Recently I have been reviewing materials on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and decided that many of us might need the quick refresher. (Professors Gary Rendsburg from Rutgers and Geza Vermes of Oxford provide the facts and numbers as follows):
The collection: 930 documents found between 1947 and 54, all dating between 250 BCE to 50 CE, a three hundred year period. The majority appear to be from the period of 150 BCE to 50 CE.
The contents: These scrolls come in four types:
- 230 texts (about 25%) copies of Hebrew Scriptures, all books except Esther.
- 250 texts (about 27%) common Judaism texts (most) or personal texts (a few).
- 350 texts (about 38%) sectarian documents of the community at Qumran.
- 100 texts (about 11%) too fragmentary to place in common or sectarian, but not Biblical
The original discovery: The first seven scrolls were discovered in 1947 by a shepherd boy in search of his lost goat, where two jars yielded seven documents. They were sold to Kando in Bethlehem, a cobbler and antiquities dealer. Four documents were sold to the Metropolitan (head) of the Syrian Orthodox church in Jerusalem, eventually being sold via an ad in NYC. Three others were sold to Prof. Sukenik of Hebrew University at Jerusalem. Among the seven were two editions of Isaiah (a complete paraphrase and an incomplete manuscript that matched the medieval texts already available). In addition, Cave 1 yielded The Thanksgiving Hymn (a post Biblical Psalm-like writing), a War Scroll (the sons of light versus the sons of darkness), the text of the Community Rule (Serekh HaYahad), a commentary on Habakkuk (Pesher Habakkuk) and what has later been improperly dubbed the “Genesis Apocryphon”.
More caves, more documents: Scouring the area between 1952 and 54, ten more caves yielded documents (11 in all) and the nearby site of Khirbet Qumran, assumed to be linked to the scrolls was excavated. The deciphering of some of the scrolls yielded published works very quickly, but the whole of the collection was not fully accessible and published in entirety until 2003, half a century later.
Their meaning: The impact on studies of the period can hardly be overstated. The collection contains, by far, the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible (1000 years older that what we had before!) What we know about the Second Temple Period Jewish world has been significantly amended. In particular, the sectarian tensions and debates have been illuminated, and our understanding of the variety of streams in this formative period of Judaism has been dramatically expanded.
