Dead Sea Scrolls

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Temple scroll 11QT a (11Q19) in the Shrine of the Book ( Israel Museum , Jerusalem)

The Dead Sea Scrolls (English: Dead Sea Scrolls ) or Qumran manuscripts are a group of ancient Jewish texts from eleven caves near the archaeological site of Khirbet Qumran in the West Bank come from. From 1947 to 1956 the caves were discovered, mostly by Bedouins . Some of the manuscripts were acquired from the antique trade and some were found during the archaeological investigation of the caves. About 15 scrolls are still recognizable as such. The remainder, an estimated 900 to 1000 scrolls, has disintegrated into more than 15,000 fragments. The manuscripts are based on the letter shapes ( palaeographic) in the time of the 3rd century BC. Dated to the 1st century AD. This dating has been verified and confirmed in some cases using the radiocarbon method. Most of the texts are written in Hebrew ; almost all of them are literary and have a religious content. Everyday texts such as B. There are hardly any letters. The literary character distinguishes the Qumran manuscripts from other ancient text finds in the region (with the exception of Masada ) and, despite the diversity of the content, makes them appear to many experts as belonging together.

For the textual history of the Hebrew Bible (the Jewish Tanakh and the Christian Old Testament ), the Dead Sea Scrolls are of outstanding importance. The Masoretic Text , which later became canonical in Judaism , is very close to a type of Qumran manuscript, which underlines the age and quality of the Jewish writing tradition. But this proto-Masoretic text has no monopoly. There is an equal coexistence of different text types among the biblical Qumran manuscripts.

The Hellenistic and early Roman Judea was up to the Qumran finds almost only through writings known that had been handed down in a centuries-long, mostly Christian-controlled selection process. The Qumran manuscripts, on the other hand, contain a spectrum of ancient Jewish literature uncensored by medieval copyists . The focus is on the Torah : some Qumran writings focus on a main or minor figure of the Torah. There are free retellings of Torah material. Other authors rearranged the legal texts of the Torah and developed them further.

In Qumran a group of texts stands out that were written in a Jewish community with a special stamp. This community called itself Jachad and is often identified in research with the Essenes . Members of the Jachad obeyed the commandments of the Torah with great radicalism and, moreover, their own commandments that were not known outside of the Jachad. The Jachad rejected the Jerusalem temple and believed that the liturgy could replace the Jerusalem sacrificial cult in their own group. Many writers believed that they were living in the end times . This was compatible with an interest in wisdom literature , which is well represented in the spectrum of Qumran writings. What is missing among the surviving extra-biblical scrolls from the Dead Sea, on the other hand, are historical works.

People of early Christianity are not mentioned in the Qumran texts, on average 100 years older. For Judaism , the Dead Sea manuscripts open up new insights into the development of Halacha .

Ancient texts found on the west bank of the Dead Sea

The following article deals with the texts from the caves at Khirbet Qumran. But ancient and early medieval texts have also been found at other archaeological sites on the west bank of the Dead Sea and in the lower Jordan Valley, which can be referred to in a broader sense as "Dead Sea Scrolls":

In individual cases it is possible that the fragments acquired in the antique trade were alleged to come from Qumran, but that these texts come from a different regional location. Since 2017, the Israel Antiquities Administration, together with the Archeology Department of the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria, has been carrying out rescue excavations in the area of ​​the above-mentioned sites in order to forestall looters. In March 2021, text finds were reported for the first time in about 60 years, namely new fragments of the Greek scroll of the twelve prophets from Nachal Chever with the text from Sach 8,16–17  EU and Nah 1,5–6  EU . This scroll was already known through fragments that appeared in the antique trade in the 1950s, and then through the archaeological investigation of the so-called Cave of Horror under the direction of Yohanan Aharoni in 1961.

Essenes - Qumran - Jachad

Floor paving in L77, interpreted by de Vaux as a chairman's place
L4 with passage and hatch to the rear room L1

The ancient authors Flavius ​​Josephus , Philon of Alexandria and Pliny the Elder describe the Essenes as a Jewish school of philosophy or as a celibate “tribe”. The Qumran-Essen theory says that this group had its center in Khirbet Qumran and owned a library here, the remains of which represent the Dead Sea Scrolls. In antiquity, book ownership is a clear feature of the upper class. However, the architecture of Khirbet Qumran does not have the luxury that one expects from owners of a large library. This is exactly what shows a voluntarily chosen ascetic lifestyle in the sense of the Qumran-Essener hypothesis.

The excavator Roland de Vaux was convinced that he had identified a writing workshop in Khirbet Qumran (so-called scriptorium in L30). It does not follow from this, even for representatives of his hypothesis, that all the scrolls from the caves were made here. Some roles are too old for that. But according to this theory, Khirbet Qumran is the place where the roles were studied and where that was practiced, which in particular the community rule (1QS) prescribes. This interpretation was accepted almost consensually until Norman Golb contradicted it in 1980. It is also conveyed at the tourist presentation by Khirbet Qumran. One example is the interpretation of L77 as a meeting room (photo): “This is where the community came together for the meetings known from the scrolls, for deliberations, for decisions about the admission of candidates and in court cases. A stone circle still shows the position of the above ... "

Within the complex of Khirbet Qumran, no room or wing can be clearly identified as a library. One would expect a room with several large wall niches in which the scrolls lay on shelves, as well as colonnades where the readers had the opportunity to study the texts. The library of Khirbet Qumran is often considered to be room L4, which is equipped with a kind of flat bench all around, and room L1 behind it, which can only be entered through L4 (photo). A hatch connects both rooms. The bench could have been a base for the wooden shelves on which the scrolls lay. Katharine Greenleaf Pedley identified L4 and L1 as a library with a reading room and a study on the upper floor, which has not been preserved. Hartmut Stegemann considers L1 to be the actual library and L4 to be the reading room. In L4 it was, of course, dark. Stegemann sees this as an advantage, because it protected the scrolls from fading. They were studied by the light of oil lamps. According to this theory, the Essenes hid their precious book scrolls during the Jewish War (before 68 AD) in the nearby cave 4Q in order to bring them to safety from the Roman army. Some important scrolls may have been removed from this hiding place and stored in Cave 1Q.

The storage of damaged sacred texts in a depot ( geniza ) has been a practice that has been attested to in Judaism since the Middle Ages. Eleazar Sukenik suspected that it was already followed by Essenes in ancient times. Assumptions about the sanctity of Hebrew texts, which made it necessary to deposit them in Genizot in the Middle Ages, cannot be taken for granted in ancient Judaism. On the contrary, Qumran manuscripts were patched in ways that would not have been acceptable in the Middle Ages. If one understands the Qumran caves as genizot, this speaks for a gradual accumulation of scrolls over a long period of time. A geniza can also contain religious texts that have been disapproved of in terms of content and have therefore been withdrawn from circulation. After Sukenik died in 1953, the geniza theory was advocated by authors who strongly emphasized this aspect (Henri del Medico, Godfrey R. Driver ). The majority opinion, however, followed de Vaux, especially since Józef T. Milik ( Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judaea , 1959) and Frank M. Cross ( The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies , 1961), two members of his edition team, presented the performance a unified ancient library outsourced from Khirbet Qumran.

Radical critics, a minority, deny a connection between Khirbet Qumran and the eleven caves of the scroll: besides Norman Golb, especially Yizhar Hirschfeld , Jürgen Zangenberg , Yizhak Magen / Yuval Peleg and Rachel Elior . Hirschfeld, for example, assumes that the scrolls come from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was a center of literary productivity of various Jewish groups and had libraries of the Hellenistic type . The text corpus of Qumran therefore came together only in the course of the dumping in the caves during the Jewish War. It is not a library of the Qumran-Essen special group, but reflects "the diversity that marked Jerusalem at the end of the period of the Second Temple."

Authors who hold fast to the Qumran-Essen theory often represent it in a modified form. Examples: Alison Schofield suspects that different Essenian local groups brought their respective libraries to Qumran around 68 AD and deposited them in the caves. Steven Pfann thinks that the depot in the somewhat remote 3Q cave (including the copper roll ) was created by Jerusalem priests. Joan E. Taylor develops Sukenik's geniza theory further.

From a methodological point of view, it makes sense to look at the roles individually, regardless of the archaeological findings from Khirbet Qumran and the ancient texts about the Essenes. The Jewish group, whose special views are recorded in some Qumran scrolls, referred to themselves as Jachad ("unity"), a language that is adopted in specialist literature; Texts that contain their particular views are therefore Jachadic texts. (The term Jachadisch is also used in the following where the English-language literature says sectarian , since " sect " is strongly derogatory in German.)

Discovery and Publication

The great scrolls from Cave 1Q

A person sits under the entrance to cave 1Q (1948)

On August 9, 1949, the Times of London published a discovery story written by Gerald Lankester Harding, director of the Jordanian Antiquities Authority: While searching for a goat, a young Taʿâmireh Bedouin found the entrance of a cave in the early summer of 1947 and threw a stone into it Deep and heard ceramics break. He went into the cave with his friend. The two Bedouins found eight scrolls in jars, divided them and sold them to traders in Bethlehem. In 1955 Harding named the two shepherds: Mohammed edh Dhib and Ahmed Mohammed. He told the story differently now, there were eight jugs, all of which were empty except for one with three rolls in it. In 1957, Mohammed edh Dhib put his own version on record, which was in conflict with Harding's version from 1955 (three rolls in a sealed jug with a lid), but dated the find to 1945: the rolls therefore hung in a leather pouch in his house for over two years before showing them to a dealer. In the meantime there were probably other visits to the cave by various people, so that those scrolls that came on the market in 1947 were removed. John Trever researched the time of the discovery and assumed November / December 1946 or January / February 1947.

The Bethlehem antiquities dealer Faidi Salahi acquired three roles from the Taʿâmireh, four more from the dealer Khalil Iskandar Shahin (Kando). Shahin sold his four rolls to the Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan Athanasius Yeshue Samuel in Jerusalem's St. Mark's Monastery . In the summer of 1947, the metropolitan showed them to experts from the École Biblique and the Jewish National Library, who, however, did not consider them to be genuine. The scandal surrounding the Shapira fragments in the 1880s continued to have an impact on this skepticism .

Trevers' photo of the Great Isaiah scroll on the bulletin board of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1948)

On November 24, 1947, a middleman for the Salahi dealer showed a fragment to the curator of the Hebrew University's Antiquities Collection , Eliezer Sukenik . This considered the authenticity to be possible. He recognized the resemblance to the inscriptions on ancient Jewish ossuaries in the Jerusalem area. Shortly before the beginning of the First Arab-Israeli War , Sukenik von Salahi first bought the War Scroll (1QM) and the Hymn Scroll (1QH) and in December the Small Isaiah Scroll (1Isa b ) and two scroll jars . In January / February 1948 Sukenik contacted Metropolitan Samuel to acquire his roles as well. He had his four roles examined at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. A postdoc, John Trever, recognized the resemblance to the Nash papyrus , the oldest known Hebrew manuscript at the time. He was given permission to photograph the reels. The metropolitan then deposited them in a safe deposit box in Beirut. Trever's photos are of particular value because of the damage to the rolls that has occurred since then. Based on the photos, William Foxwell Albright declared the roles to be real. On April 25, 1948, Millar Burrows, on behalf of the American School of Oriental Research, announced to the New York Times that the following ancient Hebrew texts had been discovered in St. Mark's Monastery in Jerusalem: the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QJes a ), the Habakkuk Pescher (1QpHab), the church rule (1QS) and the later so-called Genesis Apocryphon (1QGenAp).

After Israel and Jordan had signed a ceasefire agreement on April 3, 1949, Khirbet Qumran and the caves were in the area, Bethlehem and the old city of Jerusalem with St. Mark's Monastery on Jordanian territory. Akkash al-Zebn, an officer in the Arab Legion , located what was later to be named cave 1Q, from which the scrolls that appeared in trade came. The Jordanian Antiquities Authority then carried out an archaeological investigation there together with the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem and the Palestine Archaeological Museum . Under the pottery were fragments of characteristic cylindrical storage jars with a wide opening, on average about 60 cm high and 25-28 cm in diameter. The accompanying ceramic lids resembled upturned bowls.

Antique textiles were also found. The excavator Roland de Vaux suspected that the scrolls had first been wrapped in cloths and then deposited in the jugs. Findings of text fragments that matched the already known scrolls confirmed that the scrolls came from this cave.

If the authenticity of the roles was thus fundamentally confirmed, their age continued to be controversial:

In the fall of 1950, Willard Libby dated a linen cloth from cave 1Q, probably used to wrap a scroll, to 1917 radiocarbon years before 1950, ± 200 years, using the radiocarbon method he had developed himself shortly before . The dating to the Middle Ages was refuted.

Metropolitan Samuel had emigrated to the United States via Beirut in 1949 and had taken the roles he had acquired with him. He showed them there several times at exhibitions, but initially did not find a buyer. On the one hand, Millar Burrows published the text of these scrolls from 1950 onwards based on the photos taken at the American School of Oriental Research under the title Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark's Monastery . With that they were known to the professional world. On the other hand, the legal situation was unclear, which deterred potential buyers. After Metropolitan Samuel had advertised them in the Wall Street Journal on June 1, 1954 , a bank on behalf of Yigael Yadin purchased the rolls in New York for $ 250,000 for the State of Israel (July 1954). They have been kept in Jerusalem ever since. Sukenik's edition of the rolls he had bought was published posthumously in Israel in 1954 in Hebrew. In 1955 their English edition appeared: The Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew University .

At the Qumran excavation, from left to right: Roland de Vaux, Józef T. Milik , Gerald Lankester Harding (1952).

Roland de Vaux, director of the École Biblique and, together with Gerald Lankester Harding, director of the Jordanian excavations at the Dead Sea, agreed in 1952 with the Bedouins to jointly examine caves in the vicinity of Khirbet Qumran. The Bedouins first led the team to Wadi Murabbaʿat . While de Vaux's team began their work here, Bedouins discovered the next cave of the Scrolls at Qumran (2Q). The archaeologists then undertook a two-week search in the neighborhood of 1Q. They discovered cave 3Q. In addition to ceramic shards and a few small text fragments, they also found the copper scroll from Qumran .

