Khirbet Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls THE STORY

Khirbet Qumran

Dead Sea Scrolls THE STORY OF THEIR DISCOVERY

Bedouin Boy

Bedouin Shepherds Muhammed edh. Dhib Ahmad el-Hamid and Jum’a Muhammed Khalil

Cave 1 discovered 1947 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Book of Isaiah Rule of the Community Pesher Habakkuak Genesis Apocryphon Thanksgiving Hymns, sectarian prayers Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness Another scroll of Isaiah St. Mark’s Monastery Prof. Eleazar Sukenik

Yigael Yadin (1917 -1984) “I cannot avoid the feeling that there is something symbolic in the discovery of the scrolls and their acquisition at the moment of the creation of the State of Israel. It is as if these manuscripts had been waiting in caves for two thousand years, ever since the destruction of Israel’s independence, until the people of Israel had returned to their home and regained their freedom. This symbolism is heightened by the fact that the first three scrolls were bought by my father for Israel on 29 th November, 1947, the very day on which the United Nations voted for the re-creation of the Jewish state in Israel after two thousand years. These facts may have influenced my approach to the scrolls. It was a tremendously exciting experience, difficult to convey in words, to see the original scrolls and to study them, knowing that some of the Biblical manuscripts were copied only a few hundred years after their composition, and that these very scrolls were read and studied by our forefathers in the period of the Second Temple. They constitute a vital link—long lost and now regained—between those ancient times, so rich in civilized thought, and the present day. And just as a Christian reader must be moved by the knowledge that here he has a manuscript of a sect whom the early Christians may have known and by whom they may have been influenced, so an Israeli and a Jew can find nothing more deeply moving than the study of manuscripts written by the People of the Book in the Land of the Book more than two thousand years ago. ”

Classified Ad, The Wall Street Journal, June 1, 1954

Inside Cave 4

Jar that held some Scrolls

Temple Scroll

Shrine of the Book, Jerusalem

Sons of Light vs. Sons of Darkness

Types of Books in Scrolls • Books of the Bible • Books of the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha and other books common to all Jews of Second Temple period (prayers, mystical writings, biblical commentary) • Sectarian books belonging to the sect only

Most Popular Books in Scrolls • • 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

Khirbet Qumran

Map of the Qumran “Monastery”

Digital Reconstruction of Qumran

Pliny the Elder (23 -79 CE), Natural History V. 15 On the west side of the Dead Sea, but of range of the noxious exhalations of the coast, is the solitary tribe of the Essenes which is remarkable beyond all the other tribes of the whole world as it has no women and has renounced all sexual desire, has no money, and has only palm trees for company. Day by day the throng of refugees is recruited to an equal number by numerous accessions of persons tired of life and driven there by the waves of fortune to adopt their manner. Thus, through thousands of ages (incredible to relate) a race in which no one is born lives on forever: so prolific for their advantage is other men’s weariness of life! Lying below the Essenes was formerly the town of Engedi, second only to Jerusalem in the fertility of its land in the groves of palm trees, but now like Jerusalem a heap of ashes, Next comes Masada, a fortress on a rock, itself also not far from the Dead Sea. This is the limit of Judea.

Josephus, Antiquities XVIII, 1822: The Doctrine of the Essenes • Josephus provides the most expansive contemporary description of the Essenes. He presents them as an agricultural, virtuous people worthy of admiration for their pious, peaceful ways, their communal economic life, and celibacy. (18) The doctrine of the Essenes is that all things are best ascribed to God. They teach the immortality of the soul and believe that the rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for. (19) When they send what they have dedicated to God to the temple, they do not offer sacrifices because they have more purification rituals of their own, because of which they are excluded from the common court of the temple, but offer their sacrifices themselves. Yet their course of life is better than that of other men, and they entirely devote themselves to agricultural labor. (20) It also deserves our admiration how much they exceed all other men who claim to be virtuous, and indeed to such a degree as has never appeared among any other people, neither Greeks nor barbarians, no, not even briefly. But it has endured for so long among them and has never been interrupted since they adopted them from of old. This is demonstrated by that institution of theirs in which all things are held in common; so that a rich man enjoys no more of his own wealth than he who has nothing at all. There about four thousand men that live in this way. (21)Neither do they marry wives nor are they desirous to keep servants, thinking that the latter tempts men to be unjust and the former opens the way to domestic quarrels; but as they live by themselves, they minister one to another. (22) They also appoint certain stewards to receive the incomes of their revenues and of the fruits of the ground, those who are good men and priests, who are to get their grain and their food ready for them.

Josephus, Antiquities XIII, 297: The Pharisees and Sadducees on the Traditions of the Fathers • The traditions of the fathers, or elders, mentioned by Josephus, are an important component of what the Rabbis later called oral law. The traditions were a hallmark of the Pharisaic approach to Torah and continued into Rabbinic tradition as it was later enshrined in the Mishnah. (297) …What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have passed on to the people a great many observances handed down by their fathers, which are not written down in the law of Moses. For this reason the Sadducees reject them and say that we are to consider to be obligatory only those observances which are in the written word, but need not observe those which are derived from the tradition of our forefathers.

Who Wrote the Scrolls? • People Living at Khirbet Qumran –Essenes – Majority View –Sadducees – Schiffman • Brought from Jerusalem - Golb

Hasmonean Leaders • Mattathias, leader of the Maccabees, d. 166 • Judas 167 -160 BCE • Jonathan, leader 160 -143 BCE • High Priest 153 -143 BCE