sectarian context. These include the biblical books, but also compositions
like the books ofEnochandJubilees,which apparently were composed be-
fore the formation of the sect in the middle or late second centuryb.c.e.
and circulated more widely. But also many texts that were not known before
the discovery of the scrolls may have been in broader use in the Judaism of
the time. Yet the scrolls cannot be taken as a random sampling of Second
Temple literature. On the one hand, the proportion of clearly sectarian
texts, including sectarian rule books, is too great. On the other hand, several
important writings from this period are conspicuously absent from
Qumran. These include 1 Maccabees, the propagandistic history of the
Hasmonean family, and thePsalms of Solomon,which has often been sus-
pected of Pharisaic ideology. Nothing in the Dead Sea Scrolls can be identi-
fied as Pharisaic, and only one text (4Q448, thePrayer for King Jonathan)
can be read as supportive of the Hasmoneans. The corpus is not narrowly
sectarian, in the sense of containing only sectarian literature, but it is none-
theless selective and excludes some literature for ideological reasons.
The first scrolls were discovered on the eve of the Arab-Israeli war that
led to the division of Palestine. When partition occurred, Qumran was on
the Jordanian side of the border. The seven scrolls originally found in Cave
1(Community Rule, War Scroll, Hodayot, Habakkuk Pesher, Genesis Apoc-
ryphon,and two copies of the book of Isaiah) were acquired by Eliezer
Sukenik and his son Yigael Yadin, but Jewish scholars would have no access
to the rest of the corpus until after the Six-Day War in 1967. The interna-
tional team appointed to edit the fragments included no Jewish scholars.
The first phase of scholarship on the scrolls, then, was dominated by
Christian scholars, and Christian interests took priority. There were many
comparisons of the community behind the scrolls to early Christianity,
and such matters as eschatology and messianism received great attention
(see, e.g., Cross 1995). In 1967, however, both Qumran and the Rockefeller
Museum, where the scrolls were stored, came under Israeli control. This
did not at first lead to any change in the editorial team, but it had a pro-
found impact on scholarship in another way. Yadin, who was a general in
the Israeli army, appropriated a long text, known as theTemple Scroll,from
the antiquities dealer Kando, and he published it a decade later (Yadin
1977, 1983). This scroll contains a rewriting of biblical laws, and its interests
are primarily halakic. Its publication aroused new interest in the aspects of
the scrolls that were continuous with rabbinic rather than with Christian
interests. Even more revolutionary was the disclosure in 1984 of a halakic
work known as 4QMMT (Qimron and Strugnell 1994). This document is17Early Judaism in Modern ScholarshipEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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