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

CHAPTER TEN
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND
THE APOCALYPSE OF JOHN
Loren L. Johns
METHODOLOGY IN LITERARY COMPARISON
Analysis of the book of Revelation in light of the Dead Sea Scrolls could
take several paths methodologically. For instance, one might take a tradition-critical
approach, in which one attempts to describe as carefully as
possible the form, shape, and evolution of traditions through several eras
and communities by way of the literatures and the cultural and religious
artifacts they left behind.
Or one might approach the task more specifically in terms of the literature,
analyzing the various ways in which different communities and literatures
related to or used their Scriptures. In the case of the comparative
study of Revelation and the Dead Sea Scrolls, such an approach has real
possibility, since the communities reflected in both literatures accorded the
Hebrew Scriptures significant authority for their own faith and life. 1
Still another approach would be to analyze the ways in which these
literatures used symbols or constructed their symbolic worlds. Such an
approach might focus on one or two of the individual symbols that are
in common to the literature. This is a particularly useful approach to
take when trying to understand the life and changing values of a given
tradition or symbol. All communication, all language, is little more than
a set of symbol systems. As such, the literatures represented here are
themselves symbols that reflect a certain ordering of reality as envisioned
by the authors. I am not referring here to the deep structures of language
pursued by structuralists, but rather to the creation of symbolic universes
realized in the process of applying ink to leather and apprehended by
1. I do not suggest that the “Hebrew Scriptures” were fixed in either scope or form
at the time of the scribal activity at Qumran. Rather, I simply affirm the importance
of those Scriptures for both communities.
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