The most fruitful examination of matters concerning the priesthood can be in the treatment of the Yom Kippur service in Ben Sira and the Qumran documents. The climax of the Temple service of the whole year is the High Priest’s Abodah on Yom Kippur. The description of this Abodah is, therefore, also the climax of […]
Overview Overview- Religious Life at Qumran Primary sources Mishnah Miqva’ot 2-2-4, 8-1- The Fitness of a Ritual Pool Mishnah Niddah 2-4, 6- Some Laws of Purity Mishnah Niddah 4-2- The Pharisaic Ruling on Sadducee Women Secondary sources Courts and Testimony, Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia 1994. Liturgy of […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls The study of the “desert motif” in the Bible has played an important role in Biblical research since K. Budde introduced it into the discussion. Budde’s rather cautious, and fairly balanced, presentation of the “desert” as a formative factor in what he termed “The Nomadic Ideal in the Old Testament,”1 unloosed […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls Cistern Some scholars have maintained that these larger cisterns are mikvaot and that the impure descended on one side of the stairs, and after purification, ascended the other side. It seems from the size of the cisterns that they held drinking water, and that the ritual baths were the smaller pits. […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls 2 Sh. Talmon (Scripta Hierosolymitana, iv, pp. 187ff.) explains the association of the Sabbath with the festivals in the Damascus Document by the assumption that the Qumran sect reckoned the Sabbath from sunrise to sunrise and not from sunset to sunset, as practised by normative Judaism and Karaites alike. This assumption […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls DAMASCUS RULE (CD). The “Damascus Rule (CD ) ”document was first discovered in the genizah (storeroom) of the Qara’ite synagogue in Old Cairo by S. Schechter, who brought it to the University Library, Cambridge, where it remains. First published as “Fragments of a Zadokite Work” (Schechter 1910) because of its references […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls COMMUNITY, RULE OF THE (1QS). 1QS was among the first scrolls discovered by the bedouin at the beginning of 1947 in what came to be known as Qumran cave 1. Since the trustworthiness of the intermediaries who spread reports about it around Jerusalem could not be assumed, and their credibility was […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls THANKSGIVING HYMNS (1QH). Among the Essene writings found by the Ta’amire bedouin in Qumran Cave 1 were two leather packages that were stuck together. At one time they had formed a single leather scroll. Along a circuitous route these materials came into the possession of the Hebrew University, where they were […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls The study of halakhah, legal matters, at Qumran will be advanced considerably by the present availability of the materials. The author discusses several issues using the previously accessible material and the new preliminary forms and concludes that a Sadducean sub-stratum was more pervasive than previously assumed. The opening of the entire […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls MIQṢAT MA’ASE HATORAH (4QMMT). A sectarian polemical document, six incomplete manuscripts of which (4Q394–99) were discovered in Qumran cave 4. Taken together, they provide a composite text of about 120 lines. The preserved text, which apparently covers about two-thirds of the original scroll, derives from the middle and the end of […]