Glory, judgement and the Divine in 4Qinstruction and the gospel of John: a comparative analysis

Woods, Nicholas Lewis (2024). Glory, judgement and the Divine in 4Qinstruction and the gospel of John: a comparative analysis. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

Within the newly discovered data from Qumran Cave IV is the largest and subsistent of the Qumran wisdom texts which was originally designated Musar le Mevin and is known today as 4QInstruction. In this thesis, we aim to show that when 4QInstruction is brought into dialogue with the Gospel of John fresh insights, mutual illumination, and a better understanding from text to text takes place in both directions in ways previously unexplored.

This study aims to explore three themes and their texts that are prominent in both texts: glory, judgment, and the divine plan. With the key evidence provided by these texts, we aim to demonstrate the relationship of these two texts to each other by the themes that they promote in both directions of glory, judgment, and the divine plan.

In this study we articulate two significant research questions: First, “what do the texts of 4QInstruction and the Gospel of John have to say that glory, judgment, and the divine plan?” The second question is: “when 4QInstruction and the Gospel of John are set side by side, how do they mutually illumine each other’s thought worlds in the areas of glory, judgment, and the divine plan?”
The contribution of this thesis aims to demonstrate the mutual illumination we anticipate that the textual evidence will bring forth in the thought worlds of 4QInstruction and the Gospel of John that a pattern of conceptual dissimilarity giving birth to the wider implications between the two texts and issues the need for a continual search for new evidence for a broader contextual background to the Gospel of John in the milieu of Second Temple Judaism.

In addition, the mutual illumination which we anticipate will be brought forth is that what each author’s intends or assumes about salvation is the critical dividing factor in understanding in both directions between 4QInstruction and the Gospel of John. His intentions about salvation functions as the Johannine author’s building block to construct his theological understandings of glory, judgment, and the divine plan in the cases we present, while the author of 4QInstr. appeals to one’s predetermined destiny within the fufillment of divine plan to build his case.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):