the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

372 ATONEMENT: QUMRAN AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
thought of a ransom expressed by various terms, including purchase,
redemption, and the “loosing from sins by his blood” in Rev 1:5.
Our verse does not state from what the many are to be delivered. If it
is the faithful remnant of Israel that is the beneficiary, one would think
that the deliverance would be from their exilic punishment and thus from
the individual and collective sin, which was the object of so many doxologies
of judgment (Ezra 9; Nehemiah 9; Daniel 9; Prayer of Azariah;
and in the scrolls, 4QDibHam [4Q504–506]). The context shows, however,
that the aim of Jesus’ statement in Mark 10:45 was not so much to
indicate the precise benefits of the forthcoming ransom, as to point to the
attitude of humble service on the part of the Son of Man, which motivated
it, as an example for the disciples to follow. The lack of any statement
of what they are to be ransomed from leaves this item to be
supplied as the doctrine develops in the later NT statements. Christ’s
death delivers from death, fear, sin, guilt, uncleanness, alienation, transgressions,
the world, the Law, this present evil age, opposing principalities
and powers, and the devil himself.
There is a great richness in NT statements about the atonement, and
this fact seems to point to the need for scholarship to leave behind the
tendency to reduce everything in atonement to one dominant concept:
substitution, sacrifice, redemption, example, representation, victory,
demonstration of love. In the NT atonement passages, there is a place for
each of these concepts, yet each text puts things in a specific way.
Controversy among systematic theologians over such things as the place
of substitution in atonement, or the question of “limited atonement,”
should not prevent us from giving due weight to everything that each
passage has to offer when understood in its context and against its background,
while we carefully consider what each text actually says and
implies about such matters as
1. What is the motive of God or Christ in providing atonement?
2. What is the purpose (not necessarily the same thing as the motive)? In
John 3:16 the motive is love, and the purpose is to provide salvation for
believers in the Son. Often we meet the same kind of motive in the DSS.
3. What are the logical implications of atonement? In the NT God’s grace
calls for a way of thinking and a response: to condemn sin (Rom 8:3), to
offer oneself to God (12:1), to die to self (2 Cor 5:14–15), to respond in
love (1 John 4:10–11, 19).
Of course, in all this we should be ready for any DSS background
that may be relevant, but I can give little hope of much direct applicability
in this area. If Mark 10:45 is an important entry point, we can