Sacred Texts and Paradigmatic Revolutions
Subtitle: The Hermeneutical Worlds of the Qumran Sectarian Manuscripts and the Letter to the Romans
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 239
ISBN-13: 9780567271587
Subjects: Bible, commentaries, n. t. romans; Bible, hermeneutics; Dead sea scrolls; Hermeneutics; Church history, primitive and early church, ca. 30-600
Description: 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.