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February 20 - April 30, 2018
The Israelite phase probably came to a violent end, as evidenced by the layer of ash, when the Kingdom of Judah fell in 586 bce, but there is little corroboration for this dating.
De Vaux interpreted these features as evidence of the effects of an earthquake in 31 bce and a subsequent fire. In other words, Period Ib began in 100 bce and was continuously occupied until 31 bce.
there was a brief break in the occupation at 9/8 bce when Qumran suffered a violent destruction.
de Vaux suggested that the site was re-occupied at the reign of Herod Archelaus in 4 bce–6 ce.
de Vaux concluded that it must have been destroyed during the First Jewish Revolt, specifying the third year of the rebellion (68/69 ce) as the probable date.
Coins of Caesarea and nearby Dora, where the Roman soldiers were stationed in 67/68 ce,
a brief Roman period when a small military garrison was posted there to patrol the seashore until the fall of Masada in 73 ce.
The buildings of Qumran were abandoned for fifty-nine years, but were reused briefly and for the last time during the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome in 132–5 ce.
Most estimates of the number of scrolls found in the caves vary between 800 and 900 manuscripts.
Copies of Old Testament or Hebrew Bible books account for about a quarter of all the scrolls, 220 copies according to one tally.
The dating of the biblical books varies according to the considered opinion of scholars. Those who are more conservative tend to date the books earlier, those of a liberal persuasion later. Whether conservative or liberal, Christian, Jewish, or secular, almost all regard the time of Ezra in the 5th and 4th centuries bce as vitally important.
majority of scholars still consider the Persian period as the time when most of the scriptures, in one form or another, were composed and edited.
In the Persian period the Hebrew language was now becoming increasingly unfamiliar, and Jews, whose vernacular had become Aramaic, needed translations to help them understand the Mosaic Law written in the holy tongue. Aramaic is a northwest semitic language originally spoken by the Aramaeans; it became the official language of the Persian Empire.
Hebrew Bible reflects this linguistic transition with passages written in Aramaic (Jeremiah 10:11; Ezra 4:8–6:18, 7:12–26; and Daniel 2:4b–7:28) as well as in Hebrew.
Before the discovery of the Qumran scrolls, scholars had to be satisfied with studying Hebrew biblical manuscripts that date to the medieval period.
The Masoretic Text, as the medieval text was called, is the textus receptus or received text.
The Qumran biblical scrolls attest to the antiquity of the biblical books. They are approximately 1,000 years older than the Masoretic Text, dating to between 250 bce and 100 ce.
By about 100 ce all the biblical texts had unified into the proto-Masoretic Text or proto-Rabbinic text-type and the textual variation was limited to orthographical differences.
by about 100 ce all the biblical manuscripts found in various locations in the Judaean Desert, not only at Qumran, are proto-Masoretic Texts.
Before the discovery of the scrolls, there were three previously known text-types of the Hebrew Bible: the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint.
Some scholars, usually of the more conservative position, continue to hold the Masoretic Text as the text of the Hebrew Bible and all other text-types as translational, interpretative, or recensional derivatives, even though they do not exhibit any of the relevant textual characteristics. This ‘Masoretic Text fundamentalism’, as it is called, prejudges the new evidence of the Qumran scrolls with unwarranted convictions.
Although the Qumran-Essene theory can be disputed, it does not mean that it is wrong. In fact, most scholars still hold onto some form of this hypothesis with modifications, large and small.
Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen, ap = apocryphon and gen = Genesis), for instance, is a relatively well-preserved text whose sectarian point of view is in dispute. It belongs to the literary genre of ‘the rewritten Bible’ which interprets scriptural accounts by retelling portions of the Pentateuch.
Among the Qumran scrolls are found the earliest exemplars of the targums or Aramaic translations of the biblical books originally written in Hebrew: the targum of Leviticus (4Q156) and the targum of Job (4Q156 and 11Q10).
‘Second Temple Judaism’ refers to that form of Jewish religion, history, and literature that is defined by the sanctuary of Jerusalem. It is the ‘Second Temple’, because the First Temple, erected by King Solomon, was destroyed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 bce.
