Qumran Scholarship and the Study of the Old Testament in the New Testament

Abstract

This article argues that Qumran scholarship provides contextual and contingent perspectives in the study of the use of scripture by the New Testament authors. First, post-Qumran textual criticism has highlighted textual diversity in the period of the New Testament, raising questions about alleged exegetical variants as well as the characterizations of the Pauline citations as ‘septuagintal’. Second, while the canon of the Hebrew Bible remained open in the middle of the first century, Paul’s implied bible was consistent with the Pharisaic canon that eventually became the Rabbinic Bible. Finally, the theory of the sectarian matrix both accounts for the use of the same biblical passages and the divergent interpretations of them among various sects in the Second Temple period.

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