One of the reasons the Dead Sea Scrolls are so renowned is that they are associated with Jesus in the popular imagination. The Dead Sea Scrolls, however, have nothing directly to do with Jesus himself. The scrolls, sometimes described as the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century, represent a corpus of literature that belonged to a Jewish sect that lived at Qumran in the 1st century B.C. and 1st century A.D. In this lecture, we will explore why the Dead Sea Scrolls are valuable for understanding Jesus within his broader Jewish context.
Description and Contents of the Scrolls
• Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls were not written or copied at Qumran but were brought to Qumran from elsewhere. Some scrolls antedate the establishment of the settlement at Qumran, but others date to the time when Qumran was occupied by members of this Jewish sect. What we have at Qumran is a mixture of literary works, some of which were brought to the site from elsewhere and some of which may have been written or copied at the site itself.
• Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written on parchment, which is processed animal hide. A small number of them were written on papyrus. The majority of the scrolls were written in Hebrew. There is also a large minority of scrolls that were written in Aramaic and a very small number of scrolls written in Greek.
• What is distinctive about the Dead Sea Scrolls is that the entire corpus consists of Jewish religious works-that is, works of the Hebrew Bible and relating to the Hebrew Bible and works relating to the lifestyle and beliefs of the religious sect that lived at Qumran.
• Among the major groups of literature represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls are copies of the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament. In fact, all the books of the Hebrew Bible are represented, with the exception of the Book of Esther.• These copies of books of the Hebrew Bible—which are fragments, not complete copies-are significant because they represent the earliest copies of the Hebrew Bible that have ever been found. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest known copies of the Hebrew Bible dated to the 9th and 10th centuries A.D. The copies of the Hebrew Bible from Qumran date mostly to the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. The Dead Sea Scrolls give us an opportunity to compare the text of the ancient Hebrew Bible with the text that we have today.
• Today, when you open up a copy of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, you will find the same identical text, word for word, letter for letter. This is the standard authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible, called the Masoretic text. But in the time of Jesus, variant versions of the Hebrew Bible circulated among the Jewish population. It wasn’t until after the time of Jesus, after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., that one standard, authoritative version of the Hebrew Bible came to be used by all Jews.
• The copies of the Hebrew Bible at Qumran represent not only the proto-Masoretic text—that is, the text that served as the basis for the later Masoretic text-but also variant texts that are not preserved elsewhere.
• The finds at Qumran also include fragments of the Septuagint, the ancient translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. By the Hellenistic period, after the conquest of Alexander the Great, many Diaspora Jews no longer were able to read and understand Hebrew; instead, they read and spoke Greek. It was against this background that the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek.
• Also at Qumran is a category of literature called Targum, an ancient translation of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic. Aramaic is related to Hebrew, but by the time of Jesus, the common, everyday language of the Jewish population was Aramaic, not Hebrew.Pesharrm
• Another category of work represented among the Dead Sea Scrolls that is related to the Hebrew Bible is a pesher, or in the plural, pesharim. A pesher is a commentary on or interpretation of a book of the Hebrew Bible. Usually, it is a commentary on a prophetic book.
• What is distinctive about the genre of pesher found at Qumran is that the author interpreted biblical passages in light of events that were happening in his own time.
• The second distinctive feature of the pesher works is that the author believed that the true meaning of these biblical passages had been revealed through an inspired teacher, a leader of the Qumran sect who is referred to as the Teacher of Righteousness.Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
• Yet another category of Jewish religious literature represented among the Dead Sea Scrolls is Apocrypha. The word means “hidden books” and refers to books that were included in the Catholic canon of sacred scripture but not in the Jewish or Protestant canon. Represented among the Dead Sea Scrolls is the Book of Tobit and Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Ben Sira.
• A category of literature related to biblical works is Pseudepigrapha, meaning “false writings.” This term refers to the common practice of an author attributing his work to someone else to give it greater authority.
• Pseudepigrapha are Jewish religious works of this period that were not included in the Jewish, Protestant, or Catholic canon of sacred literature. But they were sometimes preserved in the canons of other churches, such as the Ethiopian church. Examples of Pseudepigrapha from Qumran are the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees.Sectarian Works
• The final category of literature found among the Dead Sea Scrolls are sectarian works-writings that describe the beliefs and practices of the sect that lived at Qumran and deposited the scrolls in the nearby caves. These scrolls provide information about the history of the sect, their lifestyle, and their beliefs and practices.
• The sectarian scrolls suggest that the sect formed initially somewhere in the first half of the 2"" century B.C., against the background of the turbulent events leading up to the Maccabean Revolt. Specifically, the scrolls suggest that this sect was initially founded by dispossessed Zadokite priests.
• The Zadokite priests were a group of high priests who controlled the sacrificial cult in the Temple of Jerusalem until the time of the Heliodorus affair. They traced their ancestry back to a man named Zadok-or, in Hebrew, Zadoc.
• Through the complicated series of events connected with the Heliodorus affair, the Zadokites lost control of the high priesthood and became dispossessed. ln other words, at Qumran, we seem to have members of a sect that was founded by dispossessed Zadokite priests.The Teacher of Righteousness
• The Dead Sea Scrolls tell us that the sect at Qumran was initially led by a founder called the Teacher of Righteousness. One of the interesting characteristics of the sectarian scrolls is that they refer to historical figures not by their actual names but, instead, by nicknames. These nicknames are usually puns. Therefore, “Teacher of Righteousness” is a nickname for the founder of the Qumran sect.
• In Hebrew, "Teacher of Righteousness" is Moreh ha-tzedek. Notice that “righteousness” in Hebrew is tzedek. It is a pun on Zadok or Zadokite. In other words, the nickname “Teacher of Righteousness” suggests that this figure was, in fact, one of the dispossessed Zadokite high priests. Although there has been a great deal of scholarly speculation about this issue, the nickname is a strong indicator about his identity.
• Similarly, the main opponent of the Teacher of Righteousness mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls is a figure called the Wicked Priest. “Wicked Priest” is also a pun in Hebrew. The words ha-kohen ha-rasha are a pun on ha-kohen ha-rashi (or roshe). ln other words, the “Wicked Priest” is a pun in Hebrew on the high priest. The opponent of the Teacher of Righteousness was the current high priest officiating in the Temple of Jerusalem.An Apocalyptic Sect
• The Dead Sea Scrolls provide a great deal of information about the lifestyle and beliefs of the Qumran sect. Apparently, some members practiced desert separatism-that is, they went apart to live in the desert. While members of the sect were married and had families, some of them may have practiced either occasional or permanent celibacy.
• To apply for full membership in the Qumran sect, one had to be an unblemished adult Jewish male-that is, without physical or mental disabilities or handicaps. To become a full member of the sect, one had to undergo a process of initiation that lasted between two to three years. During the course of that initiation, applicants were admitted in stages—with each stage of membership representing the attainment of a higher level of Jewish ritual purity.
• Full members of the sect lived according to the laws that governed the lifestyle of a priest serving in the Temple of Jerusalem, because the members believed that God was literally dwelling in their midst. This was an apocalyptic sect that believed that the end of days was already underway. And they believed that they were the only ones who would be saved. In this regard, the Qumran sect is similar to Jesus and his movement, who also believed that the end of days was at hand.
• There are interesting similarities and differences between the conception of the end of days among members of the Qumran sect and among Jesus and his movement. We will explore those further in our next lecture.Suggested Reading
VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, chapters 2 and 4, “Survey of the Manuscripts” and “The Scrolls and the Old Testament.”
Questions to Consider
1. What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?
2. What do the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us about the Qumran sect?
