New Testament as the use of covenantal identity markers (“the elect,” the “remnant” of God’s covenant, those “planted” by God, the true Temple); the term “teacher” as a designation for group leadership; light-language (including “Sons of Light”); and a sense of unique relationship to God and his messengers. Gaster also speculated on parallels in terminology for social relationships, including “council” (
etzah, synhedrion
) or “congregation” (
edah
,
synagōgē
) along with parallels between Qumran terms for an “overseer” (
mevaker
) and priests and comparable New Testament terms for bishop (
episkopos
, lit., “overseer”) and presbyter (“elder”). However, Gaster carefully avoided the impression that the scrolls bore some organic relationship to earliest Christianity.

A less-responsible tendency to search for parallels in the scrolls and the New Testament was a point of significant concern among scholars. Samuel Sandmel (1911–79), in his 1961 presidential address to the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, specifically noted the dangers of what he called “parallelomania” of various sorts, including in scholarship of the New Testament and ancient Jewish literature, as well as the scrolls. He noted in particular the tendency to cherry-pick shared textual references or similar theological claims without attention to their literary contexts or their relationship to larger religious implications: “Two passages may sound the same in splendid isolation from their context, but when seen in context reflect difference rather than similarity.” Equally important for understanding such parallels, Sandmel asserted, was the presence of a shared Jewish tradition (or, better, “tradition
s
”) within which the writings of Philo, the rabbis, the New Testament authors, and the Qumranites might—variously and partially—be compared but also contrasted with one another. Sandmel also offered a helpful clarification that would come to resonate in later reconsiderations of the Essene Hypothesis: “I would never try to identify the Qumran Community by the Essenes, but I incline to some willingness to identify the Essenes by the Qumran Community.”

Geza Vermes (1924–) noted in his introduction to
Jesus the Jew
(1973) that his own approach to the scrolls and other ancient Jewish sources requires using them not “simply as aids in answering queries arising from the New Testament, but as independent spokesmen capable, from time to time at least, of guiding the enquiry, either by suggesting the right angle of approach, or even the right questions to ask.” This approach came to the fore most clearly in his treatment of Jesus in light of Jewish messianism; his use of examples from Qumran allowed him to argue for an ancient Jewish messianism that was diverse and capable of including expectations of a Davidic messiah (e.g., in 1QSb 5; 4Q161 8–10; 10–20; 4Q174 1.11; CD 7.20), a priestly messiah (1QS 9.11; CD 6.7; 7.18, 20; 12.23–13.1; 14.19; 1QSa 2.11–14; 19–20; 1QSb 3.1–21; 5.20–29), or a prophetic messianic figure (1QS 9.11; 4Q175 5–20), in any of several possible combinations. From his 1953 dissertation forward, Vermes has argued for linking the scrolls directly to the Essene sect. This argument also underlies his translations of the scrolls, most recently
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English
(1997, 2004; first published as
The Dead Sea Scrolls in English
, 1962, and revised and expanded in four editions through 1995), which continues to serve as a standard general-purpose translation of the scrolls.

In recent years, challenges to the Essene Hypothesis have pushed scholars to rethink their earlier emphases on celibacy, separation, and messianic expectations as hallmarks of the Qumran movement. This shift has necessarily brought with it reconsiderations of the relevance of the scrolls for earliest Christianity.

Chief among the reasons for this shift in focus was the publication of a number of substantial—and substantially different—texts from caves other than Qumran Cave 1. This process began in a 1977 publication by Yigael Yadin (1917–84) of the Temple Scroll (English translation in 1983), which served to highlight the importance for the scrolls and so their authors of Torah, religious praxis, ritual purity, family law, and classical Jewish notions of covenant—concepts that were not emphasized by earlier studies. Yadin also led the archaeological excavation of the Masada fortress in 1963–65, which resulted in textual finds including fragments of Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, and Psalms, as well as fragments in Hebrew of Ben Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), apocryphal works based on passages from Genesis and from Joshua, and a collection of Sabbath Songs (this has also been found at Qumran).

The majority of the material from Caves 1–3 and 5–11 had been published in the first decades after their discovery. In contrast, the highly fragmentary (and massive) collection of texts from Cave 4 remained unpublished through the end of the 1980s. Public controversies over the lack of access to these texts peaked in 1991 and ultimately led to a general “freeing” of the scrolls. Although this new material confirmed much of what scholars had gleaned from the scrolls in past decades, it also revealed a much broader theological world than the one framed by the first generation of scrolls research. The themes highlighted by the Temple Scroll, including interpretation of Jewish law and practice, appeared again in multiple copies of the Community Rule (1QS) and the Damascus Document (CD). The Damascus Document also contains collective rules, such as those governing purification rites, which make clear the group’s separation from Temple practices of the time. Other sectarian rule texts, legal collections, and calendrical compositions further suggested that the scrolls do not reflect a single sectarian group but rather a movement that developed over time and in sometimes contentious ways.

