Andre Abija’s Reviews > Jesus as Mirrored in John: The Genius in the New Testament > Status Update

Chapter 13 focused on comparing Qumran, John, and the Odes of Solomon. The conclusion is that John and the Odes (Christian documents) were influenced by the dualism of the Essenes (especially the light-dark trope) but unlike Qumran, focused on human choice in salvation as opposed to pure predestination

This section compares the Odes of Solomon to the Gospel of John. Many scholars assume the Odes depend on John, but that is not backed up by thorough analysis, but instead assumed with a priori assumptions. Charlesworth makes the case that the Odes and John are not directly dependent on one another, but that they were written in the same community/theological environment

The thrust of this section is that the author of John knew about 1 Enoch and in John 3:13 is claiming Jesus as the Son of Man and refuting that Enoch was. Interestingly, my big takeaway is that Charlesworth claims NT scholars can be myopic and don’t touch 1 Enoch because it’s not easily accessible to them (Ethiopic not Greek). Good to know NT scholarship can miss things by not collaborating with other specialists

This section compares the Son of Man trope in the Self Glorification Hymn and the Gospel of John. The Hymn is pre 70 and the similarities show that John’s Christology has basis in Second Temple Judaism

This section calls out how a deep understanding of Qumranite texts helps uncover the historical, theological, and literary context of John’s gospel

This section compared the philosophy of Qumran and the Gospel of John. John uses a lot of terms that, as far as we know, are unique to Qumran, thus suggesting that John’s ideas are in fact 1st century Jewish and not 2nd century Greek. The amount of term similarity makes it likely that John knew Qumran theology and used those concepts to convey his message about Jesus being the Messiah

This section shows that there are parallels between 1QS 3-4 and the dualistic thought in the gospel of John. However, many scholars simplistically assume parallelism means direct dependence, whereas this study convincingly suggests that John is aware of QS, especially 3-4, but not a copy paste (there are too many differences). So John probably adapted terms and thoughts from Qumran

This chapter showed that John’s Christology is based in history, and that theology is richer for incorporating archeological discoveries.

For instance, purification pools were used to cleanse pilgrims to ascend to the Temple. They required “living water” to purify people - water provided by God alone. Jesus declaring Himself living water then implies being God sent and able to purify in ways man cannot

This section focused on showing that John captures historical data pre 70 AD and that it had been in error that scholars have dismissed John as ahistorical. Scholars are now beginning to acknowledge that John has a lot to say about what was true about 1st century Judaism at the time of Jesus

This section establishes a link between Qumran and the Gospel of John. There’s evidence to suggest some connection between John and the Essenes (including the Last Supper and subsequent Christian community were found in the Essene part of Jerusalem). But the author attributed things to John and Qumran that’re true of the rest of the NT. So I’d argue they don’t support a unique link between Qumran and John