The Worshipped Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Abstract

by Duncan Zuill

(Duncan Zuill is a third-year undergraduate in the B.D. Honours programme at the University of St. Andrews.--JRD)

This paper attempts to deal with emic understandings of Jesus as 'divine mediator' found in the New Testament. The subject of the 'Historical Jesus' is left for another day and missing also is any discussion of Christian texts about Jesus such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Secret Gospel of Mark. The first section reviews the different typological descriptions of Jesus in Revelation, the Gospel of John, the Synoptics in general, and Matthew in particular, Paul and the Letter to the Hebrews. These idiosyncratic expressions can be compared to descriptions of divine mediators in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Some attempt is made to show the categories which are being used in the analysis of divine mediator typologies. I have taken a 'Jesus first' comparison of divine mediator characteristics. I look at Jesus the Messiah (Davidic, Prophetic, Priestly); Jesus the teacher; Jesus the Son of Man; Jesus resembling Melchizedek; Jesus the Son of God; Jesus the Lord; Jesus the Healer/Resurrectionist and Jesus the Lamb.

I conclude that it is very difficult even at the level of divine-mediator typology to match any text from the Dead Sea Scrolls to a text of the New Testament and say that there is a divine mediator in common.

(c) 2001
Reproduction beyond fair use only on permission of the author.