The Scrollery (1952-1960)

Caves 4a and 4b (collectively referred to as 4Q) on the left and 5 on the right as seen from Khirbet Qumran

In September 1952 Bedouins discovered cave 4Q , an artificially created double cave . The mass of fragments found there, over 15,000, made a different approach necessary. International donors were sought to buy the fragments, and more employees were needed to edit the material. The institutions that participated financially were able to send scholars to the editorial team in Jerusalem: McGill University in Montreal , the University of Oxford , the University of Manchester , the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , the Presbyterian McCormick Theological Seminary from Chicago , the Vatican Apostolic Library and the Unitarian All Souls Church in New York City . The international team of editors, the so-called Scrollery , consisted of members of the École biblique , supplemented by other experts: Roland de Vaux as main editor, Józef T. Milik , Pierre Benoit , Maurice Baillet , Frank M. Cross , Patrick Skehan , John Strugnell , John Marco Allegro , Jean Starcky and (briefly) Claus-Hunno Hunzinger . John D. Rockefeller, Jr. sponsored the work with a patron.

Shortly after 4Q, caves 5Q and 6Q were discovered. In the spring of 1955, caves 7Q to 10Q were added. 7Q is remarkable because this cave only contained Greek texts. In February 1956, Bedouins discovered the last cave of the scrolls, 11Q. In ancient times it was closed with a stone and therefore contained relatively well-preserved scrolls, including two copies of the temple scroll .

The copper roll found in 1952 was oxidized and could not be opened. Allegro campaigned for the two parts of the roll to be sawn into strips at the College of Technology in Manchester in 1955/56 with a special device. He transcribed and translated the text, a directory of treasure hiding places. Allegro gave an interview to a regional broadcaster of the BBC in which he suspected that the teacher of justice , a charismatic founder of the Qumran Essenes, had been crucified just like Jesus of Nazareth later . De Vaux, Milik, Skehan, Starcky and Strugnell distanced themselves from Allegro's hypothesis in a letter to the editor. When Allegro returned to Jerusalem, he was isolated. In the official press release, the treasures of the copper scroll were presented as unreal and Allegro's contribution was ignored. De Vaux entrusted the edition of the copper scroll to Milik. In 1959 Milik's pre-translation appeared in the Revue Biblique , again with the comment that the treasures were legends. Allegro published a popular book, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll , in 1960 . He founded a fund and undertook expeditions to the places indicated in the text in 1959, 1962 and 1963, but without finding any treasures there.

During the Suez Crisis of 1956/57 the scroll fragments were stored in a bank safe in Amman and suffered considerable damage. The Scrollery staff began to create a concordance for internal use to simplify work on the non-biblical texts. This card index was completed in 1960. That year, Rockefeller stopped funding, and Jordan did not provide the same amount of funding for the edition of the Qumran Texts.

Stagnation of DJD publications (1960–1990)

Israeli military confiscated the temple scroll. From left to right: Rafi Sitton, Khalil Iskandar Schahin, Shmulik Goren, Sami Nachmias (Bethlehem 1967)

By 1970 four edition volumes appeared in the DJD series, from 1970 to 1990 inclusive only three. According to Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, this had personal reasons. Some Scrollery members had taken on too large a workload (Milik, for example, over 200 manuscripts); Milik and Strugnell were alcoholic.

During the Six Day War, an Israeli commando, commissioned by Yigael Yadin, confiscated the roll of the temple in Bethlehem in 1967 , which the antiques dealer Khalil Iskandar Shahin had hidden in his house. Shahin was later settled with $ 108,000. Yadin published the temple scroll in 1977 in a new Hebrew edition and thus ushered in a new period of research; the Dead Sea Scrolls increasingly became a subject of Judaic studies . The importance of the scrolls for the development of the Halacha and the synagogal liturgy now came more into focus.

The members of the Scrollery passed "their" texts on to doctoral students in the 1970s. The technical discussion suffered from the unequal access of scientists to the sources. On November 9, 1990, Haaretz published an interview with anti-Semitic statements by Strugnell. That was unexpected because Strugnell was working with Israeli experts among the Scrollery staff. The scandal had the consequence that Strugnell was replaced as editor of DJD by Emanuel Tov . This expanded the editorial team and thus accelerated the publication of the missing texts.

Approval of all texts (from 1991)

In September 1991 the first volume of a text reconstruction of the unpublished Qumran fragments appeared in print: A preliminary edition of the unpublished Dead Sea scrolls , edited by Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin Abegg ( Hebrew Union College ). The basis was the concordance created for the scrollery's internal use, a copy of which Wacholder had obtained from Strugnell. Abegg had written a computer program that put the texts together from the text snippets of the concordance.

On September 22, 1991, William A. Moffett, director of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, announced that his library had photographs of all unpublished text fragments and would make them fully available to the public. These photographs were taken so that the text would be preserved as a cultural asset if it were destroyed by war or natural disaster. Elizabeth Hay Bechtel had financed the campaign and owned the master set of the negatives, which became the property of the Huntington Library after her death in 1987. Other sets of the photos had gone to institutions, which, however, had undertaken not to publish them.

The Israel Antiquities Authority has been involved in the conservation of the scrolls and fragments since 1991 and announced in 2007, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the discovery of Cave 1Q, that it would create digital copies of the fragments in high resolution and publish them on the Internet. The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library website was first uploaded by Google in December 2012; an update in February 2014 offered 10,000 new multispectral photographs as well as image descriptions and an improved search function. The database is continuously updated.

In February 2017 it became known that Oren Gutfeld ( Hebrew University , Jerusalem) and Randall Price ( Liberty University , Virginia) had found typical ceramics, textiles, leather straps and the remains of a roll of blank parchment in a cave near Qumran. Tool from the 1950s suggested that Bedouins had investigated the cave and possibly extracted fragments of text. According to Lawrence Schiffman, the most important find is the unwritten remains of parchment. It shows that it is possible to obtain antique parchment that can be described in a modern way and then put on the market as an alleged Qumran text.

Fragments from private ownership

Since 2002 several private Qumran fragments have been published in the journals Revue de Qumran , Dead Sea Discoveries and Meghillot . The indications of origin were vague, but several times led to the family of the Bethlehem antiques dealer Khalil Iskandar Shahin. In 2016, Emanuel Tov pointed out that in the Schøyen Collection as well as the Museum of the Bible , the collection of Azusa Pacific University and the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the proportion of Bible texts among the fragments is significantly higher than in the Qumran text corpus. Equally unusual is the fact that practically every fragment published from a private collection can be assigned to an already known work. Nine fragments from the Schøyen Collection were examined using various methods, and two were found to be forgery; all nine are most likely written by modern scribes on antique parchment or papyrus. The Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC , opened in November 2017, exhibited 16 fragments of alleged Qumran scrolls. In October 2018, it removed five of the fragments it had acquired from 2002 after the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing identified them as modern forgeries. In March 2020 it became known that all 16 alleged Qumran fragments in this museum are forgeries.

The body of the manuscript

The number of previously existing scrolls is estimated at around 900, others at 1000 or more.

Dating, scripts and languages

For the Dead Sea Scrolls, the radiocarbon method was used to date from the 4th century BC. And the 2nd century AD. However, the method is destructive (the sample material taken is destroyed) and prone to errors. For example, in the early years editors used castor oil to make darkened fragments easier to read. A fragment treated in this way would appear younger than it is on radiocarbon dating.

The accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) was 1990 ( ETH Zurich ) and 1994/95 ( University of Arizona , Tucson ) used to determine the age of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Only small samples are necessary for this, which are taken from the blank edges of the document. Here is a selection of the measurement results:

laboratory Scroll Calibrated age

(1-sigma, reliability 68%)

Calibrated age

(2-sigma, reliability 95%)

Tucson Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa a ) 341-325 BC BC or 202–114 BC Chr. 351-295 BC BC or 230–53 BC Chr.
Zurich Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa a ) 201-93 BC Chr. 351-296 or 230-48 BC Chr.
Tucson Community rule (1QS) 164-144 BC BC or 116 BC Chr. - 50 AD 344-323 BC BC or 203 BC Chr. - 122 AD
Tucson Habakuk-Pescher (1QpHab) 88–2 BC Chr. 160-148 BC BC or 111 BC BC - AD 2
Zurich Temple Scroll (11Q19) 53 BC BC - AD 21 166 BC Chr. - 66 AD
Zurich Genesis Apocryphon (1QGenAp) 47 BC Chr. - 48 AD 89 BC Chr. - 69 AD
Zurich Hymn scroll (1QH a ) 37 BC Chr. - 68 AD 47 BC Chr. - 118 AD

Since the Hebrew script went through a development in antiquity, the age of a manuscript can also be estimated paleographically based on the shape of the letters . This results in a time window from the 3rd century BC. BC to the 1st century AD The model that is still used today was developed by Frank M. Cross in the 1950s:

  • main chronological phases: archaic (around 250–150 BC); Hasmonean (150–30 BC), Herodian (30 BC – 70 AD) and Postherodian (from 70 AD);
  • Font types: italic, semi-italic, semi-formal and formal.

As a rule of thumb, it can be formulated that the letters in the older manuscripts are of different sizes and that the younger the manuscripts, the more they become the same. The trend is towards square writing , which is so called because many letters can be drawn in a square. The scribe "hung" the letters on the horizontal line that he had previously scratched. In the more recent manuscripts, most of the letters also seem to “sit” on a second line.

Italics are typical for non-literary everyday texts, but these are very rare among the Qumran scripts. As a result, formal and semi-formal book fonts predominate. The fact that literary texts are occasionally preserved in (semi) italic script probably marks these manuscripts as private copies.

Leviticus scroll in ancient Hebrew script (11QpaleoLev a , Shrine of the Book in the Israel Museum , Jerusalem)

The Paleo-Hebrew script is an older form of the Hebrew script that was largely out of use by the time the Qumran scrolls were written. Some Qumran manuscripts use them. The first impression that texts in this font are particularly old manuscripts is deceptive. 11QpaleoLev a (photo), for example, according to Frank M. Cross, can be dated to the early 1st century AD and is therefore comparatively young. The ancient script was used as a sign of reverence for the text. It is a so-called reverential script. Mostly it was used for books of the Torah , as well as for a copy of the book of Job (4Q101). There are also manuscripts in Hebrew script in which the divine name YHWH was entered in paleo-Hebrew script.

In addition, there are other scripts in the text corpus, albeit rarely: three Hebrew scripts (Cryptic A, B and C), Greek and Nabataean .

The vast majority of the texts found are in Hebrew . Orthography , morphology and syntax reflect different language levels, one of which is particularly typical as Qumran Hebrew . According to Emanuel Tov, of the total of over 900 texts, around 150 are in Aramaic , 17 of them in Nabatean script. 27 texts are notated in Greek . How weakly the Greek language is represented in Qumran stands out in comparison with other localities in the region: 3 percent in Qumran, but z. B. 45 percent in Wadi Murabbaʿat , 23 percent in Masada .

How to quote

The Dead Sea manuscripts are quoted according to two different systems. One possibility is the naming according to content criteria. It consists of a maximum of five components:

  1. Place of origin: The eleven caves in the vicinity of Qumran were named 1Q to 11Q according to the order in which they were discovered . B. to Mas " Masada " or Mur " Wadi Murabbaʿat ", other sites of ancient texts in the region.
  2. Material: mostly parchment / leather, which is not specified; pap " Papyrus ", east " Ostrakon ".
  3. Title of the font (abbreviated). paleo refers to the use of the ancient Hebrew script , 11QpaleoLev is therefore a role of the biblical book Leviticus in ancient Hebrew script from cave 11.
  4. If several specimens of a work have been found in the same cave, they are distinguished by uppercase small letters. 4QSam a is the first, 4QSam b the second manuscript of the book of Samuel from cave 4.
  5. Language: mostly Hebrew (not specified), ar “Aramaic”, gr “Greek”.

Alternatively, you can designate a manuscript with an indication of the cave and the number that the text was assigned when it was published in the series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD). The first published texts from cave 1Q did not receive such an inventory number at that time. Outside of the specialized literature on Qumran, both types of citation are also combined, something like this: 4Q70 (Jer a ) is the first roll of the book Jeremiah from cave 4Q with the inventory number 4Q70.

Making a scroll

Columns I to IV of the Great Isaiah Scroll; the text begins at the top right (shrine of the book)
The 4Q448 has the beginning of a roll with a sewn-on fastener through which the leather strap was passed

The writing material for the Dead Sea Scrolls is mostly animal skins, mostly from sheep or goats. In the literature, they are sometimes referred to as parchment rolls and sometimes leather rolls: Antique parchment was created by stretching the animal skin extremely. The writing material of the Qumran scrolls was also superficially treated with tanning agent . The lighter side of the hair was usually described. About 12 percent of the texts were written on papyrus . The copper roll, which is also unique in terms of its content, is made of sheet copper. In addition to the scroll, the standard form of the ancient book, there are some single sheets in the body of the Qumran writings. The code does not appear.

The superbly preserved Great Isaiah scroll shows how ancient scribes proceeded. The 66 chapters of the biblical book of Isaiah were a considerable amount of text, which is why a large format was chosen. That way, the scroll did not become so thick that it was difficult to handle. The large Isaiah scroll, 22-25 cm high, has been preserved in its full length (734 cm). The height and length of the scroll are therefore in a harmonious relationship. Knowing this allows conclusions to be drawn about the original size of the fragmentary scrolls, the height of which is known. The materiality of the scrolls of Qumran is also interesting for hypotheses about the origin of biblical writings. Based on the Great Isaiah scroll, one can estimate, for example, that a scroll of the same height and spelling with the entire text of the Torah ( Pentateuch ) would have been 33.2 m long, a Hexateuch would have required 37.5 m. Book scrolls with such dimensions would be very unwieldy.

The scribe marked the columns of text and the spaces in between. These vertical lines, like the lines, were scratched into the parchment with a sharp instrument. The scribe left a margin free at the top and bottom of the roll so that damage did not lead to loss of text. A blank strip (protocol and eschatoll) was left at the beginning and end of the roll. When the paperwork was finished, the sheets were sewn together. There is such a seam, for example, between columns III and IV of the large Isaiah scroll (photo). Scrolls could be tied together with a leather strap. From cave 4Q comes a fragment of the beginning of the roll to which a fastener was sewn (4Q448, photo).

The tools of the scribe was writing tube and the carbon black ink (no iron gall ink ) which has been kept similar to today's Chinese ink as a solid block. The required amount was broken off, pulverized and mixed with water in the inkwell. After writing, the water evaporated and the soot adhered to the parchment surface thanks to the binder. For the ink of the hymn scroll it was proven by X-ray fluorescence analysis that water from the Dead Sea with its characteristic ratio of chlorine to bromine was used. The ink of the Genesis apocryphon , on the other hand, was not mixed with water from the Dead Sea.

