The relevance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for New Testament interpretation: with a bibliographical appendix
Loading...
Date
2003
Authors
Frey, J.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of Theology, University of the Free State
Abstract
English: The article demonstrates why the Dead Sea Scrolls are important for NT scholarship.
After a sketch of the main periods of Qumran research, the author discusses
four patterns of relating Qumran with the NT which he considers problematic.
Neither was the Qumran community a prototype of Early Christianity, nor do
Qumran texts reflect Early Christian history. The opinion that NT texts can be
found in the fragments from Cave 7 is erroneous, and the view that an Essene Quarter
in Jerusalem formed the nucleus of the Primitive Christian Community there
cannot be established. Based on the fact that the Qumran library is not the literary
production of a single “sect” but a broader collection of texts from different groups
in Ancient Judaism, the relevance of the Qumran library is rather that it shows the
pluriformity of Judaism at the turn of the era, and that numerous terms and ideas
in the NT which were thought to be non-Jewish can now be explained from the
variety of Jewish texts from the library. The interpretative value of Qumran is then
demonstrated by two examples: John the Baptist can be interpreted more precisely
in contrast with the purification rites and Scripture interpretation of Qumran, and
some of the Pauline anthropological terms, especially the notion of sinful flesh, can
be seen as influenced by Palestinian Jewish Wisdom traditions. As an appendix, the
author presents a select and commented bibliography for the study of Qumran texts
and their relation with the NT.
Description
Keywords
Qumran, Dead Sea Scrolls, John the Baptist, Pauline Theology: flesh, New Testament interpretation
Citation
Frey, J. (2003). The relevance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for New Testament interpretation: with a bibliographical appendix. Acta Theologica, 23(2), 86-116.