John2 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 16, 2021 5:52 pm
Those are fine objections and I will bear them in mind. Regarding your number two above, do you think the same is true for Paul re: Rom. 13?
2. Implying that the powers that be always reward the good and punish the bad makes little absolute sense in any time period, but it makes the most relative sense after 70 in the context of discouraging the revolutionary spirit.
Yes, absolutely. My current view is that Romans 13.1-7 is a post 70 interpolation. The argument has been made a number of times before, the most accessible treatment probably being that by William O. Walker on pages 221-231
Interpolations in the Pauline Letters.
For me the need to discourage "the revolutionary spirit" makes more sense in a pre-70 CE context (like in Rom. 13), given that that was when revolutionaries were the most active.
The extreme nature of the two passages, Romans 13.1-7 and 1 Peter 2.13-17, with not even a hint of a notion that the authorities can make mistakes and commit injustices, seems to me to be far more likely if
a particular event is in mind, an event so notable that it overrides the normal impulse (found virtually everywhere else in Christian discussions of this same topic) to make allowances for the authorities being the enemy sometimes. It makes more sense to me as an "I told you so" moment (in which the lesson learned was severe enough not to coddle much possibility of retort), not as a warning in advance (in which the arguments
for revolution are still strong enough to attract many to the cause, thus necessitating a more evenhanded rebuttal).
But I did not come to this understanding overnight. It took time for it to click into place, so I can certainly understand not being swayed by it, at least not immediately.
I would need to see some specific examples, but though I do think Mark is a post-70 CE writing, according to Papias it is based on the preaching of Peter, so for me any such correspondences between the DSS and Mark would similarly be relevant to a pre-70 CE context.
Well, the point is that Christianity did not need to be in direct contact with the Qumran scrolls themselves; rather, Christianity was rooted in those same ideas, and lots of early texts, both those predating and those postdating 70, bear correspondences to the Qumran materials. The office of overseer, for example, makes less sense as an innovation fresh from the pages of 1 Peter than as an established convention in the movement, one with early roots and whose description will naturally resemble the similar office at Qumran because the origins of the two offices are similar.