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

34 IMPACT OF SCROLLS ON TEXT AND CANON
time of Ezra and Nehemiah. This has brought Shemaryahu Talmon of
Hebrew University to observe that while rabbinic Judaism has not been
as illuminating of the origins of Christianity as some have thought, the
Qumran community presents a Jewish sect that believed, on the contrary,
as Christianity obviously did, that revelation had not ceased, but that
God was continuing to reveal God’s will to his people. 31 God, it was
claimed at Qumran, gave the Righteous Teacher the true rāz whereby to
interpret Scripture, just as Paul claimed a God-given mystery (mystērion, as
in Rom 11:25; 16:25; 1 Cor 2:1; 4:1); Matthew called for special training
to bring out of Scripture, which he calls “treasure,” what is new and
what is old (13:52); and Luke spoke of the key (kleis) to understand
Scripture (11:52). They all, of course, claimed that Christ had special
divine authority to teach and to interpret Scripture. Both Qumran and
Christianity counted themselves as living at or near the end time, and
both shared a common hermeneutic whereby to understand Scripture:
(a) Scripture speaks to the end time; (b) they live at the end of time; and
(c) therefore, Scripture speaks directly to them through special
revelation. 32 Like today’s dispensationalists and apocalypticists, they
were uninterested in what the original contributors to Scripture said to
their people in their time.
While it remains uncertain exactly when the Jewish canon became
specifically tripartite, or the Christian quadripartite, what now seems
clear is that the Torah and the Prophets were relatively stable as Jewish
Scripture in basic structure, if not in text, by the end of the fifth century
B.C.E., while the Ketuvim did not become so defined until much later,
after 135 C.E. 33
The contents of the Ketuvim, with Daniel included, provided the new
rabbinic Judaism with the scriptural basis by which to affirm that God had
already departed from history and become remote, and that revelation
had ceased already at the time of Ezra-Nehemiah. This would adequately
explain the disastrous defeat of Bar Kokhba, despite Akiba’s support of his
messianic claims. It would also explain the need to close ranks around the
31. See Shemaryahu Talmon, “Oral Tradition and Written Transmission, or the
Heard and the Seen Word in Judaism of the Second Temple Period,” in Jesus and the
Oral Gospel Tradition (ed. H. Wansbrough; JSOTSup 64; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1991), 121–58; and idem, “Die Gemeinde des Erneuerten Bundes von
Qumran zwischen rabbinischen Judentum und Christentum,” in Zion: Ort der
Begegnung (ed. F. Hahn et al.; BBB 90; Bodenheim: Athenäum Hain Hanstein, 1993),
295–312.
32. Already discerned by Karl Elliger in his Studien zum Habakkuk-Kommentar vom
Toten Meer (BHT 15; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1953).
33. See Sanders, “The Stabilization of the Tanak.”