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

62 THE FUTURE OF A RELIGIOUS PAST
That is not the popular view. People are fascinated with the scrolls
because they imagine they hold some secret that will unlock the
mysteries of the past (and present). Ordinary people in congregations still
flock to adult forums on the Dead Sea Scrolls. And it is not just the uninitiated
to Qumranology who have such hopes and expectations. 1 There
are still a good number among the learned community who pore over the
remaining fragments, convinced they will find evidence that there really
was some expectation of a suffering, dying, and rising Messiah—and that
such a find will settle some ancient disputes and provide something substantial
on which to construct a faith and a theology. What has occurred
is the opposite: the more we have read, the more impressed we have
become by the strangeness of these ancients and how poorly they fit
some of the portraits we have sketched of our ancestors.
CONSTRUCTING THE PAST
Such portraits are constructs, assembled from available data by each
generation of architects of the past, that play a crucial role in determining
how we make sense of our Scriptures and our religious heritage.
While in biblical studies during the last decades there has been a protest
against collapsing literature into its context, all reading presumes a setting.
I recall one of my teachers, Jacob Jervell, insisting on this point as
we proposed interpretations of Luke-Acts that resulted “simply” from
our engagement with the narrative. He demonstrated how completely
our reading was dependent on a particular sketch of early Christianity,
which was in turn derived from a reading of postbiblical Jewish history. 2
It is now interesting to me that we even use “early Christianity” in reference
to the first century C.E. The term “Christian” appears only three
1. Don Juel passed away before he could polish or update his paper. I have kept
and protected the integrity of his work, and (besides the usual editing of a chapter)
have added only some notes that draw attention to more-recent publications. I often
think of Don; he was a close colleague and we greatly admired each other. For the
last part of his life he took over my PhD seminar on “First-Century Judaism,” which
I now teach again. He would often show me his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and
it was always with enthusiasm. Just before his last Easter, I went to his home. We read
the Greek of the Gospel of John (ch. 20), affirming our own belief in the resurrection
of Jesus by God, and our experience of another world awaiting us both—for him now
(JHC, editor).
2. Jacob Jervell’s work includes collections of essays such as Luke and the People of
God (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1972) and The Unknown Paul (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1984). His most recent and mature contribution is his commentary on Acts in the
Meier Series.