The Christian church, in its organization, its sacraments, its teaching and its literature is related - and in its early stages may have been identical - with the New Covenanters who were known as the Essenes, some of whom wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Some of the consequences of the new knowledge that has come into our possession with the Qumran discoveries - and which is still accumulating - is the way in which it revises our understanding of events and circumstances in the New Testament narrative. Although as yet more questions are raised than answered, they are questions that in themselves imply a changed viewpoint.
What in the past was so often silhouetted against a blank background is suddenly seen in its natural context. Although this does not mean that we are immediately able to establish a firm relationship between an event or discourse and this new context, it does mean that in many cases we can see indications clear enough to suggest that they be explored.
In taking up some of these indications we are asking the reader to remember that we are not portagonists of particular hypotheses or anxious that suggested explanations be sustained; we are eager only that there be an honest effort - diligent and responsible, but not held back by an excessive reverence for tradition - to give what is told us in the canonical scriptures its most natural and probable interpretation. What follows merely illustrates what the approach of such an effort might be.
What are we to say, for instance, in the light of our new knowledge, of John the Baptist, who the Gospels tell us was brought up in the desert, the wilderness of Judea? Can we any longer imagine him wandering about, sustaining himself somehow in solitude in the unrelieved desolation of this wilderness, and then coming forth and preaching a doctrine that is only coincidentally similar to that of the covenanters whose monastery was in the area where John was reported to have lived?
Where did John get his ideas? And his ascetic practices? And his baptism? It is true that he departed from the ideas of the Dead Sea sect, but it is also true that he had to have some ideas from which to make departures. Where else shall we look when the evidence pooints so plausibly to the Qumran monastery? That John was, in the broader sense of the term, an Essene can scarcely be doubted. In this same broader sense, were not his followers also to be numbered with the Essenes?...
Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. Some of his disciples were drawn from John's following. Can Jesus, any more than John, be thought of as having been unconnected with Essenic communities before he decided that John's version of the Messianic faith was the one he was ready to adopt? Just as Jesus later made considerable departures from John's emphasis, had not John previously made similar departures from the emphasis of the community to which he had belonged? (We say "had belonged," but actually we are not entitled to assume that John had left his community or had been expelled from it because of nonconforming practices any more than we need assume that in establishing his own teaching, Jesus had made a definite break with John.)
Some of the consequences of the new knowledge that has come into our possession with the Qumran discoveries - and which is still accumulating - is the way in which it revises our understanding of events and circumstances in the New Testament narrative. Although as yet more questions are raised than answered, they are questions that in themselves imply a changed viewpoint.
What in the past was so often silhouetted against a blank background is suddenly seen in its natural context. Although this does not mean that we are immediately able to establish a firm relationship between an event or discourse and this new context, it does mean that in many cases we can see indications clear enough to suggest that they be explored.
In taking up some of these indications we are asking the reader to remember that we are not portagonists of particular hypotheses or anxious that suggested explanations be sustained; we are eager only that there be an honest effort - diligent and responsible, but not held back by an excessive reverence for tradition - to give what is told us in the canonical scriptures its most natural and probable interpretation. What follows merely illustrates what the approach of such an effort might be.
What are we to say, for instance, in the light of our new knowledge, of John the Baptist, who the Gospels tell us was brought up in the desert, the wilderness of Judea? Can we any longer imagine him wandering about, sustaining himself somehow in solitude in the unrelieved desolation of this wilderness, and then coming forth and preaching a doctrine that is only coincidentally similar to that of the covenanters whose monastery was in the area where John was reported to have lived?
Where did John get his ideas? And his ascetic practices? And his baptism? It is true that he departed from the ideas of the Dead Sea sect, but it is also true that he had to have some ideas from which to make departures. Where else shall we look when the evidence pooints so plausibly to the Qumran monastery? That John was, in the broader sense of the term, an Essene can scarcely be doubted. In this same broader sense, were not his followers also to be numbered with the Essenes?...
Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. Some of his disciples were drawn from John's following. Can Jesus, any more than John, be thought of as having been unconnected with Essenic communities before he decided that John's version of the Messianic faith was the one he was ready to adopt? Just as Jesus later made considerable departures from John's emphasis, had not John previously made similar departures from the emphasis of the community to which he had belonged? (We say "had belonged," but actually we are not entitled to assume that John had left his community or had been expelled from it because of nonconforming practices any more than we need assume that in establishing his own teaching, Jesus had made a definite break with John.)