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

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“THE COMING OF THE RIGHTEOUS ONE” IN 1 ENOCH,
QUMRAN, AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
Gerbern S. Oegema
INTRODUCTION
This essay 1 aims at a study of the tradition- and reception-historical context
of the expression h( e0leu/sij tou= dikai/ou, “the Coming of the
Righteous One,” found in Acts 7:52, the only passage in the New
Testament where it is found—by comparing its use in 1 Enoch, in Qumran,
especially in 4Q215a and 4Q252, and in other early Jewish writings—to
shed light on its origin and meaning. Apart from the expression itself or
parts of it as well as its possible equivalents, I also look at the wider context
in which we find it: literary, cultic, historical, eschatological, messianic,
or other context. I begin with the latter.
1. CONTEXT
1.1. Summaries of the History of Israel
The first context or framework, in which the expression h( e0leu/sij tou=
dikai/ou appears, is in that of a literary genre. Acts 7:52 is found in one
of the two main historical accounts in Luke-Acts, in Acts 7:2b–53, where
1. Paper read at the Third Enoch Seminar in Camaldoli, Italy, June 6–11, 2005,
and partly based on a paper presented at the seminar “The Pseudepigrapha and
Christian Origins,” at the annual meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamentum Societas,
Barcelona, Aug. 3–7, 2004. My thanks go to James H. Charlesworth for inviting me
to read the first version of the paper, and to him and Gabriele Boccaccini for welcoming
me to the Enoch Seminar. I further thank Jim Charlesworth for his many useful
suggestions to improve both papers, and I thank my assistant Sara Parks for
polishing my English and checking the bibliography.
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