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. The acronym MMT stands for Miqsat Ma‘ase ha-Torah, the “Selection of the Works of the Law,” as the text is referred to in an epilogue.
The document has three distinct sections: (1) regulations about the sacred calendar; (2) rulings on several points of law; (3) wider perspectives retelling the biblical story, locating the reader(s) within it and giving reasons why these works of the law are important at the present moment. Various scholars have suggested that these are the same works of the law that Paul rejects in Galatians and elsewhere, as when he writes, “No human being is justified by works of the law but only through faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16).2
Will this claim stand up?
The answer must be no, for five reasons.
(1) MMT defines one group of Jews over against the rest. The laws commanded by MMT are designed to mark out the scroll community against other groups within the wider Jewish world. The works that Paul opposes, however, define all Jews and proselytes over against the gentile, pagan world. Paul’s converts are under no pressure to join a particular Jewish subgroup or sect. Indeed, he comments wryly that the “agitators” who promote the works of the law are not interested in even having the Galatians keep the whole written Torah; they are hardly likely to have added the sort of finely tuned postbiblical regulations found in MMT (Galatians 5:3).3 No: the Galatians are under pressure from the agitators to show, simply, that they are no longer pagans and are fully part of Israel.4
(2) While MMT insists on certain postbiblical laws, Paul is battling those who wish to impose biblical regulations. Paul’s opponents want his ex-pagan converts to be circumcised, but they aren’t concerned about keeping codes concerning animal fetuses, banning the blind and the lame from the Temple, observing certain purity laws relating to streams of liquid, and so on. Paul’s point is even sharper: The basic biblical marks of Jewish identity—circumcision, sabbath, food laws—are no longer relevant for the people of Abraham as redefined through Jesus the Messiah.
(3) MMT’s regulations relate to the Jerusalem Temple and its purity. This makes sense if, as many think, both the writer and the reader were priests. But it relates only very obliquely to the issues addressed by Paul. The agitators in Galatians may have claimed authority from the Jerusalem apostles. Certainly Paul distances himself from the city and its Christian leadership (Galatians 1:15–2:21, 4:25–26). But neither he nor his opponents mention the Temple or the purity codes required for its operation. Indeed, by calling the apostles “pillars” (Galatians 2:9), he downgrades the physical Temple in favor of the newly constituted community. This move is unlike anything envisaged in MMT, although it is true that the Qumran sect did come to see itself as in some sense a replacement for the Temple.
(4) On one point, MMT’s regulations find an echo in Paul. But instead of rejecting MMT’s view, Paul takes a similar stance. MMT questions the status of children born from the illicit union of priests and laity and declares that such children are holy.5 Paul, though apparently uninterested in this question, raises a parallel one: What about the children of a marriage between a Christian and a non-Christian? His answer is the same: The children are holy, part of the new covenant community (1 Corinthians 7:14).
(5) Towering over these issues is MMT’s biblical eschatology (something ignored by scholars so far) and the way this relates to its works of the law, on the one hand, and to Paul’s works, on the other. MMT expounds Deuteronomy 30 and 31 as a prophetic text envisaging future blessings and curses, culminating in the curse of exile, after which Israel will turn to God, and God will restore her “at the end of the days.” This, says the writer of MMT, is now coming to pass, and the works of the law are the sign of the people to whom “it will be reckoned as righteousness” in the future.6 In other words, the works of the law function within an inaugurated eschatology—an understanding that the end time has already begun—to mark out those who will be restored, who will be the true Israel.
At this point MMT’s theology runs parallel to Paul’s. He too has an inaugurated eschatology—in which the true Israel is marked out by faith (Galatians 3–4; 054Romans 3–4; Philippians 3). But we do not know whether Paul’s opponents held any sort of inaugurated eschatology, and hence whether their works functioned theologically in the same way as MMT’s. It is entirely possible that they did not believe that the new age had begun with Jesus.
Many questions remain unsolved. What is the relation (in form and content) between MMT’s regulations and rabbinic law (halakhah) and the (later) concept of Oral Torah? What relation have the Pharisees to MMT and its readers, and for that matter to Paul, his converts and his opponents? These all demand further study. But we have said enough to show that the works commended by MMT are not the same as the works shunned by Paul. The phrase “works of (the) law” may well have been more widespread, and may have carried more and varied meanings, than we have been inclined to think.
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. […]
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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 ERGANOMOU,” 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.
