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

58 THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS
Given the significant differences in social location and interest and the
differences between the “great” and “little” traditions mentioned above,
of course, we should not simply assume that documents from scribal circles
such as the DSS are good sources for what the people generally were
thinking and doing. 40
In the case of the scrolls, let us examine the presentation of the
Righteous Teacher in the role of a new Moses and/or prophet. Two factors,
in particular, suggest that in this matter they may be more similar to
popular views than other scribal literature. First, in their sense of oppression
by domestic and foreign rulers, the Qumranites have moved into a
position vis-à-vis the established rulers similar to the position in which
peasants ordinarily appear. Second, the tradition of Moses, focused in the
exodus and covenant, stood against hierarchical order and centralized
rule, particularly oppressive alien rule. Significantly, when Judeans celebrated
the Passover festival, remembering their people’s deliverance from
Pharaoh’s oppressive rule, the festivities often led to demonstrations
clamoring for independence of Roman rule. And the popular prophetic
movements in Judea and Samaria took place around the mid-first century,
after Roman rule had become more directly evident and when the highpriestly
families were becoming increasingly predatory. Thus, it is surely
significant that priests and scribes, who would ordinarily have depended
upon the royal and priestly Zion traditions and would have a vested
interest in the august figure of the old Moses as author of the official
Torah, turned to a new Moses and the exodus-covenant tradition when
they broke with the Hasmonean regime. Suddenly they were in a relationship
to the rulers similar to that of the peasantry and, correspondingly,
acted out of the Mosaic exodus and covenantal tradition.
Thus the appearance of the Righteous Teacher as the new Moses—for
which the DSS provide far more textual evidence than we have for the
popular prophets closer to the time as well as the social location of Jesus—
may provide important indirect evidence for the Mosaic-prophetic script
that informed those popular movements. This indirect evidence expands
the script from exodus into covenant. Most fundamental to the script as
evident in the popular prophetic movements such as Theudas and his followers
was an exodus into the wilderness from the Pharaoh-like Jerusalem
rulers and/or the Egypt-like situation of Jerusalem under imperial rule
(Acts 5:36; Josephus, Ant. 20.97–98; cf. the Jericho-like Jerusalem that the
“Egyptian” Jewish prophet and his followers opposed in a new Joshua vs.
Jericho scenario, in Ant. 20.169–71). As portrayed in the scrolls, the
40. As I argued initially in Jesus and the Spiral, 129–31.