“Was the Dead Sea Sect a Penitential Movement?” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2010), 501-513. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal for the Study of Judaism, 2013
TheDeadSea Scrolls and Contemporary Culture is a superb collection of essays that makes original contributions to the understanding of the scrolls on the 60th anniversary of their discovery. The volume focuses on progress made in research over the last decade and highlights promising areas for fiiture research. The book is highly recommended to all those interested in the DSS, the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and rabbinic Judaism. It would be especially useful for graduate students in the fields listed above since it provides broad insights into recent research as well as timely advice on which questions might be most promising to pursue in the future. The book is a model for the type of rich, interdisciplinary interactions that many colleges and universities yearn to foster in the humanistic disciplines. Emanuel Tov opens the volume with a review of some aspects of the history and current status of the DfD publication project. The first section addresses "Identity and History of the Community." Florentino Garcia Martinez revisits the Groningen hypothesis and suggests that it can still help us explain the textual data from Qumran. Charlotte Hempel examines lQS 6:2c-4a and suggests that when it is read in light of CD i3:2b-3a, one must conclude that S' s use of the preposition in (indicating the existence of a larger or parent group) is a later development or interpolation in the text. Eyal Regev compares features of the Yahad with modem religious sects such as the Quakers, Shakers, Hutterites, Mennonites, and Amish in order to suggest several likely (and unlikely) characteristics of the Yahad. James VanderKam reassesses the early or prehistory of the people associated with the scrolls. He reaches the sober conclusion that we can know very little about the community described in CD 1 and finds no evidence that the Qumran group began or existed as a splinter group that broke away from the group described in CD 1 (à la the Groningen Hypothesis). Section 2a examines scriptural texts. Jonathan Ben-Dov compares scribal practices for writing the divine name in the Elohistic Psalter (Psalms 42-89) and in the DSS and suggests a common explanation for the phenomenon. Peter Flint provides a carefiil summary of non-masoretic variant readings in lQIsa'' and finds that while the majority of the 622 variants are minor and of little consequence, around ten percent (66) are significant and involve clear changes in the meaning of the text. His results overturn preliminary descriptions of lQIsa"» as an exemplar of the Proto-Masoretic text. Eugene Ulrich summarizes some contributions of the study of the DSS for understanding the Bible. If the reviewer might be so bold, I suggest that Ulrich's essay should be required reading for anyone who presumes to study the
BRILL eBooks, 2011
TheDeadSea Scrolls and Contemporary Culture is a superb collection of essays that makes original contributions to the understanding of the scrolls on the 60th anniversary of their discovery. The volume focuses on progress made in research over the last decade and highlights promising areas for fiiture research. The book is highly recommended to all those interested in the DSS, the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and rabbinic Judaism. It would be especially useful for graduate students in the fields listed above since it provides broad insights into recent research as well as timely advice on which questions might be most promising to pursue in the future. The book is a model for the type of rich, interdisciplinary interactions that many colleges and universities yearn to foster in the humanistic disciplines. Emanuel Tov opens the volume with a review of some aspects of the history and current status of the DfD publication project. The first section addresses "Identity and History of the Community." Florentino Garcia Martinez revisits the Groningen hypothesis and suggests that it can still help us explain the textual data from Qumran. Charlotte Hempel examines lQS 6:2c-4a and suggests that when it is read in light of CD i3:2b-3a, one must conclude that S' s use of the preposition in (indicating the existence of a larger or parent group) is a later development or interpolation in the text. Eyal Regev compares features of the Yahad with modem religious sects such as the Quakers, Shakers, Hutterites, Mennonites, and Amish in order to suggest several likely (and unlikely) characteristics of the Yahad. James VanderKam reassesses the early or prehistory of the people associated with the scrolls. He reaches the sober conclusion that we can know very little about the community described in CD 1 and finds no evidence that the Qumran group began or existed as a splinter group that broke away from the group described in CD 1 (à la the Groningen Hypothesis). Section 2a examines scriptural texts. Jonathan Ben-Dov compares scribal practices for writing the divine name in the Elohistic Psalter (Psalms 42-89) and in the DSS and suggests a common explanation for the phenomenon. Peter Flint provides a carefiil summary of non-masoretic variant readings in lQIsa'' and finds that while the majority of the 622 variants are minor and of little consequence, around ten percent (66) are significant and involve clear changes in the meaning of the text. His results overturn preliminary descriptions of lQIsa"» as an exemplar of the Proto-Masoretic text. Eugene Ulrich summarizes some contributions of the study of the DSS for understanding the Bible. If the reviewer might be so bold, I suggest that Ulrich's essay should be required reading for anyone who presumes to study the
Doctrines of the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Doctrine of the Community
This paper examines the origin and history of the Qumran community. Who were the Jews who lived in Qumran? Dead Sea Scroll scholars have argued for Sadducees (Schiffman), Pharisees (Girzberg), Zealots (Malik, Driver), unknown Jewish group (Talmon), early Christian sect (Eisenman), and Essenes (Sukenik). The Manual of Discipline now called Rule of the Community (1QS) has many parallels with the description of the Essenes by Josephus. A list of 36 items is given and referenced. The problems with identifying the Essenes as the Qumran community are also listed. Next, some summaries are given of the sectarian writings of the Qumran community: The Rule of the Community (1QS), The Damascus Document (CD), the Rule of the Congregation (1QSa), and the Temple Scroll (11QT). Finally a comparison is made between the Qumran community and the early church described in the book of Acts.
