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| Dictionary: Dead Sea Scrolls |
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Dead Sea Scrolls |
For more information on Dead Sea Scrolls, visit Britannica.com.
| Encyclopedia of Judaism: Dead Sea Scrolls |
The first finds occurred in 1947, when Bedouin chanced upon a Judean Desert cave containing a batch of seven scrolls wrapped in rags. These all eventually found their way to Jerusalem. Subsequent searches in the Judean Desert, including the specific area of Qumran along the Dead Sea shore, produced thousands of scroll remnants, in varying states of decipherability. Similar scrolls were discovered at Masada. These have all been connected with a sect living in Qumran in the last period of the Second Temple. The Damascus Covenant (or Zadokite) documents found at the end of the 19th century in the Cairo Genizah are now also assumed to have been the literary productions of the same sect. Pottery remains have assisted in dating both the documents and the community which produced many of them to the first century BCE-first century CE.
The Qumran community is identified by many scholars with the Essenes (or a group of them). Their origins in the area date to 140-130 BCE, and according to some even prior to the Maccabean uprising in 167 BCE. The founder of the sect, generally known by a title translated "Teacher of Righteousness" or "The Rightful Teacher" (the title is disputed), was apparently a priest.
The hierarchical organization of the community appears to have been an idealized arrangement along the tribal lines of ancient Israel. According to some, the supreme Qumran council appears to have consisted of 12 laymen and three priests. The latter occupied a position of preeminence in the sect, which also had a supreme lay leader, the nasi, who, in the view of many, is to be identified with the Messiah (royal or priestly) of Israel.
A striking aspect of the Qumran sectaries was their belief in their special election as members of a "New Covenant." Other themes basic to their belief were the reality of Divine grace and individual salvation. Their lives centered around Divine worship (although there does appear to have been at least one offshoot whose members worked to earn their daily bread), with prayers held twice daily, at dawn and dusk. Unlike the rest of mainstream Jewry, the sect celebrated the traditional biblical festivals according to the 52-week solar calendar consisting of four 13-week seasons. The drastic consequence of this break with the traditional Jewish luni-solar calendar was that the Jewish festivals were celebrated by the sect on fixed days of the week and thus at times which, for the mass of Jewry, were ordinary working days.
A striking divergence from the predominant national Pharisee-oriented outlook may be found in the sect's belief in Predestination, despite the apparently contradictory opinion expressed in some of their writings that men would be judged by their deeds.
The sacred communal meals of the sect constituted one of its unique features, and may well have been intended as a substitute for the sacrificial meals at the Temple in Jerusalem. Here the Qumran sect struck out on perhaps its most divergent path in that it considered the Jerusalem Temple a place of abomination and pollution, although the biblically ordained Temple and service as such were held in deepest reverence by the Qumran community. According to the War Rule, the sacrificial cult would be properly resumed in the seventh year of the Great War before the onset of the messianic era, this war to be waged by the members of the Qumran sect---the Sons of Light---against the other nonsectaries---the Sons of Darkness. Ritual purity was another extremely important tenet of belief and practice.
Among the many writings of the Qumran community are portions of the so-called pesharim or commentaries on biblical texts, e.g., the commentaries on the prophets Nahum and Habakkuk and a pesher on Psalms. A sub-division of this category are the instructive compilations of biblical verses with or without accompanying commentary. Yet another sub-grouping consists of the scroll fragments of various non-canonical (apocryphal) works previously familiar from other sources.
Apocryphal compositions such as Enoch, Tobit, and Jubilees, seem to have been embraced by the sect. A type of apocryphal literature apparently originating with the Qumran community is to be found in such compositions as the Genesis Apocryphon, the Samuel Apocryphon, psalms not found in Jewish Scripture, and other writings of a similar nature. Of special interest in this respect are the minute scraps from the Hebrew Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) scroll. These, together with the fragmentary portions of two chapters found at Masada, and the substantial sections discovered in the Cairo Genizah almost a century ago, account for about two-thirds of the previously unknown original Hebrew text of this important non-canonical work.
A scroll category of prime interest is the numerous copies of the books of the Bible (with the sole exception of the Book of Esther), including the complete Book of Isaiah, and many fragments of the Hebrew Scriptures. Viewed in their entirety, the Qumran Bible fragments strongly resemble the traditional (Masoretic) Bible text. Nevertheless, careful scrutiny shows divergences, often indicating a strong affinity with the Samaritan Bible and the Septuagint. The greater part of the Judean Desert sect's library is written in the literary Hebrew of the Second Temple era, the remainder in Aramaic, with an insignificant portion of small remnants comprising Greek translations of Scripture.