The most significant text in the context of this latter discussion is 4QMMT (
Miqzat Ma
’
aseh Ha-Torah
, “A Few Words of Torah”). This text, written in the voice of a communal leader (the Teacher of Righteousness, according to its editors), documents a series of legal disagreements, many related to issues of ritual purity, that distinguish the author and his group from an untrustworthy priestly authority structure from whom they separated. The text is addressed not to the opposition forces but to a third party, who is framed as potentially open to the “words” of the text, and who might yet—in consequence of receiving the text—find a way to bring his people to the side of righteousness before the endtimes. The Teacher of Righteousness (
moreh ha-tzedeq
and variant related phrases) is generally seen as the founding leader of the community. Who this individual was is not known; nor is it known exactly when he would have begun his sectarian efforts. Scholars have focused attention on the second century BCE, between the efforts of the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) to make Jerusalem into a Hellenistic city (ca. 175 BCE) and the Hasmonean rule of Jerusalem after the Maccabean revolt of 167–164 BCE, leading to the Hasmonean choice of Jonathan as high priest (152–143). If this conjecture is correct, then Jonathan is the “wicked priest” who opposes the Teacher, but by the nature of the case all of this is very speculative.

4QMMT emphasizes
halakhah
(legal interpretation) in an eschatological framework, and this combination served as the thematic anchor for Lawrence H. Schiffman (1948–) in his
Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls
(1994). Although the topic of
halakhah
was certainly an element of Qumran studies by the mid-1990s (dating back at least to Schiffman’s own monograph,
The Halakhah at Qumran
[1975]), he presented this later publication as a comprehensive effort to “correct a fundamental misreading” of the scrolls, “written to explain their significance in understanding the history of Judaism,” instead of concentrating on their relationship to early Christianity.

The Judaism that Schiffman identified in the scrolls was one with priestly connections (as the original Cave 1 scrolls suggested), and one with distinct conflicts with the Jerusalem authority structure (both also suggested by the earlier scrolls). But Schiffman and other scholars also observe that the scrolls assume the presence of marrying sectarians in family structures (the image of isolated men appears only in the Community Rule). Thus celibacy as such appears to have been greatly exaggerated by earlier readings. Messianism, too, came to be seen not as the driving theological focus of the scrolls but rather as one element in the larger ancient Jewish worldview. Schiffman argued for a view of the scrolls sectarians as priestly oriented Jews in conflict with both the Jerusalem priestly authorities and their Pharisaic opponents, and who consequently removed themselves from both camps. The appeal to Zadokite priestly authority in the sectarian scrolls (1QS 5.2, 9; CD 3.21–44) leads Schiffman to speak of their authors as pious (disaffected) Sadduccees; their treatment of marriage and sexuality leads him also to note that they might well be equated with the “marrying Essenes” mentioned by Josephus. Although they have not won wholesale approval as such, Schiffman’s arguments have contributed a necessary layer of complexity to the scholarly consensus with regard to the Essene Hypothesis.

The scrolls testify to a Jewish religious movement that was at once halakhically oriented, exegetically aware, purity-sensitive, and eschatologically motivated. The scrolls sectarians were not the celibate, monastic Essenes of Pliny’s designation, but nor were they “ordinary” Jews of a proto-rabbinic variety. To understand them in their full complexity requires rethinking the Judaism in which they developed, and this, in turn, provides a richer and more nuanced context in which to envision the earliest Christian movements that arose in their wake.

PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA

David Satran

LIFE

Although Philo (ca. 20 BCE–ca. 50 CE) was a contemporary of Jesus, the immediate circle of Jesus’ disciples, and the apostle Paul, his writings disclose no direct knowledge of the emergent Christian movement. From the fourth century CE on, however, the church fathers would not hesitate to turn to Philo in their accounts of the origins of Christianity. Following mention of Philo’s background and his embassy on behalf of the Jews of Alexandria (
Hist eccl
. 2.5.1ff.), Eusebius proceeds to cite at length from Philo’s work
On the Contemplative Life
as a testimony to the foundations of Christianity in Alexandria (
Hist. eccl
. 2.16–17). Later Christian legend and historiography would claim that Philo was himself involved in the foundation of Alexandrian Christianity, and in Byzantine and early medieval representations he is elevated to the role of a Christian theologian.

We have relatively few secure details of Philo’s life, but it is certain that he belonged to a prominent and influential family, deeply involved in the economic, religious, and political life of the Alexandrian Jewish community. His own works (see below) and the testimony of Josephus (
Ant
. 18.8.1) provide ample evidence both of his stature and his involvement in matters of communal welfare. Educated according to the highest standards of Greco-Roman
paideia
(education) and highly proficient in both rhetorical theory and philosophical inquiry, Philo is a strong proponent of the welfare of the Jewish community and its religious observances. His loyalty to the demands of the Hebrew Bible (through the medium of Greek translation) combined with an advocacy of the Greek wisdom traditions foreshadow the medieval religious effort—whether Jewish, Christian, or Islamic—to achieve a harmonious accommodation between scripture and philosophy.