“... In our review of Second Temple Jewish literature preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have discovered several things that may have an impact on the way one reads Jesus’ petitions for his disciples and later followers in John 17. First, analo- gous to John 17, each of our Jewish traditions construes prayer for protection in relation to demonic power, something which marks a development beyond prayers conveyed through the Hebrew Bible. Second, the texts we have looked at are not merely literary; they reflect a piety which in at least some Jewish circles was expressed through the offering of prayers for divine protection from the personified forms of evil (cf. 11Q5 xix). Third, such petitions were adaptable. They could be narrativized into stories involving ideal figures from Israel’s ancient past (Aramaic Levi Document; Jubilees). Thus patriarchs would not only be presented as practi- tioners of the piety familiar to those who read about them, but also would be made to formulate petitions which sought God’s protection for their descendants. In such cases – we have found reason to observe this in Jubilees chapters 1, 10, 12, 15 and 19 – readers would have been able to recognize themselves as addressed in the unfolding storyline. [...] Third and finally, the petitions in search of protection are formulated in the recognition that in the meantime a community which considers itself especially elect needs divine help in order to ward off the unabating influences of evil power. Such prayers would have been known to the pious, whether they were those who recited the “Prayer of Deliverance” preserved in 11Q5 xix or members of the Mat- thean and similar communities who prayed to be delivered from “the evil one” in the Lord’s Prayer (Mt. 6:13; cf. 2 Thess. 3:3). If such a petition was known to implied readers of the Johannine community, then it is not without significance that in John’s Gospel the petition that God protect Jesus’ disciples “from the evil one” is placed on the lips of Jesus. In doing this, the writer of the prayer in John 17 would have been providing readers something that we have witnessed in some texts of the Gospel’s Jewish predecessors: a prayer which readers may already have been reciting for themselves has been strengthened by having it spoken by the very one in and through whom their religiosity is determined. Therefore, just as the patriarchs’ petitions against demonic evil are formulated as prayers for their descendants and spiritual heirs, so also Jesus’ petition is concerned with his “descendants.” And so, the disciples and “those who believe in me (sc. Jesus) through their word” in the Johannine community find themselves covered in the Johannine text by the force of Jesus’ petition. ...”