Dear Friends,

In anticipation of the upcoming Qumran Seminar we will be holding online in November, this week’s newsletter is dedicated to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In 1947, local Bedouins in the area of the Qumran village in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea, stumbled upon the remnants of various scrolls written in Hebrew, which turned out to be one of the most important archaeological finds of the century. Over the years, many excavations were conducted, and altogether, 11 caves were found, containing fragments of thousands of scrolls. The first and perhaps most famous complete scroll to be found, was a copy of the book of Isaiah, which is on display in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

The identity of the writers and keepers of these scrolls is under scholarly debate, but what can be stated clearly is that they are of a Jewish group that lived in the area and led a secluded hermit-like lifestyle, concentrating on study and writing. The Scrolls, some of which were kept in large clay jars, are in fact a peek into their unique world view and beliefs.

The Area of the Qumran Caves

The Scrolls: Physical Findings and Dates
First, let us describe the actual finds: most of the scrolls, some of them merely tiny barely legible fragments, are written on parchment. Some of them are written on papyri. They are mostly in Hebrew, written in the “new” Assyrian (square) script, but some of them are written in the ancient Hebrew script, while others include only the Tetragrameton in the ancient script. Carbon 14 testing as well as historical evaluations show that the oldest of the scrolls were written in the third century BCE. The members of the group, together with their library, ceased to exist in 68 CE, when they were destroyed by the Romans, two years before the destruction of the Second Temple.

The Isaiah Scroll from Qumran, picture courtesy of Hebrew Wikipedia

The Writings
The large Qumran library contains many different types of manuscripts. First and foremost, it has many copies of different biblical books. This teaches us not only of the status of these books in the eyes of the sect, but also provides a glance into the way they were written, and their wording – enabling us to compare them with the Bible as it was preserved in the various religious traditions and learn about the history of the text itself. All the books of the Bible, other than the Book of Esther, are represented at Qumran, but most are only fragmentary.

In addition to biblical books, there are other books which were apparently considered sacred by the members of the sect. The primary example is the Book of Jubilees, which was also preserved in the Ethiopian church’s Bible, and which contains a different version of the Genesis stories. This book is also highly ideologically motivated, with a unique calendar which corresponds with the Qumran sect’s calendar, and a different perception of the law than the one accepted in normative Judaism.

Other than sacred books, we also find many writings of the group, which was a group of scholars who were committed to documenting many of their studies. Sectarian rule texts, re-written versions of biblical texts, and Pesharim are among the most important texts. Pesher, פֶּשֶׁר, is a unique Qumran genre, taking a biblical text and interpreting it according to its “current” correct understanding. The author/s of these texts believed that the real significance of the biblical texts they were interpreting was not for the time of their respective biblical authors, but rather for their own day. Some very interesting historical facts can be deduced from these Pesharim, teaching us not only when they were written, but also the group’s approach towards specific people among the members of “normative” Judaism in Jerusalem, as well as the sect’s political tendencies towards the Seleucid Kingdom and later also the Romans.
 

A Closer look at a Qumran Scroll

The importance of the Qumran finds for biblical studies
The Qumran scrolls are in fact the most ancient witnesses we have of the biblical text, and they are also preserved in Hebrew – unlike the ancient translations of the Bible. Therefore, when they attest to a biblical version different than the one preserved in Jewish tradition, their importance is great. When they correspond with the version found in an ancient translation, their value is even greater. I would like to bring one small example:
In Deuteronomy 32:8-9, there is a description of the ancient division of mankind to different peoples and the division of the land between them, emphasizing that Israel is God’s lot:

The reference to “the number of the sons of Israel” is rather strange. What is this number? According to the tradition in Genesis 11, describing all the nations born from Noah’s sons after the flood, there are 70 nations. Likewise, there were 70 sons of Israel who went down to Egypt, and this is obviously what the number is referring to. However, this is not a common use of that number.

In the ancient Greek translation of the Pentateuch from the third century BCE, known as the Septuagint, a different version appears: instead of the word יִשְׂרָאֵל, Israel, the word “God” appears, and if we translate back into Hebrew, it is possible that what appeared here in front of the translator was the word אל, El, a general word for God. These two letters for the word El are the last two letters of the word Israel. Why might someone omit the letters ישר, Isr, the beginning of Israel? Or why might someone add them? For an answer for this we need to turn to Canaanite mythology. There, El was the god who stood at the head of the Pantheon of gods, and he had 70 sons! Understood this way, the verse would appear to imply that the God of Israel was one of these sons who stood in line together with all the other sons of El, waiting to be given a nation and a territory. What an embarrassing description! We can more easily imagine that someone might have wanted to change that impression, than imagine that here someone would have changed the word “Israel” to the word “El”.

This is where the Qumran evidence fits in. In cave 4 in Qumran, many texts of the Book of Deuteronomy were found. In one of them, referred to as 4QDeutj, we have a Hebrew text that in fact shows that there was a Hebrew version like the one we find in the Septuagint!
 

Qumran Hebrew
The Qumran writings give us insight into two important aspects of Second Temple Hebrew: 1. Vocabulary, grammar and style in independent writings. 2. Spelling in all Qumran writings, including biblical books.
From the Qumran sect’s writings, we learn about the great effect that Aramaic had on the Hebrew of the time. Words, expressions, and grammar are affected by it. It is interesting to find similarities between Qumran Hebrew and the later books of the Bible on the one hand and the post-Destruction Hebrew of the Rabbis on the other hand.
From all the Qumran scrolls, we learn that the spelling norms in the Second Temple Period were different from First Temple spelling, and from the conservative spelling kept in the Jewish traditional version of the Bible. The most obvious example of this is the extensive use of the letters Alef, Heh, Vav and Yod (א, ה, ו, י) as vowels in the middle of the word. For example: the word lo, לֹא, meaning “no”, is often spelled in the Qumran writings as לוא – with a vav, ו, as a vowel indicating how it is to be read.

Have a great week!
The Biblical Hebrew Online Team