Parallels Between A New Dead Sea Scroll Fragment
(4Q521)
and the Early New Testament Gospel Tradition
One of the more intriguing of the newly released Dead Sea Scrolls is a
fragment now titled "Messianic Apocalypse" (4Q521). This text
contains three rather striking features that are of particular
significance for comparing the apocalyptic beliefs and expectations of
the Qumran community with the emerging early Christian movement. First,
the text speaks of a single Messiah figure who will rule heaven and
earth. Second, it mentions in the clearest language the expectation of
the resurrection of the dead during the time of this Messiah. And third,
and perhaps most important for students of the New Testament, it
contains an exact verbal parallel with the Gospels of Matthew and Luke
for identifying of the signs of the Messiah.
First, a translation of the fragment itself:
[the hea]vens and the earth will listen to His
Messiah, and none therein will
stray from the commandments of the holy ones.
Seekers of
HWHY, strengthen yourselves in His service!
All you hopeful in (your) heart, will you not find
HWHY in this?
For
HWHY will consider the pious (hasidim) and call the
righteous by name.
Over the poor His spirit will hover and will renew the faithful with His
power.
And He will glorify the pious on the throne of the eternal Kingdom.
He who liberates the captives, restores sight to the blind, straightens
the b[ent]
And f[or] ever I will cleav[ve to the h]opeful and in His mercy . . .
And the fr[uit . . .] will not be delayed for anyone.
And
HWHY will accomplish glorious things which have never been as
[He . . .]
For He will heal the wounded, and revive the dead and bring good
news
to the poor
. . .He will lead the uprooted and knowledge . . . and smoke (?)
(Michael O. Wise, translation)
The early Christians obviously focused on a
single Messiah or Christ, a descendent of king David, whom they
identified as Jesus of Nazareth (Mark 8:27-30; Acts 2:36). They clearly
saw him as God's cosmic agent, who would return in power and glory to
rule heaven and earth (Mark 14:61-62; 13:26-27). They expected that the
entire cosmos would come under subjection to him (Phil 2:9-10; 1 Cor
15:24-28)). They remembered him as one who had power over the demonic
spirits, over disease and death, and even over the forces of nature.
This exalted view of Jesus is well summed up in the Markan version of
the disciples' exclamation when he calms a storm on the Sea of Galilee:
"Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"
(Mark 4:35-41).
But like those at Qumran, they associated other
special figures and groups with the age of the Messiah. John the Baptist
was of the Aaronic priesthood and was revered as a returned
"Elijah," a sure sign that the End was near (Mark 9:9-13;
Malachi 4:5 [Hebrew 3:23]). The Twelve apostles were expected to sit on
thrones over the regathered twelve tribes of Israel in the coming
Messianic rule (Matthew 19:28). The followers of Jesus, referred to as
the "elect" or "saints," were expecting to rule over
the Gentile nations and even judge angels (1 Corinthians 6:1-4). In line
11 we have a clear reference to the resurrection of the dead. Why is
this so significant? Much ink has been spilled over the past few decades
discussing whether or not the people who composed the Scrolls believed
in the distinctively Jewish doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. We
know that various Jewish groups during the Second Temple period disputed
over this doctrine of the afterlife. The first references to the idea of
the dead being raised occur only in very late portions of the Hebrew
Bible (Daniel 12:1-3). It was a doctrine that was emerging in certain
Jewish circles from the 2nd century BCE down through the 1st
century CE. We see evidence of the dispute reflected in the Apocrypha
and in the New Testament (2 Maccabees 12:43-45; 15:11-16; Mark 12:18-27;
Acts 23:6-10). Obviously, for the early Christians, faith in the
resurrection of Jesus, and indeed, of all humankind at the end of days,
was a cardinal doctrine (1 Corinthians 15:12; Acts 24:15).
But what about those at Qumran? Geza Vermes, in
earlier editions of his widely circulated book The Dead Sea Scrolls
in English, says that the Scrolls never clearly
mention the idea, and concludes that "resurrection" played no
part in their eschatology (p. 56, 3rd edition). His view is commonly
reflected in many standard Qumran studies. Of course, Vermes and other
scholars had no access to this text until it was published in Biblical
Archaeology Review in 1992. We now have an unambiguous statement
that "raising the dead" was one of the key expectations of the
Messianic age in this community.
