The Jewish Annotated New Testament (163 page)

Within this narrative context, the parable’s “meaning” is an attack upon the Jewish leaders—represented in the parable as the wicked tenants—for killing the owner’s son. The precise identity of the person whom the son represents is not spelled out explicitly in the Gospel text, but both Matthew and Luke retain Mark’s final line (Mk 12.9b), predicting that the owner will destroy the tenants and hand the vineyard over to others. Its next passage quotes Ps 118.22–23:

Have you not read this scripture, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is amazing in our eyes.” (Mk 12.10–11; Mt 21.42; Lk 20.17)

To this Matthew adds the following elaboration:

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls. (21.43–44)

The author of the passage citing Ps 118.22–23 clearly understood Jesus to mean himself, when he described the tenants killing the owner’s son, and Matthew’s gloss elaborates this understanding by specifying that the Jewish leaders who confront Jesus (the “you” in the passage) are the tenants who will be destroyed for rejecting and killing “the son.” In subsequent Christian tradition this text became a primary source for the claim that Jesus’ death caused God’s rejection of the Jews and the election of the church. New Testament scholars debate whether the Gospels present the parable’s original narrative context, whether the original parable contained a reference to a son, and whether Jesus used this parable to explain his own divinely mandated fate. According to the scholars who see its meaning in this way, the parable has a virtually revelatory force as a literary form. Comparison of this parable with a rabbinic
mashal
may prove helpful in understanding the parable’s literary strategies, perhaps even offering an alternative path for interpreting it.

Most rabbinic
meshalim
are preserved as parts of biblical exegeses rather than in narrative contexts. The following is recorded in a third-century collection as a midrash on Deut 32.9, “the Lord’s own portion was his people, Jacob, his allotted share” (NRSV):

It is like a king who owned a field and gave it to tenant-farmers. The tenant-farmers began to plunder the field. So he took it away from them, and gave the field to their children, but they were more wicked than their parents. So he took the field away from the children, and gave it to their children, but soon they too proved even more wicked. [Finally,] a son was born to the king. He said to the tenant-farmers: Get off my property. I do not want you on it. Give me back my portion that I may make it known as mine. (
Sifre Deut
. 312)

So goes the first part of the
mashal
, the narrative proper. The resemblances between its stock characters and motifs to those in the New Testament parable are obvious, thereby confirming the view that both parables belonged to the same popular tradition of parable-telling. In most rabbinic
meshalim
, however, the narrative proper is typically followed by an explanatory paragraph, the
nimshal
, which provides the necessary information to apply the narrative to the verse that serves as its exegetical occasion. Here is this
mashal
’s
nimshal
:

Likewise: when Abraham came into the world, there issued from him inferior progeny—Ishmael and all the children of Keturah. When Isaac came into the world, there issued from him inferior progeny—Esau and all the chiefs of Edom. They were more wicked than their predecessors. But when Jacob came, the progeny that issued forth were not inferior; all his sons were upright persons. As the matter is stated: “Jacob was a perfect man, dwelling in tents” [Gen 25.27]. Now from what point does God make known His portion? From Jacob, as it is said, “For the Lord’s portion is His people Jacob, the lot of His inheritance.” [Deut 32.9]

The point of this
mashal
is clearly polemical: condemnation of Ishmael and Esau, the rabbinic code names for the Arab and Roman nations, and praise for Jacob’s children, the people of Israel, who, according to the
nimshal
’s interpretation of Deut 32.9, alone are God’s chosen people, “the lot of His inheritance.”

