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

JÖRG FREY 459
peculiar motifs, and traditio-historical relations are necessary to obtain a
full image of the many and diverse relations between the texts from the
Qumran library and the New Testament. But we can generalize some of
the insights from above, which might provide some perspectives for further
research.
1. A change in scholarship. We can demonstrate that the release of the
numerous fragments from Cave 4 has changed considerably the context
of Qumran and related scholarship, and it will take some time for scholars
to notice the changes and adapt their views. The number of documents
from Cave 4 has opened up the view that the Qumran library was
much more than a collection of purely “sectarian” documents. It rather
provides an idea of the diversity within Palestinian Judaism of the two or
three centuries before the turn of the era. As a consequence, scholars can
no longer concentrate their interest solely on the relation between early
Christianity and the Essenes, but must widen their purview toward investigating
relations between early Christianity and contemporary Judaism
in its many and diverse traditions and groups. For such an inquiry, the
Qumran library provides an essential and indispensable treasure of
sources. We can recognize its real value only if we take into consideration
the views held by New Testament scholars before the discovery of the
Dead Sea Scrolls.
2. A conspicuous absence of personal references. If we take as a fact that neither
John the Baptizer, nor Jesus, nor any member of the primitive church
is mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and that—likewise—the Essenes are
not mentioned within New Testament texts, the search for immediate
personal links between the larger group of the Essenes—or even more
peculiarly, the Qumran Essenes—and earliest Christianity becomes quite
speculative. Of course, there are possibilities that cannot be completely
ruled out. Relations on the different stages of development of early
Christianity are possible, and in some instances, one can sketch a quite
plausible scenario. But the constructions remain quite hypothetical, and
scholars cannot firmly establish them and thus base other assumptions or
interpretations on them. In contrast, it seems to be more promising to
capture the impact of the Qumran texts on New Testament interpretation
by studying linguistic parallels, traditio-historical relations, and the common
use and development of literary forms.
3. A linguistic resource. One of the most obvious points where the Dead
Sea Scrolls have been fruitful for New Testament scholarship is in assessing
a great number of verbal or phraseological parallels. We can now
explain words and phrases in New Testament Greek by citing Hebrew or
Aramaic parallels from the library of Qumran. Of course, we cannot