The writers of the Qumran scrolls generally remain anonymous, as a colophon has not survived or was not common. Some texts from the corpus of the Qumran scrolls are considered writing exercises and indicate a school operation. However, nothing more is known about the scribe training, including where schools were located. Whether some or many Qumran scrolls were written in the neighboring settlement of Khirbet Qumran is the subject of discussion. Jachadian writings show no particular interest in the making of books.

Two scribes participated in the Great Isaiah Scroll. Both work is comparatively fleeting. You can also see this in the typeface: the scribe strictly adhered to the right margin of the column, but at the end of his line he often got over the left margin of the column. More careful scribes avoided this. The text contains numerous errors, almost all of which were subsequently corrected. Of all Qumran rolls, 1QIsa a contains the most corrections - one every four lines on average. Millar Burrows suspected because of the numerous phonetic variants that the writers of 1QIsa a did not copy a template, but wrote according to dictation. Emanuel Tov also thinks mass production is conceivable, in which several scribes were dictated at the same time.

Text corrections in the great Isaiah scroll: the misspelled word is marked with dots, the correct spelling is added above the line

The Corrector of the Great Isaiah Scroll has also been identified as the scribe of several other texts: 1QS , 1QSa , 1QSb, and 4QSam c . This is an unusual finding because it is difficult to identify individual manuscripts with formal Hebrew book script. Therefore it looks at least that many writers are only represented with one manuscript each in the corpus of the Qumran scrolls. Since professional writers produced numerous texts, this would mean that only a small part of their respective work ended up in the Qumran text corpus and was thus preserved. Many scrolls are clearly copies because they contain typical transcription errors such as dittography .

Restoration of a fragmentary text

John Strugnell at work in the Scrollery

About 15 Dead Sea Scrolls still have the form of the ancient scroll : the Large Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa a ), the Small Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa b ), the Genesis Apocryphon (1QGenAp), the Habakkuk Pescher (1QpHab), the parish rule ( 1QS), the Rule of War (1QM), the Hymn Scroll (1QH a ), the Copper Scroll (3Q15), the Leviticus Scroll (11Q1 = 11QpaleoLev a ), the Ezekiel Scroll (11Q4), the Great Psalm Scroll (11Q5 = 11QPs a ), the Apocryphal Psalms (11Q11), the Sabbath victim songs (11Q17), a work called New Jerusalem (11Q18) and the temple scroll (11Q19). The bulk of the text corpus, on the other hand, is available in fragments of different sizes; in cave 4Q alone that is around 15,000 fragments.

After they were found or acquired in an antique trade, the fragments were first cleaned, smoothed, photographed and pre-sorted according to material, color or letter shape. Then they were placed in groups between two glass plates, photographed again and laid out on long tables in the scrollery's workroom in the Palestine Archeological Museum . The employees tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together. If two fragments have a common breakline ( material join ), their togetherness is relatively certain. If fragments do not meet directly, they can still be recognized as belonging together ( distant join ), for example because they belong to an already known text.

After 1960, Hartmut Stegemann developed the following, now generally accepted, method for reconstructing scrolls: He assumed that the scroll was wrapped up when it was deposited. Animal food (rodents, insects) or moisture have damaged superimposed windings in a similar way. Therefore, for example, a pattern of spots is repeated at the points that were superimposed on the wound roll. Such signs of deterioration, together with other observations on the description material, offer the possibility of arranging fragments of an unknown text in a sequence that is independent of the editor's assumptions about the content of the work.

The identification and assignment of fragments continues to produce new results, occasionally also with the "large" scrolls. An example: The material collected by de Vaux's team in the 1950s includes numerous pieces of parchment on which no text could be recognized with the naked eye at the time and which are therefore stored in boxes without being published. In 2018, Oren Ableman examined such a box with material from the recently discovered cave 11Q using newly developed imaging methods . Hebrew was then written on a 1.2 × 1.7 cm fragment זמרה zammərāh “to sing praise” readable, and in the line below he recognized two more letters ש and ל. The fragment belonged to the beginning of Psalm 147 . It could be assigned to the Great Psalm scroll (11Q5).

Division of the text corpus into font groups

In 1980, Norman Golb denied that the text corpus of Qumran represented the "library" of the residents of Khirbet Qumran and thus terminated the previous consensus. ( Although Karl Heinrich Rengstorf had already suspected in 1960 that the Qumran corpus of writings was the outsourced temple library from Jerusalem , this did not trigger a comparatively heated discussion.) The polemical argument with Golb led to criteria for distinguishing between Jachadian and non-Jachadian texts were sought. Two models became particularly important:

Groningen Hypothesis (Florentino García Martínez)

Florentino García Martínez 'so-called Groningen hypothesis assumes that the text corpus of Qumran did not come together in the course of the dumping in the caves, but belongs together: it is a "religious library" of the residents of Khirbet Qumran. This group would not have accepted religious literature from other groups in their library. Martínez states that there are problems with identifying the Qumrans with the Essenes described in ancient texts. The Groningen hypothesis makes it possible to differentiate between Essenes and Qumranians: the origins of the Essenes are located in the broad apocalyptic movement in Palestine during the Hellenistic period. The followers of a charismatic figure ( teachers of justice ) split off from the Essenian movement. The teacher's group used the insulting title of “crime priests” to refer to the Jerusalem high priests from the Hasmonean dynasty (ie “crime priests ” is not an alias for a historical figure). The teacher took positions on questions of the calendar , the temple cult and ritual purity , which an Essenian opponent with the code name "Liar Dripper" contradicted. Since the teacher made his halacha absolute, as divine revelation, a compromise was impossible. The group around Teacher split up and moved to Khirbet Qumran, where Teacher died. Martínez dates the establishment of the branch during the tenure of John Hyrcanus I (135 to 104 BC). The group expected the end of the world 40 years after Teacher's death. Then the Habakkuk Pescher was written, which tried to explain the absence of the end of the world. Due to historical allusions, this writing can be traced back to the last years of the reign of Alexander Jannäus , who lived in 76 BC. Died, to be dated.

With the Groningen Hypothesis, four groups of scripts can be distinguished chronologically: 1. Works of the apocalyptic tradition as an older legacy that was passed on in Qumran; 2. Classical Essene works whose content corresponds to what ancient authors say about Essenes; 3. Works of a transitional period; 4. Works with fully developed group ideology ( sectarian works ).

Community Terminology (Devorah Dimant)

Devorah Dimant dispenses with historical or sociological criteria for differentiating between font groups. Since most of the manuscripts are copies and not autographs, she considers the entire text corpus to be more or less the same and differentiates between Jachadian and non-Jachadian texts only on the basis of literary and linguistic features. It is divided into three parts: a) Biblical texts in the scope of the Tanakh, b) Works with Jachadic terminology (CT = Community Terminology ), c) Works without this terminology (NCT = No Community Terminology ). Dimant also assigns apocrypha and pseudepigraphs to this third group . For example, the following works are not Jachadic: New Jerusalem, Aramaic Levi Document , Temple Scroll .

Both Martínez 'and Dimant's models were widely received. In any case, the Groningen Hypothesis, with its basic idea of ​​a small, radicalized group that has split off from a larger movement, met with broad approval. Dimant's criteria to distinguish between Jachadic and non-Jachadic works are considered reliable. Dimant developed her model further by introducing a further category which represents a middle position between Jachadic and non-Jachadic works. Martínez, on the other hand, has postponed the reconstruction of the Jachad story in more recent works and regards the Jachad more as a readership who reads and appropriates the entire text corpus, wherever the individual texts come from.

Manuscripts of biblical books

The common term "biblical" manuscripts is anachronistic for the time the scrolls were written and in use. The canon of the Hebrew Bible ( Tanakh ) was not yet fixed at that time. It is believed that there were “authoritative texts” for the scroll owners that they considered highly authoritative. However, these are not identical to the writings that were later included in the Tanach or the Christian Old Testament (the scope of which varies depending on the denomination). Criteria for “authoritative texts” are that quotations from them were used to argue that they claimed to be written down on the basis of divine inspiration or by a significant person, that they were frequently copied, commented on and translated and that other scriptures are dependent on them for content.

The oldest biblical manuscripts were made around 250 BC. Created (4QSam b , 4QJer a ). All the books of the later Tanach except the Book of Esther are represented. There is an element of uncertainty with numerical data on biblical books, as it is not certain whether it is a copy of the entire book or, for example, a copy of the smaller fragments. B. a new composition with quotations from the Bible. Heinz-Josef Fabry counts 76 books of the Torah, 36 books of psalms, 21 times Isaiah, eight times Daniel, six times each of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The extensive book of the Chronicle is only represented by a small fragment (4Q118).

Hebrew

Small Isaiah scroll , proto-Masoretic text type

When the first Hebrew Bible texts from Qumran were published, it aroused great interest that there was a proto-Masoretic text type there that is very similar to the later Masoretic text, which has become canonical in Judaism. Its reliability and good quality were thus confirmed. The translations of the Bible into modern languages ​​that have emerged since the second half of the 20th century are therefore much more committed to the Masoretic text than was previously the norm.

The textual history of the Hebrew Bible can be thought of as a broad river bed. Several streams (text types) flow in it in parallel, sometimes mixing and separating again. On the basis of linguistic characteristics, Emanuel Tov distinguishes between five types of text:

  1. Those with special Qumran orthography . They show a free handling of the template and can possibly be assigned to a writing school working in Khirbet Qumran. Texts with a proto-Masoretic character, but also those from an independent text tradition, may have served as a template (20 percent). Tov includes the Great Isaiah Scroll, for example, in this group .
  2. Proto-Masoretic texts, whose characteristic is the agreement with the consonants of the Masoretic text, which later became canonical, examples: 1QIsa b and 4QJer c (35 percent).
  3. Pre-Samaritan texts that show characteristic features of the Samaritan Pentateuch without showing the text changes made by Samaritanus (according to Tov's assessment) for ideological reasons, examples: 4QpaleoExod m , 4QNum b (5 percent).
  4. Texts that are close to a Hebrew model of the Septuagint , examples: 4QJer b , 4QJer d (5 percent).
  5. Independent texts that correspond selectively with the Masoretic Text, the Samaritanus or the Septuagint. In addition, many have readings that cannot be found in any of the three textual traditions that later became canonical. Examples: 4QJos a , 4QSam a (35 percent).

However, Tov's classification is relativized by more recent analyzes by Armin Lange . He rejects the existence of an independent text group with Qumran orthography and comes to a significantly larger proportion of the group of independent texts: 52.5 percent for Torah manuscripts and 51 percent for Neviim and Ketuvim .

At first, the theory of local text families developed by Frank M. Cross ( Theory of Local Texts , 1976) seemed to explain the variety of texts well. She assumed that there were three textual traditions in different geographic areas: Israel / Palestine, Babylonia and Egypt. The Babylonian tradition was brought to Jerusalem by the returnees from Babylonian exile . The Masoretic text goes back to the Babylonian text tradition cultivated in Jerusalem. Since the studies by Tov and Lange, however, a larger number of texts and text families can be expected, all of which coexist in the text corpus of Qumran - and the local principle is thus abolished.

According to Eugene C. Ulrich, the situation in the middle of the 1st century AD can be characterized as follows:

  • Biblical scriptures are in circulation in various text versions.
  • There is a canon-in-process , but no finished canon.
  • There is no recognizable group that stipulates a normative text or demands that one type of text should be preferred over others.

Siegfried Kreuzer judges the last point differently: The proto-Masoretic text is in the 1st century BC. BC in Jerusalem was revised in such a way that its chronological system no longer ran towards the consecration of the Solomonic Temple , but rather towards the temple consecration after the successful Maccabees uprising (164 BC). In the Hasmonean Empire , this text was considered normative. With him the authority of the Jerusalem temple was connected.

The Samuel fragments from the Dead Sea are an interesting example that the central position of the Masoretic text, which has become canonical, needs to be reconsidered: In several fragments of scrolls of the Book of Samuel from cave 4Q (4QSam a-c ), the text often agrees with the Septuagint against Masoretic Text. Text-critical investigations indicate that the original of the Septuagint and the text type from Qumran represent an older stage of text development compared to the Masoretic text.

Instead of a handover point at which a biblical book was "finished" and was passed on to the copyists by the final editors , it is more appropriate from today's perspective to assume a handover period . "Methodologically, it follows from the more recent discussion that the simple distinction between" intended "(phase of text production: editorial criticism ) and" unintentional "(phase of text transmission: text criticism ) changes becomes more blurred and the task of textual criticism is not the reconstruction of an" original text " , but that of the oldest accessible text. "( Heinz-Josef Fabry )

Aramaic

Of the biblical books that later belonged to the Jewish canon (Tanach), the following are represented with Aramaic text fragments: Jeremiah (4Q71), Daniel (4Q112–115) and Ezra (4Q117).

Among the Qumran texts there are also three translations of biblical scriptures into Aramaic, which are somewhat misleadingly referred to as targumim . Compared to the later Targumim of rabbinical literature , some of which are free retellings, the Qumran Targumim stick closely to their original. One targum translates the book of Leviticus , two the book of Job . It is possible that both job fragments belong to the same work, with 11Q10 being one of the better preserved Qumran texts. The manuscript is young (around 50 AD), the translation can be traced back to the 2nd century BC due to linguistic features. To date.

Greek

Septuagint-Leviticus a

The Qumran corpus contains fragments of several Greek Pentateuch manuscripts. Septuagint-Leviticus a ( 4Q119 ), part of a column with text from Lev 26, 2-16, is judged to be a quite literal translation of a Hebrew original. Overall, the text is in the Septuagint tradition, but offers 15 different and sometimes unusual readings. Septuagint-Leviticus b ( 4Q120 ) is a papyrus broken up into over 100 fragments, 31 of which can be assigned to the text of the first six chapters of Leviticus. Remains of a leather scroll from the Greek book Numbers are also preserved; the relationship to the Septuagint (Old Greek or another ancient text tradition) is discussed. Small fragments of a relatively old Deuteronomy manuscript (4Q122, around 150 BC or earlier) and an Exodus manuscript (7Q1) complete the picture: the Greek translation of the Torah is present in the Qumran text corpus, albeit marginally.

There is also a papyrus fragment from the letter of Jeremiah (7Q2), i.e. a text that does not belong to the later Jewish canon ( Tanach ), but to the Septuagint canon and, as a result, to the Old Testament in some Christian denominations.

Bible texts in a different form

Tefillin and mezuzot

The Torah commandments to put on tefillin and to attach mezuzot to doors were also obeyed in Qumran. A total of about 45 fragmentary strips of parchment with Torah texts in microwriting and about 25 remains of Tefillin capsules are assigned to this group of finds; five of the parchment strips were still in the capsules. The objects often come from the antique trade; the indication of origin “Qumran” is unsecured in these cases.

