Philo, Qumran and the Gospel of John

As the recent posts on this blog has suggested, the way Philo may be of help in New Testament historical studies is far from completely explored. My earlier posting suggested a thorough comparison of words, a comparison that also includes common words of the LXX, and I also suggested that such word list may at least be used to enhance further thematic studies.

In my doctoral dissertation, now two years ago, I used a comparative method much similar to the one employed by the editor of this blog, Torrey Seland, a comparison in social history and by using social scientific models and methods.

In my comparison I focused on how Philo, Qumran and the Gospel of John may be compared when it comes to temple relationship and social boundaries. My starting point was the characterisation of the Johannine community and Johannine Christians as a sect, i.e. not Gnostic, but in the meaning of being isolated in some way. To see the addressees of the gospels as small isolated groups has been attacked several times, the last important one is perhaps Bauckham (ed). "The Gospels for all Christians." (1998). Although this perspective has its merits, I do not agree when it comes to the Gospel of John. On the other hand, I do not believe that John was sectarian.

To demonstrate this thesis, I combined J.L. Martyn’s thesis that the Gospel may be read on different levels and that an expulsion from the local gathering in the town or village of Johannine Christians was responsible for a crisis in the community (cf. the aposunagogos-places in 9:22; 12:42; 16:2), with Brown’s thesis that the group behind the Gospel had not broken communion, koinonia, with other Christian groups. I also added the idea of a close connection with its traditional (Jewish) surroundings and customs, and, naturally, the particular experiences with the belief that Jesus from Nazareth was the Messiah. To maintain the Martyn-Brown hypothesis does not necessarily mean that the community behind John was sectarian or isolated, and Philo may help us to see that.

Compared to Philo’s rejection of the Temple of Jerusalem and his acceptance of it at the same time, I argued that John’s accusations against the Temple as institution (not the buildings, they were gone) in temple-texts like John 2:13-22 and John 4:16-26, is not particularly schismatic and therefore not sectarian.

Philo, motivated by his philosophical ideas and much in accordance with the Prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible (LXX), in fact attacks and rejects the Jerusalem Temple in a much more severe way than the Johannine Christians or any Christian in the New Testament. On the other side, Philo clearly defends the temple and the ordinances of the Law, cf. Migr. 86-93. This makes one wonder what the Johannine Christians would have done if the Temple had not been destructed by the Romans, but the question is too hypothetic.

By comparing John, Philo and core Qumran writings (i.e. the writings that clearly belonged to the Yahad) I found that the milieus behind these writings may be compared to a sociological model developed in recent years in the sociology of (new) religions, Stark and Bainbridge’s theory of two different ways of relationship of a religious group to the parent body: the sect and the cult ("The Future of Religon", 1985). John clearly becomes the cult, Philo represent the parent body, while Qumran represents the sect. This solution is also evident when it comes to their social boundaries.

An edited version of the dissertation has now been accepted to be published on E.J. Brill Supplements to Novum Testamentum by the title: "Johannine Sectarianism in Perspective: A Sociological, Historical and Comparative Analysis of Temple and Social Relationships in the Gospel of John, Philo, and Qumran".