Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §14.8
were unclean should be excluded from their assembly. The matter is referred to
several times in the extant DSS and was obviously crucial for them. 280 Particularly
specified is anyone 'paralysed in his feet or hands, or lame (psh), or blind
('wr), or deaf, or dumb, or smitten in his flesh with a visible blemish (mwm)\
Such are to be excluded because the angels of holiness are present in the congregation
(lQ28a [lQSa] 2.3-10). The list evidently echoes Lev. 21.17-24, the list
of categories excluded from the priesthood, 281 and reminds us that Qumran saw
itself as a priestly or cultic community. 282 The point of interest here is that Luke
has preserved a tradition where Jesus stresses the importance of hosts inviting to
their meals 'the poor, the maimed (anapeirous), the lame (chölous), and the blind
(typhlous)' (Luke 14.13, 21). In context the implication is that such behaviour
would be surprising to contemporary etiquette and quite possibly offensive to
certain religious sensibilities. In fact, the closeness of Luke's terminology to that
used at Qumran 283 suggests quite strongly that Jesus gave his exhortation with
Qumran in view. 284 At any rate, the tradition which came down to Luke appears
to have been formulated with that contrast in mind. Either way, Jesus was remembered
as deliberately posing his vision of open table-fellowship in direct antithesis
to the ideal practised at Qumran. 285
Here then is a further point of clear distinctiveness distinguishing the dis-
280. lQ28a [lQSa] 2.3-10; 1QM 7.4-6; 4QCD b (cited by J. T. Milik, Ten Years of Discovery
in the Wilderness of Judaea [SBT 26; London: SCM, 1959] 114); 11QT 45.12-14.
281. Say to Aaron, 'None of your descendants throughout their generations who has a
blemish (mwm) may approach to offer the bread of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall
draw near, a man blind ('wr) or lame (psh), ... or a man who has an injured foot or an injured
hand . . .' (Lev. 21.17-21).
282. See further above, chapter 13 n. 124.
283. The Greek chölos is the unvarying LXX translation for the Hebrew psh, and typhlos
likewise of 'wr. Anapeiros is a variant form of anaperos, which denotes physical disability of an
unspecified kind. Whoever put Luke 14 into its present form, therefore, may well have intended
anapeiros to serve as an appropriate equivalent to hgr, 'crippled, maimed' (1QM 7.4; 4QCD b ),
or possibly mwm, 'blemish' (Lev. 21.17-18; lQ28a/lQSa2.5; 1QM7.4), since physical impairment
is clearly in view in the DSS texts at least. See further my 'Jesus, Table-Fellowship, and
Qumran' 265-67.
284. Other possible allusions to Essene self-understanding and practice are the reference
to 'the sons of light' in Luke 16.8 (Flusser, Jesus 94) and the Sabbath dispute referred to in
n. 110 above (Charlesworth, Jesus 65-67); see also above, n. 194, and the review of the discussion
of possible points of contact between Jesus and the Dead Seas Scrolls by J. H.
Charlesworth, 'The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historical Jesus', in Charlesworth, ed., Jesus and
the Dead Sea Scrolls 1-74; W. O. McCready, 'The Historical Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls',
in Arnal and Desjardins, eds., Whose Historical Jesus? 190-211; H. Lichtenberger, 'Jesus and
the Dead Sea Scrolls', in Charlesworth and Johns, eds., Hillel and Jesus 389-96.
285. 'In the Judaism of that day one can hardly imagine a more obvious contrast to the
table-fellowship of Jesus' (Becker, Jesus 161).
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