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

CHAPTER FOUR
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS AND THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
Craig A. Evans
This essay offers little that is new; its primary purpose is to assess some
of the significant gains in the study of the Synoptic Gospels in light of the
discovery and publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. 1 But it also hopes to
show that all of the major themes or emphases in the Synoptics have close parallels
in the scrolls, thereby underscoring once again the Palestinian and Jewish
provenance of these Gospels. This is an important point to make, for
throughout much of the last century scholars have often exaggerated the
non-Jewish and non-Palestinian features of the Gospels. 2 Form critics and
redaction critics have, in my opinion, assigned too much of the Synoptic
material to provenances outside of the Jewish Palestinian milieu. The
Dead Sea Scrolls have provided interpreters with a wealth of fresh data,
and these data compel us to return the Synoptic tradition to the Jewish
1. For a pre-1991 study, see Otto Betz, “Die Bedeutung der Qumranschriften für
die Evangelien des Neuen Testaments,” BK 40 (1985): 54–64; repr. in idem, Jesus: Der
Messias Israels (WUNT 42; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1987), 318–22.
2. As seen in some of the recent publications of B. L. Mack, his students, and some
of the members of the Jesus Seminar. See Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark
and Christian Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1988); idem, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q
and Christian Origins (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993); Leif E. Vaage, “Q and
Cynicism: On Comparison and Social Identity,” in The Gospel behind the Gospels: Current
Studies on Q (ed. R. A. Piper; NovTSup 75; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 199–229; idem,
Galilean Upstarts: Jesus’ First Followers according to Q (Valley Forge: Trinity Press
International, 1994). Mack and the others have been influenced by Francis Gerald
Downing, Christ and the Cynics: Jesus and Other Radical Preachers in First-Century Tradition
(JSOT Manuals 4; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988); idem, Cynics and Christian Origins
(Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992). For recent, devastating critiques of the Cynic
hypothesis, see David E. Aune, “Jesus and Cynics in First-Century Palestine: Some
Critical Considerations,” in Hillel and Jesus: Comparisons of Two Major Religious Leaders
(ed. J. H. Charlesworth and L. L. Johns; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 176–92; Hans
Dieter Betz, “Jesus and the Cynics: Survey and Analysis of a Hypothesis,” JR 74
(1994): 453–75; Christopher M. Tuckett, “A Cynic Q?” Bib 70 (1989): 349–76; idem,
Q and the History of Early Christianity: Studies on Q (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996),
368–91; Ben Witherington, Jesus the Sage: The Pilgrimage of Wisdom (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1994), 123–43.
75