Such a rhetorical function of comparative blame and praise—with some measure of contempt mixed into it—is reminiscent of the message that the Gospels saw in Jesus’ parable with its bitter condemnation of the Jewish leaders and implied praise of those whom God chose to replace them. Indeed, the rhetorical resemblance between the two parables increases the historical likelihood that Matthew’s interpretation was a plausible one to its early audience. To be sure, we will never know for certain what Jesus originally intended by his parable. But within its narrative context, Jesus’ parable may very well have been directed against the Jewish leaders for their presumed
future
responsibility for Jesus’ crucifixion. The resemblance between the wicked tenants and the later rabbinic
mashal
may go even farther. Most rabbinic
meshalim
are preserved in an exegetical context that is highlighted in the
nimshal
. The parable of the tenants is the only New Testament one that appends a verse to its narrative (Ps 118.22–23): “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is amazing in our eyes.” As it is cited, the verse may have been understood in a midrashic sense, with the Hebrew word
rosh pinah
, translated in the NRSV as “cornerstone,” meaning the central capstone in an arch (which must be irregularly shaped in order to fit its strategic position)—an interpretation favored by some modern biblical scholars; so, too, the Hebrew for “builders,”
ha-bonim
, may have been understood not as deriving from the root
b-n-h
(“to build”) but from the root
b-y-n
, “to understand,” meaning “those who understand,” or think they understand, namely, the Jewish priests and scribes. (Other
midrashim
play on the similarity of these two roots.) In this interpreted sense, then, the verse would have been read as: “The ‘stone’ that the Jewish leaders rejected as misshapen turned out in the end to be the capstone. How unpredictable is the Lord’s doing!” Such messages of unexpected reversal—the last becoming first; the least turning out to be the best—are typical of Jesus’ other teachings.

While it would be a mistake to turn Jesus into a third-or fourth-century rabbi, the wicked tenants is the only one of his parables with a
nimshal
, which typifies the rabbinic parable. This text may be, ironically, our earliest example of the literary-exegetical form that becomes so prevalent in rabbinic midrash. Nor does understanding the larger ancient Jewish context for the parable and its resemblance to the later rabbinic tradition change its anti-Jewish message in Christian interpretation. What it does show is that, for all their profound theological differences and mutual conflict, early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism spoke much the same language. Even when they disagreed, they did so in remarkably similar ways.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

Maxine Grossman

The mid-twentieth-century discovery of fragmentary ancient Jewish manuscripts in caves near the Dead Sea proved to be a bonanza for scholars of ancient Judaism. Although the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) are important for a variety of reasons to scholars in many fields, from the first the discoveries were framed in terms of the light they might shed on the world of Jesus and the New Testament.

The first seven scrolls came to scholarly attention in Jerusalem in late 1947. These scrolls, from Qumran Cave 1, included two copies of the book of Isaiah (1QIsa
^a
and IQIsa
^b
); a previously unknown expansion of the book of Genesis in Aramaic, the main language of the period (1QapGen, unrolled last of the seven, because of its advanced deterioration); and four previously unknown sectarian texts. These include a rule for an apparently celibate religious community (1QS); a type of commentary on the book of Habakkuk (1QpHab) and a collection of hymns of thanksgiving (1QH), both reflecting the terminology and worldview found in the rule text; and a highly stylized account of the final battle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness (1QM). Taken together, these manuscripts offered an evocative look at an ancient Jewish community whose resonance with earliest Christianity included not only shared scriptural interests (Genesis, Isaiah, the Minor Prophets) but also a commitment to celibacy, communitarian ideals, and the expectation of a rapidly impending end-times event.

The interpretive approach known as
pesher
is characteristic of the community’s use of scriptural texts, particularly those of the Minor Prophets and the Psalms. The word, which means “interpret” or “discover the meaning of,” occurs in Tanakh only in Eccl 8.1 (in Hebrew) and Dan 5.12,16 (in Aramaic); in Daniel it means interpretation of dreams. The scrolls, most clearly 1QpHab, the Habakkuk pesher, exemplify this interpretive strategy: quoting a verse from the biblical text and following it with an interpretation (using a form of the word “pesher”) that applies the verse to the current situation as the interpreter sees it. Pesher thus serves to make biblical texts relevant to the community’s concerns.