Members of the sect apparently participated in the Great Revolt against Rome (66-73 CE). In any case, the revolt's failure seems to have marked the end of the Qumran sect's existence.
The Qumran community is indicative of the sectarian diversity that prevailed among the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, certainly in the latter part of the Second Temple era. Unlike the Essenes, other sectarian offshoots are only hinted at here and there, whereas Qumran, through its literature and the depictions of others, has left behind a fairly well-limned portrayal of its life and beliefs and, most important, definite evidence of the existence of Jewish groupings other than the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Various scholars also regard the sect and its writings as making an important contribution to the study of early Christianity, especially because of the sect's generally monastic or semi-monastic existence; its emphasis on man's innate sinfulness, Divine grace, and the concept of predestination.
| The Religion Book: Dead Sea Scrolls |
In 1947, a young Bedouin shepherd was searching the hills around the Dead Sea, looking for lost sheep. Finding a small crevice opening downward, he dropped a pebble to see how deep the cave might be. Instead of the expected "thunk," he heard the sound of broken pottery.
What he had found shook the world. Sealed up in the cave, stored in jars and clay pots, were scrolls hidden away ever since 70 ce, when Titus and his Roman Legions destroyed the Jerusalem Temple. The Qumran community was the home of the Essene brotherhood, a band of devoted right-wing Jews who lived during the time of Jesus. Archaeology has since discovered they had built a thriving school and a place of meditation and ritual. Perhaps even John the Baptist was one of their shining stars. They were patriots of the highest order, waiting for the coming of the Messiah who would drive out the Romans and restore the kingdom to Israel. When Titus arrived with his army, the Essenes hid their library, probably intending to return after the Roman threat was eliminated. But they never came back. For almost two thousand years the tablets and parchments that had instructed and informed their beliefs lay hidden in the ground until their discovery electrified scholars all over the world.
What was it that caused the excitement? Did the Dead Sea Scrolls offer new insights into Jewish belief? Were they proof that the Bible we now have is somehow wrong? Has Christianity been based on a lie? Did they contain shocking new revelations that would destroy the belief system of the Western world? Was there a cover-up conspiracy at work?
In a word, no. True, the scholars didn't help the situation much by immediately spiriting the scrolls away to secret locations and keeping the results of their academic studies quiet. But that situation had nothing to do with a cover-up.
First of all, some of the parchments were, understandably, very fragile. It takes a lot of time and painstaking work to open them without immediately crumbling them.
Second, the constant problem of possession had to be addressed. The scrolls don't belong to the public. In a perfect world, the best experts could simply drop what they are doing and get to work. But, needless to say, this is not a perfect world.
Third, the academic community works under the "publish or perish" principle. Scholars, understandably, wanted an "exclusive." They wanted to keep their work quiet until they could write the definitive book and defend it before the academic court of inquiry.
All this took time, and the world, being what it is, was not patient. Conspiracy theories abounded. Novels were written and articles published claiming the scrolls contained some kind of "evidence" too delicate for the ears of the masses. Once that kind of thing starts it's hard to stop. Outlandish theories were advanced that the parchments told the story about aliens from outer space meeting secretly with the Essene brotherhood. Some said a book that they called "Q," from the German word for "source," was discovered. (This book probably existed. It is thought to have been the source the Gospel writers had before them when they wrote Matthew, Mark, and Luke. One author has even written a commentary on it, but it seems a bit far-fetched to write a commentary on a book no one has ever seen.)
Time has laid most of these theories to rest. But that in no way lessens the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are, without a doubt, the archaeological find of the twentieth century. To understand why, it is helpful to delve into the field of biblical translation.
Some fragments of the Hebrew Bible, that which Christians call the Old Testament, were probably written as early as a few thousand years bce. But the majority of the canon wasn't written down until much later (See Bible). And until the twentieth century, the oldest complete copy of the Bible dated only to the ninth century ce. What existed before this time were copies of copies of copies. Granted, the process of hand copying was extremely regulated by scholars. Every word was counted and every page read by many people. Still, if a small mistake had been made once and then copied over and over, each time allowing for the possibility of further mistakes, a tenth- or even hundredth-generation copy could have been quite different from the original. So the question remained: How accurate, after all these years, was the Bible?
With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars now had copies going back to before the time of Christ. The complete book of Isaiah was there, along with fragments from every single book except the book of Esther. Their importance lay in comparing them to modern translations. How close were they?
