Review: The Dead Sea Scrolls: What Have We Learned? (original) (raw)
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THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AFTER 75 YEARS: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED
Presbyterion, 2024
Most biblical scholars have a general knowledge of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). They are familiar with their discovery and have a general understanding of their significance. Knowledge of the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, remains superficial for most laypeople and Bible scholars. Many factors contribute to this situation including the complexity of these topics and the resources available to the public which are often one sided and lack nuance. The goal of this paper is to address several popular questions concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls for a popular audience with greater depth, balance, and nuance.
"New Tools for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls," Religious Studies Review 20 (1994), 113-116.
The last few years have seen a radical change in the field of Dead Sea Scrolls or Qumran studies. The recent release of the full set of photographic materials and opening of access to all scholars occurred simultaneously with major changes in the "personnel," methodologies and results of research in this no longer arcane field. These changes were the greatest stimulus for the sequence of exciting events, featured in the press over the past three years, which now place before us these new materials. Irrespective of one's view of the ethical or theoretical issues involved regarding the question of access to ancient documents and rights of publication, we are clearly in a new world.
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
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
2007
Edna Ullmann-Margalit, a professor of the philosophy of science 1 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has turned her interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls into a fascinating study of the scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls. As she makes clear in the introduction (p. 17), Ullmann-Margalit makes no claim to expertise in the Scrolls, but is rather engaged in “second-order” scholarship; her subject is the study of the Scrolls. The book is divided into an introduction and three chapters: Chapter 1, “Writings and Ruins: The Essene Connection”; Chapter 2, “A Hard Look at ‘Hard Facts’: The Archaeology of Qumran”; and Chapter 3, “Sects and Scholars.” In the introduction, Ullmann- Margalit lays out her primary goal, which is “to subject to scrutiny the inner logic of the main theory of Qumran studies as well as of the rival theories.” The main theory is the Qumran-Essene hypothesis, which Ullmann-Margalit defines as follows: “the scrolls found in the caves [in the vicinity of Qumran] belonged t...
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.
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