Today's more cube-shaped Tefillin capsules are leather containers that are worn with straps on the head and upper arm. A Qumran Tefillin capsule looked like a flat, small leather pouch when closed. It had one or more bulges in which the texts were inserted; then it was folded up and sewn shut. Yigael Yadin acquired an intact copy in 1968 (XQPhyl A – D = XQ1‒4). The 13 × 20 mm large bag contained four compartments, in which were folded, closely written strips of parchment (27 × 40-44 mm). Three of them were still in place. The selection and arrangement of the Torah texts differ from the later rabbinical regulations. The rules for this were probably not yet established. It is conceivable that the Qumran tefillin were not only worn during prayer, but throughout the day or (similar to an amulet ) in special situations, such as illness.

Fragments of Mezuzot texts (4Q149–155) come from cave 4Q, another specimen from cave 8Q. Mezuzot containers are not known from Qumran. It is possible that the wrapped strips of text were deposited directly in cracks on the door frame.

Reworked Pentateuch

Five fragments are referred to as Reworked Pentateuch , "Torah revisions", which cannot be categorized into biblical or non-biblical texts: 4Q158; 4Q364-367. For the most part, they contain the well-known Bible text in a version that is close to the Samaritan Pentateuch , but often change the order or add new material. When the DJD was first published, Emanuel Tov and Sidnie White Crawford classified these texts as non-biblical and non-authoritative. For Eugene Ulrich, James VanderKam and Michael Segal, however, Reworked Pentateuch texts were biblical, namely witnesses of the biblical text that was developing. Tov later joined this position. If 4Q365 encompassed the entire Pentateuch, this scroll would have been an impressive size with an estimated length of 22.5–27.5 m.

Non-biblical texts

The division of the non-biblical texts into groups made here follows Armin Lange and Ulrike Mittmann-Richert.

Parabiblical writings

As para biblical texts ( parabiblical texts ) bible close writings are called. This closeness can relate to texts, topics or people of the later Tanach.

Enoch literature

First Book of Enoch (4QEn a ar = 4Q201)

The Torah has the highest authority in Judaism, and most of the Qumran parabiblical writings are related in some way to the Torah. This includes the entire Enoch literature with its main character Enoch , who according to Gen 5: 21–24  EU “walked with God” and therefore did not die but was raptured.

The First Book of Enoch , which is included in the Old Testament in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church , is in its final form an extensive composition (108 chapters) of at least five parts. It is represented in Qumran with eleven Aramaic manuscripts (4Q201-202; 4Q204-212), the oldest 4QEn a ar (= 4Q201) paläografisch v at 200-150. Is dated. The so-called Astronomical Book of Enoch (Chapters 72-82) occurs in Qumran as a separate script. The figurative speeches (chapters 37-71) are missing in Qumran. Presumably this text was added late in the composition of the First Book of Enoch, and the Aramaic manuscripts from the Qumran text corpus originated at an earlier time. The meaning of the First Book of Enoch for the Jachad is very great: One read in this ancient script that there is a division in the angelic world into fallen, seductive angels on the one hand and helpful angels on the other. These two groups are called Aramaic ערין ʿîrîn "guardians" and קדשין qaddîšîn "saints". The Jachad developed a complex doctrine of angels and demons in his own writings; it was believed, for example, that one could take part in the liturgy of angels and cast out demons. But while the First Book of Enoch establishes the origin of evil with an uprising of the angels, a main scripture of the Jachad ( church rule) teaches that the spirits of light and darkness were both created by God.

The Book of Giants , whose Aramaic text is only known from Qumran, is also part of the Enoch literature . It is one of the scriptures of Manichaeism ; Translations into several languages ​​have therefore been preserved. The giants ( Nephilim ) are dangerous hybrid beings (half angel, half human). Enoch interprets a dream for the giants. Some repent, but most remain evil and are then defeated by God's fighting angels.

Jubilee book

The book of anniversaries also belongs to the Old Testament of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. It represents a different type of Torah-related literature. Here, a mysterious figure (Enoch) that is only scarcely mentioned in the Torah is upgraded to the hero of his own works, but extensive parts of the Torah - from the creation story to the Exodus from Egypt - are told anew ( Rewritten Bible ). Good and bad angelic beings play an important role in this; they are organized hierarchically and constantly affect people.

Jachadian texts quote the jubilee book as an authoritative script; at least 14 manuscripts show its popularity.

Genesis apocryphon

The Genesis apocryphon from cave 1Q is a compilation of older Noah and Abraham traditions from the Herodian period , not a retelling of Genesis, but an independent work. It confronts the reader with a great claim to authority, at times as a literal speech by biblical people. Presumably the Genesis Apocryphon was supposed to serve as a reading instruction on how to understand the Genesis text. In addition, the Qumran corpus contains several fragmentary texts with further Noah traditions.

Moses and Joshua Apocrypha

The Moses Apocrypha is a Rewritten Bible relating to Deuteronomy . The authority of the high priest is thereby strengthened. Anyone who opposes him is a false prophet. A ritual is mentioned in which the high priest consults the Urim and Thummim .

The two fragmentary Joshua apocrypha refer to the book of Joshua and also contain speeches, blessings, and prayers. In the Jachad, the Joshua apocryphon 4Q379 was an authoritative text.

Temple scroll

The temple scroll is designed as God's own speech and thus makes canonical claims. She relates all instructions for the desert sanctuary ( Mishkan ) in the Torah to the second Jerusalem temple . One concludes from the content, age and strong differences from Deuteronomy , for example , that the Torah texts relating to the temple were not yet finally formulated at that time.

Pseudo-Ezekiel, pseudo-Jeremiah, pseudo-Daniel

When the books of the prophets were recognized as inspired, holy scriptures after the Torah, a parabiblical literature also grew up around these texts. Either new speeches were put into the mouths of the biblical prophets, or the biography of the prophets was designed according to legend. A total of six fragments contain pseudo- Ezekiel material, they probably belong to the same work. The shift in emphasis in the vision of the dead bones ( Ez 37,1-14  EU ) is interesting : the hope of resurrection for the “whole house of Israel” has become the resurrection of the pious in Israel in Pseudo-Ezekiel . The very fragmentary pseudo- Jeremiah material can probably be grouped into three works. Pseudo-Jeremiah, who is in the Diaspora (Egypt), proclaims ethical commandments, mourns for the Jerusalem temple and complains about his own situation. Three pseudo- Daniel scriptures that may belong together offer an interpretation of the entire history of the world; The Aramaic text 4Q246, initially also referred to as the Daniel Apocryphon (4QapocrDan ar), contains a dream interpretation of Pseudo-Daniel for a king, in which after several negative events the appearance of a figure is announced, the " Son of God " and "Son of the Most High " is called. However, it is not clear whether the author evaluates these titles positively or negatively.

Wills literature

Farewell speeches by biblical figures are referred to as will literature. The general plot consists in the patriarch summoning his family on his deathbed, giving a speech and finally dying. The Qumran text corpus focuses on important priestly figures : the will of Kohat , the visions of Amram .

The Aramaic Levi Document is a forerunner of the more recent will literature. In this scripture Levi becomes the heavenly high priest ; In heaven he meets his father Jacob, who dresses him in priestly robes, and his grandfather Isaac, who instructs him in the priestly laws. Then Levi appears as a wisdom teacher and prophet. The text deals with the ablutions of the priest, the types of wood for the altar and the order in which the parts of the sacrificial animal are placed. Most of it has no reference to the written Torah. Such details were priestly professional knowledge. Prospective priests may study this text to prepare for their temple service.

Exegetical writings

Habakuk-Pescher

In contrast to the parabiblical works, the exegetical writings are characteristic products of Jachad . Authoritative texts are quoted by verse in a Pescher and then commented on. There are two types: Pesharim, who continuously comment on a book, and thematic Pesharim, who compile and comment on quotations from various scriptures. The interpreting formula always contains the word Hebrew פשר pešær : "interpretation". The design technique is reminiscent of ancient dream and omen interpretation.

The best known and best preserved is the Habakuk-Pescher (1QHab), a unique specimen , but not an autograph due to typical copying errors . He formulates the hermeneutic concept behind the Pescher literature as follows:

“And God said to Habakkuk to write down what will come about the last generation. But he did not announce the completion of time to him. And when it says: So that whoever reads it can hurry ( Hab 2.2  EU ), its interpretation refers ... to the teacher of justice , to whom God has revealed all the secrets of the words of his servants, the prophets. "

- 1QpHab VII 1-4

Habakkuk could not grasp the actual meaning of the text revealed to him at all at his time. Because he is destined by God for the people in the end times (the "last generation"). Then comes an inspired interpreter interpreting the secrets in Habakuk's ancient text. From this arises the mysterious way in which the Pesharim relate to their contemporary history. They create a network of symbolic names (people, places, events) that can only be uniquely resolved in exceptional cases. In early Qumran research there was great optimism that the Pesharim could be used as historical sources for the history of Jachad, the biography of the Teacher of Justice and the history of Judea in general in the Hellenistic and early Roman times; now people are skeptical.

Testimonia of Qumran , single sheet in semi-formal script ( Jordan National Museum, Amman)

The most important thematic Pescher is that on eschatology , 4MidrEschat a, b . The text consists of two parts, formerly known as 4QFlorilegium and 4QCatenaA. Annette Steudel demonstrated the togetherness by applying the reconstruction method developed by Stegemann. Your own present is interpreted as "the end of days", a time of purification in which you have to deal with opponents from the realm of evil ( Belial ). The Pharisees are meant . With the future coming of the Messiah , the time of purification ends and the time of salvation begins. 4MidrEschat a contains the concept that the Jachad, i.e. a group of people, is a spiritual temple and its liturgy replaces the sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple.

There are also commentaries without the Pescher-Deute formula, for example on the book of Genesis. 4QMidrash Sefer Moshe (= 4Q249), around 150 BC Written in BC, it is the earliest known example of a halachic midrash .

A special case is 4Q175, with the publication of John Allegro as Testimonia , titled "Schriftbeweise" (photo): the rare example of an almost completely preserved Qumran text. The scribe is the same who copied the church rules (1QS) (i.e. a member of the Jachad), but here he obviously made little effort. 4Q175 was probably some kind of note. As in 1QS, the divine name YHWH is not written, but replaced by dots. You can see that B. in the first line. Several quotes from authoritative writings are strung together: Ex 20.21  EU in the text version of Samaritanus , Num 24.15–17  EU , Dtn 33.8–11  EU and a text from the Joshua apocryphon b (contained therein: Jos 6:26  EU ). Usually it is seen as an expression of the messianic hope for a prophetic, royal and priestly figure. It is interesting from a contemporary perspective that the ethnarch Johannes Hyrkanos I is praised by Flavius ​​Josephus as a prophetically gifted priest-king. In the Jachad, such claims were probably denied; maybe 4Q175 belongs in this context.

Regulations and legal texts

Three scriptures give a picture of how the community life of the Jachad was organized:

  • Community rule (1QS);
  • Community rule (1QSa), handed down only once as an appendix to 1QS (see below: eschatological and apocalyptic writings);
  • Damascus script (CD).

Parish rule

The Church Rule (1QS, Hebrew סרך היחד særækh hajjaḥad ) is represented in the corpus of the Qumran writings with at least eleven copies, which speaks for its great importance in the Jachad. It is a collective publication with a complicated history. In the text version of the well-preserved scroll from cave 1Q it has the following content: after an introduction, which enumerates the ethical ideals of the group, follows the description of the annual federal renewal ceremony. This is followed by the dualistic two-spirit teaching with the idea of ​​double predestination . This is followed by rules of conduct, a catalog of punishments and a final psalm. The text differs greatly in the individual manuscripts, although they are not far apart in time. This raises the question of practicability, especially with the criminal provisions. One possibility would be that the manuscripts come from different local groups of the Jachad, another that the jurisprudence was oral and that the diversity of the manuscripts reflects stages of this oral tradition.

Damascus script

Damascus script (4QD f = 4Q271)

The Damascus script (CD) also has a complex prehistory, but is more stable as a text (compared to the church rules). After a warning with historical theological explanations, a four-part collection of laws follows:

  • “Laws for the Instructor”: Men with certain disabilities are excluded from priestly ministry and from Torah reading;
  • “Order for the settlement of the cities of Israel”: in addition to non-Jachadic rules (agriculture, Sabbath, etc.), the admission ceremony into the group is described;
  • "Order of the settlement of the camps": the group members live in families and are organized in camps, which have an overseer ( Hebrew מבקר mevaqqer ) presides;
  • "List of legal clauses": the catalog of penalties is linked to the corresponding passages in the municipal rules (1QS).

The chronological and sociological relationship between the parish rules and the Damascus script is the subject of discussion. In addition to close contacts, there are considerable differences:

  • In the church rules, prayer ("lifting offering of the lips") seems to have taken the place of temple worship. The Damascus script, on the other hand, seems to assume participation in the Jerusalem cult.
  • The church rule does not require celibacy . But women are almost not mentioned. It is therefore obvious to imagine the Jachad as a group of men living together. The Damascus script, on the other hand, assumes that the members live in families with their children. According to Cecilia Wassen, the Damascus script is the product of a patriarchal, totalitarian group that allows women to be members of minor rank.

4QMMT

4QMMT is a lesson on "a little bit of doing the Torah" ( Hebrew מקצת מעשי התורה miqṣat ma‛aśê hattôrāh , hence the abbreviation MMT). On about 20 questions of Halacha, especially sacrifice and cultic purity (i.e. priestly issues), one's own opinion is declared to be binding as a "Torah practice". Sometimes the opposite opinion is quoted and rejected. Six surviving manuscripts show that the text was important in the Jachad. For reasons of content, 4QMMT is an early Jachadic script; the holiness of Jerusalem and the temple is strongly emphasized. A discussion with Jerusalem priestly circles seems possible, but is made more difficult by the maximum positions that 4QMMT takes.

Other texts relating to religious law have been preserved in fragments. In 4Q477 sanctions against various Jachad members are listed. This document was named 4QRebukes Reported by the Overseer , " Overseer-Reported Corrections ." Accordingly, the precepts of Jachad were at least partially practiced in real life.

