The idea
Pitre names his evidence base up front: the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, Philo, the Pseudepigrapha, the Aramaic Targums and early rabbinic literature, with a full list in the Appendix — the Scrolls (2nd c. BC–AD 70), the Pseudepigrapha (1 Enoch, 4 Ezra), Josephus, the Mishnah and Tosefta (the most authoritative witness after the Bible), the Targums, the Babylonian Talmud and the Midrash Rabbah. He is careful about dates: he is not suggesting Jesus or the evangelists read these works, some compiled centuries later, but that they 'bear witness to ancient Jewish traditions outside the Bible that may have circulated at the time of Jesus.' Scholars of every stripe — Allison, Evans, Levine, Keener, Meier, Sanders, Vermes — use them the same way.
Key verses
- Genesis 3:15 — read by the Targum of 'the day of King Messiah.'
- Isaiah 66:7 — read by Targum and midrash of the Messiah's painless birth.
The connection
| Old Testament root | New Testament fulfilment | |
|---|---|---|
| Jewish traditions preserved in later writings | → | The first-century assumptions behind the New Testament |
The method is comparative, not genealogical: a Targum or midrash is not a source the evangelists copied but a window on how Jews read Scripture, and so on what a first-century reader would have heard in Luke or John.
Sources
- Dead Sea Scrolls (pp 17, 168)
- Josephus (pp 17, 168)
- Philo of Alexandria (p 17)
- Targums (pp 17, 168)
- Mishnah (p 168)
- Babylonian Talmud (p 169)
- Midrash Rabbah (p 169)
- 1 Enoch (p 168)