The answer is, very close indeed. The copyists down through the centuries had done their work amazingly well. So far, at least, there have been only very minor mistakes or differences discovered. The Dead Sea Scrolls have convinced scholars that modern Bibles are very faithful to the originals. Of course, the scrolls discovered at Qumran were not original either. They, too, are copies of copies. But their importance lies in the fact that they are so much closer in time to the originals. Not nearly as much time had passed to allow significant changes to have cropped up.
This is not nearly as exciting to most people as conspiracy theories and new religious philosophies. But to Bible scholars, it is the stuff of grand adventure.
Sources: Kirsch, Jonathan. The Harlot by the Side of the Road. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997. LaSor, William Sanford. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Faith. Chicago: Moody Press, 1956.
| Archaeology Dictionary: Dead Sea Scrolls |
A series of more than 800 documents dating to the 1st and 2nd centuries bc and the 1st century ad which were found in 1947 in caves at Qumran near the Dead Sea in Israel. Written on parchment and papyrus, these documents were preserved because of the extreme aridity of the region. They are the religious writings of a Jewish sect known as the Essenes, and seem to have been hidden in the caves during the Roman subjugation of the Jewish Revolt in ad 68. The collection includes versions of all the Old Testament texts as well as sectarian works.
[Sum.: R. Eisenman and M. Wise, 1992, The Dead Sea Scrolls uncovered. Shaftesbury: Element]
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Dead Sea Scrolls |
Scrolls of the Qumran Caves
Three types of documents have been found in the caves near Qumran: copies of books of the Hebrew Bible, e.g., Isaiah, of which two almost complete scrolls have been found; copies of books now collected in the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, e.g., Tobit, 1 Enoch, and Jubilees; and documents composed by an ascetic community, e.g., a book of community rules called The Manual of Discipline, an allegorical account of the community called The War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness, a group of devotional poems called The Thanksgiving Psalms, a commentary on the Book of Habakkuk, and an extensive work, known as the Temple Scroll, containing ritual law.
Documents from the third group have been identified by some scholars with the Essenes, a Jewish religious sect living an ascetic communal agricultural life in the region between the 2d cent. B.C. and 2d cent. A.D. It has also been hypothesized that the Qumran scrolls are the secreted library of a community, perhaps Essene, that lived at Qumran, and thus survived the destruction of the settlement in c.A.D. 68. Startling parallels in expression and thought between the Qumran materials and the New Testament have led to speculation as to their influence on early Christianity. The Temple Scroll, for instance, revealed a list of rules of conduct resembling standard Christian ethics. Some scholars have tried to establish that Jesus and John the Baptist were influenced by, or members of, a Qumran Essene community, but such interpretations are widely disputed. More recent work by other archaeologists and biblical scholars has questioned the association of the scrolls with the Qumran ruins and the Essenes.
Other Texts
Other texts, not related to the Qumran scrolls, have been found in the area around the Dead Sea. At Masada other scrolls were found, including manuscripts of Sirach and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. In the caves at Wadi Murabbaat, c.11 mi (18 km) S of Qumran, many documents were found concerning Bar Kokba's army, as well as more biblical manuscripts. Other documents from the Bar Kokba era were discovered in caves S of En Gedi. These findings, written in Greek, Aramaic, and Nabataean, included biblical fragments, psalms, various legal documents, and a lost Greek translation of the minor prophets. The oldest documents, found at a site 8 mi (13 km) N of Jericho, were left by Samarians massacred by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C.
Control and Publication of the Scrolls
Most of the originals of the scrolls are at the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem; the rest are at the Israel Museum's Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. The intact scrolls and other materials were published in the decades following their discovery, but many fragments remained unpublished and under the control of a small group of scholars, originally appointed by Jordanian officials, and their intellectual heirs. As a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, control of all the scrolls passed to the Israeli Antiquities Authority. International dissatisfaction with the limited access allowed to, and the slow rate of publication of, the scrolls that remained unpublished led the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., to allow (1991) scholars access to its set of master negatives of the scrolls despite the objections of the Israeli Antiquities Authority. Subsequently the authority removed its restrictions on the use of the unpublished scrolls, and expedited the publication of them.
