Footnotes

1.

Common Era (C.E.) and Before the Common Era (B.C.E.), used by this author, are the alternate designations corresponding to A.D. and B.C. often used in scholarly literature.

2.

P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., “The Mysterious Copper Scroll,” BR 08:04.

3.

See Michael O. Wise and James D. Tabor, “The Messiah at Qumran,” BAR 18:06.

4.

This is the form in which the name appears in the Gospel of John.-Ed.

5.

See Otto Betz, “Was John the Baptist an Essene?” BR 06:06.

Endnotes

1.

See the insightful discussion by M. Hengel, “Bishop Lightfoot and the Tübingen School on the Gospel of John and the Second Century,” Durham University Journal (January, 1992) [The Lightfoot Centenary Lectures, ed. J.D.G. Dunn], pp. 23–51, esp. p. 24.

2.

This possibility cannot be proved, and probably now cannot be disproved.

3.

K. Aland dates this papyrus to the beginning of the second century C.E. Aland, “Der Text des Johannesevangeliums im 2. Jahrhundert,” in Studien zum Text und zur Ethik des Neuen Testaments: Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag von Heinrich Greeven, ed. W. Schrage (BZNW 47; Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 1986) pp. 1–10.

4.

See J. Jeremias, The Rediscovery of Bethesda; John 5:2 (New Testament Archaeology Monograph 1; Louisville: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1966).

5.

J. T. Milik in 3Q15 11.12 reads byt ‘sdtyn and takes the second noun to be a dual, “Bet Esdatain;” the meaning could be “(in) the House of the Two Pools.” See Milik, “Le rouleau de cuivre provenant de la Grotte 3Q (3Q15),” in Les ‘Petites Grottes’ de Qumran, ed. M. Baillet, J. T. Milik, and R. de Vaux (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 3; Oxford: Clarendon, 1962) pp. 214, 271.

6.

Literally “have been worked in God.”

7.

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, A Wandering Aramean, (Society of Biblical Literature [SBL] 25; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979), p. 93.

8.

The use of capitals only for the Qumran Community is intentional.

9.

See W. A. Meeks, “The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism,” Journal of Biblical Literature (1972), pp. 44–72, esp. pp. 70–71.

10.

I use liminality in the sense defined by Victor Turner in Process, Performance, and Pilgrimage (New Delhi: Concept, 1979) esp. pp. 11–59. Also see Jonathan Z. Smith, “Birth Upside Down or Right Side Up?” History of Religions 9 (1969–1970), pp. 281–303, and his “A Place on Which to Stand: Symbols and Social Change,” Worship 44 (1970), pp. 457–474.

11.

For a discussion of this point, see the introduction in J. Charlesworth, ed., John and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Christian Origins Library; New York: Crossroad, 1991), and also see chapter five.

12.

Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John (Anchor Bible Series; Garden City, NY.: Doubleday, 1966) vol. 1, p. lxii.

13.

Some of the Hermetic tractates and some of the gnostic codices are intermittently similar to John; but then the influence seems to be from John to them.

14.

D. Moody Smith, Johannine Christianity (Columbia, S.C.: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1984), p. 26.

15.

J. L. Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, rev. ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979); R. E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist, 1979).

16.

Despite the cries of a few authors, a consensus still exists among the best Qumran specialists that the Qumranites were Essenes. Lawrence Schiffman challenges the Essene origins of the Qumran group, (see his “The Significance of the Scrolls,” BR 06:05) but he has affirmed (at least to me on several times) that the Qumran group in the first century C.E. is to be identified as Essenes. After almost 30 years of teaching and publishing on the Qumran scrolls I have seen that the Qumran group was a sect (it deliberately removed itself, sociologically and theologically from other Jews) and that we think about Qumran Essenes, Jerusalem Essenes and other groups living on the outskirts of most of the cites, as Philo and Josephus reported.

17.

See Jerome Murphy-O’Connor and James H. Charlesworth, eds., Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Christian Origins Library; New York: Crossroad, 1992), and the pertinent chapters.

18.

See Charlesworth’s introduction to Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls, pp. ix–xvi.

19.

K. Stendahl rightly demonstrated that there is a School of Matthew and that the means of interpreting scripture is strikingly like that found in the Qumran commentaries (the Pesharim), see Stendahl, The School of St. Matthew and Its Use of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968). Also see K. Schubert, “The Sermon on the Mount and the Qumran Texts,” in The Scrolls and the New Testament, pp. 118–128; and W. D. Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966) esp. pp. 208–256. Davies argues—and 1 fully concur—that the Sermon on the Mount “reveals an awareness of the [Dead Sea Scroll] Sect and perhaps a polemic against it.” (p. 235)

20.

See the contributions by Brown, Price, Leaney, Jaubert, Charlesworth, Quispel and Brownlee in Charlesworth, ed., John and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

21.

See W. Baldensperger, Der Prolog des vierten Evangeliums (published in 1898). Also see R. Bultmann, The Gospel of John, trans. G.R. Beasley-Murray (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971) pp. 84–97.

22.

See Brownlee in John and the Dead Sea Scrolls, pp. 165–194.

23.

As one of the best commentators on John stated, “There are close contacts between John and Qumran on important points … that there were some associations must be seriously considered, however they were set up.” R. Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John, trans. K. Smyth (New York: Crossroad, 1987), vol. 1, pp. 134–135.

24.

R. A. Culpepper, The Johonnine School (SBL Dissertation Series 26; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975). See also G. Strecker, “Die Anfänge der Johanneishchen Schule,” New Testament Studies 32 (1986), pp. 31–47; and E. Ruckstuhl, “Zur Antithese Idiolekt—Soziolekt im johanneischen Schrifttum,” in Jesus im Horizont der Evangelien (Stuttgarter Biblische Aufsatzbande 3; Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Biblework, 1988), pp. 219–64.

25.

Although the author of John may have known one of the Synoptics, especially Mark, he was not dependent on the Synoptics, as Gardner-Smith, Goodenough, Käsemann, Cullmann, Robinson, Smith and other gifted scholars have demonstrated in different ways. As P. Borgen pointed out, John seems to relate to the pre-Synopotic tradition that is evident, for example, in Paul. See P. Borgen, “John and the Synoptics,” in The Interrelations of the Gospels, ed. D. L. Dungan (Leuven: Leuven University Press and Uitgeverij Peeters, 1990), pp. 408–37. See now the major study by D. M. Smith, John Among the Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).

26.

It is conceivable that none of the Qumranites ever became Christians. That still leaves most of the Essenes to account for, and if Philo and Josephus can be trusted that means over 3,700 of the 4,000 Essenes living in ancient Palestine.

27.

See the contributions in James H. Charlesworth, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Anchor Bible Reference)