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

418 DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
number of scholarly studies provide fresh insights on the significance of
the Qumran documents for the interpretation of the New Testament. On
the other hand, earlier assumptions that appear to be overstated in the
light of the new evidence can be corrected and modified.
However, the discussion has only started, and it will be a lot of work
until its results can be summed up. But hopefully in some years we will
be able to provide a new evaluated collection of all the material from
Qumran that can help us to understand the documents of early
Christianity within their context of early Judaism.
At the University of Munich, my predecessor, Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn,
has worked on the project of a new “kind of ‘Billerbeck’ on Qumran,” 42
a commented collection of the Qumran parallels for New Testament
exegetes. The Munich Qumran project then focused on the authentic
Letters of Paul. Its results are being preliminarily published in a number
of articles, until the book-length publication will appear in due time. The
most recent comprehensive discussion of the links between Qumran and
the New Testament is the two-volume study by Herbert Braun from
1966, which covers the scholarly literature only from 1950–59. This
study is clearly outdated. It is also based on a number of assumptions on
early Judaism and on the place of the New Testament within the history
of religions that cannot be shared any more. 43 So, in view of the progress
analysis of the whole material and can replace the former standard monograph by
Adam S. van der Woude, Die messianischen Vorstellungen der Gemeinde von Qumran (SSN
3; Assen: van Gorcum, 1957). Cf. also James H. Charlesworth, “Challenging the
Consensus Communis regarding Qumran Messianism (1QS, 4QS MSS),” in Qumran-
Messianism: Studies on the Messianic Expectations in the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. J. H.
Charlesworth, H. Lichtenberger, and G. S. Oegema; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998),
120–34. On the issue of Qumran dualism and its alleged relations with Johannine
thought, cf. Jörg Frey, “Different Patterns of Dualistic Thought in the Qumran
Library,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International
Organization for Qumran Studies; Published in Honour of J. M. Baumgarten (ed. M. J.
Bernstein, F. García Martínez, and J. Kampen; STDJ 23; Leiden, New York: Brill,
1997), 275–335; idem, “Licht aus den Höhlen? Der ‘johanneische Dualismus’ und die
Texte von Qumran,” in Kontexte des Johannesevangeliums: Das vierte Evangelium in religionsund
traditionsgeschichtlicher Perspektive (ed. J. Frey and U. Schnelle, in collaboration with
J. Schlegel; WUNT 175; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 117–203, thoroughly questioning
the widespread assumptions of a close relationship between Qumran and the
Gospel of John.
42. Cf. H.-W. Kuhn, “The Impact of the Qumran Scrolls,” 327–39, esp. 327. Cf.,
since then, the articles mentioned in n30 (above).
43. To mention only one example, H. Braun stays fully within the Bultmannian
concept when he interprets New Testament predestinational dualism in terms of gnostic
syncretism; cf. H. Braun, Qumran und das Neue Testament, 2:250. Bultmann himself
takes up the Qumran finds only as evidence for a gnostic type of Judaism; cf. Rudolf
K. Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testaments (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1951), 361n1.