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 the Lord, strengthen yourselves in His service! All you
hopeful in (your) heart, will you not find the Lord in this? For the Lord 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 the
Lord 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 the Lord. 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 the Lord" (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.