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Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, Cosponsored by the University of Vienna, New York University, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Israel Museum
The Sixteenth Orion Symposium celebrated seventy years of Dead Sea Scrolls research under the theme, “Clear a path in the wilderness!” (Isaiah 40:3). Papers use the wilderness rubric to address the self-identification of the Qumran group; dimensions of religious experience reflected in the Dead Sea writings; biblical interpretation as shaper and conveyor of that experience; the significance of the Qumran texts for critical biblical scholarship; points of contact with the early Jesus movement; and new developments in understanding the archaeology of the Qumran caves. The volume both honors past insights and charts new paths for the future of Qumran studies.
Why do questions of purity play a minor role in the New Testament when the majority of the texts are of Jewish origin and character? To answer this question, the present study analyses the forming of identity as a central function to purity in ancient Jewish sources. Using the theory of social identity according to Henri Taijfel and John Turner, Milena Hasselmann examined the importance of purity texts in the New Testament and in other ancient Jewish sources for the construction of social identity. On a broad basis of sources and with the help of Hebrew-language literature, which is little received in the German and English-language scientific context, it becomes a meaningful picture that places the purity texts of the New Testament in its wider environment. In doing so, she shows that the New Testament's handling of questions of purity is to be seen in continuity rather than discontinuity with other ancient traditions.

Warum nehmen Reinheitsfragen einen verhältnismäßig geringen Stellenwert im Neuen Testament ein, wenn die Texte mehrheitlich jüdischen Ursprungs und jüdischer Prägung sind? Dieser Frage geht die vorliegende Studie nach und setzt zu ihrer Beantwortung bei einer zentralen Funktion, die Reinheit in anderen antiken jüdischen Quellen zukommt, ein: Reinheitsbestimmungen sind identitätsstiftend. Mit der Theorie der Sozialen Identität nach Henri Tajfel und John Turner untersucht Milena Hasselmann, welche Bedeutung Reinheitstexte im Neuen Testament und in anderen antikjüdischen Quellen für die Konstruktion sozialer Identität haben. Auf einer breiten Quellenbasis und unter Hinzuziehung hebräischsprachiger Literatur, die im deutsch- und englischsprachigem Wissenschaftskontext wenig rezipiert wird, entwirft sie ein aussagekräftiges Bild, das die Reinheitstexte des Neuen Testament in dessen weitere Umwelt einordnet. Sie zeigt damit, dass der neutestamentliche Umgang mit Reinheitsfragen in Kontinuität zu anderen antiken Traditionen zu sehen ist.
Religion, Ethnicity, and the Shaping of Jesus-Oriented Jewishness in the Fourth Gospel
In John within Judaism, Wally V. Cirafesi offers a reading of the Gospel of John as an expression of the fluid and flexible nature of Jewish identity in Greco-Roman antiquity. While many have noted John’s general Jewishness, few have given it a seat at the ideologically congested table of ancient Jewish practice and belief.
By interrogating the concept of “Judaism” in relation to the complex categories of “religion” and “ethnicity,” Cirafesi argues that John negotiates Jewishness using strategies of ethnic identity formation paralleled in other Jewish sources from the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods. In this process of negotiation, including its use of “high christology” and critique of Ioudaioi, John coalesces with other expressions of ancient Jewish identity and, thus, can be read “within Judaism.”
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Religious Polemics and Encounters in Late Antiquity: Boundaries, Conversions, and Persuasion explores the intricate identity formation and negotiations of early encounters of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). It explores the ever-pressing challenges arising from polemical inter-religious encounters by analyzing the dynamics of apologetic debate, the negotiation and formation of boundaries of belonging, and the argumentative thrust for persuasion and conversion, as well as the outcomes of these various encounters, including the articulation of novel ideas. The Late Antique authors studied in the present volume represent a variety of voices from North Africa, passing through Rome, to Palestine. Together, these voices of the past offer invaluable insight to shape the present times, in hope for a better future.
Over the course of his career, Dale Allison has enriched our understanding of Jewish and Christian hopes about the end of history, advanced nuanced readings of ancient texts in light of their scriptural and cultural conversation partners, and deepened our knowledge of the history of biblical interpretation throughout the ages. In all of these ways, he has sought, in the words of T.S. Eliot, “to recover what has been lost.”

