Text, Thought, and Practice in Qumran and Early Christianity

The 13 papers comprising this volume represent the fruits of the first Orion Center Symposium devoted to the comparison of the Dead Sea and early Christian texts. The authors reject the older paradigm which configured the similarities between Qumran and early Christian literature as evidence of “influence” from one upon the other. They raise fresh methodological possibilities by asking how insights from each of these two corpora illuminate the other, and by considering them as parallel evidence for broader currents of Second Temple Judaism. Topics addressed include specific exegetical and legal comparisons; prophecy, demonology, and messianism; the development of canon and the rise of commentary; and possible connections between the Gospel of John and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Ruth A. Clements, Th.D (1997), Harvard University Divinity School, is Chief of Publications at the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, and co-author of The Orion Center Bibliography of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Daniel R. Schwartz is a professor of ancient Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on ancient Jewish historiography. His most recent book is the volume on 2 Maccabees in the series Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature.

'This volume appears as a good representative of the "third stage" in the study of the relationship between the scrolls and the New Testament, and definitely deserves the attention of scholars of Second Temple Judaism and New Testament alike.'

H. Debel, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses