"Drawing on the Recent Flowering of Dead Sea Scroll studies and utilizing the interpretive angle offered by N. T. Wright, Marvin Pate explores the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament. How did the Essene community of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian communities of the New Testament express their distinct self-understandings as communities living in the last days and fulfilling the story of Israel? Viewed through the lenses of hermeneutical perspective, messianic belief, the reverse of the Deuteronomic curse, the promised new covenant, and the nexus of symbol, praxis and story, the Scrolls cast interpretive light on familiar New Testament texts."--BOOK JACKET.