Showing papers on "Dead Sea Scrolls published in 1994"

The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English

Abstract: One of the world's foremost experts on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Qumran community that produced them provides an authoritative new English translation of the two hundred longest and most important nonbiblical Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran, along with an introduction to the history of the discovery and publication of each manuscript and the background necessary for placing each manuscript in its actual historical context.

The Dead Sea scrolls today

Abstract: "Best-selling book on the Scrolls, updated to reflect current scholarship and recent debates" The premier Dead Sea Scrolls primer ever since its original publication in 1994, James VanderKam's"Dead Sea Scrolls Today"won the Biblical Archaeology Society's Publication Award in 1995 for the Best Popular Book on Biblical Archaeology In this expanded and updated edition the book will continue to illuminate the greatest archaeological find in modern times While retaining the format, style, and aims of the first edition, the second edition of"The Dead Sea Scrolls Today"takes into account the full publication of the texts from the caves and the post-1994 debates about the Qumran site, and it contains an additional section regarding information that the Scrolls provide about Second Temple Judaism and the groups prominent at the time Further, VanderKam has enlarged the bibliographies throughout and changed the phrasing in many places Finally, quotations of the Scrolls are from the fifth edition of Geza Vermes's translation, "The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English"(Penguin, 1997)"

Reclaiming the Dead Sea scrolls : the history of Judaism, the background of Christianity, the lost library of Qumran

Abstract: Controversy has surrounded the Dead Sea Scrolls ever since they were first discovered in caves bordering the Dead Sea. what is their true meaning? What revelations do they hold about Judaism and about the origins of Christianity? In this bestseller Schiffman lifts the shroud of mystery and conspiracy that has obscured their true meaning, proving that many of the scrolls have been incorrectly translated and misinterpreted.

The Dead Sea scrolls on microfiche : a comprehensive facsimile edition of the texts from the Judean Desert

Abstract: The Dead Sea Scrolls comprise the most important manuscript discovery in the field of biblical and early Jewish studies to have been made this century. They were first discovered in 1947 in a cave above the Dead Sea near the ruins of Qumran, and in subsequent years in ten more caves in which approximately 800 manuscripts were finally brought to light. Further manuscript and epigraphs were also found in the desert of Judah. These documents date from c. 300 BCE to 70 CE. They provide unique and invaluable information on the textual transmission of the hebrew Bible, and on the history of Ancient Judaism and the beginnings of Christianity. Yet many of these documents still remain unpublished over 40 years after their discovery. With the publication of "The Dead Sea Scrolls on Microfiche" schoars can for the first time in history gain full access to the discoveries. This collection makes available all the known written documents and several artifacts from the Desert of Judah. This edition contains some 5000 photographs and is accompanied by a printed guide which is based on the Dead Sea Scroll Inventory Project from the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center in Calremont, California.

Qumran prayer and religious poetry

Abstract: Qumran Prayer and Religious Poetry represents the first attempt to undertake a systematic, comprehensive study of the liturgical and poetic texts which were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran. In the light of the prayer texts from Qumran the author conducts a systematic study of Jewish prayer beginning with its biblical traditions, through its development during the Second Temple period, and down to rabbinic prayer.

The Works of the Messiah

Abstract: In a recent issue of Revue de Qumran, Emile Puech published an exceptionally interesting text, 4Q521, which he dubbed a "messianic apocalypse. "1 The proposed designation is at best an approximate indication of generic affinity. The extant fragments show none of the formal marks of apocalyptic revelation,2 but, like many apocalypses, they deal with eschatological expectations which include the resurrection of the dead. In another formulation of Puech, it is "an exhortation based on the blessings or chastisements which God will bring about through, or in the days of, his Messiah."3 Three aspects of the text are especially interesting in this regard. First, there is explicit mention of a "messiah" or "anointed one,' and so the text is an important addition to the limited repertoire of explicit messianic references from the preChristian period. Second, there is explicit mention of resurrection in two passages. References to resurrection are notoriously scarce in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Third, one of the resurrection passages has a very close parallel in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and may throw some light on the categories in which Jesus of Nazareth was perceived by his followers at an early stage. The fragmentary state of the text, however, leaves room for some questions about its interpretation. It is not immediately clear what role, if any, the messiah plays in the resurrection. I shall argue that he most probably serves as God's agent in raising the dead. Such a role, however, is not

