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

JÖRG FREY 435
cannot provide a historical framework for the interpretation of the relations
between New Testament and Qumran texts,
3. SOME METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
a. Twofold Negative Evidence and Numerous Questions
To reach an adequate point of departure for relating the Qumran texts
with the New Testament, we basically have to consider twofold negative
evidence:
First, the documents from the Qumran library mention neither Jesus
nor any other person known from early Christian texts. And second, the
New Testament texts make no mention of Qumran or the group of the
Essenes.
The last observation is even more astonishing and calls for explanation.
Why do New Testament authors mention Pharisees and Sadducees
but no “Essenes,” who—according to Josephus—held an equally important
position in Palestinian Judaism at that time? 107 If Josephus is basically
right—and I assume he is 108 —the Essenes were not only a marginal sect in
a remote monastery in the desert, but also had some influence as the
third religious party (as the term ai3rhsiv should be translated) in Jewish
Palestine. The silence of the New Testament authors and texts is thus
even more remarkable. Is it due to a greater distance between earliest
“Christianity” and the Qumran group or Essenism as a whole, or can we
interpret it as a sign of close relations between the two movements? 109
107. Both Josephus, Ant. 18.20, and Philo, Prob. 75, give the number of 4,000
Essenes; Josephus, Ant. 17.41–42, additionally mentions 6,000 Pharisees.
108. According to Berndt Schaller, “4000 Essener—6000 Pharisäer: Zum
Hintergrund und Wert antiker Zahlenangaben,” in Antikes Judentum und frühes
Christentum: Festschrift für Hartmut Stegemann zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. B. Kollmann, W.
Reinbold, and A. Steudel; ZNWBeih 97; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), 172–82,
such numbers are a topos of ancient historiography and cannot claim historical accuracy.
Of course, it is possible that these numbers are based not on Philo’s or Josephus’s
own calculations but on some kind of source (as Schaller, 174, assumes). For Josephus,
however, we should assume that he had some knowledge of the Palestinian Jewish
groups and their influence. So we should accept the fact that there were more Pharisees
than Essenes, but that both groups had some influence in religion and society during
the period before the Jewish War. Cf. the more extensive argument in Frey, “Zur historischen
Auswertung der antiken Essenerberichte,” 55–56.
109. Thus Hans Kosmala, e.g., held the view that the Essenes were the group with
which earliest Christianity was related most closely; see his article “Jerusalem,” BHH
2:820–50, esp. 846.