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

JAMES H. CHARLESWORTH 107
thinking so characteristic of the Fourth Gospel is not to be traced back
to Platonic idealism (even if there is some influence from Plato mediated
through early Jewish thought). The dualism in the Fourth Gospel is also
appreciably different from that found in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old
Testament), the apocryphal books (esp. Sirach and Judith), or rabbinic
writings. 37 What scholars could not find within Judaism before the discovery
of the scrolls, beginning in 1947, is boldly displayed with surprising
clarity within the most important of the scrolls, the Rule of the
Community (1QS; 4QS; 5QS). 38 In columns 3 and 4 of this document, we
find what the Master (lyk#m) taught those entering the sect. He taught
them the cosmic dualism between two powerful forces (angels),
expressed in terms of a light-versus-darkness paradigm, with humans at
the center of the struggle and divided into two lots—the Sons of Light
and the Sons of Darkness. 39
Some sections of this Rule were memorized, and surely that seems to
be the case with columns 3 and 4. The section begins with the words, “It
is for the Master to instruct and teach all the Sons of Light” (1QS 3.13).
Such an initiate was to know by heart that “from the God of knowledge
comes all that is and shall be” (1QS 3.15). Other scrolls composed, or
finally edited, in the Qumran Community show that these words were
memorized. For example, in the Angelic Liturgy 40 we see the effect of the
Master’s teaching: “For from the God of knowledge came into being all
which is forever” (4QshirShabb 4; cf. MasShirShabb 1.2). Fully initiated
members of the Qumran sect would not have needed to carry a copy of
Exploration Society and the Shrine of the Book, 2000), 105—15; the quotation is on
105. An earlier and shorter version of Bauckham’s paper appeared as “Qumran and
the Fourth Gospel: Is There a Connection?” in The Scrolls and the Scriptures: Qumran
Fifty Years After (ed. S. E. Porter and C. A. Evans; JSPSup 26; Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1997), 267–79.
37. See Geert H. C. Stuart, The Struggle in Man between Good and Evil (Kampen: Kok,
1984), esp. 94–100.
38. One manuscript of this document was found in Cave 1, ten copies in Cave
4, and one in Cave 5. The critical edition of the Rule, with apparatus, may be
found in the Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project volumes:
The Dead Sea Scrolls—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations, 6 vols.
(ed. J. H. Charlesworth et al.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Louisville: Westminster
John Knox, 1994–).
39. One of the first scholars to see Qumran influence on the Fourth Gospel was
Karl G. Kuhn; see his “Die in Palästina gefundenen hebraïschen Texte und das neue
Testament,” ZTK 47 (1950): 192–211.
40. A pre-Qumran origin of the Angelic Liturgy is conceivable, but the work was certainly
used in the Qumran Community, and the work may have been composed at
Qumran, as Carol A. Newsom points out in her initial edition of Songs of the Sabbath
Sacrifice (HSS 27; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 2.