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

JAMES H. CHARLESWORTH 127
literature.” 96 Scholars are likewise almost unanimous in concluding that
it is unlikely that the Fourth Evangelist borrowed from the Odes. Hence,
it seems most likely that the Odes of Solomon come to us from the same
environment as the Fourth Gospel and perhaps were composed within
the Johannine School. 97
The Fourth Gospel was not written by a philosopher working alone
and dependent on the Synoptic Gospels. 98 It is, rather, the product of a
group of scholars; most of them were Jews who worked independently of
the Synoptics. 99 The Fourth Gospel took shape over more than two
decades in something like a school. It is intriguing to ponder who may
have been members of this school. How many of its early members had
been Essenes? Had any of them formerly lived on the marl terrace south
of Qumran or in one of the caves just north or west of Qumran? Did
they influence the Johannine community and the composition of the
Fourth Gospel by what they had memorized in an Essene setting (at
Qumran, Jericho, Jerusalem, or elsewhere in ancient Palestine)?
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN AND SOCIOLOGY
These insights into the Johannine group and their social rifts with John
the Baptizer’s group, with another form of “Judaism,” and with what will
96. Smith, Johannine Christianity, 27.
97. See James H. Charlesworth and R. Alan Culpepper, “The Odes of Solomon and the
Gospel of John,” CBQ 35 (1973): 298—322. A slightly revised version of this work appears as
“The Odes of Solomon and the Gospel of John,” in in Literary Setting, Textual Studies, Gnosticism,
the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Gospel of John (ed. J. H. Charlesworth; vol. 1 of Critical Reflections
on the Odes of Solomon; JSPSup 22; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 232—60.
98. Even though we have come to realize how different are the Tendenzen of Mark,
Matthew, and Luke, I concur with the majority of scholars that there is still merit in
seeing these three Gospels together, as the Synoptics, and in contrast with the Fourth
Gospel. They tend to see the chronology and teaching of Jesus with (syn) the same eye
(optic). Yet we must be alert to the distortions that also can arise by the assumption that
they see Jesus synoptically and with little differences.
99. Although the Fourth Evangelist may have known one of the Synoptics, he was not
dependent on any one of them, as Gardner-Smith, Goodenough, Käsemann, Cullmann,
Robinson, Smith, and other gifted scholars have demonstrated in different ways. As
Peder Borgen pointed out, the Fourth Gospel seems to relate to the pre-Synoptic tradition
that is evident, for example, in Paul; see his “John and the Synoptics,” in The Interrelations
of the Gospels (ed. D. L. Dungan; BETL 95; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990),
408–37. See the major study by Dwight Moody Smith, John among the Gospels
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992); and idem, “The Problem of John and the Synoptics in
Light of the Relation between Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels,” in John and the
Synoptics (ed. A. Denaux; BETL 101; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), 147–62.