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

120 A STUDY IN SHARED SYMBOLISM AND LANGUAGE
and concepts and reshaped them to articulate the contention that Jesus was
none other than the Messiah promised to the Jews (see, e.g., John 4:25–26).
In summary, the preceding discussion of excerpts from the Dead Sea
Scrolls and the Fourth Gospel helps to clarify a consensus (though not a
unanimous one) 70 in current research. Among all the ancient writings, only the
Dead Sea Scrolls disclose a type of thought, a developed symbolic language, and a
dualistic paradigm with termini technici that are surprisingly close to the Gospel of
John. 71 This widely held conclusion is clearly articulated by D. Moody
Smith: “That the Qumran scrolls attest a form of Judaism whose conceptuality
and terminology tally in some respects quite closely with the
Johannine is a commonly acknowledged fact.” 72 John Painter astutely
concludes that “the context in which the Johannine tradition was
shaped…is best known to us in the Qumran texts.” 73
The Fourth Evangelist’s most striking point of contact with the Dead
Sea Scrolls, whether direct or indirect, is surely with the dualistic paradigm
and its technical terms. These, moreover, are developed in two columns of
the Rule of the Community. This section of the Rule contains the quintessential
theology of the Qumranites: It summarizes their lore and explanation
of evil and suffering, as well as the cosmic explanation of human behavior.
Since it is introduced as a section to be taught by the Maskil, “the
Master,” to the candidates for admission into the Qumran Community,
it probably was the heart of Qumran lore that had to be mastered and
memorized by all members of the Qumran sect.
THE JEWISHNESS OF THE JOHANNINE GROUP
Subsequent to the widespread recognition that the Fourth Evangelist had
been influenced in some way by the dualism found in the Rule, 74 and
the Qumran literature, but they do suggest Johannine familiarity with the type of thought exhibited
in the scrolls” (italics mine).
70. Günther Baumbach denies a direct influence from the Rule on the Fourth
Gospel; see his Qumran und das Johannesevangelium (AVTRW 6; Berlin: Evangelische
Verlagsanstalt, 1957), 53.
71. Some of the Hermetic tractates and gnostic codices are strikingly similar to the
Fourth Gospel, but the influence seems to flow from the Fourth Gospel to them.
72. D. Moody Smith, Johannine Christianity (Columbia, SC: University of South
Carolina Press, 1984), 26.
73. John Painter, The Quest for the Messiah (2d ed.; Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), 29.
74. See Otto Böcher, Der johanneische Dualismus im Zusammenhang des nachbiblischen
Judentums (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1965); Raymond E. Brown, “The Qumran Scrolls and
the Johannine Gospels and Epistles,” in Stendahl and Charlesworth, The Scrolls and the
New Testament, 183–203; Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St John, 1:108, 128–35,