The New Jerusalem: Ideal City

Abstract: The Aramaic scroll found in the Qumran caves and named by Milik "The New Jerusalem" I is a detailed description of a temple city designed upon an orthogonal grid of streets, in the tradition of orthogonal cities that began in ancient Egypt and was continued in the Greek Hippodamian cities and the Roman castrum. The reconstruction of the scroll that has been published to date is based on two pages (5Q15), which were found in a relatively complete state and were completed by Milik with the aid of another copy of the same scroll that was found in Cave 4 at Qumran and has not been published, and also fragments of the scroll that have been published only in part. In my discussion of the scroll I rely upon Milik's reconstruction and the fragments that have been published except in those cases where Milik notes that his reading is not decisive. The text of the scroll in Aramaic and in English translation has been published by Fitzmyer and Harrington,2 and in German by Beyer.3 Greenfield4 proposed several corrections to Milik's reconstruction. An attempt at an architectural reconstruction of the New Jerusalem was made by Licht,5 with whom I disagree in the reconstruction presented here. There are minor differences among the reconstructions of the Aramaic in the various publications. No full and accepted "official" text of the scroll has as yet been published, so for my present purpose I have chosen the text pub-

Women in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Abstract: In keeping with the concerns of this Conference for issues of methodology in the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, I would like to situate this paper and take some methodological clues h m a broader area than is perhaps usual in Qumran Studies. Today, it is acknowledged that “’women in antiquity’ is now a fully established area of specialization within classical scholarship,”’ and, more specifically, the study of women in the religions of the ancient world has developed into a sub-specialization. A feminist critical methodology has evolved which seeks to put women as well as men at the center of our study and reconstructions. Given the androcentric nature of both our ancient sources and of much modem scholarship, this has necessitated a painstaking task of reading old texts with new presuppositions about the presence and roles of women, of gathering and preserving whatever information has survived, and of using a disciplined imagination in the reconstruction of historical reality. In an important survey article in 1983, Ross Kraemer was already able to synthesize an extensive body of primary research on women in Early Christianity and in the Greco-Roman religions; however, on turning to Judaism, she noted the contrast: “all in all, there has been very little carehl scholarly consideration of women in the varieties of Judaism in late antiquity.”2 The last ten years have done much to fill this lacuna and there are now major studies on Jewish women in the Diaspora, in Philo, Josephus, in the Mishnah, and in much of the Apocrypha and P~eudepigrapha.~ Yet there has not been, to my knowledge, similar scholarly work on women in that type (those types)

The Community of the Renewed Covenant : the Notre Dame Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls

Abstract: The Dead Sea Scrolls continue to be the subject of widespread interest and controversy. Unfortunately the discussions and debates surrounding them are not always accurate or clear. The Community of the Renewed Covenant grew out of a symposium, held at the University of Notre Dame in 1993, which convened to address the state of the question in scrolls research. The contributors to this volume, each a well-known Qumran scholar and member of the international team currently editing the unpublished scrolls, represent the cutting edge in Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship. They present here the most recent overviews and syntheses in various areas of scrolls study, making The Community of the Renewed Covenant the broadest, most authoritative, and up-to-date book available on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran Site: Present Realities and Future Prospects

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Genesis 1 in Jubilees 2

Abstract: After the full text of Jubilees became available for western scholarly consumption in the mid-nineteenth century, it soon became the object of sundry comparative studies. The earliest estimates of its date placed it in the first century CE (Dillmann, for one), but later R.H. Charles made the classic case for dating the book to the end of the second century BCE.' Whichever of these dates one preferred, it was obvious to all that Jubilees postdated the Hebrew version of Genesis-Exodus and predated the earliest rabbinic and patristic exegetical works. Thus, the book stood at an ancient point in the history of interpreting Genesis-Exodus. It embodied both unique exegetical stands and hermeneutical moves that were familiar from later texts. Unlike most later commentaries, however, Jubilees bills itself, not merely as an explication of the divinely given words to Moses, but as revelation: its words come from the tablets of heaven and are mediated to Moses by an angel of the presence (1:29-2:1). The evidence from Qumran helps us to see how one group considered Jubilees authoritative: not only have remnants of 14 or 15 copies of the book been found there,2 but the Damascus Document certainly cites it as an authority, and 4Q2283 probably does as well. From the point of view of scriptural exegesis, one of the more interesting passages for comparative purposes is the creation account in Jubilees 2. It is obviously based upon Genesis 1-2, but

Studies in Biblical Law: From the Hebrew Bible to the Dead Sea Scrolls

Abstract: Gershon Brin examines the development of biblical law, suggesting that it may be due to different authors with different legal outlooks, or that the differing policies were required in response to different social needs, etc. Biblical laws appearing in the Dead Sea Scrolls literature are treated in a separate unit. Study of this subject can shed light both on the biblical laws as such, as well as on the manner of their reworking by the Judaean Desert sect. Brin also discusses here questions of the style, the idea, and the historical and ideological background underlying the reworking of these laws in Qumran. The second part of the book presents a comprehensive picture of the issues involved in the laws of the first-born, a subject that has legal, social and religious implications.

