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

The History of Scholarship
JÖRG FREY 443
Last, from the viewpoint of the history of New Testament research, it is
interesting to ask: In what way did the Qumran finds and the subsequent
waves of publication change our religio-historical views and, as a consequence,
also our theological interpretation of New Testament texts?
What interpretations were proposed in view of the Qumran parallels,
and how many of them were abandoned soon afterward? In which way
did the scrolls definitely change our view of the historical Jesus, of Paul,
or of the Fourth Gospel? Asking and answering these questions will
finally show the real impact of the discovery of the Qumran library on
the study of the New Testament.
4. TWO MAJOR TEST CASES
a. The Impact of Qumran on the Interpretation of John the Baptizer
As a first test case for the discussion of similarities and dissimilarities
between the documents from Qumran and the New Testament, I take John
the Baptizer. This is the figure from the New Testament that most scholars
have considered to be closely related with Qumran or the Essenes. 129
In one of the most certain traditions within the New Testament, Jesus
was baptized by John and received John’s “baptism of repentance for the
129. The scholarly literature is immense; cf. only the more recent contributions: Otto
Betz, “Was John the Baptist an Essene?” BRev 18 (1990): 18–25; Hermann Lichtenberger,
“The Dead Sea Scrolls and John the Baptist: Reflections on Josephus’ Account of John the
Baptist,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research (ed. D. Dimant and U. Rappaport;
STDJ 10; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 340–46; idem, “Johannes der Täufer und die Texte von
Qumran,” in Mogilany 1989: Papers on the Dead Sea Scrolls Offered in Memory of Jean Carmignac.
Part I: General Research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Qumran, and the New Testament. The Present State
of Qumranology (ed. Z. J. Kapera; Proceedings of the Second International Colloquium on
the Dead Sea Scrolls [Mogilany, Poland, 1989]. Qumranica Mogilanensia 2; Kraków:
Enigma, 1993), 139–52; idem, “Die Texte von Qumran und das Urchristentum,” Judaica
50 (1994): 68–91; Stegemann, Die Essener, Qumran, 292–313; Stephen J. Pfann, “The
Essene Yearly Renewal Ceremony and the Baptism of Repentance,” in The Provo
International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls: Technological Innovations, New Texts, and
Reformulated Issues (ed. D. W. Parry and E. C. Ulrich; STDJ 30; Leiden: Brill, 1999),
337–52; Charlesworth, “John the Baptizer and Qumran Barriers,” 353–75; James I. H.
McDonald, “What Did You Go Out to See? John the Baptist, the Scrolls and Late Second
Temple Judaism,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context (ed. T. H. Lim;
Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 53–64; Markus Öhler, “The Expectation of Elijah and
the Presence of the Kingdom of God,” JBL 118 (1999): 461–76. Cf. also Joan E. Taylor,
The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).