This Second Temple lasted 585 years until the Romans destroyed it in 70 ce. During this age, Jews lived successively under Persian (539–331 bce), Hellenistic (331–170 bce), and Roman rule (63 bce–70 ce). Only for a brief interlude, between 166–63 bce, did Jews experience any kind of autonomy under the Maccabaean rule and Hasmonaean dynasty.
during this time of independence that the communal phase of Qumran began and the sects of the Essenes, Pharisees, and Sadducees were noted for the first time.
by 165 bce Judaea was ruled by one of Mattathias’s sons, the military leader Judas, nicknamed Maccabaeus or ‘the hammer’ either because of the physical form of his head or the ferocious temperament of the man. This nickname also became the epithet of his brothers, Jonathan Maccabee (161–143 bce) and Simon Maccabee (143–135 bce) who followed him in reigning over an independent Jewish state.
from the time of the return from exile, the leadership of the Jews became a diarchy, vested as it was in one secular and another religious figure.
sect, like the Essenes, is a group that denies salvation to all in the larger community. It is introversionist in that it turns inwardly on itself, whereas a party, like the Pharisees, is reformist and simply says that all in the larger community should agree with the party tenets.
The Essenes were introversionists who fled the cities ‘because of the ungodliness customary among town-dwellers’
The Pharisees were reformists who did not retreat from the cities. They were expert interpreters of the law who depended upon the tradition of the elders. They were concerned about food purity, Sabbath rules, tithes, and the calendar.
Finally, there were the Sadducees about whom very little is known.
Judaism is not a creedal religion like Christianity. It does not require assent to a set of creeds and doctrines. It is a way of life, conformity to a pattern of practices, and membership in the Jewish people. Until Maimonides articulated the thirteen principles of faith in the Middle Ages, traditional Judaism did not have a common set of faith statements.
‘new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah’ (v. 31). The innovation of this covenant is to be found in the belief that the law will be placed within men, written upon their hearts. By declaring this new dispensation, the passage remarkably advocates a setting aside of the teaching of the torah (v. 34). It is no wonder that the antinomian tendencies of the Pauline letters take up this point.
It seems to me that there is a better model and that is to regard the Essenes, the Qumran community of the yahad, the urban sectarians, the Jerusalem church, and the Pauline congregations as distinct groups that shared a common sectarian matrix.
the disciples of Jesus were originally considered as followers of ‘the Way’—and as such they held to a similar, yet distinct, set of beliefs. They focused on certain scriptural passages, like Isaiah 40, Jeremiah 31, and Habakkuk 2:4, but they drew different lessons from them.
Dormitian Abbey in Jerusalem
the new covenant is sectarian in the sense that only members of sects focused on this concept. The whole of rabbinic literature ignores this concept; the only possible exception is berit milah or the covenant of circumcision, but its link to Jeremiah is tenuous at best.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are important, first and foremost, for what they tell us about Second Temple Judaism and sectarianism. They allow us an insider’s view of the thoughts and beliefs of one or more Jewish sects related to the Essenes and who were also comparable to early Christian groups.
a questionable tendency to describe the Jewish community of the scrolls in Christian terminology.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are also important for Old Testament studies or Hebrew Bible scholarship in providing the earliest Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts of almost all the biblical books.
the Dead Sea Scrolls are important for our understanding of the early churches and the New Testament.
Several texts are called rules or serakhim (singular: serekh).
A group of some twenty-five scrolls interpret larger and smaller passages from the Hebrew Bible using the technical term pesher.
The continuous pesharim are running commentaries on the verses and phrases of a biblical book by the use of a regular pattern of biblical quotation, introductory formula, and comment.
The thematic pesharim, on the other hand, organize their commentary around a theme, such as the person and work of the heavenly redeemer figure, Melchizedek (11QMelch).
The Hodayot, or Thanksgiving Psalms, from Cave 1 is a long scroll of eighteen columns in which an individual speaker and community gives thanks to the Lord.
