Paul and 4QMMT: works, faith, and justification

Matthew Thiessen says that to understand the historical Paul we must relocate him in the world of first century Judaism, and here’s a book that does just that: Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich, and Jason Maston, eds. Reading Romans in Context: Paul and Second Temple Judaism (2015). Twenty passages in Romans are read alongside a range of texts from the intertestamental period, the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Qumran, Josephus, and Philo. Here’s an example.

Works of the Law at Qumran

In chapter four, Jason Maston and Aaron Sherwood ask what light a passage in the reconstructed Qumran text 4QMMT (4Q394-4Q399) sheds on what Paul has to say about works of the Law and justification. The text consists of a calendar, interpretive comments on a number of purity laws, and an exhortation to obedience, which concludes:

Now, we have written to you some of the works of the Law, those which we determined would be beneficial for you and your people, because we have seen that you possess insight and knowledge of the Law. Understand all these things and beseech Him to set your counsel straight and so keep you away from evil thoughts and the counsel of Belial. Then you shall rejoice at the end time when you find the essence of our words to be true. And it will be reckoned to you as righteousness, in that you have done what is right and good before Him, to your own benefit and to that of Israel. (4Q398 f14_17ii:2-8)

• According to Maston and Sherwood, this is the only ancient Jewish text outside the Pauline corpus that uses the phrase “works of the Law,” though I did find this: “When he has passed a full year in the Yahad, the general membership shall inquire into the details of his understanding and works of the Law” (1QS 6:18); and this: “…who oversees the Yahad [shall instruct him] in [the works] of the law” (4Q265 f4ii:6).
• The dominant view appears to be that the document was sent from Qumran to the temple priesthood in Jerusalem around 150 BC to address concerns over the maintenance of ritual purity in the Hasmonean period. Others have argued that it was an internal or “intramural” letter, or one written to the Qumran community from outside.
• The phrase “works of the Law” refers to all the commandments, but the authors are interested in a specific subset of highly technical regulations: “some of the works of the Law” (4Q398 f14_17ii:3; cf. 4Q394 f3_7i:4-6).

• Belial is the satanic power behind pagan hostility towards Israel.
• The “end time” or “last days” will come “when those of Israel shall return to the L[aw of Moses with all their heart] and will never turn aw[ay] again. But the wicked will incr[ease in] wicked[ness]” (4Q398 f11_13:4-5).
• When this happens, it will be reckoned to an individual recipient of the document as righteousness, he will be justified or vindicated, if he has adhered to the instructions. Maston and Sherwood connect this with the justificationboth of Abraham (Gen. 15:6) and of the impetuous Phinehas.

It was reckoned to Phineas as righteousness

At Shittim, the people of Israel began to intermarry with the Moabites and worship their gods, and “the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel” (Num. 25:3). When a man brought a Midianite woman into the congregation, Phinehas killed both of them, and the plague that was ravaging the people was halted (25:6-9). He is commended because “he was zealous (ezēlōsen) for his God and made atonement (exilasato) for the sons of Israel’” (Num. 25:10-13 LXX). We have a further comment on the incident in the Psalms:

Phinehas stood and made atonement (exilasato), and the breach abated. And it was reckoned to him as righteousness to generation and generation forever. (Ps. 105:28-31 LXX)

Intermarriage was also a matter of concern for the authors of the Qumran document: “[But y]ou know that some of the priests and the [people are intermarrying.] [They are] uniting and defilin[g the hol]y seed [as well as] their [own] with forbidden marriage partners” (4Q396 f1_2iv:9-11).

At a later stage, when Israel is confronted with much more powerful enemies, it is not violent action but faithful suffering which has this sort of purifying and atoning effect. So we have this comment on the significance of the suffering of the Maccabean martyrs under the tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes:

And these who have been divinely sanctified are honored not only with this honor, but also in that, thanks to them, our enemies did not prevail over our nation; the tyrant was punished, and the homeland was purified, since they became, as it were, a ransom for the sin of the nation. And through the blood of those pious people and the propitiatory (hilastēriou) of their death, divine Providence preserved Israel, though before it had been afflicted. (4 Macc. 17:20-22)

I presume that this is an important part of how we get from the righteousness of the murderous Phinehas to the righteousness of the murdered Jesus and his persecuted followers.

The narrative logic of justification in Paul

So when we get to Paul, the narrative logic of justification is not very different to that of these antecedent episodes. The Jews face a crisis: the holy seed is being corrupted by intermarriage, or the Seleucids are bent on eradicating Jewish religion, or the temple has been desecrated, or the prospect of a devastating war looms on the apocalyptic horizon. Under such circumstances, radical acts of covenant loyalty may have a transformative, purifying, redemptive effect for the nation, and the person who acts in this way is commended: it will be counted to him or her as righteousness.

