Nearly 35 years ago, Bedouin tribesmen searching for more scrolls near the original find on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea discovered the now-famous Qumran cave 4. Cave 4 proved to be the richest of all the Qumran caves, containing fragments of over 500 scrolls. One of the scroll fragments from cave 4 is […]
Until the discoveries of modern archaeology, we knew about ancient Jewish ritual immersion baths only from literary texts. Now, however, archaeology has provided us with numerous examples of Jewish ritual immersion baths, called miqva’ot (singular, miqveh), dating to the late Second Temple period, prior to and during the time when John the Baptist lived. These […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls TEACHER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. The dominant figure associated with the branch of the Essenes that established itself at Qumran. The fifteen references in the published Dead Sea Scrolls, however, furnish only meager information about him. Some are so fragmentary as to yield only the name môreh haṣṣedeq (1QpHab 1-13; 4QpPsb [= 4Q173] […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls A comprehensive scheme of Biblical interpretation such as the Qumran community followed is not likely to have arisen by accident. It bears the impress of an original mind, and we are told quite plainly whose mind this was. The Teacher in the Community Documents The Zadokite Admonition tells how a righteous […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls- the New York University conference in memory of Yigael Yadin (ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman), JSOT Press, Sheffield 1990, p.13-24. The fact that papers on celibacy1 continue to find their place on the agenda of Qumran colloquia is, I think, not only a reflection […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years After Their Discovery (ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman, Emanuel Tov and James C. VanderKam), Israel Exploration Society, Jerusalem 2000, p.105-115. It seems to have become quite widely accepted that the parallels between the Johannine literature of the New Testament (the Gospel and Epistles of John) and […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls 1. The Law of Witnesses The judges spoken of in the last chapter were not the only personae involved in the judicial process. While it was important to ensure that members of the judiciary met the requirements of the law, it was equally crucial that witnesses conformed to the rigid qualifications […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls Of all the writings in the New Testament, the First Epistle of John, along with the Epistle to the Ephesians, presents perhaps the greatest number of theological contacts with the writings from Qumran. This study will take as a basis for comparison the teaching concerning the two spirits which is set […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls (1) The third section of the weekday Morning Service is called ,קריאת שמע “The Recitation of the Shema‘,” after its main content, or יוצר, “Creator,” because it begins with the benediction יוצר אור , “Creator of Light”; in fact, from this latter the entire Morning Service has acquired the name תפלת […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls 3. Ritual Purity and Impurity and the Admission Process In order to understand the meaning of the separation from the pure food, it is necessary to consider the process of admission to the sect as described in the Manual of Discipline. Like the Penal Code, these regulations are seen by Pouilly […]