The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Volume 3, The Scrolls and Christian Origins

4: THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS AND THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

1. For a pre-1991 study, see Otto Betz, “Die Bedeutung der Qumranschriften für die Evangelien des Neuen Testaments,” BK 40 (1985): 54–64; repr. in idem, Jesus: Der Messias Israels (WUNT 42; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1987), 318–22. 2. As seen in some of the recent publications of B. L. Mack, his students, and some of the members of the Jesus Seminar. See Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1988); idem, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993); Leif E. Vaage, “Q and Cynicism: On Comparison and Social Identity,” in The Gospel behind the Gospels: Current Studies on Q (ed. R. A. Piper; NovTSup 75; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 199–229; idem, Galilean Upstarts: Jesus’ First Followers according to Q (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1994). Mack and the others have been influenced by Francis Gerald Downing, Christ and the Cynics: Jesus and Other Radical Preachers in First-Century Tradition (JSOT Manuals 4; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988); idem, Cynics and Christian Origins (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992). For recent, devastating critiques of the Cynic hypothesis, see David E. Aune, “Jesus and Cynics in First-Century Palestine: Some Critical Considerations,” in Hillel and Jesus: Comparisons of Two Major Religious Leaders (ed. J. H. Charlesworth and L. L. Johns; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 176–92; Hans Dieter Betz, “Jesus and the Cynics: Survey and Analysis of a Hypothesis,” JR 74 (1994): 453–75; Christopher M. Tuckett, “A Cynic Q?” Bib 70 (1989): 349–76; idem, Q and the History of Early Christianity: Studies on Q (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), 368–91; Ben Witherington, Jesus the Sage: The Pilgrimage of Wisdom (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 123–43. 75 CHAPTER FOUR THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS AND THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Craig A. Evans This essay offers little that is new; its primary purpose is to assess some of the significant gains in the study of the Synoptic Gospels in light of the discovery and publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls.1 But it also hopes to show that all of the major themes or emphases in the Synoptics have close parallels in the scrolls, thereby underscoring once again the Palestinian and Jewish provenance of these Gospels. This is an important point to make, for throughout much of the last century scholars have often exaggerated the non-Jewish and non-Palestinian features of the Gospels.2 Form critics and redaction critics have, in my opinion, assigned too much of the Synoptic material to provenances outside of the Jewish Palestinian milieu. The Dead Sea Scrolls have provided interpreters with a wealth of fresh data, and these data compel us to return the Synoptic tradition to the Jewish 76 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS AND THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Palestinian context.3 One interesting implication is that the cultural, religious , and social gap between the historical Jesus, on the one hand, and the later interpretive presentations of him in the Gospels, on the other hand, is significantly narrowed.4 In the pages that follow, each of the Synoptics will be treated. We begin with Mark, looking at its themes of mystery and revelation. Next we move to Matthew and its themes of righteousness and fulfillment. Finally, we treat Luke and its themes of election and community. All of these themes are of major importance to the evangelists, and all of them are consistent with themes and emphases in the Dead Sea Scrolls. MYSTERY AND REVELATION IN MARK One of the curious features of the Gospel of Mark is its theme of secrecy. Jesus commands people and demons to be silent, to tell no one about him, and in some cases not even to enter a nearby village. Mark tells us that Jesus never taught without using parables, but that these parables at times seem to be riddles and enigmas more than clarifying illustrations. Mark further tells us that even the disciples, Jesus’ closest followers, had difficulty understanding Jesus. Indeed, not only did they fail to understand his teaching regarding the kingdom of God; they also rejected his stated mission of suffering and death. At the turn of the twentieth century, these phenomena led William Wrede to develop his well-known hypothesis of Mark’s “messianic secret,”5 an hypothesis that has been at the center of Markan study for the whole of the twentieth century.6 An enormous literature has grown up around the more...