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

DONALD H. JUEL 69
The writer of the Rule of the Community (1QS) offers a similar explanation
for differences of opinion about crucial matters:
In a spring of light emanates the nature of truth and from a well of
darkness emerges the nature of deceit. In the hand of the Prince of Lights
(is) the dominion of all the Sons of Righteousness; in the ways of light they
walk. But in the hand of the Angel of Darkness (is) the dominion of the
Sons of Deceit; and in the ways of darkness they walk. By the Angel of
Darkness comes the aberration of all the Sons of Righteousness; and all
their sins, their iniquities, their guilt, and their iniquitous works (are
caused) by his dominion, accord to God’s mysteries, until his end. (1QS
3.19–23) 9
In the case of both communities, such explanations are offered for disagreements
principally with members of the same family. Neither literature
contains a full-blown mythology. Crucial for locating the groups, as
Alan Segal has pointed out, neither group moves toward relegating Israel’s
God—the Creator—to the status of a lesser god who is the problem. 10
What distinguishes scriptural interpretation at Qumran and within the
Palestinian Jesus Movement from later rabbinic midrashim has to do with
social location and the particular experience of God out of which the
writings grew. In these communities it has become impossible to live
together within the larger family. Particular forms of faith in God—Israel’s
God—have opened unbridgeable chasms between branches of the family
of Israel. How to understand and live in such a world as children of God
is what generates narratives and rules and commentaries.
Although within rabbinic tradition there is confidence in reason to convince
even hostile Gentiles with a sound argument and a sense that the
world is a place where regularities can be identified, the literature of the
Palestinian Jesus Movement is far more impressed with the surprises in
tradition. The scandal involves the gulf between what is taken for common
sense and the truth. Most striking—and worthy of comment—is the
inability to convince others of the community’s reading. “The light shines
in the darkness, and the darkness has not grasped it” (John 1:4). The community
that produced the scrolls operates with a similar view of the world.
Reasoned conversation with the “children of darkness” is impossible.
As close as the analogies may be, a significant difference remains: in
the Fourth Gospel, Jesus’ opponents are regularly identified as “the Jews.”
9. Charlesworth’s translation, in “Rule of the Community,” in The Rule of the
Community and Related Documents (ed. J. H. Charlesworth et al.; PTSDSSP 1; Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 15.
10. Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and
Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977).