few days ago I wrote about my meeting with Mt 11:2-6 during a sermon. Soon after, I came across this post , dedicated to the same Gospel passage, blog "The Sacred Page" of three professors American Catholics. The posts and 'was written by Michael Barber, a professor of theology, Scripture and Catholic Thought at the university' Catholic 'John Paul the Great " San Diego.
Very properly, the passage from Matthew Barber compares with 4Q521, one of many Hebrew fragments found in the fourth Qumran cave. The text, very incomplete, contains a step which is very popular, which is sometimes also indicated by the title of "Messianic Apocalypse". It is a prophecy about the events that characterize the advent of the Messiah as the great and 'that the list of those miracles and Messianic' almost equal to what we read in Matthew 11. Obviously, this' is not random but due to the fact that both texts combined in the same way two steps of the prophet Isaiah, in Chapters 35 and 61. A direct dependency seems difficult, but certainly you can 'say that this kind of description of the Messiah and of his activities 'circulated in Jewish circles at the time of Jesus'
That leaves me a bit 'perplexed' so that Barber draws from these observations: even scholars 'skeptics should admit that the possibility' of 'authenticity' of these verses and gesuana 'high. How 4Q521 strengthen this attribution to Jesus' historic? Barber cites the famous comment by Matthew Davies and Allison as an example of a skeptical approach. I wanted to take a look at the argument of Davies and Allison, 'cause in fact, their commentary and' truly remarkable (and 'was in the race until the last to be chosen as a basic text for my spring course).
Davies and Allison, to the pages listed by Barber, in fact, support the authenticity 'of Jesus' words', but there are two observations to make. First, the two do not ever mentioning 4Q521 (and the commentary 'of 1988 and I have the impression - but I have not checked - that the fragment had not yet been published at the time). Second, one of the reasons why Davies and Allison to think that the words of Matthew 11 are derived from Jesus 'historical' the very fact that "strangely" Jesus 'chooses to describe the Messiah using Isaiah 35 +61 ("' cause no chosen a more prophecy 'Moses'?). Davies and Allison have used here the criterion of discontinuity '(anything can' come from Jesus 'history only when it can not' have been produced from the Jewish community or 'early Christian), but Barber and not' noticed that the test was able to run only when nothing was known of 4Q521! The Qumran fragment, far from supporting the historicity 'of Mt 11:2-6, and' very strong evidence against it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment