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

DONALD H. JUEL 63
times in the New Testament. In Acts, it is used by outsiders to refer to a
“sect” and an ideology that is Jewish. What characterizes the particular
Jewish group in Antioch is apparently its commitment to “Christ” and its
attitude toward Gentile participation in community activities. But these
believers do not regard themselves as “Christians” as opposed to “Jews.”
They do not, in fact, adopt the terminology at all. And from the perspective
of outsiders, “Christian” is a name that attempts to distinguish
this “sect” of Jews from others. The term “sect” is actually used in Acts
28:22, where the “local leaders of the Jews” tell Paul that “with regard to
this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against” (NRSV). If we
are not permitted to use anachronistic terminology in reading Luke-
Acts—like “Christian”—identifying the group and understanding its piety
become a different matter.
We use the term “Christian”—meaning something other than
“Jewish”—because we presume a history in which a decisive break
between Jesus’ followers and the “Jewish” community occurred before
the end of the first century C.E. If that construct is inaccurate, our reading
of Luke-Acts (and the rest of the New Testament) will change.
As heirs of postbiblical Judaism and of the New Testament, we see
different things and see things differently as a result of having encountered
new texts and archaeological data. One of the questions before us
is how we have changed and what is different about what we see. What
difference does it make to students of the Mishnah and Talmud and to
students of the New Testament if they have read the Dead Sea Scrolls?
What difference does it make that these writings are part of our religious
past?
“CHRISTIAN” AND “JEW”
Due in large measure to the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the
conversation they have engendered, it has become customary to speak of
“first-century Judaism.” Students of Walter Bauer have likewise seen the
appropriateness of speaking of a variety of forms of early Christianity,
understanding “Christianity”—like “normative Judaism”—as a creation of
the second, third, and fourth centuries C.E. 3
3. Walter Bauer, Rechtglaubigkeit und Ketzerei in Ältesten Christentum (ET: Orthodoxy and
Heresy in Earliest Christianity [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971]). Helmut Koester and James
M. Robinson have developed his thesis in their Trajectories through Early Christianity
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971).