The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

144 A STUDY IN SHARED SYMBOLISM AND LANGUAGE
that gave us much more than the five books of Enoch in so-called 1 Enoch.
Before 70 C.E. and within Judaism, the most prolific writing group was
the Essenes. They disappeared as a unique sect in 70. After 70 and before
the defeat of Bar Kokhba (135/136), the most prolific writing group
within Judaism was the Johannine School. Is it odd to suggest that after
70 the new “writing” school within Judaism was influenced by
Qumranites or Essenes? Would sociological reflections not indicate that
a social group so preoccupied with reading and writing may well have
influenced another later writing group within the same religion? These
reflections need to be enriched by the discovery that the most significant
influences from the Essenes upon New Testament authors have been
seen in documents that postdate 70 C.E. 153
An accurate grasp of both the Fourth Gospel and the Essenes requires
an understanding of their use of a solar-lunar calendar. The Essenes and
the communities behind Jubilees and the Books of Enoch followed a solarlunar
calendar154 and thus observed festivals, holy days, and the beginning
of the year at a time different from that of the Jewish establishment
in Jerusalem. This is a remarkable sociological phenomenon whose theological
ramifications are profound when one understands how the
Essenes perceived the cosmic dimension of the calendar.
Because the Fourth Evangelist gives a time different from that in the
Synoptics for the celebration of the Last Supper, it is conceivable that the
Johannine community followed, or recorded, that Jesus had followed an
Essene calendar. This possibility is weakened by our inability to discern
how unique within Early Judaism was the Essene calendar; but it is
strengthened by the growing awareness that Jesus apparently celebrated
the Last Supper within the Essene quarter of Jerusalem. 155 Even if this
possibility looms probable, it is the Fourth Evangelist’s theology that
removes the institution of the Eucharist from Jesus’ Last Supper; that is,
he wants to ground this celebration (as is evident in the early tradition of
1 Corinthians 11) in the remembrance of Jesus’ life, placing it with innuendoes
in the feeding of the five thousand in chapter 6.
153. See James H. Charlesworth, “Have the Dead Sea Scrolls Revolutionized Our
Understanding of the New Testament?” in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years after Their
Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20—25, 1997 (ed. L. H. Schiffman, E.
Tov, and J. C. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and the Shrine of
the Book, 2000), 116—32.
154. See the authoritative study of S. Talmon, “The Calendar of the Covenanters of
the Judean Desert,” in The World of Qumran From Within: Collected Studies (Jerusalem:
Magnes; Leiden: Brill, 1989), 147—85; repr. of rev. ed. from “The Calendar Reckoning
of the Sect from the Judaean Desert,” in Aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. C. Rabin
and Y. Yadin; ScrHier 4; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1958; 2d ed. 1965), 162–99.
155. See the discussions in Charlesworth, ed., Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls.