Jesus in Context

Jesus changed our world forever. But who was he and what do we know about him? David Wenham's accessible volume is a concise and wide-ranging engagement with that enduring and elusive subject. Exploring the sources for Jesus and his scholarly reception, he surveys information from Roman, Jewish, and Christian texts, and also examines the origins of the gospels, as well as the evidence of Paul, who had access to the earliest oral traditions about Jesus. Wenham demonstrates that the Jesus of the New Testament makes sense within the first century CE context in which he lived and preached. He offers a contextualized portrait of Jesus and his teaching; his relationship with John the Baptist and the Qumran community (and the Dead Sea Scrolls); his ethics and the Sermon on the Mount, his successes and disappointments. Wenham also brings insights into Jesus' vision of the future and his understanding of his own death and calling.

Texts, Translations, Notes, and Commentary

The chapter provides a critical representation of the text(s), based on manuscript comparison and consulting of digital images, an English translation that cleaves to the original Hebrew while rendering it in accessible prose. Critical Notes to both the Hebrew text and its English translation, and a Commentary that seeks to highlight and interconnect the overarching themes and rhetorical strategies of the text, as it might have been communally performed in the intellectual and ritual life of the Qumran community (or communities). Suggestions for Further Reading are incorporated into each section. The Notes, which form the largest part of this chapter, identify and analyze the plenitude of both explicit (citation) and implicit (allusion) scriptural interpretation, both legal and non-legal, as well as convergences and divergences with a panoply of ancient Jewish sources, including, in addition to the Hebrew Bible, other scrolls, other second temple Jewish literature, New Testament, and early rabbinic sources, the last of which is a particular feature of this commentary in comparison to its antecedents (see Ancient Source indices). These cross-references will serve to better understand and appreciate the Damascus Document in its broader historical and cultural contexts. The Comments on each editorial unit seek to frame the text in relation to broader consideration of the identity formation, reinforcement, and transmission of both individuals and communities, of both veteran members and novices. Particular attention is given to the seeming polemical nature of much of the text, as well as its intra-mural educational purposes. The commentary takes seriously the self-designation of the community, through this text (CD [MS B] 20:10, 13), as a studying and practicing community, “the house of the Torah.” Another important feature of the Damascus Document, and hence its commentary, is the different types and functions of human leadership of the community which sees both it leaders and itself as divinely elect and in possession of esoteric wisdom and discernment.

John the Baptist in Memory, Judaism and Historical Materialism

Joel Marcus’s JBHT argues that John would have seen himself not as forerunner to Jesus but rather that he, and not Jesus, was the proclaimer and inaugurator of God’s apocalyptic kingdom. The historical Baptist, originally part of the Qumran community, broke away from this group due to his belief that he himself was the prophet Elijah and that his own ministry was central to God’s purposes. This article raises three methodological and historiographical questions concerning where Marcus might reconsider and/or expand the results of his study. First, can we really get at John’s self-understanding beyond the subjective memory impressions left in our extant sources? Second, does Marcus’s connection of John to the Qumran community rely on (mis)characterizations of the community as a marginal sect? Third, what social and economic forces prompted John’s ‘individual decision’ to relocate to the wilderness?

Response to the Respondents: Competition, Qumran and Supersessionism

The critics of JBHT in this issue have questioned three main aspects of the book: its assertion that early Christians competed with people who believed that John the Baptist was the principal figure in the history of salvation, its assertion that early in his career the Baptist was a member of the Qumran community, and the way in which the book situates the Baptist in relation to Second Temple Judaism in general. The article addresses these concerns, rebutting certain objections but acknowledging areas in which the book could have been more nuanced or further developed.

Catching John in Four Nets? Competition, Qumran, Sacramentalism and Messianism

In his recent study on John the Baptist Joel Marcus suggests that John founded a sect that was in competition with the early Jesus movement. Marcus also suggests that John himself was a former member of the 'Qumran community'. His baptism is considered as a kind of sacrament in which the Holy Spirit was imparted. How secure are these proposals? In this discussion, we conclude that in the oldest literary witnesses – Q, Mark and Matthew – the relationship between John and Jesus is seen in terms of mutual agreement (despite Jesus’s obvious superiority) and there are no recognizable traces of serious competition with John’s disciples, even less a ‘Baptist sect’. The evidence used by Marcus to suggest that John was once a member of the ‘Qumran community’ connects John with broader patterns of thought in Second Temple Judaism, not simply sectarians at one location. That John imparted the Holy Spirit in a sacramental rite can only be supported by radically altering biblical readings. However, Marcus has suggested that in light of all this that John thought of himself not only as Elijah but as a kind of Messiah, with the role of his successor, the Coming One, being to destroy the chaff. In doing this, Marcus redesigns John as a kind of alternative Christ of Faith. However, the underlying ‘competition model’ needs to be rejected and replaced with one that sees Jesus as claiming to be a successor to John, his highly esteemed teacher.

