Sacred Texts and Paradigmatic Revolutions: The Hermeneutical Worlds of the Qumran Sectarian Manuscripts and the Letter to the Romans

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This volume applies a rhetorical-discourse method to the Yahadic manuscripts and Romans to show how community leaders uniquely determined specific hermeneutical rules, axioms, and paradigms for their communities. Stark examines the Yahadic texts using Thomas Kuhn's arguments about scientific paradigms and their shifts as a framework for considering the patterns through which Paul and the Yahad interpret their scriptures. Stark outlines the three ways in which the Teacher determined the perspective from which the Yahad approached its scriptures. Following this, he analyses the Romans and the three thematic ways that Jesus determined the perspective from which Paul approached his scriptures. Despite strong similarities between them, the paradigms under which the Yahad and Paul operated moved them to fundamentally different understanding of the kinds of faithfulness they should exhibit towards those whom they received as Yahweh's appointed agents. The Yahad understood faithfulness to the Teacher within the context of Torah, but Paul understood the Torah within the context of Abraham-style faithfulness to Jesus.

Reviews

The author presents a well-researched work. The greatest strength of the book lies in the way Stark frames his study through an extensive methodological discussion in chapter one. -- Kengo Akiyama, University of Edinburgh, UK * The Expository Times *

Author Bio

J. David Stark is an adjunct online professor of Judeo-Christian Studies. He has written on the topic of Pauls relationship to rewritten biblical literature: Rewriting Prophets in the Corinthian Correspondence: A Window on Pauls Hermeneutic Bulletin for Biblical Research 22, no. 2 (2012), pp. 22549.