Bibliography
See texts published in the series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (39 vol., 1955-2002); T. H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures (1976); M. A. Knibb, The Qumran Community (1987); G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (3d ed. 1987). L. H. Schiffman, The Eschatological Community of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1989); J. A. Fitzmyer, The Dead Sea Scrolls (rev. ed. 1990); H. Shanks et al., The Dead Sea Scrolls after 40 Years (1991); H. Shanks, ed., Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992); L. H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (1994); N. A. Silberman, The Hidden Scrolls (1994); N. Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls (1995); G. Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (1997); H. Shanks, The Mystery and Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1998).
| Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia: Dead Sea Scrolls |
Ancient religious documents.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient manuscripts found at Khirbat Qumran, in caves in the Judean desert near the Dead Sea, 7.5 miles (12 km) from Jericho. The scrolls were uncovered in 1947. Archaeologists later discovered a cemetery of over one thousand graves, a central building, and central caves containing fragments of old documents. The area was apparently destroyed by an earthquake in 31 B.C.E. and then rebuilt. The authors of the scrolls lived there until 68 C.E. The contents of the scrolls and other evidence show that the authors belonged to a Jewish sect. The scrolls or fragments include two complete copies of Isaiah and fragments of nearly every other book of the Bible. Their discovery advanced the study of the Hebrew Bible, since the earliest versions before the scrolls were discovered dated to the Middle Ages. Fragments of the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha and other unknown books were also found, including the Book of Tobit, the Hebrew version of Jubilees, and the Aramaic version of the Book of Enoch. The scrolls include sectarian books as well, including a commentary on Habakkuk, parts of a commentary on Micah and Nahum, and others. These commentaries explain the prophetic writings in relation to the history of the sect. Other scrolls deal with the sect's organization and theological doctrines. They also contain fragments of the Zadokite documents that were found in Cairo. The Temple scroll minutely details the Temple. The sect responsible for the scrolls was assumed to have been the Essenes, but recent scholarship has placed this thesis in doubt. They beheld the power of good ruling in a world in opposition to the power of evil, and they saw themselves as the chosen "sons of light."
Their apocalyptic circles, among whom Enoch was composed, probably influenced the beginnings of Christianity, especially those close to Paul and John the Evangelist.
Some of the scrolls came into the possession of Hebrew University through E. L. Sukenik, who was responsible for the first publication of selections. Others went to the United States where they were published by Burrows, Brownlee and were subsequently purchased for the government of Israel through the agency of Sukenik's son, Yigael Yadin. They are housed in the Shrine of the Book in the Israel Museum. The publication of the many fragments was entrusted to a group of scholars whose slow progress generated international controversy. In 1991, the system was overhauled to ensure speedy publication. The Huntington Library in San Marino, California, in the interim, published photographs of the collection and made them available without restrictions.
Bibliography
Charlesworth, James, ed. The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations: Pseudepigraphic and Non-Masoretic Psalms and Prayers (Dead Sea Scrolls, No. 4, Part A). Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1998.
Davies, Philip R. The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002.
Garcia, Florentíno Martínez, and Tigchelaar, Eibert, eds. The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.
Reed, Stephen A. The Dead Sea Scrolls Catalogue: Documents,Photographs and Museum Inventory Numbers. Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1994.
— MIA BLOOM
| Bible Dictionary: Dead Sea Scrolls |
A large collection of written scrolls, containing nearly all of the Old Testament, found in a cave near the Dead Sea in the late 1940s. The scrolls were part of a library collected by the Essenes, a religious community of Jews that flourished for a few centuries around the time of Jesus. The scrolls are highly valued for the information they give about the Bible and about
| Wikipedia: Dead Sea scrolls |
The Dead Sea scrolls consist of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Qumran Wadi near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea.
The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include some of the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 BCE and preserve evidence of late Second Temple Judaism. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus.[1] These manuscripts generally date between 150 BCE to 70 CE.[2] The scrolls are most commonly identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, though some recent interpretations have challenged their association with the scrolls.[3] Still, these represent a minority view, as references in ancient texts from Josephus, Philo, and Pliny all discuss the Essenes, with Pliny identifying the center of Essene activity on the west side of the Dead Sea, exactly where the scrolls were found.[4] Moreover, Philo and Josephus both extensively describe the customs and beliefs of the Essenes, in many cases closely matching information found in the scrolls themselves.[5] This is not surprising, since Josephus reports in his Life that at the age of sixteen he became an Essene neophyte for three years.[6]
The Dead Sea Scrolls are traditionally divided into three groups: "Biblical" manuscripts (copies of texts from the Hebrew Bible), which comprise roughly 40% of the identified scrolls; "Apocryphal" or "Pseudepigraphical" manuscripts (known documents from the Second Temple Period like Enoch, Jubilees, Tobit, Sirach, non-canonical psalms, etc., that were not ultimately canonized in the Hebrew Bible), which comprise roughly 30% of the identified scrolls; and "Sectarian" manuscripts (previously unknown documents that speak to the rules and beliefs of a particular group or groups within greater Judaism) like the Community Rule, War Scroll, Pesher (Hebrew pesher פשר = "Commentary") on Habakkuk, and the Rule of the Blessing, which comprise roughly 30% of the identified scrolls.[7]
Prior to 1968, most of the known scrolls and fragments were housed in the Rockefeller Museum (formerly known as the Palestine Archaeological Museum) in Jerusalem. After the Six Day War, these scrolls and fragments were moved to the Shrine of the Book, at the Israel Museum.
