New Covenant and New Scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls

What is it about?

Chapter 4 of Levi S. Baker, Why a New Testament? Covenant as an Impetus for New Scripture in Early Christianity, Texts and Editions for New Testament Study 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2025). Chapter 4 examines a potential parallel to early Christianity. The DSS community believed that God had inaugurated Jeremiah’s promised new covenant and had granted them new revelation. This community also wrote new texts, and chapter 4 explores these community compositions’ potential scriptural status and their relationship to this new covenant. In summation, the evidence suggests that the community received some of their own texts as the revealed scriptures of the new covenant.

Featured Image

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Chapter 4 investigates a potential parallel to early Christianity. In all 2T Judaism, only one other community is known to have made Jeremiah’s promise of a new covenant central to its self-understanding, and this community produced new documents. After a technical introduction deals with definitions, assumptions, and procedures for identifying both community compositions and scripture, the community’s new covenant identity is briefly described. Chief among the Qumran covenanters’ central convictions were the beliefs that God had renewed his covenant with them and had given them new revelation (CD I, 4–8; III, 12–17). Motivated by a commitment to the covenant, and convinced that they had received new revelation, this community produced numerous texts. The chief purpose in chapter 4 is to consider these community compositions’ potential scriptural status and their relationship to this covenant. Although only a handful of representative texts are considered and the fragmented nature of the textual and material evidence renders certitude impossible, the evidence strongly suggests that the community received some of their own texts as the revealed scriptures of the new covenant.