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The Epistle of Barnabas and the Dead Sea Scrolls: some observations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
The discovery of the Qumran texts, as is well known, has produced a whole spate of books and articles many of which deal inter alia with affinities between the doctrinal formularies of the sect and the NT and between its organisation and practice and that of the Apostolic Church in Jerusalem. However, in all this literature, which has now reached unmanageable proportions, it would seem that insufficient attention has been paid to affinities between the texts and Christian post- Apostolic literature. The purpose of this article is to examine the theology of the epistolary tract known as the Epistle of Barnabas in the light of the Qumran scrolls.
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1960
References
page 45 note 1 The only writer known to me who has discussed this question is Audet, J. P., O.P., ‘Affinités littéraires et doctrinales du Manuel de Discipline’, Revue biblique (1952) pp. 219–238Google Scholar; (1943) pp. 41–82. He has expanded his views in his important study, La Didaché: Instructions des Apδtres (Paris, 1958).Google Scholar
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page 46 note 2 Succa 21b; Abod. Sar. 19b.
page 46 note 3 Mishna Rosh Hash iii.8. In the first two centuries A.D. Amalek, for the Jews, was the eternal enemy. Cf. Justin Dial. xlix.
page 46 note 4 cf. Berachoth 57b.
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page 47 note 4 I have used Gaster's translations.
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page 57 note 1 There appears to have been some connexion between the beliefs of the sect and those of the Jerusalem Temple, where the Vidui originated. See further Kuhn, K. G. in The Scrolls and the N.T., ed. Stendahl, K. (1958), p. 69.Google Scholar
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page 59 note 1 Yadin, Y., The Message of the Scrolls, p. 131Google Scholar, asserts that members of the sect lived in the diaspora on the basis of the reference in the War Scroll to the ‘wilderness of the peoples’. This, however, is quite uncertain.