A recently published fragment among the Dead Sea Scrolls contains beatitudes with some striking similarities to the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-3–12) and in the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6-20–23)—and also some important differences.

The fragment was published in 1991 by Emile Puech,a my colleague at the École Biblique in Jerusalem. From his analysis of the fragment, Puech claims to have solved a long-time scholarly crux concerning the beatitudes in Matthew and Luke (see sidebars, “The Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount” and “The Beatitudes and Woes in the Sermon on the Plain”). Luke’s version has four beatitudes; Matthew has nine (although some scholars count differently and come up with seven or eight). What is the relationship between the beatitudes in the two Gospels? Until now, most scholars have concluded that Matthew is an expansion of Luke, in accordance with the general rule of critical scholarship that lectio brevior melius (the shorter reading is the better one). Applying this rule, Luke’s is the earlier text, substantially glossed in Matthew’s later composition. Puech, however, claims that the beatitudes in this fragmentary Dead Sea Scroll show that Matthew’s beatitudes of nine (eight + one) is the original form of the Gospel beatitudes because this number corresponds to a standard literary form of the time, seven or eight beatitudes.

Read the rest of Beatitudes Found Among Dead Sea Scrolls in the online Biblical Archaeology Society Library.