. Commentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins. Joseph A. Fitzmyer

 The Messiah Code, June 5, 2010

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This review is from: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls & Related Literature) (Paperback)

I was expecting too much from the new chapter on Qumran and Messianism. Fitzmyer analyzes the various fragments pertaining to messiahs in a coldly academic atmosphere. He concludes, considering the changing singular and plural, past and future connotations the texts expose, that thought must have evolved within the community. But the relation with Christian origins does not come out. 
What does Fitzmyer really think happened? The connection between the DSS and early Christianity will necessarily be Messiah-mediated. Does he have personal ideas or feelings while singing under the shower? Even the very stern Donald Redford finally indulged in a bit of subjectivism, a failure towards which he had always shown utmost distrust. And by doing so, presenting even excuses to the reader, he gave us the most eloquent and inspired refutation of Egyptian monotheism that admirers set in the hands of Akhenaton in El Amarna. What are Fitzmyer's deep convictions? Do the double messiah schemes represent community clans? The OT relates in many of its stories an opposition between the Jerusalem clergy and the Northern Highland clergy dedicated to the same Abraham inspired party. How did the Messianic community of Qumran express its internal dissents? 
If an eminent scholar such as Fitzmyer only has question marks, we can seriously consider that the true relation between Scrolls and Gospels will finally come out, not from the academy, but from a layman as Ernest Renan predicted over a century ago.

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