Calendar writings

The First Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees , two old writings that are considered authoritative in the Jachad, assume a calendar year of 364 days or 52 weeks (6 working days plus Sabbath). “The great attraction of the 364-day calendar is its mathematical aesthetics.” Each quarter consists of two months of 30 days and finally a month of 31 days. The beginning of the year is always the 4th day of the week; Celebrations fall on the 1st, 4th or 6th day. This solar calendar may be much older, but it was around 200 BC. BC it gained importance for one's own identity. When around 150 BC When the lunar calendar, which was common in the Seleucid Empire , was introduced in Jerusalem, this modernization of the temple cult met with strong opposition:

“And there will be people who will watch the moon closely, paying attention to the moon. Because he spoils the times and goes ahead ten days from year to year [...] they will be wrong with regard to months and Sabbaths and feasts and anniversaries. "

- Book of Anniversaries 6.36f.

The Jachad adhered to the traditional 364-day calendar. His calendar works deal mainly with the regular change of the priestly families on duty at the temple (so-called Mishmarot texts, cf. Hebrew משמרות mišmārôt , plural: "fulfillment of official duties, service departments"). It seems like planning in the event that the Jachad would be responsible for the Jerusalem cult. The most important annual festival is Shavuot . The festival is linked in the jubilee book and in the temple scroll with the covenant on Sinai. The Jachad probably celebrated its federal renewal ceremony on this day. Shavuot was followed by other small harvest festivals for wine, oil and wood in the Jachadic calendar, which do not exist in the later Jewish calendar. Conversely, the Yachadian calendar ignores the comparatively new Jewish festivals of Purim and Hanukkah .

Poetic and liturgical writings

Daily Prayers, Divrei Hameorot, Sabbath Sacrifice Songs

Sabbath Sacrifice Songs (4Q403)

The daily life of the Jachad members was structured by morning and evening prayers in a weekly and monthly rhythm. The texts 4Q503 ( Daily Prayers ) and Divrei Hameorot offer fragments of these liturgies . There were also holiday prayers, only fragments of which have survived on Yom Kippur and possibly Shavuot . The Sabbath sacrificial songs imagine angelic beings performing a heavenly cult. It is not known whether these texts were listed in any way in the Jachad or should only be read and meditated. Further liturgical texts are blessings and curses.

Psalm-like poems occupy a large space among the Jachadic texts. Apparently, as an authoritative text, the biblical book of psalms stood on the same level as its own composition of psalms and non-biblical texts ( large psalms scroll ).

Barkhi Nafshi texts

The Barkhi-Nafshi texts are thanksgiving prayers that begin with the phrase known from Psalm 103 and Psalm 104 : “Praise the Lord my soul!” ( Hebrew בָּרֲכִ֣י נַ֭פְשִׁי אֶת־יְהוָ֑ה bārǎkhî nafšî 'æt-JHWH ). David R. Seely and Moshe Weinfeld believe that, based on the two biblical psalms, there was a tradition of Barkhi-Nafshi texts that went back to the Middle Ages. A liturgical function can no longer be determined, but the fragment 4Q434 f2 shows parallels with the later table blessing ( Birkat Hamason ) and is therefore important for the development of Jewish prayer texts.

Hodayot

The Hymn Scroll ( Hodayot ) from Cave 1Q is a composition of poetic texts and hymns that already in 1955 by Eleazar Sukenik were published. According to Jürgen Becker , Gert Jeremias and Karl Georg Kuhn , a distinction between the Hodayot and church songs and teacher songs makes sense. At least one teacher song shows an extraordinary self-confidence of the speaker ( Self-Glorification Hymn , also handed down as a separate text: 4Q471b). An autobiographical interpretation of the teacher of justice , suggested by Gert Jeremias in 1963, is still represented. Alternatively, Carol Ann Newsom suggests that the respective head of the Jachad ( Hebrew מבקר mevaqqer , “overseer”) with the teacher songs , appropriates the role that he has to play in the group, just as the simple member identifies with the “I” of the church songs.

4QApocryphal Psalm and Prayer

4QApocryphal Psalm and Prayer is a text that is controversial in research. The beginning of a scroll is preserved. After Psalm 154 , a political prayer text follows:

“Arise, saint, for (על) Jonathan the king and the whole assembly of your people Israel, who are (scattered) in the four directions. Peace be to them all and to your kingdom / your kingdom. Your name will be praised. "

- 4QApocryphal Psalm and Prayer II 1-9

“Jonathan the King” could either be the high priest and military leader Jonathan Maccabeus , or the king and high priest Alexander Jannäus . The latter is more likely because he also had the title of king. From Jachadic writings it is clear that this ruler was rated negatively ("Lion of Wrath"). 4QApocryphal Psalm and Prayer could be a non-Jachadic text. If one assumes Jachadic authorship, one could possibly also translate in the first sentence: "against (על) Jonathan, the king".

Wisdom literature

The Book of Sirach is represented among the Dead Sea Scrolls with a Hebrew manuscript from Cave 2Q and a longer quote as part of the Great Scroll of Psalms (there was also a Hebrew scroll of the Book of Sirach on Masada).

4QInstruction is a wisdom writing that has been preserved in fragments. It is also known by the title Hebrew מוסר למבין mûsar ləmevîn “ethics for the understanding”. There are eight manuscripts, so this one was popular. After the reconstruction by Eibert Tigchelaar, 4QInstruction was a rather extensive work with over 20 columns of text. Addressed is a wisdom student who leads a normal social life with his wife and children; the student is impoverished, but involuntarily. The first half of the book has a cosmological content; the second half is about the punishment of the wicked in the final judgment. One of the key words is Hebrew רז נהיה raz nihjæh “Mystery of what has become” ( Johann Maier's translation ). What is meant is a plan of God that includes everything that was, is or will be. The reader should meditate on this mystery in his own interest. For example, he will understand his obligations towards his parents better or he will be more successful in agriculture. If you compare the Sirach book and 4QInstruction , you will notice striking differences between these two wisdom teachings . Sirach and his students are relatively wealthy (they own slaves, can travel). In addition, Sirach explicitly warns against wanting to fathom the mysteries of creation ( Sir 3, 21–24  EU ). Whether 4QInstruction was a Jachadic work or came from outside, but was revised in the Jachad, is judged controversially in research.

4QMysteries is a wisdom script that has been preserved in very fragmentary form, which is represented by the repeatedly occurring term Hebrew רז raz “Mysterium” is similar to 4QInstruction , but is more speculative and less practical. A fragment (4Q300 = 4QMysteries b ) contrasts wisdom with the art of divination, which is reminiscent of the biblical book of Daniel (e.g. Dan 2.27–30  EU ).

Historical stories

In the Qumran text corpus, historical narratives outside of parabiblical literature are very rare. The book of Tobit (4Q196-200) is a doctrinal narrative in Aramaic and Hebrew versions.

There are also two fragmentarily preserved Aramaic tales that take place at the Persian royal court: the prayer of Nabonidus (4Q242) and Proto-Esther (4Q550). These court stories can be regarded as entertainment literature, which is also supported by their small format: in a way, the ancient form of a paperback.

Manuscripts from cave 4Q, which the editors referred to as "historical texts" ( Historical Text A – G), because they contain personal names from the Hasmonean period, especially Queen Salome Alexandra (with her Hebrew name Šəlamṣijôn ) and a Aemilius, by which Marcus Aemilius Scaurus the Younger can be meant, who intervened in the Hasmonean fratricidal war .

Eschatological and apocalyptic writings

The term eschatological is used in the Old Testament specialist literature for numerous texts of the Tanach , which Klaus Koenen characterizes as follows: “One does not expect the end of time, but a turning point in time that leads to the completion of creation; no other world, but this world different… ”On the other hand, texts are called apocalyptic in which the end of the world is seen as inevitable and a world created by God beyond this catastrophe is hoped for. The apocalyptic seer withdraws from the world, writes under the pseudonym of a great figure from the past and uses code names to mystify his diagnosis of contemporary history. A sequence of events is foretold from the present to the end of the world. Apocalyptic is a marginal phenomenon within the Tanakh that characterizes few and late texts.

Eschatological and apocalyptic views correspond, so to speak, to the zeitgeist in Judea of ​​the Hellenistic and early Roman times; they are very broadly represented in the text corpus of the Qumran writings. But that does not mean that they always form the focus in terms of content. "The main tone of these works is mostly on other themes: mainly the halacha , the calendar or liturgical themes," emphasize Géza G. Xeravits and Peter Porzig with reference to the Jachadic writings.

New Jerusalem

The Aramaic work “New Jerusalem” ( New Jerusalem ), represented by seven copies, contains a vision report of the type of the heavenly journey, a kind of city tour through a utopian, gigantic Jerusalem. The path leads from the periphery to the center. From the city gates through the empty streets and apartment blocks, the Deuteengel accompanies the visionary to the temple where the cult is in operation. This visionary city design is probably based on the Hippodamian scheme .

Milchama texts

The Milchama texts describe the end-time struggle ( Hebrew מלחמה milḥamāh ) the “sons of light” against the “sons of darkness”, or Israel against the kittim . With the well-preserved war scroll from cave 1Q, a version of this text was among the first published Qumran writings. Both earthly and heavenly worlds are dualistically divided into two contending parties, good and evil. The authors found the basic idea of ​​Israel as a well-ordered war camp in the Torah ( Num 10.1-36  EU ). The detailed representation of combat units shows proximity to Hellenistic-Roman war manuals. Detailed priestly prayers before, during and after the battle indicate what is happening. The "Sons of Light" act as a collective, individuals are not particularly emphasized. It is uncertain whether the Milchama texts originated in the early Hasmonean period (Kittim = Seleucids ) or in the early Roman period (Kittim = Roman).

1QSa and 1QSb

Two eschatological-apocalyptic texts have been handed down as an appendix to the church rules of cave 1Q:

  • The community rule (1QSa) contains rules for the life in Jachad, which have been placed in an eschatological framework. The focus is on the communal meal. In the end times, a priest and a non-priestly “anointed” ( Messiah ) will preside over the meal; the Messiah is subordinate to the priest.
  • The Rule of Blessing (1QSb), a Jachadic text, contains five blessings about groups and people. He upgrades the role of the end-time priest, who is transferred to the angels and is to officiate with them in the end-time temple. The “prince of the community”, on the other hand, is an ideal king who should create justice and wage wars victoriously (here the text refers to Isa 1,1-5  EU ).

Qumran Manuscripts and New Testament

Research history

Qumran research in the 1950s and 1960s was dominated by New Testament scholars. They were primarily interested in information about the origins of Christianity. A direct relationship between the scrolls and the New Testament could not be shown. Neither Jesus nor any other person from early Christianity is mentioned in the Qumran texts, which are mostly older. The second negative finding is more surprising: there is no mention of the Jachad, Khirbet Qumran or Essenes in the New Testament. (One suggestion identifies the Essenes with the Herodians named in Mark 3.6  EU , among others ; but this does not meet with greater approval.) Up until the publication of the written finds from Qumran, the environment of the Jesus movement had largely been reconstructed through inferences from later rabbinical material. One consequence of studying the Qumran texts was a more positive image of the Pharisee , since the Jachad evidently lived far more strictly than the Pharisees.

In 1952 André Dupont-Sommer saw very far-reaching parallels between the teacher of justice and Jesus of Nazareth: “Everything in the Jewish New Covenant heralds the Christian New Covenant and prepares it. The Master from Galilee, as presented to us in the New Testament, appears in many ways as an astonishing reincarnation of the Teacher of Justice. ”Edward Wilson took up Dupont-Sommer's thesis in 1955 in a simplified form: The Scrolls from the Dead Sea . The book became a bestseller in the United States. Wilson suggested that Khirbet Qumran , rather than Jerusalem or Bethlehem, should be seen as the cradle of Christianity. The Qumran Essenes and early Christianity are successive phases of the same movement. He expressed the suspicion that Christian Qumran researchers were trying to downplay and cover up this.

Frank M. Cross saw the Qumran Essenes as traders of the older apocalyptic literature. The early Christianity took over the inheritance of Qumran, so to speak, in its church structures and in the awareness of living in the end times. Cross was a student of William Foxwell Albright . The proximity between Qumran and the New Testament was used in the Albright School as an argument against Rudolf Bultmann's reading of the New Testament in a Hellenistic context. The Gospel of John and the letters of John in particular preserved historical memories from an Aramaic-Hebrew milieu with a strong Essenian influence. This appealed to a conservative Christian public. Cross was actually an Old Testament scholar, and after resuming his teaching at Harvard University , he stopped studying the New Testament. Another member of the Albright School published continuously on the subject of Qumran and early Christianity, even when the publication of the Qumran texts largely stagnated from 1960 to 1990: Joseph Fitzmyer .

The Bultmann School was very influential in the German-speaking area and beyond. Their is also Herbert Brown attributable, in 1966 a two-volume synthesis, entitled Qumran and the New Testament presented. It was about parallels and thus about the religious-historical classification of early Christianity. Important topics were:

Rudolf Bultmann founded dualistic thinking in Paulus of Tarsus and in John's Gospel with Gnostic influence. The Qumran texts now showed that dualism also occurred in the Palestinian world of the Jesus movement. This was an important point for Bultmann-critical, conservative New Testament scholars. Karl Georg Kuhn explained why the strongest effects of Qumran research in the New Testament can be expected for the Gospel of John: In Qumran as in the Gospel of John, the dualistic category light / darkness relates to what humans do . In Gnosis the dualism is justified differently; Light and darkness are "not human modes of existence, but substantial components of the physique of the world and man." Qumran texts and John's Gospel move closer together, Gnostic literature appears to be different.

Papyrus 7Q5

José O'Callaghan Martínez suggested in 1972 that writings of the New Testament were kept in cave 7Q: 7Q5 contains the text of Mk 6,52–53  EU and 7Q4 1 Tim 3,16ff. EU . If that were the case, the dating of the Gospel of Mark and of 1st Timothy would have to be revised by historical-critical biblical studies. O'Callaghan's proposal was rejected by experts in Qumran ( Maurice Baillet ), papyrology (CH Roberts), and New Testament textual criticism ( Kurt Aland ). In 1984 Carsten Peter Thiede again represented that 7Q5 contained the text Mk 6.52–53  EU . Thiede's thesis has been falsified by several studies.

Robert Eisenman has been advocating the thesis since the 1980s that John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazareth and his brother James , like the Qumran-Essenes, were part of an anti-Roman political movement in Judea. In 1992 he published together with Michael O. Wise a translation of the Qumran texts just released by the Huntington Library under the title The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered . In the foreword Eisenman repeated his thesis that the Yachad "teacher of justice" was none other than the leader of the early Jerusalem community , James with the nickname "the righteous." The opponent of the teacher, referred to in the Jachad with the code name "Liar, however, was Paulus von Tarsus . In order for these equations to be possible at all, Eisenman had to defend against the consensus of research that the Yachadian writings were later dated to the last decades before the Jewish War. The usual palaeographic dating has been confirmed by the radiocarbon method . So Eisenman argued against two scientific dating methods.

