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

8 JOHN THE BAPTIZER AND THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
admitted to enter “the waters,” and he must not enter the water if he is
impure (1QS 5.13). Note how the Qumranite can be cleansed:
It is by the Holy Spirit of the community in his [God’s] truth that he can
be cleansed from all his iniquities. It is by an upright and humble spirit that
his sin can be atoned. It is by humbling his soul to all God’s statutes, that
his flesh can be cleansed, by sprinkling with waters of purification, and by
sanctifying himself with waters of purity. (1QS 3.7–9)
Immersion seems to be the end of a process; it does begin the process for
purification. Before entering the “waters of purity,” one first must have
entered the community, be cleansed by the Holy Spirit, and then obtain
“an upright and humble spirit.”
According to Mark and Luke (but not Matthew), Qumran’s concepts
are different from those of the Baptizer. He preached “a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3). 20
According, to Josephus, however, the Baptizer—like the Qumranites—presupposed
a life of piety before baptism. As at Qumran, what was needed
was a ritual cleansing of the body after the spirit had been cleansed of its
impurities. Note the words of Josephus: “In his [John the Baptizer’s] view
this [leading righteous lives] was a necessary preliminary if baptism was
to be acceptable to God. They must not employ it to gain pardon for
whatever sins they committed, but as a consecration of the body implying
that the soul was already thoroughly cleansed by right behavior”
(Ant. 18.117). 21 Has Josephus read Qumran ideas into the teaching of the
Baptizer? That is possible, but unlikely. If there has been any distortion
of the message of the Baptizer, it seems more likely that the Evangelists
have portrayed the Baptizer in light of Jesus, who called Jews to “repent,
and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15).
For the Qumranites and the Baptizer, immersion symbolized entering
into a community that awaited and was prepared for the final cataclysmic
day of judgment. Within this broad similarity, there is—as a historian
might expect—much dissimilarity; for example, only at Qumran is the
immersion repeatable, indeed frequent. 22 While it is conceivable that for
the Baptizer some might have been immersed twice in their lifetime, at
20. We should recognize that this is clearer for the Baptizer than for Qumran.
21. Josephus, Ant., 9.82–83. See Lichtenberger, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and John the
Baptist,” 340–46 in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research, 18–26.
22. Ben Witherington seems more impressed by the differences and is “vexed” by
the relationship between the Baptizer and the Qumranites. See Ben Witherington,
“John the Baptist,” in DJG (ed. J. B. Green and S. McKnight; Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity, 1992), 383–91.