Dead Sea Scrolls

And

The Tanakh

Professor Sukenik, after initially defining the time span of the scrolls as the Second Temple period, recognized their special significance and advocated the now widely accepted theory that they were remnants of the library of the Essenes.

Today scholarly opinion regarding the time span and background of the Dead Sea Scrolls is anchored in historical, paleographic, and linguistic evidence, corroborated firmly by carbon 14-datings. Some manuscripts were written and copied in the third century B.C.E., but the bulk of the material, particularly the texts that reflect on a sectarian community, are originals or copies from the first century B.C.E.; a number of texts date from as late as the years preceding the destruction of the site in 68 C.E. at the hands of the Roman legions.

Interesting for Jews?

Professor Schiffman Said of the scrolls…

“There is an emotional component,” the expert explained, pointing to a piece of Psalm 121 on display: “Esa einai el heharim”—“I shall raise my eyes to the mountains . . .”

“When you realize that these very words were recited directly from this scroll by our forefathers 2,200 years ago, it’s very moving.”

Schiffman added that he finds that Jews generally have an intense interest in archaeology and their history.

According to Schiffman, there are certain differences between the books of Tanach found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and those that we have.

“There are some texts that are slightly different, usually just in the spelling of a word here or there.” He explained that ultimately the differences were expunged; a scroll found in the courtyard of the Holy Temple “corrected all the other texts.”

More to Investigate?

Professor Schiffman said:

“Until recently the main task involved editing and publishing the Scrolls. But now, the research possibilities are endless.

“For example, one of the fundamental ideas in Jewish mysticism is that the angels praise G d in Heaven. When you open up the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are poems, not the same poems we have, and they describe the angelic praise of G d.

“So now, if a person were to write a book about angelic praise of G d in Judaism, they have a wider resource field available.”

The Qumran Library

The collection of writing recovered in the Qumran environs has restored to us a voluminous corpus of Jewish documents dating from the third century B.C.E. to 68 C.E., demonstrating the rich literary activity of Second Temple-period Jewry. The collection comprises documents of a varied nature, most of them of a distinct religious bent. The chief categories represented are biblical, apocryphal or pseudepigraphical, and sectarian writings. The study of this original library has demonstrated that the boundaries between these categories is far from clear-cut.

The biblical manuscripts include what are probably the earliest copies of these texts to have come down to us. Most of the books of the Bible are represented in the collection. Some books are extant in large number of copies; others are represented only fragmentarily on mere scraps of parchment. The biblical texts display considerable similarity to the standard Masoretic (received) text. This, however, is not always the rule, and many texts diverge from the Masoretic. For example, some of the texts of Samuel from Cave 4 follow the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Bible translated in the third to second centuries B.C.E. Indeed. Qumran has yielded copies of the Septuagint in Greek.

The biblical scrolls in general have provided many new readings that facilitate the reconstruction of the textual history of the Old Testament. It is also significant that several manuscripts of the Bible, including the Leviticus Scroll are inscribed not in the Jewish script dominant at the time but rather in the ancient paleo-Hebrew script.

A considerable number of apocryphal and pseudepigraphic texts are preserved at Qumran, where original Hebrew and Aramaic versions of these Jewish compositions of the Second Temple period were first encountered. These writings, which are not included in the canonical Jewish scriptures, were preserved by different Christian churches and were transmitted in Greek, Ethiopic, Syriac, Armenian, and other translations.

Some of these are narrative texts closely related to biblical compositions, such as the Book of Jubilees and Enoch, whereas others are independent works-for example, Tobit and Ben Sira. Apparently some of these compositions were treated by the Qumran community as canonical and were studied by them.

The most original and unique group of writings from Qumran are the sectarian Ones, which were practically unknown until their discovery in 1947. An exception is the Damascus Document (or Damascus Covenant), which lacked a definite identification before the discoveries of the Dead Sea area. This widely varied literature reveals the beliefs and customs of a pietistic commune, probably centered at Qumran, and includes rules and ordinances, biblical commentaries, apocalyptic visions, and liturgical works, generally attributed to the last quarter of the second century B.C.E. and onward.

There are 225 Biblical texts included in the Dead Sea Scroll documents, or around 22% of the total. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain parts of all but one of the books of the Tanakh of the Hebrew Bible. Listed below are the most represented books, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the number of translatable Dead Sea texts that represent a copy of scripture from each Biblical book:

Book Number found

Psalms

Deuteronomy

1 Enoch

Genesis

Isaiah

Jubilees

Exodus

Leviticus

Numbers

Minor Prophets

Daniel

Jeremiah

Ezekiel

Job

Tobit

1 & 2 Kings

1 & 2 Samuel

Judges

Song of Songs (Canticles)

Ruth

Lamentations

Sirach

Ecclesiastes

Joshua

Now I’m adding more from another article I wrote, this one is newer, and sheds some information that I think was discovered since the publication of the article above.

There is mention in the Dead Sea Scrolls of a Teacher of Righteousness;

Some Christians say that this Teacher of Righteousness could be Jesus, but the timing of these writings of the Teacher of Righteousness were written over a hundred years before the lost years of Jesus. If we look in the New Testament and the many things written about the teachings of Jesus, we can see many correlations between what is written about what Jesus taught, and the many things written within the Scrolls. Could it be that what Jesus is said to teach were taken from the Dead Sea Scrools?

'Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven', preaches Jesus (Matt. 5:3); this line comes from the 'War Scroll' from the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Cave 1 and states: 'Among the poor in spirit there is a power... '8

Indeed, the whole of the Gospel of Matthew, and especially Chapters 10 and 18, contains metaphors and terminology at times almost interchangeable with those of the 'Community Rule'. In Matthew 5:48, for instance, Jesus stresses the concept of perfection:

'You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.'

The 'Community Rule' speaks of those 'who walk in the way of perfection as commanded by God'. 9 There will be, the text affirms,

'no pity on all who depart from the way ... no comfort... until their way becomes perfect'.10

In Matthew 21:42, Jesus invokes Isaiah 28:16 and echoes Psalm 118:22:

'Have you never read in the scriptures: It was the stone rejected by the builders that became the keystone.'

The 'Community Rule' invokes the same reference, stating that 'the Council of the Community... shall be that tried wall, that precious corner-stone'.11

If the Qumran scrolls and the Gospels echo each other, such echoes are even more apparent between the scrolls and the Pauline texts - the Acts of the Apostles and Paul's letters. The concept of 'sainthood', for example, and, indeed, the very word 'saint', are common enough in later Christianity, but striking in the context of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

According to the opening line of the 'Community Rule', however,

'The Master shall teach the saints to live according to the Book of the Community Rule...'12

Paul, in his letter to the Romans (15:25-7), uses the same terminology of the 'early Church': 'I must take a present of money to the saints in Jerusalem.'

Indeed, Paul is particularly lavish in his use of Qumran terms and images. One of the Qumran texts, for example, speaks of 'all those who observe the Law in the House of Judah, whom God will deliver... because of their suffering and because of their faith in the Teacher of Righteousness'.13 Paul, of course, ascribes a similar redemptive power to faith in Jesus.

Deliverance, he says in his epistle to the Romans (3:21-3), 'comes through faith to everyone... who believes in Jesus Christ'. To the Galatians (2:16-17), he declares that 'what makes a man righteous is not obedience to the Law, but faith in Jesus Christ'. It is clear that Paul is familiar with the metaphors, the figures of speech, the turns of phrase, the rhetoric used by the Qumran community in their interpretation of Old Testament texts. As we shall see, however, he presses this familiarity to the service of a very different purpose.

In the above quote from his letter to the Galatians, Paul ascribes no inordinate significance to the Law. In the Qumran texts, however, the Law is of paramount importance.

The 'Community Rule' begins:

'The Master shall teach the saints to live according to the Book of the Community Rule, that they may seek God... and do what is good and right before Him, as He commanded by the hand of Moses and all His servants the Prophets...'14

Later, the 'Community Rule' states that anyone who 'transgresses one word of the Law of Moses, on any point whatever, shall be expelled'15 and that the Law will endure 'for as long as the domain of Satan endures'.16 In his rigorous adherence to the Law, Jesus, strikingly enough, is much closer to the Qumran texts than he is to Paul.

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:17-19), Jesus makes his position unequivocally clear - a position that Paul was subsequently to betray:

Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish

but to complete them. I tell you solemnly... not one dot, not one little stroke, shall disappear from

the Law until its purpose is achieved. Therefore, the man who infringes even one of the least of

these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be considered the least in the

kingdom of heaven...

If Jesus' adherence to the Law concurs with that of the Qumran community, so, too, does his timing of the Last Supper. For centuries, biblical commentators have been confused by apparently conflicting accounts in the Gospels. In Matthew (26:17-19), the Last Supper is depicted as a Passover meal, and Jesus is crucified the next day.

In the Fourth Gospel (13:1 and 18:28), however, it is said to occur before the Passover. Some scholars have sought to reconcile the contradiction by acknowledging the Last Supper as indeed a Passover feast, but a Passover feast conducted in accordance with a different calendar. The Qumran community used precisely such a calendar - a solar calendar, in contrast to the lunar calendar used by the priesthood of the Temple.17 In each calendar, the Passover fell on a different date; and Jesus, it is clear, was using the same calendar as that of the Qumran community.

Certainly the Qumran community observed a feast which sounds very similar in its ritual characteristics to the Last Supper as it is described in the Gospels.

The 'Community Rule' states that,

'when the table has been prepared... the Priest shall be the first to stretch out his hand to bless the first-fruits of the bread and new wine'.18

And another Qumran text, the 'Messianic Rule', adds:

'they shall gather for the common table, to eat and to drink new wine... let no man extend his hand over the first fruits of bread and wine before the Priest... thereafter, the Messiah of Israel shall extend his hand over the bread'.19

This text was sufficient to convince even Rome. According to Cardinal Jean Danielou, writing with a 'Nihil Obstat' from the Vatican:

'Christ must have celebrated the last supper on the eve of Easter according to the Essenian calendar. '20

One can only imagine the reaction of Father de Vaux and his team on first discovering the seemingly extraordinary parallels between the Qumran texts and what was known of 'early Christianity'. It had hitherto been believed that Jesus' teachings were unique - that he admittedly drew on Old Testament sources, but wove his references into a message, a gospel, a statement of 'good news' which had never been enunciated in the world before.

Now, however, echoes of that message, and perhaps even of Jesus' drama itself, had come to light among a collection of ancient parchments preserved in the Judaean desert.