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

JÖRG FREY 437
not “argue with the men of the pit” but “hide the counsel of the law in
the midst of the men of injustice” (1QS 9.16–17). Thus, we cannot presuppose
that peculiar sectarian insights were open for everybody or even
discussed publicly. Nevertheless, Essene influence on the Palestinian
Jesus movement cannot be ruled out. But the sources of both groups
remain silent, and their silence can be interpreted in various ways.
Moreover, not all the parallels adduced can prove an Essene influence:
similarities of the community organization, communal meals, the
community of goods or some theological issues might also be explained
by similarities of the respective groups’ situation, or by the common
reception of biblical and postbiblical traditions. It is a question, therefore,
of how many of the textual parallels actually allow the assumption of textual
or other Essene influences.
It is also possible that some Essenes—or former Essenes—became
Christians in the period of the Palestinian Jesus movement 113 and also in
later times, after the destruction of Qumran in 68 C.E. and of the temple
in 70 C.E., when the war against Rome ended. 114 But in the light of the
radical position on the Law and on ritual purity, we can ask whether
Essenes could have joined the Palestinian Jesus movement so easily and
in such a number to enact a considerable influence on Christian theology
after 70 C.E. A conversion of an Essene would have been an even
greater miracle than the calling of the Pharisee Paul in his way to
Damascus: the development within the early-Christian community, the
growing openness for non-Jews, and the liberality toward issues of
purity—these should have been even more offending for a member of the
Essenes than for a Pharisee. The assumption of a reinforced Essene influence
in the New Testament documents of the third generation, the period
after the Jewish War, seems to be even more questionable than an influence
on Jesus or the Jesus movement in the earliest period.
If all these assumptions are only possibilities that cannot be ascertained
from explicit textual evidence, the problem of the personal and
institutional relations between Essenism and earliest Christianity cannot
113. This was assumed on the basis of Acts 6:7; cf. Riesner, Essener und Urgemeinde
in Jerusalem, 85–86; but see the critical statements cited in n104 (above).
114. Such an assumption was frequently made in view of the Fourth Evangelist, who
was then interpreted as a former Essene; cf. John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 236–37; and with a different reconstruction, Eugen
Ruckstuhl, “Der Jünger, den Jesus liebte,” in Jesus im Horizont der Evangelien (ed. E.
Ruckstuhl; SBAB 3; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1988), 355–95, esp. 393–95.
Cf. also James H. Charlesworth, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel according to
John,” in Exploring the Gospel of John: In Honor of D. Moody Smith (ed. R. A. Culpepper
and C. C. Black; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 65–97, esp. 89.