The Dead Sea Scrolls Revue de Qumran 11,3 <43> (1983), p.379-389. The Damascus Document XII, 6–11 contains a series of regulations dealing with relations with non-Jews. These prescriptions form a serekh, (1) a list of laws compiled even before the editor of the Zadokite Fragments redacted this text from its disparate parts. (2) Most of […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls CALENDARS. A calendar is a system for arranging and calculating the standard divisions of time (days, months, years, etc.). The term is also used to refer to schedules of events such as festivals. This entry consists of two articles, one surveying the use of calendars in the ANE and the other […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls Certain basic theological notions, forming the core of all approaches to Judaism in Second Temple times, undergird much of what appears in this scroll. The author no doubt regarded these beliefs, which he appropriated from the Torah, as constituting a uniform theology. To the author and his sources, God is the […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls THE STUDY OF QUMRAN LAW Initially, scholars focused their efforts on studying the law of the Qumran sect itself, about which we have much significant information. But the texts from Qumran also tell us a remarkable amount about the more general state of Jewish law in the Hasmonaean period, not only […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls The bulk of the materials we shall discuss are sectarian, and thus we begin by laying out their basic views. Then we turn to additional materials in the collection and to the sect’s polemics against other approaches in order to learn about other contemporary systems of Jewish law. The legal materials […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls The collection of laws pertaining to the king constituted a separate unit that the author incorporated into the Temple Scroll. The text first discusses the obligation of setting up a monarchy- When you enter the land which I am giving you, and you take possession of it and dwell in it, […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls The Temple Scroll claims that Israel is given the land only conditionally. In order for the people to merit the land, they must uphold the highest judicial standards. Bribery and corruption in judgment must be avoided- … in order that you live, and come and take (or- retain) possession of the […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, in describing the great cosmic battle to take place before the End of Days, outlines the tactics and rituals to be followed during the war. The war will start- … when the exiles of the Sons […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls All Jewish groups in the Second Temple period assigned Jerusalem special sanctity in Jewish law, because the Temple located there was the religious center of the Jewish people. Despite the Dead Sea sectarians’ condemnation of and abstention from the Temple rituals of their own day, the Judaism they espoused did not […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls Although the Jerusalem most often mentioned in the scrolls is the city of Hasmonaean times, some texts allude to the Jerusalem of the First Temple period. Indeed, the destruction of the First Temple was still being mourned even after the Jews had replaced it with the Second Temple. Such a text […]