Two Figures in the Dead Sea Scrolls — Melchizedek in 11QMelchizedek (11Q13) and “Son of God” in the “Apocryphon of Daniel” (4Q246) — as Two Eschatological Soteriological Concepts

The article analyses and juxtaposes the images of the eschatological soteriological figures of Melchizedek in 11QMelchizedek (11Q13) and the “Son of God” in 4QApocryphon of Daniel (4Q246). Identifying the differences in the soteriological concepts reflected in 11Q13 and 4Q246, the author reaches the following main conclusions. God the Creator is transcendent to creation; Melchizedek is predominantly the spiritual head of the entire universe (cf. also 4Q521, frag. 2, 2:1 of the “Messiah” of the Lord), who during the Eschaton will put an end to all the dark forces of creation led by Belial, atone for the sins of the worthy and retaliate against the sinful. As for the “Son of God” in 4Q246, his mission is mainly directed to earthly affairs, albeit on a global scale; he appears as a lay and military leader who comes at a critical moment to the aid of God’s people and is called to establish a just and righteous world order and in fact to become the sovereign of the united earthly kingdom. To a certain extent the image of “Son of God” in 4Q246 may be compared with the personality of the eschatological “messenger who announces peace (שלום)” (Isa. 52:7), i.e. establishes socio-political welfare on earth (cf., e.g., 4Q246, frag. 2, 2:5–6), and who is identified in 11Q13 2:16, 18 with the figure of the “anointed”/”prince” mentioned in Dan. 9:25 (the lay Messiah). Melchizedek, on the other hand, appears in 11Q13 as a divine figure on a universal, not just global, scale— one could even say like a second “God” within the created universe. As for the “messenger of good who announces salvation, saying to Zion: your God reigns” (Isa. 52:7), referred to in 11Q13 2:18–24, this is probably the Teacher of Righteousness of the Qumran community (the priestly Messiah).

The Tradition of the 364-Day Calendar versus the Calendar Polemic in Second Temple Judaism

The article presents the major hypotheses concerning the emergence of the 364-day calendar within Judaism and the related calendrical controversy, which presumably caused the separation of a certain group of Jews, known to us as the Qumran Community, from the temple cult in Jerusalem. It is not known whether the 364-day calendar tradition is older than that of the Astronomical Book, or whether the adoption of this tradition was accompanied by conflicts. The Qumran texts do not provide unequivocal evidence for any calendrical polemics. The only witness to these polemics is The Book of Jubilees, copies of which were found in the Qumran library. However, the Qumran Community itself did not share the radical line of The Book of Jubilees, which condemns reliance on the moon in time-keeping. The 364-day calendar is presumed to have been a distinctive feature of the Qumran Community, which however did not arouse any controversies within Second Temple Judaism.

“The Land Is Mine” (Leviticus 25:23): Reimagining the Jubilee in the Context of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

The Jubilee tradition commemorates the release of slaves, the remission of debt, and the repatriation of property, a “day” of physical and spiritual restoration. The Jubilee tradition—originating in a constitutional vision of ancient Israel periodically restoring its ancestral sovereignty as custodians of the land—became a master symbol of biblical theology, a powerful ideological resource as well as a promise of a divinely realized future during the Second Temple period, when the Qumran community envisioned an eschatological Jubilee and the early Jesus tradition remembered Jesus’ nonviolence in Jubilee-terms. Jubilee themes can also be identified in ideals inscribed in the founding of America, the Abolition movement, the Women’s Liberation Movement, the Civil Rights movement, and Liberation Theology. This study seeks to extend the exploration of Jubilee themes by adopting a comparative methodological approach, re-examining Jubilee themes in the context of the contemporary Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where the dream of Peace in the Middle East continues to play out in predominantly politicized contexts.

The Eschatological Spirituality of “the Sons of Light” in Qumran

One of the most important features of the members of the Qumran community, who referred to themselves by the name “the sons of light,” was aspiration to holiness by observing the Law, purity and cult. The spirituality of the Qumran community was founded on the New Covenant which would be fulfilled “at the end of the days”. This eschatological reality was stressed in the practical spirituality of the members of the Qumran community. In the present article, the spirituality of the Qumran community will be presented via three points: (1) The origin of the Qumran community; (2) The community of a New Covenant with God; and (3) Eschatological beliefs. Our accumulated knowledge about the spirituality of the Qumran community and its beliefs enables us to better understand many eschatological texts of the Old Testament and Intertestamental Literature. It also indicates to us certain similarities and differences with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, Pseudepigrapha, and Expansions of Scripture

The sources presented here reflect voices from various creative strands of Jewish community life between 700 BCE and 135 CE. All of them in varying ways approach divine guidance through communal rereading, reinterpretation, and expansion of scripture. The Qumran community (which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls) took a hierarchical view of guidance, placing discernment largely in the hands of the elders. Pseudepigrapha and expansions of scripture, like the Prayer of Manasseh, used the name of a biblical figure to expand on what the biblical text itself may have mentioned only in passing. Jubilees elaborates on Abram’s crucial but brief encounter with God in Genesis 12 and depicts it as a response to Abram’s request for divine guidance. The Sibylline Oracles (as distinct from the Roman Sibylline Books) attribute Jewish oracles to the pagan Sibyl. 3 Maccabees weaves together human initiative with divine guidance to the Jewish community in Alexandria.