Publication of the scrolls has taken many decades, and the delay has been a source of academic controversy. As of 2007 two volumes remain to be completed, with the whole series, Discoveries in the Judean Desert, running to thirty-nine volumes in total. Many of the scrolls are now housed in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, while others are housed in the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, Princeton Theological Seminary, Azusa Pacific University, and in the hands of private collectors. According to The Oxford Companion to Archeology, "The biblical manuscripts from Qumran, which include at least fragments from every book of the Old Testament, except perhaps for the Book of Esther, provide a far older cross section of scriptural tradition than that available to scholars before. About 35% of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament and 10% to the Greek and Samaritan traditions, with the remainder exhibiting sometimes dramatic differences in both language and content. In their range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around 100 AD."[8]
Contents |
The settlement of Qumran is 1 km inland from the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. The scrolls were found in eleven caves nearby, between 125m (Cave 4) and 1 km (Cave 1) away. None were found within the settlement, unless it originally encompassed the caves. In the winter of 1946–47, Muhammed edh-Dhib and his cousin discovered the caves, and soon afterwards the scrolls.
John C. Trever reconstructed the story of the scrolls from several interviews with the Bedouin. edh-Dhib's cousin noticed the caves, but edh-Dhib himself was the first to actually fall into one. He retrieved a handful of scrolls, which Trever identifies as the Isaiah Scroll, Habakkuk Commentary, and the Community Rule (originally known as "Manual of Discipline"), and took them back to the camp to show to his family. None of the scrolls was destroyed in this process, despite popular rumor.[9] The Bedouin kept the scrolls hanging on a tent pole while they figured out what to do with them, periodically taking them out to show people. At some point during this time, the Community Rule was split in two.
The Bedouin first took the scrolls to a dealer named Ibrahim 'Ijha in Bethlehem. 'Ijha returned them, saying they were worthless, after being warned that they may have been stolen from a synagogue. Undaunted, the Bedouin went to a nearby market, where a Syrian Christian offered to buy them. A sheikh joined their conversation and suggested they take the scrolls to Khalil Eskander Shahin, "Kando", a cobbler and part-time antiques dealer. The Bedouin and the dealers returned to the site, leaving one scroll with Kando and selling three others to a dealer for £7 GBP ($29 in 2003 US dollars).[9]
Arrangements with the Bedouin left the scrolls in the hands of a third party until a profitable sale of them could be negotiated. That third party, George Isha'ya, was a member of the Syrian Orthodox Church, who soon contacted St. Mark's Monastery in the hope of getting an appraisal of the nature of the texts. News of the find then reached Metropolitan Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, better known as Mar Samuel.
After examining the scrolls and suspecting their antiquity, Mar Samuel expressed an interest in purchasing them. Four scrolls found their way into his hands: the now famous Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa), the Community Rule, the Habakkuk Pesher (a commentary on the book of Habakkuk), and the Genesis Apocryphon. More scrolls soon surfaced in the antiquities market, and Professor Eleazer Sukenik and Prof. Benjamin Mazar, Israeli archaeologists at Hebrew University, soon found themselves in possession of three, The War Scroll, Thanksgiving Hymns, and another, more fragmented, Isaiah scroll.
By the end of 1947, Sukenik and Mazar received word of the scrolls in Mar Samuel's possession and attempted to purchase them. No deal was reached, and instead the scrolls caught the attention of Dr. John C. Trever, of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), who compared the script in the scrolls to that of The Nash Papyrus, the oldest biblical manuscript then known, and found similarities between them.
Dr. Trever, a keen amateur photographer, met with Mar Samuel on February 21, 1948, when he photographed the scrolls. The quality of his photographs often exceeded the visibility of the scrolls themselves over the years, as the ink of the texts quickly deteriorated after they were removed from their linen wrappings.
The scrolls were analyzed using a cyclotron at the University of California, Davis where it was found that the black ink used was iron-gall ink.[10] The red ink on the scrolls was cinnabar (HgS, mercury sulfide).[10]
In March, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War prompted the removal of the scrolls for safekeeping, from Israel to Beirut, Lebanon.
