Qumran
Undoubtedly the most famous and most widely discussed texts among the
Dead Sea Scrolls are those found between 1946-1947 and 1956 in eleven
caves near Qumran. As noted above, most scholars regard the texts as re-
mains of a library associated with a group of Essenes. Discovered were
around 100,000 fragments of approximately 800 to 900 manuscripts rep-
resenting some 350 literary compositions, penned between the third cen-
turyb.c.e.and around 50c.e.The distribution of manuscripts between
the caves is very uneven. No less than 70 percent of the manuscripts were
found in Cave 4, while the most complete ones come from Caves 1 and 11.
Caves 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10 produced very few texts. In Cave 7 only Greek
papyrus fragments were found.
The Qumran texts differ from all other manuscript finds from the
Judean Desert by their number and their religious character. About a quar-
ter of the corpus, around 220 manuscripts, are multiple copies of biblical
works, though Nehemiah and Esther are apparently lacking. The biblical
manuscripts not only throw important light on the development of the
biblical text and the history of the Jewish canon, but they also allow new
insights into techniques of copying and transmitting biblical manuscripts.
Another quarter of the corpus, close to 200 manuscripts, represents a wide
variety of religious texts, a few previously known but most heretofore un-
known. Slightly more than a third of the corpus, around 250 manuscripts,
are recognized by most scholars as documents that reflect the ideology and
practices of a particular sect, usually identified as Essene. This category in-
cludes such works at theRule of the Community(1QS), theRule of the Con-
gregation(1QSa), theRule of Blessings(1QSb), theThanksgiving Hymns
(1QH), theWar Scroll(1QM), and the pesharim (e.g., 1QpHab).
The great majority of books from the Qumran corpus were written in
Hebrew, only a few in Greek, among them copies of LXX manuscripts in
Cave 4 and a small number from Cave 7. Aramaic is represented by a sig-
nificant minority of texts, among them reworkings and expansions of bib-
lical traditions (e.g.,Genesis Apocryphon; Aramaic Levi Document)and
apocalyptic works, mostly from the Enoch cycle. Most of the texts use the
square Aramaic script regardless of whether their language is Hebrew or
Aramaic. Paleo-Hebrew appears in a small number of copies of penta-
teuchal books (e.g., 4Q11; 4Q22), Job (4Q101), and theological texts
(4Q123). In some manuscripts Paleo-Hebrew is used only for the Tetra-
grammaton. Besides square script, Paleo-Hebrew, and Greek, a small num-354jürgen k. zangenbergEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:04:14 PM