The same problem also exists with Barbara Thiering's thesis: She assumes that Jesus was raised by Essenes and initiated into the community by John the Baptist. Then, however, he married Maria Magdalena and finally traveled to Rome: Everything depends on the late dating, and this has the paleographic and C14 findings against it.

New questions

Since the halachic texts from Cave 4Q were published, the Jachad and the Jesus movement appear less similar than in the early days of Qumran research. Today, a comparison of New Testament and Jachadic texts serves more to contextualize both groups than to presume a direct influence. The non-Jachadic texts in particular show the diversity of contemporary Judaism. For some formulations of the Greek New Testament one only knows the Hebrew or Aramaic parallel through the Qumran texts. So the expression “poor in spirit” in Beatitudes Mt 5,3  EU has a parallel in 1QM 14,7 and 1QH a 6,14. The meaning there is “humble, low in mind” or “desperate”. 4Q525 offers a number of Beatitudes that also mention the "pure heart" people. Both examples show that the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount are shaped by a “Palestinian-Jewish matrix” in their form and in their design by the evangelist Matthew. 4QInstruction combines an eschatological worldview with everyday practical advice. This can be compared with the wisdom texts of the Jesus tradition. “Works of the law” ( ancient Greek ἔργα νόμου érga nómou ), an important formulation for Paul of Tarsus , is given clearer contours through 4QMMT : This Jachadian lesson explains “a little bit of doing the Torah”, and this Torah doing seems in the sense of Torah -Regulation, Halacha , to be meant.

Qumran manuscripts and rabbinical literature

The contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls to understanding the evolution of Halacha is significant. Because these texts offer an insight into the period before the writing of the Mishnah (around 200 AD). Joseph Baumgarten first suggested that there was a priestly halachic tradition carried by the Jachad (cf. 4QMMT ) and by Sadducees , in contrast to the Pharisaic and later rabbinical tradition. The church rule (1QS 7-12) takes a basic division into "revealed" ( Hebrew נגלות niglôt ) and "hidden" ( Hebrew נסתרות nistarôt ) precepts of the Torah. Jahad members obeyed the commandments given to all of Israel, as well as new commandments determined through inspired exegesis that Israel outside of the Jachad knew nothing about. Marriage law is an interesting example of the justification of norms in Jachadic writings: The Damascus script (CD 4,18f.) Derives the prohibition of polygamy and remarriage after divorce from the order of creation ( Gen 1,27  EU ). In many cases, halachic Qumran texts contain the "old" Halacha, that is, what was common at the time of the Second Temple and which was often not disputed between the religious parties. A methodological problem is that the rabbinical literature is not contemporary with the Qumran texts, but rather more recent, and the conflicts between Pharisees and Sadducees that it contains are unlikely to give a historically reliable picture of both positions.

Museums and collections

Most of the Qumran fragments are kept in the Rockefeller Museum (formerly Palestine Archaeological Museum ) in East Jerusalem. In 1991 the Israel Antiquities Authority set up a laboratory here to preserve the fragments.

Shrine of the Book (2019)

The Shrine of the Book in West Jerusalem, a division of the Israel Museum , was built specifically to display the great Dead Sea Scrolls to the public. It opened on April 20, 1965. The special architecture should make the visit a religious experience; the white dome symbolizes both the "Sons of Light" known from Jachadic writings and the rebirth of the Israeli nation, according to the curator Adolfo Roitman.

The Jordanian National Museum in Amman owns, among other things, the copper roll (3Q15) and the single sheet 4QTestimonia . The exhibits give an overview of the various materials and types of the scrolls. They are in the Jordanian capital because they were loaned to the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Amman for an exhibition prior to the Six Day War .

The Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris acquired fragments from Cave 1Q in 1953, including the composition New Jerusalem , several Bible texts and Pesharim. The Universities of Heidelberg, Leuven and the University of Chicago Oriental Institute also have Qumran fragments. Among the private collections with Qumran fragments is the Schøyen Collection in Oslo.

literature

The journals Revue de Qumrân (Paris, from 1958), The Qumran Chronicle (Krakow, from 1990), Dead Sea Discoveries (Leiden, from 1994) and מגילות / Meghillot (Jerusalem, from 2003) as well as the monograph series Studies are researching the scrolls on the Texts of the Desert of Judah .

Editions and translations

Roland de Vaux's team edited the main edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls: the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series . The first volume appeared in 1955, even before caves 7-11 were discovered. Volume 2 was published in 1959 with material from Wadi Murabba'at , and in 1962 Volume 3 with material from caves 2, 3, 5–10, including the copper scroll . In 1965 Volume 4 appeared with the psalm scroll from Cave 11, in 1968 Volume 5 with texts from Cave 4. In 1977 Volume 6 appeared with smaller texts and Targumim from Cave 4, in 1982 Volume 7 and others. with the war roll .

In parallel to this successive publication, others published individual Qumran texts and translations thereof, some of them unauthorized: In 1955 John Allegro prematurely published the copper scroll, in 1956 Yigal Yadin published the Aramaic Genesis apocryphon . All of the writings from Cave 1 were published. In 1960 Eduard Lohse published the first German translation of some Qumran texts, followed in 1964 by Johann Maier . In 1962 an English translation of all known Qumran texts by Geza Vermes was published . In 1976 Milik published the oldest Aramaic fragments of the Book of Enoch from Cave 4. In 1982 an English translation of the temple scroll was published. In 1984 Klaus Beyer published all Aramaic texts from the Qumran caves .

Volume 1: The texts of caves 1–3 and 5–11. ISBN 3-8252-1862-7 .
Volume 2: The texts of the cave 4. ISBN 3-8252-1863-5 .
Volume 3: Introduction, chronology, index and bibliography. ISBN 3-8252-1916-X .
  • The texts from Qumran. Hebrew / Aramaic and German; with masoretic punctuation, translation, introduction and comments. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt
Volume 1: Eduard Lohse (ed.): The writings from cave 1 and 4. 4th edition 1986
Volume 2: Annette Steudel and others (eds.): Die Tempelrolle and other writings, 2001, ISBN 3-534-11613-5 .
Aids
  • Reinhard G. Kratz, Annette Steudel, Ingo Kottsieper (eds.): Hebrew and Aramaic dictionary on the texts from the Dead Sea including the manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza . De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston
Volume 1: Aleph-Beth , 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-044128-4 .
Volume 2: Gimmel-Zajin , 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-060292-0 .
  • Heinz-Josef Fabry , Ulrich Dahmen (Ed.): Theological dictionary to the Qumran texts. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart
Volume 1: 2011, ISBN 978-3-17-020429-4 .
Volume 2: 2013, ISBN 978-3-17-020430-0 .
Volume 3: 2016, ISBN 978-3-17-020431-7 .
Overview presentations, specialist dictionaries, introductions
  • John J. Collins, Timothy H. Lim (Eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2010. ISBN 978-0-19-920723-7 .
  • Philip R. Davies, George J. Brooke, Phillip R. Callaway: Qumran. The Dead Sea Scrolls. Theiss, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-8062-1713-0 .
  • Heinz-Josef Fabry : Qumran . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 8 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1999, Sp. 778 .
  • Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896.
  • Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, Oxford et al
Volume 1: A - M , 2000, ISBN 0-19-513796-5 .
Volume 2: N - Z , 2000, ISBN 0-19-513797-3 .
Bibliographies
  • William Sanford LaSor: Bibliography of the Dead Sea Scrolls 1948–1957. Pasadena 1958.
  • Bastiaan Jongeling: A Classified Bibliography of the Finds in the Desert of Judah, 1958-1969. Brill, Leiden 1971 (STDJ Volume 7)
  • Florentino García Martínez; Donald W. Parry (Ed.): A bibliography of the finds in the desert of Judah, 1970-1995. Brill, Leiden 1996, ISBN 90-04-10588-3 (STDJ Volume 19).
  • Avital Pinnick: The Orion Center Bibliography of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1995-2000). Brill, Leiden 2001, ISBN 90-04-12366-0 (STDJ Volume 41).
  • Ruth Clements, Nadav Sharon (Eds.): The Orion Center Bibliography of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature (2001-2006). Brill, Leiden 2007, ISBN 90-04-16437-5 (STDJ Volume 71).
Individual questions
  • Daniel K. Falk: Parabiblical Texts: Strategies of Extending the Scriptures Among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Library of Second Temple Studies, Volume 63. T&T Clark Publications, London 2007, ISBN 1-84127-242-6 .
  • Ulrich Dahmen, Hartmut Stegemann, Günter Stemberger: Qumran - Biblical Studies - Ancient Judaism (= insights: results - reports - reflections from meetings of the Catholic Academy Schwerte. Volume 9). Bonifatius, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-89710-347-8 , in particular: Heinz-Josef Fabry: The manuscripts from the Dead Sea and their meaning for the text of the Hebrew Bible. Pp. 11-29.
  • Jörg Frey , Hartmut Stegemann : Qumran controversial. Contributions to the text finds from the Dead Sea. Bonifatius, Paderborn 2002, ISBN 3-89710-205-6 .
  • Michael Fieger, Konrad Schmid , Peter Schwagmeier: Qumran - the Dead Sea Scrolls: Lectures of the St. Gallen Qumran Symposium from 2/3 July 1999. Academic Press, Friborg 2001, ISBN 3-7278-1329-6 .
  • Alan J. Avery-Peck, Jacob Neusner , Bruce Chilton (Eds.): The Judaism of Qumran. A Systemic Reading of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Brill, suffering
Volume 1: Theory of Israel , 2001, ISBN 90-04-12001-7 .
Volume 2: World view, comparing judaisms , 2001, ISBN 90-04-12003-3 .
  • Donald Parry, Eugene C. Ulrich: Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, the Provo International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls - Technological Innovations, New Texts, and Reformulated Issues. Brill Academic Publications, Leiden 1999, ISBN 90-04-11155-7 .

