November 28, 1947 Israel Purchases Three Dead Sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls are 900 fragments of what were scrolls in antiquity, which constituted the library of a group of Jews who lived at the shore of the Dead Sea. Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University
The Scrolls were discovered not by the Bedouin boy, as everyone says, but in the Cairo Genizah in the 1860s and on. In 1947, the Bedouin boy discovered the “first” seven scrolls. Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University
The Scrolls fall into three categories – books of the Hebrew scriptures, apocryphal literature and materials from the sectarians themselves. Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University
The Dead Sea Sect was a group of Jews who broke off from the Temple establishment, leaving Jerusalem in about 152 BCE when Jonathan the Maccabee took over as high priest. Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University
The media assumed that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls would solve problems related to Christianity, but the Scrolls are actually biblical and Second Temple Jewish texts. Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University
The richness of the inner debate of Judaism and the beautiful literature of the Second Temple period becomes clear through the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University
There is still a popular conception that the Dead Sea Scrolls can solve the problem of early Christianity, but that prevents us from learning about the rise of Christianity through these Jewish texts. Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University
The real relevance of the Dead Sea Scrolls is not the Scrolls themselves, but a real understanding of Second Temple times. Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University
Qumran Caves are a series of caves, some natural, some artificial, found around the archaeological site of Qumran in the Judean Dessert in the West Bank. It is in a number of these caves that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. The limestone cliffs above Qumran contain numerous caves that have been used over the millennia: the first traces […]