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

136 A STUDY IN SHARED SYMBOLISM AND LANGUAGE
copies of Genesis found in the Qumran caves, as well as creation motifs
in sectarian writings like the Thanksgiving Hymns. 122
4. Pneumatology. In the Qumran Scrolls and in the Fourth Gospel we find
a strikingly similar pneumatology. This shared pneumatology is sometimes
impressively different from what is found in the Old Testament Apocrypha
and Pseudepigrapha. Most important, the concept of the “Holy Spirit” in
the Qumran Scrolls reflects a development from the Hebrew Scriptures. 123
The concept of Spirit at Qumran became a personification, and probably
a hypostatic being, separate from God. As Frank M. Cross stated judiciously,
“In the Qumrân Rule the Spirit of Truth has a ‘greater distance’
from God; the hypostatized Spirit of God has become largely identified
with an angelic creature, the spirit from God, and their functions combined.”
124 This development was achieved by the Essenes and unique to
them; the concept of “the Holy Spirit” appears in other early Jewish writings
only in texts that are suspiciously under Essene influence. The concept
of the Holy Spirit abounds in the scrolls composed at Qumran. Hence,
the Fourth Gospel, which identifies the Paraclete with “the Holy Spirit”
(14:26) and has the risen Jesus breathe upon his chosen disciples “the Holy
Spirit” (20:22), has most likely been influenced, somehow, by this uniquely
Qumran pneumatology. 125 We need to allow for the possibility that earlier
Jesus 126 had inherited the concept of the Holy Spirit from the Essenes. 127
The unusual term “Spirit of Truth” also links the Qumran Scrolls
(1QS 3.18–19; 4.21, 23) with the Fourth Gospel (14:17; 15:26; 16:13; cf.
the variant in 4:24). 128 Apparently, the Fourth Evangelist inherited this as
122. See esp. Michael A. Daise, “Creation Motifs in the Qumran Hodayot,” in The
Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years after Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July
20—25, 1997 (ed. L. H. Schiffman, E. Tov, and J. C. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel
Exploration Society and the Shrine of the Book, 2000), 293—305.
123. See Frederick F. Bruce, “Holy Spirit in the Qumran Texts,” ALUOS 6
(1966–68): 49–55.
124. Frank M. Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran (3d ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress,
1995), 153 (italics his).
125. If the Fourth Evangelist was influenced by Paul, then we should consider if
Paul was influenced by Essenes as he developed his pneumatology.
126. Obviously, we need to explore to what extent the early followers of Jesus
imparted pneumatology to Jesus and that this aspect of the early kerygma and
didache eventually helped shaped the Fourth Gospel, as well as the other Gospels.
127. See my discussion in “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historical Jesus,” in Jesus and
the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. J. H. Charlesworth; ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1992), 20–22.
128. R. Bauckham (“The Qumran Community and the Gospel of John,” in The Dead
Sea Scrolls Fifty Years after Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20—25,
1997 [ed. L. H. Schiffman, E. Tov, and J. C. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration
Society and the Shrine of the Book, 2000], 105—15), an erudite and gifted scholar, seeks
“to disprove” the possibility that Qumran has influenced the Fourth Gospel (108). I