Web links

Commons : Dead Sea Scrolls  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. For this narrower definition of the term "Dead Sea Scrolls" see: Millar Burrows:  Qumran 1. Overview of the texts . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 3. Edition. Volume 5, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1961, Sp. 740-741., Here p. 740: "The Hss., Which have become known as" Dead Sea Scrolls ", were 1947-1956 in caves discovered near the northwest corner of the Dead Sea. "
  2. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1873.
  3. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1894.
  4. Stephen A. Reed: Find-Sites of the Dead Sea Scrolls . In: Dead Sea Discoveries 14/2 (2007), pp. 199-221, here pp. 212f.
  5. Amanda Borschel-Dan: Bible scroll fragments among dazzling artifacts found in Dead Sea Cave of Horror . In: The Times of Israel , March 16, 2021.
  6. See Yohanan Aharoni: Expedition B - The Cave of Horror . In: Israel Exploration Journal 12 (1961), pp. 186-199, here pp. 197f. and Baruch Lifshitz: The Greek Documents from the Cave of Horror , ibid., pp. 201-207.
  7. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 145.
  8. a b Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 142.
  9. See Norman Golb: The Problem of Origin and Identification of the Dead Sea Scrolls . In: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 124/1 (1980), pp. 1-24.
  10. Othmar Keel, Max Küchler: Places and landscapes of the Bible. A Handbook and Study Guide to the Holy Land , Volume 2: The South . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1982, p. 469. See Roland de Vaux: Archeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls . The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy. Oxford University Press 1959, London 1973, p. 11: Towards its western extremity a circular area stands out from the surrounding plastered floor by the fact that it is paved. This seems to mark the place where the president of the assembly would have taken his stand .
  11. Katharine Greenleaf Pedley: The Library at Qumran . In: Revue de Qumran 2/1 (1959), pp. 21-41, here pp. 32f.
  12. Hartmut Stegemann: The Essenes, Qumran, John the Baptist and Jesus . Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1994, p. 59.
  13. ^ Roland de Vaux: Archeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 1959 . Oxford University Press, London 1973, pp. 104f.
  14. Eliezer L. Sukenik: The Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew University . Magnes, Jerusalem 1955, pp. 22-24 (New Hebrew), referenced here from: Stephen Pfann: The Ancient “Library” or “Libraries” of Qumran: The Specter of Cave 1Q . In: Sidnie W. Crawford, Cecilia Wassen (Eds.): The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept of a Library . Brill, Leiden / Boston 2016, pp. 168–216, here p. 175, note 12.
  15. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 150f.
  16. ^ Joan E. Taylor: The Essenes, the Scrolls, and the Dead Sea . Oxford University Press, New York 2016, pp. 272f.
  17. Yizhar Hirschfeld: Qumran - the whole truth. The finds of archeology - reassessed . Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2006, pp. 83-87, quotation p. 87.
  18. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, pp. 134, 161 and 164f. See Alison Schofield: From Qumran to the Yahad. A New Paradigm of Textual Development for the Community Rule . Brill, Leiden 2008; Stephen Pfann: Reassessing the Judean Desert Caves. Libraries, Archives, Genizas and Hiding Places . In: Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 25 (2007), pp. 147-170; Joan E. Taylor: Buried manuscripts and empty tombs. The Qumran Genizah theory revisited . In: Aren Maeir et al. (Ed.): "Go out and Study the Land." Archaeological, Historical and Textual Studies in Honor of Hanan Eshel . Brill, Leiden 2012, pp. 269-315.
  19. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 4.
  20. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 6.
  21. William Hugh Brownlee: Edh-Dheeb's Story of his scroll Discovery . In: Revue de Qumrân 3/4 (1962), pp. 483-494, here pp. 484f.
  22. William Hugh Brownlee: Edh-Dheeb's Story of his scroll Discovery . In: Revue de Qumrân 3/4 (1962), pp. 483-494, here pp. 488f. and 493.
  23. ^ Roland de Vaux: Archeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Schweich Lectures . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1973, p. Vii note 1.
  24. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The Dead Sea texts and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 9.
  25. ^ Neil Asher Silberman : Sukenik, Eleazar L. In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  26. John C. Trever: The Discovery of the Scrolls . In: The Biblical Archaeologist 11/3 (1948), pp. 45-57, here p. 47. Cf. Ders., A Paleographic Study of the Jerusalem Scrolls . In: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 113 (1949), pp. 6-23.
  27. John C. Trever: The Discovery of the Scrolls . In: The Biblical Archaeologist 11/3 (1948), pp. 45-57, here p. 50.
  28. ^ Jacques Briend: Samuel, Athanasius Yeshue . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  29. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, pp. 9–11. Lawrence H. Schiffman: Inverting Reality: The Dead Sea Scrolls in the Popular Media . In: Dead Sea Discoveries 12/1 (2005), pp. 24–37, here p. 26.
  30. ^ Roland de Vaux: La grotte des manuscripts hébreux . In: Revue Biblique 56/4 (1949), pp. 586-609, here p. 589.
  31. ^ Roland de Vaux: Post scriptum. La cachette des manuscripts hébreux. In: Revue Biblique 56/2 (1949), pp. 234-237, here p. 235.
  32. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 15.
  33. ^ Gregory L. Doudna: Carbon-14 Dating . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  34. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 15f. Jacques Briend: Samuel, Athanasius Yeshue . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  35. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, pp. 16 and 124f.
  36. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The Dead Sea texts and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 123.
  37. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 17.
  38. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, pp. 18 and 120–125.
  39. ^ Philip R. Davies: John Allegro and the Copper Scroll . In: George J. Brooke, Philip R. Davies (Eds.): Copper Scroll Studies . Sheffield Academic Press 2002, Sheffield et al. 2002, pp. 25-36, here pp. 28-35.
  40. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 19f.
  41. a b Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, pp. 20f.
  42. ^ Jacques Briend: Shahin, Khalil Iskandar (Kando) . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  43. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 21.
  44. John J. Collins: Strugnell, John . In: In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  45. Lawrence H. Schiffman: Inverting Reality: The Dead Sea Scrolls in the Popular Media . In: Dead Sea Discoveries 12/1 (2005), pp. 24–37, here p. 33.
  46. Jason Kalman: From The War Scroll to A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls: Marty Abegg… In His Own Words . In: Kipp Davis, Kyung S. Baek, Peter W. Flint, Dorothy Peters (Eds.): The War Scroll, Violence, War and Peace in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature: Essays in Honor of Martin G. Abegg on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday . Brill, Leiden 2016, pp. 23–48, here p. 24f.
  47. ^ Mary Ellen K. Davis, American Library Association: The Dead Sea Scrolls are opened to the public . In: College & Research Libraries News 52/10 (1991), pp. 629-634. ( online )
  48. ^ Pnina Shor, Marcello Manfredi, Greg H. Bearman, Emilio Marengo, Ken Boydston, William A. Christens-Barry: The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library: The Digitization Project of the Dead Sea Scrolls . In: Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archeology & Heritage Studies 2/2 (2014), pp. 71–89.
  49. ^ The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, February 8, 2017 press release: Hebrew University Archaeologists Find 12th Dead Sea Scrolls Cave . See also: Brittany Collins Kaufman: New Dead Sea Scroll cave reports may be 'premature,' scholar says (press release from the University of Notre Dame , February 10, 2017)
  50. ^ Daniel Weiss: Scroll Search . In: Archeology , May / June 2017.
  51. Dennis Mizzi, Jodi Magness: Provenance vs. Authenticity: An Archaeological Perspective on the Post-2002 "Dead Sea Scrolls-Like" Fragments . In: Dead Sea Discoveries 26 (2019), pp. 135–169, here p. 149.
  52. ^ Emanuel Tov: Introduction, Text editions, the Collection of the Museum of the Bible, Textual and Orthographic Character, Relation to other fragments from the Judean desert . In: Emanuel Tov, Kipp Davis, Robert Duke (eds.): Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments in the Museum Collection (= Publications of the Museum of the Bible . Volume 1). Brill, Leiden / Boston 2016, pp. 3–18, here p. 11.
  53. Kipp Davis, Ira Rabin, Ines Feldman, Myriam Krutzsch, Hasia Rimon, Årstein Justnes, Torleif Elgvin and Michael Langlois: Nine Dubious “Dead Sea Scrolls” Fragments from the Twenty-First Century . In: Dead Sea Discoveries 24/2 (2017), pp. 189-228, here p. 225.
  54. Årstein Justnes, Josephine Munch Rasmussen: The Post-2002 Fragments and the Scholars Who Turned Them Into Dead Sea Scrolls . In: Ancient Near East Today VII / 2 (2019)
  55. Jennifer Ouellette: All 16 Dead Sea Scroll fragments in the Museum of the Bible are fakes . In: Ars Technica , March 23, 2020
  56. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 4.
  57. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1884; Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 4; Heinz-Josef Fabry: The text and its story . In: Christian Frevel (Ed.): Introduction to the Old Testament . 9th, updated edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, pp. 37–66, here p. 46.
  58. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 20f. Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 42. On castor oil: Greg Doudna: Dating the Scrolls on the Basis of Radiocarbon Analysis . In: Peter W. Flint, James C. VanderKam (Eds.): The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment . Volume 1. Brill, Leiden 1998, pp. 430-471, here pp. 448f. ( Online )
  59. ^ Greg Doudna: Carbon-14 Dating . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  60. ^ Greg Doudna: Dating the Scrolls on the Basis of Radiocarbon Analysis . In: Peter W. Flint, James C. VanderKam (Eds.): The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment . Volume 1. Brill, Leiden 1998, pp. 430-471, here pp. 468-470.
  61. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1884.
  62. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumran literature , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 21
  63. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 28. Some paleographers refer to the stage of development of the Hebrew script found in the Qumran manuscripts as “Judean script”. See Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 38f.
  64. a b Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 44.
  65. ^ Frank M. Cross: Paleography . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  66. Heinz-Josef Fabry: The text and its history . In: Christian Frevel (Ed.): Introduction to the Old Testament . 9th, updated edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, pp. 37–66, here p. 46f.
  67. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 43.
  68. ^ Emanuel Tov: The Nature of the Greek Texts from the Judean Desert . In: Novum Testamentum 43/1 (2001), pp. 1-11, here pp. 2 and 4.
  69. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 17f.
  70. Heinz-Josef Fabry: The text and its history . In: Christian Frevel (Ed.): Introduction to the Old Testament . 9th, updated edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, pp. 37–66, here p. 46.
  71. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 32f.
  72. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The Dead Sea texts and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 30.
  73. David M. Carr: Rethinking the Materiality of Biblical Texts: From Source, Tradition and Redaction to a Scroll Approach . In: Journal for Old Testament Science 132/4 (2020), pp. 594–621, here pp. 614f.
  74. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, pp. 29–31.
  75. Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn, Timo Wolff, Admir Masic, Gisela Weinberg: On the Origin of the Ink of the Thanksgiving Scroll (1QHodayot) . In: Dead Sea Discoveries 16/1 (2009), pp. 97-106, especially p. 100.
  76. Emanuel Tov scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the text of the Judean Desert . Brill, Leiden 2004, p. 13f.
  77. Emanuel Tov scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the text of the Judean Desert . Brill, Leiden 2004, p. 10. Cf. Christine Schams: Jewish Scribes in the Second-Temple Period (= Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series . Volume 291), Sheffield 1998, p. 260: Instead, it seems probable that the members of the community did not asign any special importance to the actual writing and copying of scrolls. Some of the scrolls were probably written by members, others by outsiders, and some may have been acquired. The scrolls could have been written by both professional scribes and educated, literate individuals .
  78. ^ Emanuel Tov: The Text of Isaiah at Qumran . In: Craig C. Broyles, Craig A. Evans (Eds.): Writing and reading the scroll of Isaiah: studies of an interpretive tradition . Brill, Leiden 1997, here p. 501.
  79. Emanuel Tov scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the text of the Judean Desert . Brill, Leiden 2004, p. 19. Cf. Curt Kuhl: Writer peculiarities: Comments on the Isaiah scroll (DSIa) . In: Vetus Testamentum 2/4 (1952), pp. 307-333, here p. 318.
  80. Emanuel Tov: The Text of Isaiah at Qumran , Volume 2. In: Craig C. Broyles, Craig A. Evans (Ed.): Writing and reading the scroll of Isaiah: studies of an interpretive tradition (= Vetus Testamentum, Supplements . Volume 70.2). Brill, Leiden 1997, pp. 481-490, here p. 501. See Millar Burrows: Orthography, Morphology, and Syntax of the St. Mark's Isaiah Manuscript . In: Journal of Biblical Literature 68/3 (1949), pp. 195-211, here p. 196: The total picture is one of freedom like that of Elizabethan English, indicating a partly traditional, partly phonetic manner of writing, probably from dictation or memory .
  81. Emanuel Tov scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the text of the Judean Desert . Brill, Leiden 2004, p. 23f.
  82. Emanuel Tov scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the text of the Judean Desert . Brill, Leiden 2004, pp. 28f.
  83. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 27f.
  84. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, pp. 48–50.
  85. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, pp. 53–56. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumran Literature , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 21f.
  86. Oren Ableman: Preliminary Publication of Cave 11Q Fragments from Box 1032A . In: Jean-Baptiste Humbert, Marcello Fidanzio (ed.): Khirbet Qumrân and Aïn Feshkha IV A: Qumran Cave 11Q: Archeology and New Scroll Fragments . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2019, pp. 231–244, here pp. 242f. Compare Gesenius. 18th edition 2013 , p. 305.
  87. Cf. Karl-Heinrich Rengstorf: Hirbet Qumran and the Dead Sea Library . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1960.
  88. Eibert Tigchelaar: Classifications of the Collection of Dead Sea Scrolls and the Case of “Apocryphon of Jeremiah C” . In: Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 43/4 (2012), pp. 519-550, here pp. 521f. See Baruch A. Levine: The Temple Scroll: Aspects of Its Historical Provenance and Literary Character . In: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 232 (1978), pp. 5-23.
  89. Florentino García Martínez: A Groningen Hypothesis of Qumran Origins and Early History . In: Revue de Qumrân 14/4 (1990), pp. 521-541, here pp. 522 and 524.
  90. Florentino García Martínez: A Groningen Hypothesis of Qumran Origins and Early History . In: Revue de Qumrân 14/4 (1990), pp. 521-541, here pp. 536-538.
  91. Florentino García Martínez: A Groningen Hypothesis of Qumran Origins and Early History . In: Revue de Qumrân 14/4 (1990), pp. 521-541, here p. 540.
  92. Florentino García Martínez: A Groningen Hypothesis of Qumran Origins and Early History . In: Revue de Qumrân 14/4 (1990), pp. 521-541, here p. 525.
  93. Devorah Dimant: Sectarian and Non-Sectarian Texts from Qumran: the Pertinence and Usage of a Taxonomy . In: Revue de Qumrân 24/1 (2009), pp. 7-18, here pp. 7-9.
  94. Devorah Dimant: The Qumran Manuscripts: Contents and Significance . In: Devorah Dimant, Lawrence H. Schiffman (Eds.): Time to Prepare the Way in the Wilderness. Papers on the Qumran Scrolls by Fellows of the Institute for Advanced Studies of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1989-1990 . Brill, Leiden 1994, pp. 23-58, here p. 26.
  95. Devorah Dimant: The Qumran Manuscripts: Contents and Significance . In: Devorah Dimant, Lawrence H. Schiffman (Eds.): Time to Prepare the Way in the Wilderness. Papers on the Qumran Scrolls by Fellows of the Institute for Advanced Studies of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1989-1990 . Brill, Leiden 1994, pp. 23-58, here p. 31.
  96. Eibert Tigchelaar: Classifications of the Collection of Dead Sea Scrolls and the Case of “Apocryphon of Jeremiah C” . In: Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 43/4 (2012), pp. 519-550, here pp. 524-528.
  97. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 7f.
  98. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 38.
  99. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1884.
  100. Heinz-Josef Fabry: The Dead Sea manuscripts and their meaning for the text of the Hebrew Bible. In: Ulrich Dahmen, Hartmut Stegemann, Günter Stemberger (eds.): Qumran - Biblical Studies - Ancient Judaism. Paderborn 2006, p. 12. According to Fabry (ibid.) The book Haggai is also missing in the Qumran text corpus; but this is represented by 4Q77. See Mika S. Pajunen: Minor Prophets in the Dead Sea Manuscripts . In: Julia M. O'Brian (Ed.): The Oxford Handbook on the Minor Prophets . Oxford University Press, New York 2021, pp. 57-72, here pp. 62f. The text of the fragment 4Q118 can be supplemented in such a way that it corresponds to the text of 2. Chr 28,27-29,3, but this is uncertain. See George J. Brooke: The Books of Chronicles and the Scrolls of Qumran . In: Robert Rezetko, Timothy Henry Lim, W. Brian Aucker (eds.): Reflection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honor of A. Grame Auld (= Vetus Testamentum, Supplements . Volume 113). Brill, Leiden / Boston 2007, pp. 35-48, here pp. 38-40.
  101. Siegfried Kreuzer: From Diversity to Uniformity - How did the Masoretic Text come to dominate? . In: Ders., History, Language and Text (= supplements to the journal for Old Testament science . Volume 479). De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 354-365, here p. 356.
  102. Heinz-Josef Fabry: The text and its history . In: Christian Frevel (Ed.): Introduction to the Old Testament . 9th, updated edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, p. 58.
  103. Emanuel Tov: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible . Fortress, 2nd Edition Minneapolis 2001, pp. 114-117.
  104. Characteristic are frequent matres lectionis , plene spelling and long suffix forms.
  105. Emanuel Tov: The Text of Isaiah at Qumran , Volume 2. In: Craig C. Broyles, Craig A. Evans (Ed.): Writing and reading the scroll of Isaiah: studies of an interpretive tradition (= Vetus Testamentum, Supplements . Volume 70.2). Brill, Leiden 1997, pp. 481-490, here p. 511.