Early in September, 1948, Mar Samuel brought Professor Ovid R. Sellers, the new Director of ASOR, some additional scroll fragments that he had acquired. By the end of 1948, nearly two years after their discovery, scholars had yet to locate the cave where the fragments had been found. With unrest in the country at that time, no large-scale search could be undertaken. Sellers attempted to get the Syrians to help him locate the cave, but they demanded more money than he could offer. Finally, Cave 1 was discovered, on January 28, 1949, by a United Nations observer.
The Dead Sea Scrolls went up for sale eventually, in an advertisement in the June 1, 1954 Wall Street Journal.
On July 1, the scrolls, after delicate negotiations and accompanied by three people including the Metropolitan, arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. They were purchased by Prof. Mazar and the son of Prof. Sukenik, Yigael Yadin, for US$250,000 and brought back to Jerusalem, where they are on display at the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum.
Cave 1 was discovered in the winter or spring of 1947. It was first excavated by Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux from Feb 15 to Mar 5, 1949.[11] In addition to the original seven scrolls, Cave 1 produced jars and bowls, whose chemical composition and shape matched vessels discovered at the settlement at Qumran, pieces of cloth, and additional fragments that matched portions of the original scrolls, thereby confirming that the original scrolls came from Cave 1.
The original seven scrolls from Cave 1 are:[12]
Cave two was discovered in February, 1952.[13] It yielded 300 fragments from 33 manuscripts, including Jubilees and the Wisdom of Ben-Sirach in the original Hebrew.
Cave three was discovered on March 14, 1952.[13] The cave yielded 14 manuscripts including Jubilees and the curious Copper Scroll, which lists 67 hiding places, mostly underground, throughout the ancient Roman province of Judea (now Israel and Palestine). According to the scroll, the secret caches held astonishing amounts of gold, silver, copper, aromatics, and manuscripts.
Cave four was discovered in August, 1952, and was excavated from September 22 to 29, 1952 by Gerald Lankester Harding, Roland de Vaux, and Józef Milik.[14] Cave four is actually two caves (4a and 4b), but since the fragments were mixed, they are labeled as 4Q. Cave 4 is the most famous of Qumran caves both because of its visibility and its productivity. It is visible from the plateau to the south of the Qumran settlement. It is by far the most productive of all Qumran caves, producing ninety percent of the Dead Sea Scrolls and scroll fragments (approx. 15,000 fragments from 500 different texts), including 9-10 copies of Jubilees, along with 21 tefillin and 7 mezuzot.
Caves 5 and 6 were discovered in 1952, shortly after Cave 4. Cave 5 produced approximately 25 manuscripts, while Cave 6 contained fragments of about 31 manuscripts.[14]
Caves 7-9 are unique in that they are the only caves that are accessible only by passing through the settlement at Qumran. Carved into the southern end of the Qumran plateau, archaeologists excavated caves 7-9 in 1957, but did not find many fragments perhaps due to high levels of erosion that left only the shallow bottoms of the caves.
Cave 7 yielded fewer than 20 fragments of Greek documents, including 7Q2 (the "Letter of Jeremiah" = Baruch 6), 7Q5 (which became the subject of much speculation in later decades), and a Greek copy of a scroll of Enoch.[15][16][17] Cave 7 also produced several inscribed potsherds and jars.[18]
Cave 8 produced five fragments: Genesis (8QGen), Psalms (8QPs), a tefillin fragment (8QPhyl), a mezuzah (8QMez), and a hymn (8QHymn).[19] Cave 8 also produced several tefillin cases, a box of leather objects, lamps, jars, and the sole of a leather shoe.[18]
Cave 9 produced only small, unidentifiable fragments.
Caves 8 and 9 also yielded several date pits[18] similar to those discovered by Magen and Peleg to the west of Locus 75 during their "Operation Scroll" excavations.[20][21]
Cave 10 produced only a single ostracon with some writing on it.
Cave 11 was discovered in 1956 and yielded 21 texts, some of which were quite lengthy. The Temple Scroll, so called because more than half of it pertains to the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem, was found in Cave 11, and is by far the longest scroll. It is now 26.7 feet (8.15m) long. Its original length may have been over 28 feet (8.75m). The Temple Scroll was regarded by Yigael Yadin as "The Torah According to the Essenes." On the other hand, Hartmut Stegemann, a contemporary and friend of Yadin, believed the scroll was not to be regarded as such, but was a document without exceptional significance. Stegemann notes that it is not mentioned or cited in any known Essene writing.[22]
Also in Cave 11, an escatological fragment about the biblical figure Melchizedek (11Q13) was found. Cave 11 also produced a copy of Jubilees.