The scrolls reflected a Judaism different from later rabbinic tradition, and scholars were quick to suggest possible contexts for that difference. One of the first scholars to see the scrolls, E. L. Sukenik (1889–1953), suggested as early as 1948 that they might be connected with the Essenes, an ancient Jewish sect that the Roman author Pliny (
Nat
. 5.15 § 73) had located near the shores of the Dead Sea. Accounts of the Essenes from two first century Jewish writers, Philo (
Good Person
12.77;
Hypoth
. 10.4; 11.11–12) and Josephus (
Life
10–12;
J.W
. 2.119, 122, 126;
Ant
. 13.171, 18.11, 20), rounded out the picture of the sect as all male, generally celibate, and highly concerned with a collective life of simplicity and separation from the corrupt society around them. Textual similarities between 1QS and the Damascus Document (CD), a rule text discovered in the late 1890s in the Cairo Geniza by Solomon Schechter (1847–1915), provided further context for the scrolls, by framing 1QS as the rule text for the celibate Essene community at Qumran and CD as a parallel rule for an outside population of “marrying Essenes” mentioned only by Josephus and not by the other sources (
J.W
. 2.160–61). The so-called Essene Hypothesis has framed the order of business in scrolls scholarship up to the present day.

References to a founding Teacher of Righteousness (and to his conflicts with a Wicked Priest, who sought to kill him on account of his teachings) resonated even more intensely with scholars who came to see in the scrolls a possible backdrop for Jesus’ ministry. The evidence of the scrolls was brought to bear even more directly in comparison with John the Baptist who, like the scrolls’ authors, went out into the wilderness to “prepare a way for the Lord,” lived ascetically, and preached baptism for the removal of sins and the preparation for end times salvation. The parallels in the scrolls to John’s practice of immersion have struck scholars. For instance, the Damascus Document (CD 10.10–13) and the Temple Scroll (11QSTemple 45.7–10) contain rules for this practice. In the Rule of the Community (2.25–3.9), there would seem to be a description of immersion as an initiation into the community. Although some scholars, like Jacob L. Teicher (1904–81), argued for specific correlations between the scrolls and the central figures of early Christianity (Teicher equated the Teacher of Righteousness with Jesus and the Wicked Priest with Paul), the vast majority of scholars saw the scrolls as providing more general religious and cultural contexts for the developments of Christian messianism and eschatological expectations.

There is also the matter of New Testament parallels to imagery in the Qumran materials, especially the emphasis on light versus darkness. This is characteristic of imagery in Tanakh: for instance, light is associated with Torah (Isa 2.5) and darkness with evil (Prov 2.13); God is manifest as light (Ps 104.2). In the Qumran documents, all of humankind is divided into the “sons of light” and the “sons of darkness” (this is further developed in 1QS 1.9–11 and other places). The phrase “children of light” appears in the New Testament at Lk 16.8; Jn 12.36; Eph 5.8; and 1 Thess 5.5, meaning those who are among the righteous. The contrast is also present in many other New Testament passages: e.g., 1 Jn 2.8–11. This imagery is especially prominent in the Gospel of John (1.4–5,7–9; 3.19–21; 8.12; 12.46).

By 1956, excavations at Qumran revealed a habitation site and a cemetery containing some 1,100 graves. Initial arguments dated the founding of the habitation site to the mid-second century BCE, which would fit with early identifications of the Teacher of Righteousness. A recent re-dating of the site by the archaeologist Jodi Magness argues for its founding as a sectarian habitation site around the turn of the first century BCE. Magness’ interpretation of the site emphasizes a number of key features: the extensive water installations, which she views as evidence for ritual purity as a chief concern at the site; large quantities of high-quality but simple table-ware, which argue for the service of group meals; and the minimal presence of imported fineware and decorative architectural features, which suggest a lack of interest in ostentation. The presence of women at the site remains a point of debate; the evidence from the cemetery reveals few if any ancient female skeletons, and there is little significant evidence in the form of small finds traditionally associated with women (tools for spinning and weaving textiles; hair combs, and decorations). Critiques of the classical Essene Hypothesis suggest variously that the site should be understood as a rustic villa, a pottery-production center, or a commercial entrepôt (warehouse or depot for goods to be exported). None of these theories adequately addresses the material remains of the site and its cemetery, and none adequately refutes the view that the site should be understood in terms of its relationship to the scrolls.