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

JOHN J. COLLINS 75
of the Dead Sea sect, but it is gratuitous to suppose that it was necessarily
always the primary consideration in Second Temple Judaism. While
the Scrolls provide plenty of evidence of continuity with the later rabbinic
forms of Judaism, they also provide plenty of motifs and ideas that we
would never have expected to find on the basis of the rabbinic writings
alone. This is especially true in matters of eschatology and in the mythological
elements that frame the more practical or halakic teachings of the
Scrolls. It seems to me that Maier does not make sufficient allowance for
the pluriform character of Judaism in this period.
It was precisely the pluriform character of Judaism that allowed the
emergence of early Christianity as a Jewish sect, sharply at variance with
other Torah-oriented groups. Consequently, it is as legitimate to trace
lines of continuity from the Scrolls to early Christianity as study their
links to rabbinic Judaism. Second Temple Judaism was the extraordinarily
fertile soil from which both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity
sprang. Consequently, while the few passages in the Pseudepigrapha that
speak of a “son of man” figure may not be of great interest for the history
of later Judaism, 15 they are of enormous interest for the historian of
religion, and not only for the Christian theologian. Continuity, of course,
is not identity, and we must also be conscious of the differences from one
period to another. But this is as true in the case of rabbinic Judaism as in
the case of the New Testament.
In the remainder of this essay I will review the various messianic figures
in the Scrolls with two questions in mind: first, was this idea typical
or atypical of the Judaism of the day? and second, how does it relate to
the messianic ideas of early Christianity? By a messianic figure I mean
one who plays a role in the final, eschatological, restoration of Israel and
who is sometimes, but not necessarily always, designated by the word
xy#m or its translation equivalents. 16 I exclude, on the one hand,
anointed figures who are not in an eschatological context, such as the historical
high priests, and on the other figures like Melchizedek in 11Q13
(Melchizedek), who are never called xy#m in the texts. I also recognize that
phrases like “branch of David” and “prince of the community” often
function as variant ways of referring to the eschatological Davidic king. 17
15. So Maier, ibid., 587.
16. Collins, The Scepter and the Star, 12. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Dead Sea Scrolls and
Christian Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 73–110, tries to limit the discussion
of messianism to passages where the word xy#m occurs.
17. John J. Collins, “Method in the Study of Messianism,” in Methods of Investigation
of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran Site: Present Realities and Future Prospects (ed.
M. Wise et al.; Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 722; New York: New
York Academy of Sciences, 1994), 213–29. Maier also recognizes this point.