While many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are small fragments of Biblical, apocryphal, or sectarian manuscripts, some of the scrolls have come to be well known and influential to Second Temple Judaism. The following is a brief list of some of the more widely known Dead Sea Scrolls:[12]
The significance of the scrolls relates in a large part to the field of textual criticism. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible were Masoretic texts dating to 9th century AD. The biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls push that date back a millennium to the 2nd century BC. Before this discovery, the earliest extant manuscripts of the Old Testament were in Greek in manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209 and Codex Sinaiticus.
About 35% of the DSS biblical manuscripts belong to the Masoretic tradition, 5% to the Septuagint family, and 5% to the Samaritan, with the remainder unaligned. The non-aligned fall into two categories, those inconsistent in agreeing with other known types, and those that diverge significantly from all other known readings. The DSS thus form a significant witness to the mutability of biblical texts at this period.[23] The sectarian texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of which were previously unknown, offer new light on one form of Judaism practiced during the Second Temple period.
Books Ranked According to Number of Manuscripts found (top 16)[24]
| Books | No. found |
|---|---|
| Psalms | 39 |
| Deuteronomy | 33 |
| 1 Enoch | 25 |
| Genesis | 24 |
| Isaiah | 22 |
| Jubilees | 21 |
| Exodus | 18 |
| Leviticus | 17 |
| Numbers | 11 |
| Minor Prophets | 10 |
| Daniel | 8 |
| Jeremiah | 6 |
| Ezekiel | 6 |
| Job | 6 |
| 1 & 2 Samuel | 4 |
There has been much debate about the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The dominant theory remains that the scrolls were the product of a sect of Jews living at nearby Qumran called the Essenes, but this theory has come to be challenged by several modern scholars. The various theories concerning the origin of the scrolls are as follows:
The prevalent view among scholars, almost universally held until the 1990s, is the "Qumran-Essene" hypothesis originally posited by Roland Guérin de Vaux[25] and Józef Tadeusz Milik,[26] though independently both Eliezer Sukenik and Butrus Sowmy of St Mark's Monastery connected scrolls with the Essenes well before any excavations at Qumran.[27] The Qumran-Essene theory holds that the scrolls were written by the Essenes, or perhaps by another Jewish sectarian group, residing at Khirbet Qumran. They composed the scrolls and ultimately hid them in the nearby caves during the Jewish Revolt sometime between 66 and 68 CE. The site of Qumran was destroyed and the scrolls were never recovered by those that placed them there. A number of arguments are used to support this theory.
The Qumran-Essene theory has been the dominant theory since its initial proposal by Roland de Vaux and J.T. Milik. Recently, however, several other scholars have proposed alternative origins of the scrolls.
Qumran-Sectarian theories are variations on the Qumran-Essene theory. The main point of departure from the Qumran-Essene theory is hesitation to link the Dead sea Scrolls specifically with the Essenes. Most proponents of the Qumran-Sectarian theory understand a group of Jews living in or near Qumran to be responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, but do not necessarily conclude that the sectarians are Essenes.
A specific variation on the Qumran-Sectarian theory that has gained much recent popularity, is the work of Lawrence H. Schiffman who proposes that the community was led by a group of Zadokite priests (Sadducees).[28] The most important document in support of this view is the "Miqsat Ma'ase Ha-Torah" (4QMMT), which cites purity laws (such as the transfer of impurities) identical to those attributed in rabbinic writings to the Sadducees. 4QMMT also reproduces a festival calendar that follows Sadducee principles for the dating of certain festival days.
A few scholars have argued that the Dead Sea Scrolls reflect similarities with the early Christian movement. While there are certainly some common characteristics shared between different Jewish sectarian groups, most scholars deny that there is any connection whatsoever between the Christians and the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Still, Spanish Jesuit Josep O'Callaghan-Martínez has argued that one fragment (7Q5) preserves a portion of text from the New Testament Gospel of Mark 6:52-53.[29] In recent years, Robert Eisenman has advanced the theory that some scrolls actually describe the early Christian community. Eisenman also attempted to relate the career of James the Just and the Apostle Paul / Saul of Tarsus to some of these documents.[30] Barbara Thiering also supports the Christian Origin theory, but argues that Jesus of Nazareth is the Wicked Priest mentioned in the scrolls.[31]
Some scholars have argued that the scrolls were the product of Jews living in Jerusalem, who hid the scrolls in the caves near Qumran while fleeing from the Romans during the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Karl Heinrich Rengstorf first proposed that the Dead Sea Scrolls originated at the library of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.[32] Later, Norman Golb suggested that the scrolls were the product of multiple libraries in Jerusalem, and not necessarily the Jerusalem Temple library.[33] Proponents of the Jerusalem Origin theory point to the diversity of thought and handwriting among the scrolls as evidence against a Qumran origin of the scrolls. Several archaeologists have also accepted an origin of the scrolls other than Qumran, including Yizhar Hirschfeld[34] and most recently Yizhak Magen and Yuval Peleg,[35] who all understand the remains of Qumran to be those of a Hasmonean fort that was reused during later periods.
