Light and Darkness: Sectarian Rhetoric in Qumran and the New Testament
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Abstract
While attempting to shed light on Jewish discourse during the first century, many scholars have compared the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, seeking evidence of common ground and critical differences (Fitzmyer 2000, Abegg 2006, Wooder 2006). This paper explores Jewish first-century sectarian dialogue (as revealed in the New Testament and the sectarian Qumran documents) through writers’ uses of light and darkness as a metaphor for good and evil; and of ‘sons of X’ as an expression of spiritual membership.
This paper shows that the New Testament writers subvert the rhetoric which was previously used by the Qumran sect (‘light/dark,’ ‘sons of’) in order to mark their own sectarian boundaries. This is done by first establishing that this rhetoric was rooted in the Hebrew Tanakh, with no close parallels in other Ancient Near Eastern cultures; second, by demonstrating that although this rhetoric was rooted in the Old Testament it had acquired additional resonances, including a slogan or code status, by the time it was taken up by the Qumran writers; third, by showing that this rhetoric is indeed shared by the Qumran and New Testament corpora; and fourth, by explaining how various New Testament writers show awareness of and reaction to this rhetoric’s provenance.
This paper contributes to the study of Judeo-Christian religion, sectarianism, language and power, and linguistic boundary-marking.
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