The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (89 page)

Cf. Emanuel Tov, ‘The Unpublished Qumran Texts from Caves 4 and II',
JJS
43 (1992), 101-36.

The claim that several minute Greek scraps from Cave 7 represent the New Testament is unsubstantiated. Cf. below, pp. 472-3.

It is suggested that the Aramaic fragments of 4Q550 derive from a proto-Esther.

4Q242-6 testify to the existence of a non-canonical Daniel cycle.

The exception is the Damascus Document, well attested in Caves 4, 5 and 6, but previously known from two incomplete medieval manuscripts found in the Cairo Genizah, and first published by S. Schechter as
Documents of Jewish Sectaries,
I:
Fragments of a Zadokite Work,
Cambridge, 1910; repr. with a Prolegomenon by J. A. Fitzmyer (Ktav, 1970). For a better edition see Magen Broshi,
The Damascus Document Reconsidered,
Jerusalem, 1992.

‘The Development of the Jewish Scripts', in
The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of W. F. Albright,
Garden City, NY, 1961, 133-202.

.
Cf. O. R. Sellers, ‘Radiocarbon Dating of Cloth from the ‘Ain Feshkha Cave',
BASOR
123 (1951), 22-4.

G. Bonani
et al.,
‘Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls',
‘Atiqot
20 (1991), 25-32.

A. J. T. Jull
et al.,
‘Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments from the Judean Desert',
Radiocarbon
37 (1995), 11-19. The quotation appears on p. 17.

.
Cf. most recently in
The Essenes According to the Classical Sources,
Sheffield, 1089, 12-23. The co-author of this volume, Martin Goodman, has recently questioned the use of the evidence by Josephus to prove the Essene identity of the sect, arguing that Josephus never presents a full picture of the Jewish scene of his time and that consequently he may have referred to a group merely similar to the Essenes. Cf. ‘A Note on the Qumran Sectarians, the Essenes and Josephus',
JJS
46 (1995), 161-6. Despite my admiration for his learning, I exceptionally beg to differ.

For a fuller argument, see below, pp. 46-8.

G. Vermes,
The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective,
London, 1994, 117.

For a major restatement of the whole subject, see Emanuel Tov,
Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible,
Minneapolis-Assen/Maastricht, 1992.

Cf. ‘Biblical Proof-texts in Qumran Literature',
JSS
34 (1989), 493-508. It should be noted, however, that the Damascus Document quotes also the Book of Jubilees and a work attributed to the Patriarch Levi. It is unclear what their status was.

Cf. J. T. Milik,
The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave
4
,
Oxford, 1976.

Cf. E. Schürer, G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Goodman,
The History of the Jewish People in the Age ofJesusChrist,
III, Edinburgh, 1986, 250-68.

Cf. ‘Historical Texts C-E, 40331-333', ed. J. A. Fitzmyer,
DJD,
XXXVI, 281-9.

Cf. ‘Qumran Forum Miscellanea II: The so-called King Jonathan Fragment (40448)', JJS 44 (1993), 294-300.

.
For a more detailed exposition, see Chapter III below.

Cf.
War
11
,
567; III, 11, 19.

Cf.
War
11, 152-3.

Cf. F. García Martinez, ‘Qumran Origins and Early History: A Groningen Hypothesis', Folia
Orientalia
25 (1988), 113-36; F. García Martinez and A. S. van der Woude, ‘A Groningen Hypothesis of Qumran Origins and Early History', RQ 14 (1989-90), 521-42.

G. R. Driver,
The Judaean Scrolls: The Problem and a Solution,
Oxford, 1965; C. Roth,
The Historical Background of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
Oxford, 1958.

‘The Problem of Origin and Identification of the Dead Sea Scrolls',
Proceedings ofthe American Philosophical Society
124/1 (1980), 1-24; ‘Who Hid the Dead Sea Scrolls?', BA 48 (1982), 68-82 ; ‘Khirbet Qumran and the Manuscripts of the Judaean Wilderness: Observations on the Logic of their Investigation',
JNES
49 (1990), 103-14. For a criticism of the Golb thesis, see Timothy H. Lim, ‘The Qumran Scrolls: Two Hypotheses',
Studies in Religion
21/4 (1992), 455-66.

Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? - The Search for the Meaning of the Qumran Manuscripts,
Scribner, New York/London, 1995. This volume repeats a completely misconceived attack on the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and on myself as director of the Centre's Forum for Qumran Research, although the facts misinterpreted by Professor Golb (first in
The Qumran Chronicle
2/1, 1992, 3-25) have been set out correctly by G. Vermes and P. Alexander, ‘Norman Golb and Modern History' (ibid., 2/2, 1993, 153-6, with a correction in the same periodical 4/1-2, 1994, 74).

At the Scrolls Symposium held at the Library of Congress in Washington on 21-2 April 1993, Magen Broshi, Director of the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, delivered a powerful rebuttal of the Golb conjecture as well as the speculative theory advanced at another conference, held in New York in December 1992, by Pauline Donceel-Voûte, in whose view Qumran was a winter villa built for wealthy inhabitants of Jerusalem and the room which de Vaux identified as a
scriptorium
a dining hall (see ‘Coenaculum',
Res Orientales
IV (1992), 61-84). Against the latter theory, see R. Reich, ‘A Note on the Function of Room 30 (the “Scriptorium”) at Khirbet Qumran',
JJS
46 (1995), 157-60, For P. Donceel-Voûte the Qumran complex constitutes a country estate, a
villa rustica
(‘Les ruines de Qumrân réinterprétées',
Archaeologia
298 (1994), 24-35), and the same theory is propounded by Yizhar Hirschfeld (‘Early Roman Manor Houses in Judea and the Site of Khirbet Qumran',
Journal of Near Eastern Studies
57 (1998), 161-89). According to A. Crown and L. Cansdale, Qumran was a luxurious hostelry for merchants (‘Qumran: Was it an Essene Settlement?',
BAR
20, No. 5 (1994), 24-35, 73-8). The mainstream opinion that the ruins are the remains of an Essene religious settlement is forcefully maintained by M. Broshi in ‘The Archaeology of Qumran: A Reconsideration' and ‘Was Qumran, indeed, a Monastery?', in
Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls,
Sheffield Academic Press (2002), 198-210, 259-73. For the latest and very competent archaeological account see Jodi Magness,
The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls,
Grand Rapids, 2002.

In January 1996, two Israeli archaeologists investigated man-made caves close to the settlement which, in their opinion, were used as sleeping quarters by members of the sect. See M. Broshi and H. Eshel, ‘How and Where Did the Qumranites Live?',
Dead Sea Discoveries
6 (1999), 328-48.

Cf. e.g. John Strugnell, ‘Moses Pseudepigrapha at Qumran', in
Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls,
ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman (
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha,
Supplement, Series 8, Sheffield, 1990, 221).

‘Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts from the Judaean Desert: Their Contribution to Textual Criticism'
, JJS
39 (1988), 10-19.

It may also be wondered why the librarians of Jerusalem should have chosen such a distant place to hide their manuscripts when equally inaccessible caves could have been found closer to home?

See his numerous articles in
JJS
between 1951 and 1955.

The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross,
London, 1970.

.
Jesusthe Man: A New Interpretation from the Dead Sea Scrolls,
Doubleday, London and New York, 1992;
Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
Harper, San Francisco and NewYork, 1992.

Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise,
The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered,
London and New York, 1992.

See my review of
The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered
in the
TLS
of 4 December 1992 and ‘The War over the Dead Sea Scrolls',
The New York Review of Books,
11 August, 1994, 10-13.

Cf. below, pp. 472-3.

Cf. below, p. 614.

Cf. G. Vermes,
Jesus the Jew,
London, 1973, 67-9;
The Religion ofJesusthe Jew,
London, 1003,102-3.

