Salvation Through Emulation: Facets of Jubilean Soteriology at Qumran (original) (raw)

2011, This World and the World to Come: Soteriology in Early …

§1. Introduction. One of the most interesting theological features in the documents from Qumran is an extreme form of dualism that divides the entirety of creation into two camps or opposing forces: the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness (1QS 3.13-4.14; 1QM 1.1-7). According to this bifurcated worldview, those who endeavour to understand God's deeds and engage in activities that are pleasing to Him are counted among the Sons of Light (1QS 3.20a). The wicked, by contrast, are ruled by the K#wx K)lm, or "angel of darkness," who manipulates and cajoles humans into turning their backs on God and walking along a sinful path of disobedience (1QS 3.20b-23a). Exemplars of these two camps are nearly ubiquitous in the writings from Qumran and the authors of these documents frequently used recognizable archetypes as a way to encourage their readers to adopt certain behaviours and avoid others. Where the sons of Noah and the Nephilim were seen as the poster children for disobedience and sinful activity (CD 2.17b-19; 3.1; cf., Gen 6; 1 Enoch 1-36; Jub 11.2), Abraham was held up as a paragon of faith and patience (CD 3.2-3a; cf., Gen 22; Jub 17.15-18). Although he had some competition from the likes of Enoch and Moses, Abraham's unshakeable faith and his elevated status as a "friend of God" (cf. Isa 41.8; 2 Chr 20.7) meant that he was frequently pressed into service by the Qumran community and other Second Temple theologians to function as the obedient Jew par excellence. The quintessential story of Abraham's unflappable faith is the Akedah or Binding of Isaac (Gen 22). In the biblical version of this tale, Abraham, the surprisingly spry centenarian, is asked by God to sacrifice Isaac, his wife's only son, as a burnt offering on the summit of a mountain in the land of Moriah, a place that would, according to tradition, become the very spot where the Jewish temple would be erected (cf. 2 Chr 3.1). Many questions are left unanswered by the account of this story in Genesis-a fact that was not lost on the Jews of the Second Temple period. In particular, why would God ask an aged Abraham to sacrifice his only legitimate son when the Lord had already agreed to make Abraham's offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky (Gen 15.1-6)? Moreover, if God were omniscient, why would He need to test Abraham's resolve by asking him to do something that God already knows he will do? These and other questions regarding the ambiguity of Scripture fired the imagination of Jewish theologians during the Second Temple period and it inspired some scribes to address these ambiguities by engaging in a variety of exegetical and interpretive practices, such as gap-filling, homogenization, conflation, and the creation of a type of literature that modern scholars refer to as "rewritten Scripture" or "rewritten Bible." 1 This explosion of scribal activity and dialog with the material that would eventually become the Hebrew Bible resulted in the creation of numerous pseudepigraphic and apocryphal composi-1 For discussions on these terms, see Sidnie White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times