Texts in Conversation
Jesus in John and the Dead Sea Scrolls use the image of flowing water to describe a divine source of life. In the Scrolls, a “fountain of living waters” represents wisdom given by God, while John describes the life-giving spirit that flows from faith.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
1QHa 16:17
The Thanksgiving Hymns
Dead Sea Scrolls, Prayers, Hymns, and Liturgy
12 esteemed, and, being unknown, its mystery is sealed. And you, O God, have fenced in its fruit with the mystery of mighty warriors 13 and holy spirits and the whirling flame of fire, so that no [stranger may come] to the spring of life, and with the eternal trees 14 he may not drink the holy water, and may not bear his fruit with the planting of heaven. For he saw without recognizing, 15 and he considered without believing in the source of life, and he gave over the eternal blossom as yield. And I became a thing mocked by 16 flooding rivers, for they cast up their mire on me. 17 But you, my God, have put in my mouth as it were an early rain for all … […] … and a spring of living water that does not fail. When they open, 18 the heavens do not cease, and they become a torrent flooding over [all the trees by the] water, and boundless seas […]
John 7:38
New Testament
37 On the last day of the feast, the greatest day, Jesus stood up and shouted out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and 38 let the one who believes in me drink. Just as the scripture says, ‘From within him will flow rivers of living water.’” 39 (Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus was not yet glorified.) 40 When they heard these words, some of the crowd began to say, “This really is the Prophet!” 41 Others said, “This is the Christ!” But still others said, “No, for the Christ doesn’t come from Galilee, does he? 42 Don’t the scriptures say that the Christ is a descendant of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”
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Notes and References
"... Both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Fourth Gospel assume a modified ethical and cosmological dualism that is also found in some of the Jewish Scriptures (e.g., Job 1:6-12; Psalm 89:10-11; Proverbs 4:10-19). It is modified dualism because in both, God is supreme (e.g., 1QS III, 15-17; John 1:1-3). The Fourth Gospel and the Dead Sea Scrolls both criticize the temple, but only the Dead Sea Scrolls sect detaches from it. There are five kinds of scriptural interpretation at Qumran: legal, exhortation, narrative, poetic, and prophetic. We also can find these different scriptural interpretations in the Fourth Gospel ..."
Puskas, Charles & Robbins, Michael
Conceptual Worlds of the Fourth Gospel: Intertextuality and Early Reception
(p. 73) Cascade Books, 2021
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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