In “To Recover What Has Been Lost”: Essays on Eschatology, Intertextuality, and Reception History in Honor of Dale C. Allison Jr., leading biblical scholars and historians offer ground-breaking studies on Jewish and Christian eschatology, intertextuality, and reception history—three areas particularly evident in Allison’s scholarship. These essays reconstruct the past, advance fresh readings, and reclaim overlooked exegetical insights. In so doing, they too recover what has been lost.
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This work consists of an introduction, transcription, translation, and commentary to the Greek translation of Isaiah in the Codex Sinaiticus. It comments on the Greek language in its context, especially on how the Greek language is stretched beyond its normal range of function. It addresses the peculiarities of Codex Sinaiticus, including its history, scribes, divisions, and orthography. In line with the aims of the Brill Septuagint Commentary Series, it mainly discusses not how the text was produced, but how it was read.
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Metaphor and the Portrayal of the Cause(s) of Sin and Evil in the Gospel of Matthew traces the range and significance of metaphors used in Matthew for the origin and sin and evil and their congruence with key texts of the Second Temple milieu.

While traditional theology has often sought to pinpoint a single cause of sin and evil, Matthew’s use of a spectrum of metaphors undermines theologically reductionist approaches and opens up a rich range of ways for conceiving of and talking about the cause of sin and evil. Ultimately, the use of metaphor (necessary to discussions of sin) destabilizes foundationalist theologies of sin, and any theology of sin must grapple with the inherently tensive nature of metaphorical language.
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The Fourth Gospel and the Manufacture of Minds in Ancient Historiography, Biography, Romance, and Drama is the first book-length study of genre and character cognition in the Gospel of John. Informed by traditions of ancient literary criticism and the emerging discipline of cognitive narratology, Tyler Smith argues that narrative genres have generalizable patterns for representing cognitive material and that this has profound implications for how readers make sense of cognitive content woven into the narratives they encounter. After investigating conventions for representing cognition in ancient historiography, biography, romance, and drama, Smith offers an original account of how these conventions illuminate the Johannine narrative’s enigmatic cognitive dimension, a rich tapestry of love and hate, belief and disbelief, recognition and misrecognition, understanding and misunderstanding, knowledge, ignorance, desire, and motivation.
In Paul and Scripture, an international group of scholars discuss a range of topics related to the Apostle Paul and his relationship(s) with Jewish Scripture. The essays represent a broad spectrum of viewpoints, with some devoted to methodological issues, others to general patterns in Paul’s uses of Scripture, and still others to specific letters or passages within the traditional Pauline canon (inclusive of the disputed letters). The end result is an overview of the various ways in which Paul the Apostle weaves into his writings the authority, content, and even wording of Jewish Scriptures.
Ethnic Labeling in the Gospel of John
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In Jesus the Samaritan: Ethnic Labeling in the Gospel of John, Stewart Penwell examines how ethnic labels function in the Gospel of John. After a review of the discourse history between “the Jews” and “the Samaritans,” the dual ethnic labeling in John 4:9 and 8:48 are examined and, in each instance, members from “the Jews” and “the Samaritans” label Jesus as a member of each other’s group for deviating from what were deemed acceptable practices as a member of “the Jews.” The intra-textual links between John 4 and 8 reveal that the function of Jesus’s dual ethnic labeling is to establish a new pattern of practices and categories for the “children of God” (1:12; 11:52) who are a trans-ethnic group united in fictive kinship and embedded within the Judean ethnic group’s culture and traditions.