But Paul breaks from tradition in a key respect: the present crisis will entail a massive remaking of the political-religious order of the ancient world for which the old acts of covenant loyalty will prove ineffectual. The prospect of the annexation of the nations of the Greek-Roman world by the God of Israel is changing the rules of the game. A very different kind of covenant loyalty is demanded.

• No Jews will be justified by “works of the Law”; the righteousness of God has been made apparent by other means (Rom. 3:20-21).
• A person is “justified by faith apart from works of the Law” (Rom. 3:28).
• Jewish believers in the messiah Jesus are justified by faith, not by “works of the Law” (Gal. 2:15-16).
• Gentile believers in Galatia received the Spirit not by “works of the Law” but by “hearing with faith” (Gal. 3:2-5).
• Those “who rely on works of the Law are under a curse,” because in the present eschatological crisis of judgment against Israel the “righteous shall live by faith” (Gal. 3:10-11).
• Paul also invokes king David as an example of a person whose “lawless deeds are forgiven” and whose “faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5-8).

The more relevant antecedent, in Paul’s view, therefore, is the justification of Abraham, who was counted righteous precisely because he had faith in then promise of a radically different future. This is the passage that Maston and Sherwood read alongside the 4QMMT text, to good effect:

And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. (Rom. 4:5-9)

But then the authors ask: “Why does Paul reject works of the law as an acceptable means to righteousness?” (56). They give two reasons. First, he rejects the doing of Torah as a “means to attaining righteousness.” Secondly, he thinks that “God has worked through his Son to effect justification for his people” (57).

That strikes me as a very weak explanation.

Justification and eschatology

The critical detail that Maston and Sherwood overlook in the Qumran statement is the reference to the “end time” or “last of days,” when the division in Israel between the righteous and the wicked generated by the presence of Belial would be resolved. It more or less coincides with the resolution described in Daniel:

And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. (Dan. 12:1-3)

Scholarship, both critical and conservative, is persistently blind to the narrative of eschatological disruption that frames and makes sense of so much of Jewish—including Jewish-Christian—thought in this period.

It is the more surprising in this case because Maston and Sherwood list N. T. Wright’s article on 4QMMT and Paul in their bibliography. Wright states that:

The context within which the key line C31 may best be understood is explicitly covenantal and eschatological. The writer has in mind a sequence of historical events, promised in advance in scripture, leading to a foretold climax (hence ‘eschatological’ in that sense), through which the covenant between God and Israel was now being renewed. ‘Justification’ and ‘works’ form part of this scheme of thought.1

For Wright the eschatological fulfilment in view, both in 4QMMT and in Paul, is the final return from exile, the restoration of God’s people. So to be justified is to bear the legitimising “boundary markers” of membership in that part of Israel which will experience eschatological renewal.

But the ‘reckoning of righteousness’ in this text is not about how someone comes to be a member of the sect. It is the recognition, the indication, that one is already a member. It is what marks someone out as having already made the transition from outsider to insider, from (in the sect’s eyes) renegade Jew to member of the eschatological people.2

That’s all to the point, broadly speaking, and we can trace the thought through to Paul’s hope that one outcome of the crisis would be the salvation of “all Israel” (Rom. 11:26-27).

But Paul’s eschatological vision is actually focused elsewhere, and its fulfilment is not ultimately dependant on some final return-from-exile for Israel. The decisive outcome will be the confession of Jesus as Lord by the nations, the rule of Jesus over the nations, and the worship of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ by the nations.

Presumably, he imagined that the churches would have a continuing priestly function in the new political-religious order, ideally with “all Israel” having been grafted back into the community of fulfilment.

But in the meantime, I would argue that it is not membership of the community that is principally at issue when Paul speaks about justification but this conviction, inspired by the Spirit of prophecy, concerning the new political-religious order—the hope that out of the present crisis would come the rule of Israel’s messiah over the nations:

And again Isaiah says, There will be the root of Jesse and the one arising to rule the nations, in him the nations shall hope. May the God of this hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing in order that you may abound in the hope in power of the Holy Spirit. (Rom. 15:12-13*)

• 1

  N. T. Wright, 4QMMT and Paul: Justification, ‘Works,’ and Eschatology.” In History and Exegesis: New Testament Essays in Honor of Dr E. Earle Ellis for His 80th Birthday, ed. Aang-Won Son (2006), 104-132, here page 112.

• 2

  Wright, “4QMMT and Paul,” 117.