  106. Here Siegfried Kreuzer critically objects that the reference value is the Samaritian Pentateuch, ie a percentage value of the pre-Samaritan texts can only be determined for Pentateuch manuscripts. This increases their share from 5 to around 15 percent. See Siegfried Kreuzer: Text, text history and text criticism of the Old Testament. On the history of research at the turn of the century . In: Ders., History, Language and Text (= supplements to the journal for Old Testament science . Volume 479). De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 298-336, here p. 308.
  107. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 201f. Heinz-Josef Fabry: The text and its story . In: Christian Frevel (Ed.): Introduction to the Old Testament . 9th, updated edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, pp. 37–66, here p. 48. Cf. Armin Lange: Handbuch der Textfunde vom Toten Meer , Volume 1: The manuscripts of biblical books from Qumran and the other sites . Mohr, Tübingen 2009, p. 19.
  108. Heinz-Josef Fabry: The text and its history . In: Christian Frevel (Ed.): Introduction to the Old Testament . 9th, updated edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, pp. 37–66, here pp. 54–57.
  109. ^ Eugene C. Ulrich: The Qumran Biblical Scrolls - the Scripture of Late Second Temple Judaism . In: Timothy Lim, Larry W. Hurtado, A. Graeme Auld, Alison Jack (Eds.): The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context . T&T Clark International, London / New York 2000, pp. 67-88, here p. 85.
  110. Siegfried Kreuzer: From Diversity to Uniformity - How did the Masoretic Text come to dominate? . In: Ders., History, Language and Text (= supplements to the journal for Old Testament science . Volume 479). De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 354-365, summary p. 365.
  111. Raimund Wirth: The Septuagint of the Samuel books . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2016, pp. 233–243.
  112. Heinz-Josef Fabry: The text and its history . In: Christian Frevel (Ed.): Introduction to the Old Testament . 9th, updated edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, pp. 37–66, here pp. 57–59, quoted on p. 59.
  113. a b Heinz-Josef Fabry: The text and its story . In: Christian Frevel (Ed.): Introduction to the Old Testament . 9th, updated edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, pp. 37–66, here p. 47.
  114. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 28–30.
  115. Eugene Ulrich: Septuagint . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  116. Yehuda B. Cohn: Reading Material Features of Qumran Tefillin and Mezuzot . In: Anna Krauß, Jonas Leipziger, Friederike Schücking-Jungblut (Eds.): Material Aspects of Reading in Ancient and Medieval Cultures . Materiality, Presence and Performance (= material text cultures . Volume 26). De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2020, pp. 89-99, here pp. 89f. and note 5.
  117. See the exhibit in the Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, Jerusalem ( photo ).
  118. Lawrence H. Schiffman: Phylacteries and Mezuzot . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, online version 2008. See Yigael Yadin: Tefillin from Qumran (XQ Phyl 1-4) . The Israel Exploration Society and the Shrine of the Book, Jerusalem 1969; Maurice Baillet: Nouveâux phylactères de Qumrân . In: Revue de Qumrân 7 (1970), pp. 403-415. Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, pp. 367-370.
  119. Lawrence H. Schiffman: Phylacteries and Mezuzot . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, online version from 2008. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumran literature , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 27f.
  120. Yehuda B. Cohn: Reading Material Features of Qumran Tefillin and Mezuzot . In: Anna Krauß, Jonas Leipziger, Friederike Schücking-Jungblut (Eds.): Material Aspects of Reading in Ancient and Medieval Cultures . Materiality, Presence and Performance (= material text cultures . Volume 26). De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2020, pp. 89-99, here p. 90.
  121. ^ Molly M. Zahn: The Problem of Characterizing the 4QReworked Pentateuch Manuscripts: Bible, Rewritten Bible, or None of the Above? In: Dead Sea Discoveries 15/3 (2008), pp. 315-333, here pp. 315-317.
  122. David M. Carr: Rethinking the Materiality of Biblical Texts: From Source, Tradition and Redaction to a Scroll Approach . In: Journal for Old Testament Science 132/4 (2020), pp. 594–621, here p. 602. Armin LangeQumran 1. The text finds from Qumran . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE). Volume 28, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1997, ISBN 3-11-015580-X , pp. 45-65., Here p. 47.
  123. Cf. DJD XXXIX ( Indices and an Introduction to the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series ), taken over in: Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 13.
  124. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1885.
  125. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 53f.
  126. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 55–57.
  127. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 57–59.
  128. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 59–63.
  129. Benjamin Ziemer:  Genesis Apocryphon. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (eds.): The scientific biblical dictionary on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff .; Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumran Literature , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 65–69.
  130. Devorah Dimant: Reworking of Scripture at Qumran . In this. (Ed.): Scripture and Interpretation. Qumran text did rework the Bible (= Supplements to the Journal of Old Testament scholarship . Volume 449). De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, pp. 1-262, here p. 9.
  131. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 72f.
  132. Heinz-Josef Fabry: The Dead Sea manuscripts and their meaning for the text of the Hebrew Bible , p. 13.
  133. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 80–85.
  134. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 86–89.
  135. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 90–96. Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 381f.
  136. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1886.
  137. ^ Hermann LichtenbergerQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 3, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2000, Sp. 1363.
  138. Quoted here from: Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 229.
  139. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 86–89.
  140. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 127. Cf. Annette Steudel: The Midrash for eschatology from the Qumran community (4QMidrEschat ab): material reconstruction, text inventory, genre and traditional-historical classification of the work from the Qumran finds represented by 4Q174 (Florilegium) and 4Q177 (Catena A) . Brill, Leiden et al. 1994.
  141. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1886.
  142. Armin LangeQumran 1. The text finds from Qumran . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE). Volume 28, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1997, ISBN 3-11-015580-X , pp. 45-65., Here pp. 46 and 49.
  143. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1886.
  144. Controversies in the Scrollery team became public when Strugnell subjected Allegro's edition of the text (DJD, Volume 5) to extensive criticism. Cf. John Strugnell: Notes en marge du volume V of the 'Discoveries in the Judaean Desert of Jordan . In: Revue de Qumrân 7 (1970), pp. 163-276, on 4Q175: pp. 225-229.
  145. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 112f. Annette Steudel: Testimonia . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  146. a b Wikipedia follows the older linguistic usage introduced by Eduard Lohse to designate 1QS as "community rule" and 1QSa as "community rule". In more recent standard works, these terms are used the other way round. See Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 141 and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 248.
  147. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 142–152; Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, pp. 243–249.
  148. A non-biblical term that may come from the Hellenistic association system; (English: instead of "overseer" overseer ) could be translated: examiner, examiners, Kümmerer.Vgl. Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, pp. 258–259; Hebrew and Aramaic dictionary of the Dead Sea texts including manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza . Volume 1, Berlin / Boston 2017, p. 303f. (בקר II).
  149. Tal Ilan: Women in Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls . In: John J. Collins, Timothy H. Lim (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls , New York 2010, pp. 123–150, here p. 133. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to die Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 162. Cf. Cecilia Wassen: Women in the Damascus Document . Brill, Leiden et al. 2005.
  150. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 384f.
  151. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 164–172.
  152. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 173.
  153. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 290.
  154. Quoted here from: Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 178.
  155. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1887f.
  156. Gesenius. 18th ed. 2013 , p. 758.
  157. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 180.
  158. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 292f.
  159. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 184–203. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1888f.
  160. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 204–206.
  161. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 209–211.
  162. Michael R. Douglas: The Teacher Hymn Hypothesis Revisited. New Data for an Old Crux . In: Dead Sea Discoveries 6/3 (1999), pp. 239-266. Cf. Gert Jeremias: The teacher of righteousness . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1963, p. 176: “It is completely unthinkable that there were two men in the community of Qumran in a very short time who both came before the community with the revolutionary claim to bring about salvation with their teaching , and that both men were accepted by the community. "
  163. Carol Ann Newsom: The Self As Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran . Brill, Leiden / Boston 2004, p. 288.
  164. Quoted here from: Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 258.
  165. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 258–260.
  166. ^ Matthew J. Goff: The Mystery of Creation in 4QInstruction . In: Dead Sea Discoveries 10/2 (2003), pp. 163-186, here p. 179.
  167. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 223-231. Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The Dead Sea Texts and Ancient Judaism . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2016, pp. 341–344. On the reconstruction of the text, see Eibert Tigchelaar: To Increase Learning for the Understanding Ones. Reading and Reconstructing the Fragmentary Early Jewish Sapiential Text 4Q Instruction . Brill, Leiden et al. 2001.
  168. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 231–233.
  169. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1889f.
  170. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, p. 249.
  171. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumran literature , Berlin / Boston 2015 S. 243rd
  172. ^ Klaus Koenen:  Eschatology (AT). In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (eds.): The scientific biblical dictionary on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.
  173. Hans-Peter Müller (theologian)Eschatology II. Old Testament . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 2, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1999, Sp. 1546–1553., Here Sp. 1552.
  174. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 270f.
  175. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 273–276; Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The Dead Sea Texts and Ancient Judaism . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2016, p. 322f.
  176. Armin LangeQumran . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 6, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, Sp. 1873-1896., Here Sp. 1890.
  177. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 276–281. Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The Dead Sea Texts and Ancient Judaism . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2016, pp. 252f.
  178. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 285–287.
  179. Géza G. Xeravits, Peter Porzig: Introduction to Qumranliteratur , Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 287f.
  180. ^ Jörg Frey : Critical Investigations in the Scrolls and the New Testament . In: John J. Collins, Timothy H. Lim (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls , Oxford / New York 2010, pp. 517-542, here p. 525.
  181. So for the first time Constantin Daniel: Les Hérodiens du Nouveau Testament sont-ils des Esseniens? In: Revue de Qumrân 6 (1967), pp. 31–53; recently Joan E. Taylor: The Essenes, The Scrolls, and the Dead Sea , New York 2014, especially p. 130.
  182. ^ Hermann Lichtenberger : The contribution of the Qumran finds to a new view of Judaism. In: Jewish history in Hellenistic-Roman times . Oldenbourg, Munich 1999, pp. 193-204, here p. 202.
  183. ^ André Dupont-Sommer: The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Preliminary Survey . Blackwell, Oxford 1952, pp. 99f .: Everything in the Jewish New Covenant heralds and prepares the way for the Christian New Covenant. The Galilean Master, as He is presented in the writings of the New Testament, appears in many respects as an astonishing reincarnation of the Teacher of Righteousness . Quoted here from: John J. Collins: The Scrolls and Christianity in American Scholarship . In: Devorah Dimant, Ingo Kottsieper (Eds.): The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective: A History of Research . Brill, Leiden / Boston 2012, pp. 197–216, here p. 197.
  184. John J. Collins: The Scrolls and Christianity in American Scholarship . In: Devorah Dimant, Ingo Kottsieper (Eds.): The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective: A History of Research . Brill, Leiden / Boston 2012, pp. 197-216, here p. 198. Jörg Frey : Critical Investigations in the Scrolls and the New Testament . In: John J. Collins, Timothy H. Lim (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls , Oxford / New York 2010, pp. 517–542, here p. 520. Lawrence H. Schiffman: Inverting Reality: The Dead Sea Scrolls in the Popular Media . In: Dead Sea Discoveries 12/1 (2005), pp. 24–37, here pp. 27f.
  185. John J. Collins: The Scrolls and Christianity in American Scholarship . In: Devorah Dimant, Ingo Kottsieper (Eds.): The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective: A History of Research . Brill, Leiden / Boston 2012, pp. 197-216, here pp. 200-202.
  186. John J. Collins: The Scrolls and Christianity in American Scholarship . In: Devorah Dimant, Ingo Kottsieper (Eds.): The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective: A History of Research . Brill, Leiden / Boston 2012, pp. 197-216, here pp. 204-206.
  187. ^ Jörg Frey : Critical Investigations in the Scrolls and the New Testament . In: John J. Collins, Timothy H. Lim (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls , Oxford / New York 2010, pp. 517-542, here p. 518.
  188. Karl Georg Kuhn:  Qumran 5. Significance for the NT . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 3. Edition. Volume 5, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1961, Sp. 751-754., Here p. 754.
  189. ^ Jörg Frey: Critical Investigations in the Scrolls and the New Testament . In: John J. Collins, Timothy H. Lim (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls , Oxford / New York 2010, pp. 517–542, here pp. 522f., With reference to Stefan Enste, among others: No text of Mark in Qumran. An examination of the thesis: Qumran fragment 7Q5 = Mk 6.52-53. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000. See also: Hermann LichtenbergerQumran 4. The meaning of the text finds . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE). Volume 28, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1997, ISBN 3-11-015580-X , pp. 72–79., Here p. 74.
  190. German version: Robert Eisenman, Michael Wise: Jesus und die Urchristen. Goldmann, Munich 1994. See also: Michael Baigent , Richard Leigh: Verschusssache Jesus. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1991.
  191. John J. Collins: The Scrolls and Christianity in American Scholarship . In: Devorah Dimant, Ingo Kottsieper (Eds.): The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective: A History of Research . Brill, Leiden / Boston 2012, pp. 197-216, here pp. 208f. See also: Otto Betz , Rainer Riesner : Jesus, Qumran and the Vatican. Clarifications. Brunnen-Verlag, Giessen 1993.
  192. ^ Jörg Frey : Critical Investigations in the Scrolls and the New Testament . In: John J. Collins, Timothy H. Lim (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls , Oxford / New York 2010, pp. 517-542, here p. 522. Cf. Barbara Thiering: The Biblical Source of Qumran Asceticism. In: Journal of Biblical Literature 93/3 (1974), pp. 429-444; Barbara Thiering: Jesus of Qumran. His life - rewritten. Gütersloh publishing house, 2nd edition Gütersloh 1996.
  193. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran. The Dead Sea Texts and Ancient Judaism . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2016, p. 328.
  194. Jörg Frey: New Testament Science and Ancient Judaism: Problems - Perceptions - Perspectives . In: Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 109/4 (2012), pp. 445-471, here pp. 458f.
  195. George J. Brooke: The Pre-Sectarian Jesus . In: Florentino García Martínez (Ed.): Echoes from the Caves: Qumran and the New Testament (= Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah . Volume 85). Brill, Leiden 2009, pp. 33–48, here p. 43.
  196. Michael Bachmann: 4QMMT and Galatians, מעשי התורה and ΕΡΓΑ ΝΟΜΟΥ . In: Journal for New Testament Science 89 (2009), pp. 91–113, especially pp. 109-113.
  197. Aharon Shemesh: Halakhah between the Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic Literature . In: John J. Collins, Timothy H. Lim (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls , Oxford / New York 2010, pp. 595–616, here p. 596. See Joseph Baumgarten: The Pharisaic‐ Sadducean Controversies about Purity and the Qumran Texts . In: Journal of Jewish Studies 31 (1980), pp. 157-170. ( Online )
  198. ^ Gary A. Anderson: Law and Lawgiving. In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  199. Aharon Shemesh: Halakhah between the Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic Literature . In: John J. Collins, Timothy H. Lim (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls , Oxford / New York 2010, pp. 595–616, here pp. 610–612.
  200. ^ Lutz Doering: Parallels without Parallelomania. Methodological reflections on Comparative Analysis of Halakhah in the Dead Sea Scrolls . In: Steven Fraade, Aharon Shemesh, Ruth Clements (Eds.): Rabbinic Perspectives: Rabbinic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls . Brill, Leiden 2006, pp. 13–42, here pp. 31–34.
  201. ^ Joseph Zias: Palestine Archaeological Museum . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  202. ^ Adolfo A. Roitman: Shrine of the Book . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  203. George J. Brooke: Amman Museum . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.
  204. ^ Jacques Briend: Bibliothèque nationale de France . In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, James C. VanderKam: Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Oxford University Press, 2008 online version.

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