| Summary and Conclusions We end where we began. Truly the most fascinating thing about the scrolls is the people who used them. Without the realization that the scrolls were the product of real people in a definite point in time, reflecting their fears, hopes, convictions, expectations, aims, and desires, the scrolls would be much less meaningful. By looking closely at the ancient people of Qumran—what they thought and how they behaved—we are given an extraordinary window of insight into the religious climate that spawned normative, or Pharisaic, Judaism, as well as another covenant group of dissenters—the early Christian contemporaries of the Qumran community. The people of Qumran stood at a historical juncture, a three-way crossroads in a period that witnessed the eventual survival of only two ideologies, Pharisaic, or rabbinic, Judaism and Christianity.
2. See Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, trans. G. A. Williamson (London: Penguin Books, 1989), 6:16. See also Charles F. Pfeiffer, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible (New York: Weathervane Books, 1969), 11–2. 3. James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), 1–2, quotes the pertinent portion of the letter. 4. See Pfeiffer, Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible, 13. 5. The story of the find and its initial announcement can be found in most introductions to the Dead Sea Scrolls, but the most accurate without being pedantic is perhaps VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 3–8. 6. As cited in VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, pl. 2. 7. See Hershel Shanks, "Barview," Biblical Archaeology Review 11/5 (1985): 4. 8. See Cross, Ancient Library of Qumran, 36–7. 9. See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Responses to 101 Questions on the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 57. 10. See Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, The Holy Land: An Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 395. 11. See ibid. 12. Alan D. Crown and Lena Cansdale, "Qumran: Was It an Essene Settlement?" Biblical Archaeology Review 20/5 (1994): 25–35, 73–4, 76–8. As early as 1959, Henry Del Medico argued that the structure in question was a triclinium rather than a Scriptorium. This interpretation was also favored by the great biblical scholar G. R. Driver. 13. Personal conversation with Dr. Broshi at the International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls, 15–17 July 1996, held at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. 14. Shemaryahu Talmon, The "Dead Sea Scrolls" or "The Community of the Renewed Covenant" (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993), 6. 15. See VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 12. 16. See Fitzmyer, Responses to 101 Questions, 13. 17. See ibid., 26 18. See Pfeiffer, Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible, 18. 19. Fitzmyer, Responses to 101 Questions, 26. 20. See Murphy-O’Connor, The Holy Land, 397. 21. Talmon, "Dead Sea Scrolls," 3. 22. As cited in Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll: The Hidden Law of the Dead Sea Sect (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985), 113. 23. Marion G. Romney, "Temples—The Gates to Heaven," Ensign (March 1971): 16. 24. See David B. Galbraith, D. Kelly Ogden, and Andrew C. Skinner, Jerusalem: The Eternal City (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996), 150. 25. See VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 71. 26. See Cross, Ancient Library of Qumran, 54. 27. Frank Moore Cross, "The Historical Context of the Scrolls," in Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Hershel Shanks (New York: Random House, 1992), 25. 28. Cross, "Historical Context," 25. 29. Rule of the Community (1QS) I and V. This and subsequent translations, unless otherwise noted, are from Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 4th ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1995). 30. See the critique in VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 93–4. 31. For an introduction to the Damascus Document, sometimes called the Zadokite Document, see Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 48–51. 32. Damascus Document (CD) I. 33. See VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 100–1. 34. See Damascus Document (CD) I; Commentary on Psalm 37:7, in The Dead Sea Scriptures, trans. Theodor H. Gaster, 3rd ed., (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1976), 326. 35. See VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 102. 36. See the summary in Hershel Shanks, "Essene Origins—Palestine or Babylonia," in Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Shanks, 80. 37. Cross, "Historical Context," 31. 38. Ibid., 31–2. 39. Pliny, Natural History, vol. 2, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (1969), 5.73. 40. These include Pliny’s inference that the settlement was still in existence around the time he wrote in a.d. 77 because he used the present tense in his description. This present-tense language seems to contradict the generally accepted picture provided by archaeological data that suggest that the settlement was destroyed by the Romans in a.d. 68 or 70. The author’s reference to Engedi as a city second only to Jerusalem in palm trees and fertility has also been criticized (it should probably read "Jericho") as indicative of the overall problematic nature of Pliny’s description. 41. See VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 72. 42. As cited in ibid., 74. 43. See ibid., 87. 44. See ibid., 88–91. 45. Josephus, Jewish War, trans. H. Thackeray and R. Marcus, Loeb Classical Library (1988), 2.122. 46. Rule of the Community (1QS) VI. 47. Josephus, Antiquities, trans. H. Thackeray, Loeb Classical Library (1976), 13.171–3. 48. Rule of the Community (1QS) III. 49. Scroll terminology is not complicated, just abbreviated. The number 4 designates the cave in which the document was found (Cave 4 in this case), the Q stands for Qumran, and the last number indicates this text is fragment number 180. 50. Ages of the Creation (4Q180). 51. See the discussion in VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 153. 52. Jubilees 23:30–1, in The Book of Jubilees, trans. James VanderKam (Lovanii: E. Peeters, 1989), 511:149. 53. Josephus, Jewish War 2.154–5. 54. As cited in VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 81. The preliminary publication of this text is found in Emile Puech, Revue de Qumran 15 (1991–92): 479–522. 55. Rule of the Community (1QS) VI. 56. Ibid., V. 57. Ibid., VI. 58. Josephus, Jewish War 2.129–31. 59. Ibid., 2.123. 60. See the discussion in VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 81. 61. See ibid., 86. 62. Josephus, Jewish War 2.147–9. 63. War Rule (1QM) VII. 64. As cited in Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll, 178. 65. As cited in S. Kent Brown, "The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Mormon Perspective," BYU Studies 23/1 (1983): 55. 66. Rule of the Community (1QS) VII. 67. Josephus, Jewish War 2.147. 68. As cited in Fitzmyer, Responses to 101 Questions, 53 (see pp. 53–6). 69. Damascus Document (CD) XIV. The use of brackets in the text indicates restored portions by the translator. 70. War Rule (1QM) II. 71. See Talmon, "Dead Sea Scrolls," 15. 72. See ibid., 16. 73. Rule of the Community (1QS) VIII, in Dead Sea Scriptures; see also Vermes’s translation. 74. These quotations are from the Mishnah, Sotah 48b, Sanhedrin 11a, and from Seder <Olam Rabbah 6, as cited in Talmon, "Dead Sea Scrolls," 16.75. Talmon, "Dead Sea Scrolls," 17–8. 76. See Josephus, Jewish War 2.160–1. 77. See VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 14–5, 90–1. 78. Brown, "Dead Sea Scrolls: A Mormon Perspective," 57–8. 79. See Josephus, Jewish War 2.126–32. 80. Rule of the Community (1QS) I and IX. 81. See Talmon, "Dead Sea Scrolls," 3–4. 82. See ibid., 3. 83. Ibid. 84. Ibid., 24.
Introduction | Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4 | Section 5 | Section 6 | Summary and Notes |
