During my class with James VanderKam this past Summer, “Introduction to Early Judaism,” I was reading the Rule of the Community (1QS) from the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) and the concept of communal sharing of goods struck me. There seemed to be an interesting parallel with Qumran (if that’s truly where the DSS were written) and the Jesus-following community in the early chapters of Acts. I asked Dr. VanderKam if any scholars had examined the relationship. He informed me of some other interesting links, not least of which is the fact that they both admitted new members to the community at the culmination of the Festival of Weeks (AKA Pentecost) and pointed me to two brief suggestions that he had made in print, which are more teasers for further research than actual studies but it seems appropriate to share them here. As an Anabaptist, thinking about connections and contrasts between the Qumran community and the radical community of the early church sounds like something worth exploring!

From his chapter, “Sinai Revisited,” for Biblical Interpretation at Qumran (2005), edited by Matthias Henze (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature):

Before concluding, we should note that the Qumran community was not the only one in ancient Judaism that allowed its self-image to be shaped by Israel at Mount Sinai. In the New Testament the earliest Jerusalem church, as pictured in Acts exhibits a number of the same traits. That community was constituted in a new way at the Festival of Pentecost, the Greek term for the Festival of Weeks. On that day many new members were welcomed into the fellowship. Those first followers of Jesus also established a unity, an ideal society in which property was held in common, meals were eaten together, and prayers were offered in community. It too was a community that received revelation in this state in a dramatic divine manifestation. As a matter of fact, an entire series of traits in the Pentecost story (such as the tongues of fire, revelation in the languages of the world) also have their origin in reflection on the Sinai event, an event that was central in the Hebrew Bible and continued to exercise influence for many centuries. (pg. 60)

In addition, this following quote is from his essay, “Covenant and Pentecost,” which appeared in Calvin Theological Journal (Volume 37.2, Nov 2002, 239-254):

Another aspect of the story in Acts 2–the nature of the community formed by the first Christians–may also be paralleled by Jewish understandings of the events at Sinai. As we have seen, the Bible itself gave rise to the idea of imagining the situation as ideal when Israel encamped at Mt. Sinai and received the Torah. The Qumran community embodied those ideal features in its structure, and the church of Acts 2-4 seems to have done the same. They, too, had all things in common and lived a life characterized by prayer and obedience to the apostles’ teaching, just as Israel had been unified and receptive to the revelation at the mountain. (pg. 252)

The latter essay is more focused on the Acts community (cf. 246-254), while the majority of the former article is in regards to the community at Qumran. This connection between the earliest church and the DSS community is something I hope to develop further in the future. I find it interesting in thinking about the ideals with which these two Jewish communities began. Since the majority of the DSS are most likely written in the first century BCE, and thus prior to Jesus and the early church, was the early church familiar with the ideas of the DSS group or other groups like them? The parallels are inviting. For another specific example, 1QS 6:25 addresses those who are deceitful about property: “If one of them has lied deliberately in matters of property, he shall be excluded from the pure Meal of the Congregation for one year and shall do penance with respect to one quarter of his food” (Vermès translation). And we are reminded of the admittedly more serious fate of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11.

Yet there are obvious contrasts. The Community Rule outlines a very defined sense of ranking among its members, especially regarding its communal meal. Though it is not the same kind of ranking, it is division nonetheless that concerns Paul about the Corinthian practices of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:17-22; 10:17). 1QS also has a strict view of insiders and outsiders. This is one of the strongest issues with which the early church wrestled, particularly in Acts 15. That chapter, of course, comes down on the significantly more liberal side of things by allowing Gentiles into the community, only requiring of them four “essentials” of the Law: “that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication” (15:29). Perhaps it is this more liberal side of the early church that leads to the abandonment of the early ideals of community (since there isn’t much mention of sharing of goods elsewhere in the NT). When the community busts open its doors to hoards of all kinds of people, keeping a strict and committed community life becomes difficult.

The questions nevertheless remain for the nature of the early church in Acts: Did they have some awareness of the DSS community? Did its leaders have some kind of “strategy” or “plan” about how to organize this new community based on a knowledge of other communities, groups, and sects? If they were aware of the DSS community or at least the kinds of views held at the DSS community, it would appear that they adapted this for the needs of the early church and some of the much different ideas of Jesus. So much to think about.