Line 11 of this text also contains another
highly striking feature. Indeed, it appears to be the closest and most
direct linguistic parallel to a New Testament text that we have yet
discovered. The line reads:
For he will heal the wounded,
resurrect the dead,
and proclaim glad tiding to the poor.
In both Matthew and Luke we read of a
deputation that John the Baptist sends to Jesus while John is
imprisoned. John's disciples ask Jesus, "Are you the coming one, or
do we look for another?" The story is thus tightly framed around
the question of messianic identity: what will the signs of the
true Messiah be? Jesus answers:
Go and report to John what you have seen and
heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor
have the glad tiding preached to them (Luke 7:22-23 and
Matthew 11:4-5).
This reply is cast in the style of a precise
formula. It reflects a very early Christian expectation of the signs of
the messianic age and the marks for identification of the Messiah. One
indication that we have here a very early Christian
tradition is that these passages from Luke and Matthew come from the
source scholars have designated as Q, from the German word Quelle,
meaning "source." According to most N.T. scholars, Q was a
collection of the "Sayings of Jesus," somewhat like the Gospel
of Thomas in genre, which was compiled in the middle of the first
century, but before our finished Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) were
written.
The phrase at the end of line 11, about
"proclaiming glad tidings to the poor" is a direct quotation
from Isaiah 61:1, which tells of an "anointed one" (i.e.,
messiah) who will work various signs before the Day of
HWHY. This
passage is quite important in the Gospel of Luke. In fact, he highlights
it as the inauguration of the Messianic mission of Jesus. According to
Luke, it is this very verse from Isaiah which Jesus reads and claims to
fulfill in his home town synagogue of Nazareth.
However, what is most noteworthy is that Isaiah
61:1 says nothing about this Anointed One raising the dead. Indeed, in
the entire Hebrew Bible there is nothing about a messiah figure raising
the dead. Yet, when we turn to the Q Source, which Luke and Matthew
quote, regarding the "signs of the Messiah," we find the two
phrases linked: "the dead are raised up, the poor have the glad
tidings preached to them," precisely as we have in our Qumran text.
Luke makes more than passing use of this notion of the
"resurrection of the dead" as a sign of the age of the
Messiah. In the two places he quotes Isaiah 61:1 he also mentions
specific cases of resurrection of the dead: as Elijah once raised the
son of the widow, Jesus now raises the son of the widow from Nain (Luke
4:26; 7:11-17). This is hardly accidental, as the close juxtaposition of
the texts makes clear.
It is also significant that this section of the
Q Source is dealing with traditions shared between the community of John
the Baptist and that of the early followers of Jesus. The close
connections between John the Baptist and the community that produced the
Scrolls have been pointed out by many scholars. Through this Dead Sea
Scroll fragment, coupled with the early Q Source of the Gospels, we are
taken back to a very early common tradition within Palestinian Judaism
regarding the "signs of the Messiah." We are in a better
position to speak of the common expectations of a variety of
interrelated apocalyptic, sectarian, baptist groups which have fled to
the "wilderness" to prepare the "Way of
HWHY"
(Isaiah 40:3; Luke 3:4; 1QS 8,9). They appear to share a specific set of
expectations, and they draw in strikingly similar ways, upon a common
core of prophetic texts from the Hebrew Bible and related Jewish
literature.
Of course, this fragment alone
does not settle our attempts to identify the people of the
Scrolls—whether they should be labeled as Essenes, Sadducees, Zealots,
Pharisees, Nazarenes, Ebionites, or a unique blend of their own
amalgamation. However, the text does provide a most direct and
significant example of a common messianic hope among the followers of
John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Teacher of Righteousness.
For a fuller and
more technical treatment of this text see James Tabor and Michael Wise,
"4Q521 'On Resurrection' and the Synoptic Gospel Tradition: A
Preliminary Study," in Qumran Questions, edited by James
Charlesworth (Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), pp. 161-163.
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