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

JAMES H. CHARLESWORTH 105
of them antedate the destruction of 70 C.E. The chief excavator,
Nahman Avigad, reported, “We were astonished by the rich and attractive
variety of the stone vessels.” 27 Hence, the Fourth Evangelist, most
likely a Jew—and probably his fellow Jews—possessed considerable
knowledge about Jewish purification rights. From other areas of research
we now know that the requirements for purification were increased considerably
from the time when Herod the Great began to rebuild the
Temple around 20 B.C.E. until its destruction in 70 C.E. The Fourth
Gospel, therefore, should not be ignored in the study of pre-70 traditions
that may contain history. 28
We should amass all pertinent data in order to reconstruct the past.
Hand in glove with the relegation of the Fourth Gospel to the second century
and the perception of it as a Greek work was the contention that it
contained only theology and not history. Only the Synoptics—Matthew,
Mark, and Luke—could be used in searching for the historical Jesus. As
Paula Fredriksen states:
The discovery of the Scrolls—whose place, date, and completely Jewish
context is very secure—undermined this view of the Fourth Gospel. For the
Scrolls, like John, speak the language of Children of Light and Children of
Darkness; they, too, envisage struggle between the two realms. One need
not posit, then, as earlier scholars did, that such language and thinking
point to a late or non-Jewish origin for John’s Gospel. The Scrolls incontrovertibly
show that early first-century Judean Jews spoke and thought in
similar ways. And an earlier, Jewish context of composition for John’s
Gospel then reopens the question of its historical value for reconstructing
Jesus’ life. 29
Such comments indicate that a powerful movement is now finally evident
among the leading scholars. The Fourth Gospel must not be shelved in
attempts to say something about Jesus, son of Joseph, and his time. As D.
Moody Smith has demonstrated, the Gospel of John contains “an array
27. Nahman Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (Nashville: Nelson, 1983), 176; for photographs
and pertinent discussions, see 120–36.
28. D. A. Carson rejects the concept of a Johannine school and is suspicious of any
historically reliable information in the Fourth Gospel. See Donald A. Carson,
“Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel: After Dodd, What?” in Studies of History
and Tradition in the Four Gospels (ed. R. T. France and D. Wenham; Gospel Perspectives 2;
Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981), 83—145. More recently, F. J. Moloney has taken up Dodd’s
insights and shows that the Fourth Gospel is independent of the Synoptics, and in places,
especially in Jesus’ early ministry, preserves reliable historical information. See Francis J.
Moloney, “The Fourth Gospel and the Jesus of History,” NTS 46 (2000): 42–58.
29. Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
2000), 5.