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

270 THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND THE APOCALYPSE OF JOHN
that a connection between faith and keeping the commandments (i.e.,
“works”) is common to both the Apocalypse and the Dead Sea Scrolls—
a relationship quite unlike the one we see in Paul.
However, such a reading may derive from an overly Augustinian
understanding of Paul and an illegitimate—or at least anachronistic—
contrast between Judaism and Christianity. Despite Paul’s writings, the
strong emphasis on keeping the commandments that we see in the
Apocalypse and in the Dead Sea Scrolls would not have been unusual or
distinctive within first-century Judaism. Nor are there signs to indicate
that the emphasis on works in the Apocalypse is in any way indebted to
the halakic interests of the scrolls. It is true that both the scrolls and the
Apocalypse emphasize reproof and discipline (cf. Rev 3:19; Rule of the
Community [1QS] 5.24–6.1; Damascus Document [CD] 9.2–8; Polemical
Fragment [4Q471 frag. 1]; Decrees [4Q477]). Both communities are enjoined
to pay close attention to matters of lifestyle and to develop and maintain
a clear countercultural consciousness about their identity and way of living
(cf. 1QS 1.1–15; 8.16b–9.2), though the method of paraenetic address
is more direct in the scrolls. 49 There are further differences. The scrolls
give more attention to the specifics of covenant faithfulness, to the exact
shape of that faithfulness. In Revelation, the rhetoric revolves around the
importance of following the commandments generally and the uncompromising
allegiance that such commitment entails, rather than the
specifics involved, though some specifics are present (such as avoiding
food offered to idols: Rev 2:14, 20; cf. 1 Cor 8:1–10; 10:19).
Serious commitment to the works of the Law—to a real ethical
righteousness—was quite natural and unremarkable in first-century
Judaism. It certainly was not unique to Revelation and the scrolls.
Emphasis upon “works” was simply one expression of the seriousness
with which most Jewish groups took the Torah in Second Temple
Judaism: “Torah was one of the major categories which defined Jewish
life during the Greco-Roman period.” 50
In order to substantiate an alleged anti-Pauline Essene polemic in the
Apocalypse, one would have to demonstrate the presence of an argument
49. The paraenesis in the prophetic oracles of Revelation 2–3 represent a partial
exception to the general rule that the paraenetic or deliberative rhetoric of the
Apocalypse is oblique.
50. John Kampen, “‘Righteousness’ in Matthew and the Legal Texts from
Qumran,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International
Organization for Qumran Studies, Cambridge 1995; Published in Honour of Joseph M.
Baumgarten (ed. M. J. Bernstein, F. García Martínez, and J. Kampen; STDJ 23;
Leiden: Brill, 1997), 461.