Paul and Qumran - The BAS Library
Login
Home > Magazines > Bible Review > October 1998

Paul and Qumran

When Paul shuns the “works of the law,” is he referring to the very works commended by the Dead Sea Scroll known as MMT?

By N. T. Wright

The nonacademic controversies1 surrounding the Dead Sea Scroll known as MMT have obscured more important questions about this critical text: What is it about? Where does it belong in Jewish history? And how does it relate (if indeed it does, as many have claimed) to Paul and the New Testament? MMT is reconstructed from six surviving Qumran fragments (numbered 4Q394-399), none of them complete. Most scholars believe it is a letter, written in the mid-second century B.C.E., from the leader of the Qumran group to the head of a larger group, of which the Qumranites were once a part. […]

Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Endnotes

1.

The Biblical Archaeology Society, publisher of BR, was sued by Israeli scholar Elisha Qimron for copyright infringement when BAS reprinted a page from a Polish journal that contained a photocopy of a tentative reconstruction of MMT that Qimron had handed out at an academic conference. An Israeli court found in favor of Qimron, but the decision is under appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court.

2.

See Martin Abegg, “Paul, ‘Works of the Law’ and MMT,” BAR 20:06. Also J.D.G. Dunn, “4QMMT and Galatians,” in New Testament Studies 43 (1997), pp. 147–153; M. Bachmann, “4QMMT und Galaterbrief, hrwth yc[m und ERGA NOMOU,” in Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 89 (1998), pp. 91–113 (with copious bibliography). I am grateful to Professor Bachmann and others in the SNTS “Qumran and the New Testament” seminar for stimulating discussions on this topic. For the text and translation of 4QMMT, see Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell, Qumran Cave 4 V: Miqsat Ma‘ase Ha-Torah, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 10 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997), pp. 220–228; Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1996), pp. 358–364; Florentino García Martínez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English (Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 77–85.

3.

It is possible that Paul’s polemic against calendrical observances in Galatians 4:10 may relate to something like MMT section A. But it is equally likely that it simply refers to the biblical Sabbath- and festival-keeping.

4.

Some of MMT’s regulations (B 3–9) are indeed concerned with avoiding gentile impurity. But they are not urging avoidance as such: The reader(s) would be just as keen on that. They define this way of avoiding gentile impurity over against other Jewish ways of doing so.

5.

4QMMT B 75–76.

6.

4QMMT C 31.