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

PAUL GARNET 367
supererogation or any merit that could be transferred to others. Isaiah 53
was not an important passage for them. Isaiah 43 was more attractive in
the Judaism of the time.
There was, therefore, no vicariously atoning role for the community
in its thinking, and this cannot form the background for the NT conception
of the saving efficacy of the death of Christ. The impression that
there was such an atoning role had been given by scholars’ tendency to
translate the Hebrew phrase (Nww( hcr) ra4s[â (a6wôn by “atone for sin”
instead of by “accept the punishment of iniquity.” It is the identical phrase
used in Lev 26:41, where it clearly means accepting the punishment of
one’s own iniquity. This is laid down as a condition for Israel’s return
from exile. It involves a doxology of judgment: acknowledging that God
is just in handing out the punishment one receives. Such doxologies are
found in the OT after Israel had gone into exile and continue into post-
OT Judaism, including the DSS. The fact that they continue is evidence
that many Jews did not consider that the return under Cyrus in 538
B.C.E. constituted a true “restoration” as foretold by the prophets. The
Qumran community had as one of its raisons d’être the desire to fulfill
this precondition of return from exile.
For an understanding of the origin of NT atonement thought, therefore,
we cannot build on the Qumran community or its leaders as vicarious
atoners. Instead, we should base our search on the known exilic
soteriology of Jesus’ audiences as attested strikingly in the Qumran literature
but also in many other Jewish writings of the Second Temple
period. An important element in this soteriology was the expectation that
God would give the Gentile nations as a kôpher in order to save Israel (Isa
43:3–7; 1Q34 frag. 3 1.4–6). So strong was this idea in the Judaism of the
time that it was actually incorporated into Isaiah 53: verse 9 in the LXX
reads, “I shall give the wicked for his grave,” while Targum Jonathan has
in verse 8, “He will cause the dominion of the Gentiles to pass away from
the land of Israel, and transfer to them the sins which my people have
committed.” 13
This idea reappears in the NT with a different twist. Instead of Isaiah
43 being inserted into Isaiah 53, as in LXX and Targum Jonathan, the terms
of Isaiah 43 (love, ransom/redeem, giving life) are used to express the
thought of Isaiah 53 as applied to Jesus Christ. This can be accounted for
credibly as a development from Mark 10:45, which would confirm our
earlier conclusion that this is the “port of entry.” It should also be noted
13. Adolf Neubauer, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters
(trans. S. R. Driver and A. Neubauer; New York: Ktav, 1969), 2:2, 6.