2013
These two massive volumes comprise the proceedings of a conference of the same name held at the University of Vienna in February 2008. The purpose of the conference, and the proceedings volumes, in the words of the editors, is “to integrate the Dead Sea Scrolls fully into the various disciplines that benefit from the discovery of these very important texts” (vol. 1, p. x). As a result, the papers contained in these volumes are wideranging, written by specialists in the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) as well as in other disciplines. The volumes will thus appeal to scholars in a variety of disciplines, including archaeology of the ancient Near East. ... In as large a collection as the editors present here, the reader should expect essays of uneven quality. But there is much in this collection to entice scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as connected disciplines
Introduction to The Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls have revolutionized the study of the Hebrew Bible’s formative stages as well as our understanding of Jewish religion before the age of the Rabbis and of Christianity. The discovery of these texts nearly 70 years ago at Khirbet Qumran and other sites around the Dead Sea has lead to a flurry of scholarly activity along with a host of interpretations and hypotheses which we are still now struggling to evaluate. Through a careful reading of select texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls corpus, we will begin to interact with many of the unanswered questions at the heart of Qumran studies: who wrote the scrolls, who stored them away in caves, who was the iconic teacher of righteousness, and what exactly do the scrolls teach us about the creation of scripture and early usage of some texts that would eventually become the Bible and other texts that would largely fade out of existence? We will also read some of the latest research on Qumran in order to better understand the nature of the settlement at Khirbet Qumran and its interaction with the world around it.
AUTHOR MS The Dead Sea Scrolls: Challenging the Particularist Paradigm
Torah, Temple, and Land: Ancient Judaism(s) in Context, 2020
Some of the most attention-grabbing hypotheses in Qumran studies are based on a smoking gun approach. A parade example is the so-called separation passage in 4QMMT. The prevalent interpretation of this passage as a reference to the emergence of the Qumran movement does not pass the Cinderella Slipper Test. It just doesn’t fit. The context would support a halakhic separation rather than a reference to sect-formation. References to “women,” “fornication,” and “abomination” sit better with the issue of abstaining from improper marriages with “foreign wives.” Even the most ardent proponents of the view that this is the smoking gun reference to the emergence of the sect spend some time justifying the text’s otherwise amenable tone. In addition, it is crucial to take into account that the people are portrayed as rather vulnerable and misled by their priestly leaders rather than a lost cause in this text. This paper proposes a promising fresh avenue of engagement with scholars working on the equally complex emergence of Christian identity. Thus, William Horbury’s assessment, that “Jews and Christians shared a common sub-culture, the literary focus of which was the Jewish Scriptures” applies to Qumran Jews too. This calls to mind a Twitter hashtag #QumranJewsToo. I am, therefore, suggesting that the Scrolls present us with a much richer literary heritage than narrow sectarian assessments suggest. Here we can learn a great deal from the more nuanced accounts of emerging identities in the study of the parting of the ways between Jews and Christians – or perhaps the ways that never parted as Annette Reed and Adam Becker entitled a recent volume. While I am not suggesting that those who moved to Qumran never parted, I find it inconceivable that the social organization of the community emerged fully fledged – almost like a stroppy teenager walking out in the middle of MMT. In short, our efforts at tracing the emergence of the movement behind the Dead Sea Scrolls can benefit from Switzerland and the CERN facility – let us think less Big Bang and more Higgs Boson – human and literary particles rubbing along in ways that are at first sight not easy to detect but which ultimately make up the basic constituents of matter, in our case ancient Judaism.