Some of the documents were published early. All the writings in Cave 1 appeared in print between 1950 and 1956, those from eight other caves were released in 1963, and 1965 saw the publication of the Psalms Scroll from Cave 11. Their translations into English soon followed.
Although heralded as one of the great events in modern archaeology, the discovery of the scrolls is not without controversy. All the manuscripts were initially placed under the oversight of a committee of scholars appointed by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities. This responsibility was assumed by the Israel Antiquities Authority after 1967.[36]
Some have claimed that access to the scrolls has been monopolized. Most of the longer, more complete scrolls were published soon after their discovery. The majority of the scrolls, however, consists of tiny, brittle fragments, which were published at a pace considered by many to be excessively slow. Even more unsettling for some was the fact that access to the unpublished documents was severely limited to the editorial committee. In 1991, researchers at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, announced the creation of a computer program that used previously published scrolls to reconstruct the unpublished texts. Officials at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, announced that they would allow researchers unrestricted access to the library’s complete set of photographs of the scrolls. With their monopoly broken, the officials of the Israel Antiquities Authority agreed to lift their long-standing restrictions on the use of the scrolls.[36]
Ben Zion Wacholder's publication in the fall of 1991 of reconstructed 17 documents from a concordance that had been made in 1988 and had come into the hands of scholars outside of the International Team; in the same month, there occurred the discovery and publication of a complete set of facsimiles of the Cave 4 materials at the Huntington Library, which were not covered by the "secrecy rule".
After further delays, public interest attorney William John Cox undertook representation of an "undisclosed client," who had provided a complete set of the unpublished photographs, and contracted for their publication. Professors Robert Eisenman and James Robinson indexed the photographs and wrote an introduction to A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which was published by the Biblical Archaeology Society in 1991.[37] As a result, the "secrecy rule" was lifted.
Publication accelerated with the appointment of the respected Dutch-Israeli textual scholar Emanuel Tov as editor-in-chief in 1990. Publication of the Cave 4 documents soon commenced, with five volumes in print by 1995. As of March 2009 volume XXXII remains to be completed, with the whole series, Discoveries in the Judean Desert, running to thirty nine volumes in total.
In December 2007, the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation commissioned London publisher Facsimile Editions to publish exact facsimiles [38] of three scrolls,[39] The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa), The Order of the Community (1QS), and The Pesher to Habakkuk (1QpHab). Of the first three facsimile sets, one was exhibited at the Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition in Seoul, South Korea, and a second set was purchased by the British Library in London. A further 25 sets including facsimiles of fragments 4Q175 (Testimonia), 4Q162 (Pesher Isaiahb) and 4Q109 (Qohelet) were announced in May 2009.
The display of the scrolls has at times attracted controversy. In 2009, when the Israeli Antiquities Authority displayed the scrolls at the Royal Ontario Museum, the Palestinian Authority protested, claiming they were illegally obtained by Israel from the Jordanian-owned Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem in 1967.[40]
High-resolution images of all the Dead Sea Scrolls are not yet known to be available online. However, they can be purchased in inexpensive multi-volumes - on disc media or in book form - or viewed in certain college and university libraries.
According to Computer Weekly (16th Nov 2007), a team from King's College London is to advise the Israel Antiquities Authority, who are planning to digitize the scrolls. On 27th Aug 2008 an Israeli internet news agency YNET announced that the project is under way[41]. The scrolls are planned to be made available to the public via Internet. The project is to include infra-red scanning of the scrolls which is said to expose additional details not revealed under visible light.
The text of nearly all of the non-biblical scrolls has been recorded and tagged for morphology by Dr. Martin Abegg, Jr., the Ben Zion Wacholder Professor of Dead Sea Scroll Studies at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC, Canada. It is available on handheld devices through Olive Tree Bible Software - BibleReader, on Macs through Accordance, and on Windows through Logos Bible Software and BibleWorks.
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