See also G. Vermes, ‘Qumran Forum Miscellanea I'
, JJS
43 (1992), 303-4, and Emile Puech, ‘Une apocalypse messianique',
RQ
15 (1991-2), 475-522.

Cf. Targum Neofiti, Fragmentary Targum and Pseudo-Jonathan on Gen. iii, 15.

S. Talmon in F. M. Cross and S. Talmon,
Qumran and the Origin of the Biblical Text,
Cambridge, Mass., 197
5,
380.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Forty Years On,
Oxford, 1987, 15-16.

On this, see G. Vermes,
The Religion of Jesus theJew,
London and Minneapolis, 1993.

The absence of any mention of the ‘sons of Zadok, the Priests' in MMT deals a serious blow to the hypothesis that a proto-Sadducaean priestly group lurks behind this document. The basis of this theory is that three legal doctrines (out of a list of more than twenty) voiced in MMT are attributed to the Sadducees in rabbinic literature. But the soundest position is to consider these teachings as priestly halakhot, held by the forerunners of the Qumran Community and the later Sadducees.

The
Therapeutai
or Egyptian ascetics of Philo adopted celibacy, but formed separate male and female communities (mature men having left behind family and property, and women being mostly aged virgins; cf. Philo,
Contemplative
Life, 13, 68) whose members met for worship. A badly damaged manuscript from Cave 4 (4Q
502
), repeatedly mentioning old men and women, is interpreted by J. M. Baumgarten as probably alluding to a similar institution (‘4Q
502
, Marriage or Golden Age Ritual?',
JJS
34 (1983), 125-35). 4Q
502
consists of 344 papyrus fragments. Its editor, M. Baillet (
DJD
, VII, 81-105), gave it the title ‘Marriage Ritual', which is almost certainly a misnomer (see Baumgarten above). Not a single coherent section of this liturgical composition has survived; hence no meaningful translation can be supplied. However, it is worth noting that fr. 2 contains the phrase ‘daughter of truth' and an allusion to the examination of women concerning their ‘intelligence and understanding'. Josephus states in connection with the marrying Essenes that they trained their women - like their men - for three years
(War
II, 161; cf. G. Vermes,
Discovery in the Judean Desert,
New York, 1956, 57
,
note 176; J. M. Baumgarten,
DJD
, XVIII, 143).

This interpretation of the data yielded by the excavation is that of R. de Vaux (see
Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, I
973). In her recent brilliant survey, Jodi Magness questions de Vaux's theory regarding the first phase of the limited sectarian occupation of the Qumran site during the second half of the second century BCE and argues that the communal buildings were first erected around 100 BCE (see
The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls,
2002, 63-9). If she is right, the initial edifice was already on a relatively large scale and would correspond to the needs of an already well-established group. In fact, her theory is compatible with the early Hasmonaean beginnings of the sect based on literary considerations, albeit without supporting archaeological evidence.

The Zadokite affiliation of the Teacher of Righteousness may be supported by circumstantial evidence. According to the older version of the Community Rule, represented by 4Q
258
and
256
, the democratic ‘Congregation' (‘the Many') constituted the supreme authority of the Community with ordinary priests (sons of Aaron) forming the top layer in doctrinal and legal administration. This position is attributed to the ‘sons of Zadok', members of the high-priestly family, in the revised 1QS v. In other words, at some early stage in the history of the sect there was a Zadokite takeover. Combining this information with the account of CD 1 (supported by 4QD), we may reasonably surmise that the change occurred with the arrival of the Teacher of Righteousness sent by God to take care of the ‘plant' of Aaron and Israel (ordinary priests and lay Jews), who had been groping, leaderless, for twenty years. The crisis in the Zadokite ranks in the 160s BCE, following the secession of Onias IV to Egypt, provides the likeliest background for these events (cf. G. Vermes, ‘The Leadership of the Qumran Community' in
Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion
[Martin Hengel Festschrift] I (Tübingen, 1996, 375-84). In this connection it may not be irrelevant to note that according to 4Q
266
fr. 5 ii priests who had emigrated among the Gentiles were disqualified.