The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins.

• Author: Van Peursen, W. Th.
• Position: Book Review

The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins. By JOSEPH A. FITZMYER, S.J. Grand Rapids, Mich.: WM. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING Co., 2000. Pp. xvii + 290. $25 (paper).

Joseph Fitzmyer is a distinguished and prolific scholar who has produced numerous monographs and articles concentrating on two fields of interest: Qumran studies and the New Testament. He has fruitfully combined these two specializations in a number of publications on the Jewish background of the New Testament and early Christianity, including his well-known Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament (London, 1971).

The volume under review is a collection of twelve articles on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the impact of these scrolls on New Testament studies. It contains the following studies: "The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins: General Methodological Considerations" (pp. 1-16), "The Dead Sea Scrolls and Early Christianity" (17-40), "The Aramaic 'Son of God' Text from Qumran Cave 4 (4Q246)" (41-62), "The Background of 'Son of God' as a Title for Jesus" (63-72), "Qumran Messianism" (73-110), "A Palestinian Jewish Collection of Beatitudes" (111-18), "Aramaic Evidence Affecting the Interpretation of Hosanna in the New Testament" (119-31), "The Significance of the Qumran Tobit Texts for the Study of Tobit" (132-58), "The Qumran Texts of Tobit" (152-236), "The Aramaic Levi Document" (237-48), "The Qumran Community: Essene or Sadducean?" (249-60), and "The Gathering In of the Teacher of the Community" (261-65). The fifth article appears here for the first time; the third and eighth studies are each a combination of two ear lier articles. The remaining nine articles have been published before, but are here revised and updated in many places. Cross-references between the articles have also been added.

The first two articles give a general introduction to the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament. Chapters 3-5 deal with the impact of the Scrolls on the interpretation of Christological titles in the New Testament, especially "Son of God" and "Messiah." (Compare Fitzmyer's articles on "Son of Man" and "Kurios" in his A Wandering Aramaean: Collected Aramaic Essays [Missoula, Mont., 1979], 115-60.) Chapter 6 discusses the parallels between 4Q525 and the beatitudes in the Gospels. Chapter 7 deals with Hosanna, the cry with which the people welcomed Jesus entering Jerusalem in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and John. Fitzmyer argues that in first-century...