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

HEINZ-WOLFGANG KUHN 177
at least attached to one manuscript, 72 —are all found in 4QMMT and in
Galatians.
5. “Sinful Flesh”
Paul
Romans 8:3: “God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh
(sarko_v a9marti/av).”
Qumran
1QS 11.9 says: “However, I belong to a wicked humankind and to a company
of unjust flesh (lw( r#b); my sins (ytwnww(), my crimes (y(#p), my
errors (yt)+x)…” 73 In different use (see below) for all wicked men, especially
in the pagan nations: 1QM 4.2–3 on a banner: “From [3] God is the
power of war against all unjust flesh (lw( r#b),” identified in line 2 as people
who belong to “Belial and all the men of his lot”; 1QM 12.11–12 in a
prayer: “…and may your sword [12] consume guilty flesh (hm#) r#b),” 74
identified in a parallelismus membrorum as “the nations, your enemies.”
Explanations
The term “sinful flesh” or similar was not used in the Hebrew Bible
(including Sirach) or in the Septuagint. The same is true for the Mishnah. 75
It also cannot be found as sa&rc a9marti/av (“sinful flesh”) in any Jewish
or pagan Greek text between the third century B.C.E. 76 and the third
72. See 4QMMT section A (4Q394 frags. 3–7 col. 1, but not frags. 1–2 according
to the reedition of Shemaryahu Talmon in Qumran Cave 4.XVI: Calendrical Texts [ed.
S. Talmon, J. Ben-Dov, and U. Glessmer, DJD 21; Oxford: Clarendon, 2001]) and
Gal 4:10.
73. Already in 1952 Karl Georg Kuhn emphasized the parallel between Rom 8:3
and 1QS 11.9; see his “Peirasmo&j—a(marti/a—sa&rc im Neuen Testament und die
damit zusammenhängenden Vorstellungen,” ZTK 49 (1952): 200–22, here 210n2;
revised in ET: “New Light on Temptation, Sin, and Flesh in the New Testament,” in
The Scrolls and the New Testament (ed. K. Stendahl; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957),
94–113, 265–70, here 267n23.
74. In the parallel passage in 1QM 19.4, “guilty” is missing.
75. Here t)+x r#b (in m. Zebah[ 8:4; 14:13) means “meat of a sin offering.”
76. According to Thesaurus Linguae Graecae [on CD-ROM], Version E, published at
the University of California, Irvine, CA, 1999.