The Hidden Scrolls: Christianity, Judaism and the War for the Dead Sea Scrolls

Abstract: Since their discovery in caves in the Judean Desert by the Bedouin in the 1940s, the Dead Sea Scrolls have been the cause of much religious, scholarly and political controversy In this book Neil Silberman, archaeologist and writer, explores the true significance of the scrolls, and the reasons for their suppression for fifty years, interpreting them as revolutionary writings of militant Jews under the oppressive rule of the Romans Now available for international study, the scrolls will suggest new ways of thinking about the past and the present for Jews and Christians alike

Had the works of philo been newly discovered

Abstract: The voluminous works of Philo have been known for so long; their existence is taken for granted. But imagine the headlines had this first-century Jew's commentaries on the Pentateuch, his declamatory books, and his dialogues appeared unexpectedly, even mysteriously, from some dry corner of Alexandria! Though the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices has eclipsed scholarly interest in Philo, renewed devotion to Philonic studies will be required for the advancement of scholarship on Early Judaism and Christianity.

Messiahs in Context: Method in the Study of Messianism in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Abstract: The study of messianism in the Dead Sea Scrolls has vacillated between two poles. On the one hand, the standard treatments which have dominated the study of the Scrolls for the last forty yeals have generally assumed a high level of doctrinal consistency, and have tended to fit the various messianic allusions into a coherent system.’ On the other hand, there has been a growing tendency to accuse such systematic treatments of “harmonizationyy and to take the individual texts in isolation.2 It is my contention that the latter tendency has been taken to excess in some recent studies. While real differences between texts must certainly be respected, we must also recognize the signals that link one text with another and so provide a context for interpretation, if we are not to miss the forest for the trees. At issue in this discussion is the nature of the Qumran corpus. No one, to my knowledge, has ever claimed that everything found at Qumran was produced there, or was a product of the same sect. It has been common, however, to claim that non-sectarian material must be pre-Qumran, and that the community was effectively screened off fiom outside influence for most of its history. This position is difficult to maintain, in light of the abundance of material fiom Cave 4. Nonetheless it remains true that there is a core group of interrelated texts, with overlapping terminology and common subject

The Pesharim and the Origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Abstract: This paper addresses once again how the pesharim, especially the Habakkuk Commentary (lQpHab), should be suitably read. Ever since their publication, the pesharim have been the focus of controversy concerning the history which they may describe. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to describe something of their literary character to clarify their purpose and to put various uses and abuses of these texts in a proper methodological perspective. As always, we must begin with the primary evidence, the texts themselves. Datable to the turn of the era, give or take a generation, they are made up of explicit quotations of scriptural texts and commentary. They are grouped together as a distinct corpus because of the use of the term 1WD in various formulae which introduce the interpretation proper. The way that the scriptural text is cited has resulted in these texts being roughly classified in two groups, those that cite the scriptural extracts in the running order of the scriptural text itself, and those which are arranged in some other selective fashion (see most recently, Dimant 1992). The basis of this broad classification is very important and often forgotten. These texts are dependent on the text of Scripture in some way. Too often scholars have paid scant attention to the way the scriptural text is cited and its treatment by the interpreter, preferring rather to jump directly to their own conclusions about the significance of the commentary by itself, usually imposing on it some kind of historical reconstruction based on their own prejudices about events in some particular period fiom the second century B.C.E. (ea., Wacholder 1983:185-199) to the fall of the Temple (70 c.E.) (eg. , Eisenman 1986). A textual commentary in any age is a mixture on the one hand of the base text (sometimes very slightly modified) and on the other of the circumstances, exegetical techniques (Brooke 1985:166-169; Feltes 1986:205-229; Brewer 1992:189-190) and inherited traditions of the commentator. Apart fiom the actual choice of prophetic text, there is something very distinctive about the continuous pesharim, including lQpHab: the scriptural text takes priority. However many other similarities there may be in matters of content, the form