History and Memory in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Author(s):  
Travis B. Williams
2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-135
Author(s):  
Alison Schofield

Jodi Magness’ proposal that an altar existed at Qumran leaves some unanswered questions; nevertheless, her conclusions are worthy of consideration. This study examines her claim that the residents at Qumran had an altar, modeled off of the Wilderness Tabernacle, through the lens of critical spatial theory. The conceptual spaces of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, such as The Damascus Document and The Community Rule, as well as the spatial practices of the site of Qumran do not rule out – and even support – the idea that Qumran itself was highly delimited and therefore its spaces hierarchized in such a way that it could have supported a central cultic site.


Canon&Culture ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 321-332
Author(s):  
Peter Flint
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea ◽  

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Herda ◽  
Stephen A. Reed ◽  
William F. Bowlin

This study explores the Dead Sea Scrolls to demonstrate how Essene socio-religious values shaped their accounting and economic practices during the late Second Temple period (ca. first century BCE to 70 CE). Our primary focus is on the accounting and commercial responsibilities of a leader within their community – the Examiner. We contend that certain sectarian accounting practices may be understood as ritual/religious ceremony and address the performative roles of the Essenes' accounting and business procedures in light of their purity laws and eschatological beliefs. Far from being antithetical to religious beliefs, we find that accounting actually enabled the better practice and monitoring of religious behavior. We add to the literature on the interaction of religion with the structures and practices of accounting and regulation within a society.


Author(s):  
Vered Noam

This chapter examines the story of the internecine struggle between the two Hasmonean brothers, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, which brought the Hasmonean commonwealth to its end. Only in Josephus is the story of the murder of a righteous man, Onias, juxtaposed to the central tradition regarding the siege of the temple during this war, although this too was clearly an early Jewish tradition. In the rabbinic sources, the story of the siege and the sacrificial animals underwent multiple reworkings, and it is the Babylonian Talmud that reflects the more original version and message of the story. If in Chapter 2, we saw the “rabbinization” of the figure of John Hyrcanus, here the story itself underwent this process and its original moral message was replaced by multiple halakhic implications. In both corpora, this dissension between brothers is seen as the leading cause of the downfall of the Hasmonean dynasty. This was in contradistinction to the political stance represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which interpreted the Roman occupation as proof of the sinfulness of the Hasmonean state from its very inception.


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