Barcosiba and Qumrân

1957 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-71
Author(s):  
L. E. Toombs
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
First Century ◽  
Common Belief ◽  
Small Company ◽  
Widespread Phenomenon ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Qumran Community

The vigorous discussion to which the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has given rise has usually proceeded on the assumption that documents such as the Manual of Discipline and the War Scroll represent specific nd distinctive teachings of the Qumrân Community. If this is so, we are in possession of an important witness to the life and thought of one relatively small segment of first-century Judaism. But is the horizon of the scrolls necessarily so limited? There are at least two alternatives. (a) Assuming that the Qumrân Community were Essenes, Essenism may still be regarded, even after Qumrân, as a widespread phenomenon with many varied modes of expression, of which the Community at Qumrân was but one. Its library then lets us look at an Essenism which did not come into existence when the buildings at Qumrân were erected, nor perish with their destruction. (b) Even though the documents themselves are sectarian and Essene, many of the ideas contained in them may well have been the objects of common belief outside the sect and outside the wider areas of Essenism. If the type of thought which the Dead Sea Scrolls represent was widely diffused among the general population, we have in these parchments an entry, not into the mind of a small company of recluses alone, but into an important phase of religious thought in the Judaism of the Graeco-Roman period. Should this prove to be true, we shall be able with more confidence to get behind the transforming effect of two unsuccessful revolts against Roman rule, and to see more clearly the true features of popular religion before the wars.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND THE ACCOUNTING AND ECONOMIC PRACTICES OF A SOCIETY: EVIDENCE FROM THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Herda ◽  
Stephen A. Reed ◽  
William F. Bowlin
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
First Century ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Relationship

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.

Writings in the Dead Sea Scrolls

2018 ◽  
pp. 324-341
Author(s):  
Lawrence H. Schiffman
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Masoretic Text ◽  
Hebrew Word ◽  
The Dead

This chapter argues that the Writings was an evolving collection of scripture used in a wide variety of ways by the Dead Sea Scrolls community at Qumran (second century bce to first century ce). Though the Hebrew word Ketuvim (Writings) does not occur in the Scroll material, all but one (Esther) of the books contained therein are found. The plentiful and varied textual evidence at Qumran, and occasionally other Judean desert sites, is presented with special attention to the number of biblical and other manuscripts and place found; textual comparisons with the biblical Masoretic text and others (e.g., Septuagint); citations; and other interpretive uses in sectarian documents. The importance of the books in the Writings for the life of the late postexilic community of Qumran and the nature of the Dead Sea Scrolls biblical collection are, together, a constant focus of the study.

Jewish Law in the Gospels in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls

2021 ◽  
pp. 014610792110343
Author(s):  
Lawrence H. Schiffman
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Right

This study examines a number of specific examples of halakhic (Jewish legal) matters discussed in the New Testament that are also dealt with in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This paper compares and contrasts the rulings of these two traditions, as well as the Pharisaic views, showing that the Jewish legal views of the Gospels are for the most part lenient views to the left of those of the Pharisees, whereas those of the Dead Sea Scrolls represent a stricter view, to the right of the Pharisaic views. Ultimately, in the halakhic debate of the first century ce, the self-understanding of the earliest Christians was very different from that of the sect of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, Pseudepigrapha, and Expansions of Scripture

2020 ◽  
pp. 164-174
Author(s):  
John A. Jillions
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Sibylline Oracles ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Qumran Community ◽  
Divine Guidance

The sources presented here reflect voices from various creative strands of Jewish community life between 700 BCE and 135 CE. All of them in varying ways approach divine guidance through communal rereading, reinterpretation, and expansion of scripture. The Qumran community (which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls) took a hierarchical view of guidance, placing discernment largely in the hands of the elders. Pseudepigrapha and expansions of scripture, like the Prayer of Manasseh, used the name of a biblical figure to expand on what the biblical text itself may have mentioned only in passing. Jubilees elaborates on Abram’s crucial but brief encounter with God in Genesis 12 and depicts it as a response to Abram’s request for divine guidance. The Sibylline Oracles (as distinct from the Roman Sibylline Books) attribute Jewish oracles to the pagan Sibyl. 3 Maccabees weaves together human initiative with divine guidance to the Jewish community in Alexandria.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and Violence: Sectarian Formation and Eschatological Imagination

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 12-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Jassen
Keyword(s):  
Community Violence ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Sociological Approaches ◽  
Qumran Community

AbstractThis article analyzes two interconnected narratives of violence in the Dead Sea Scrolls by drawing upon some recent treatments of religious violence employing social-scientific approaches—in particular, the "scarce resources" theory—and more general sociological approaches to sectarianism. The first narrative of violence revolves around the origins of the community's violent worldview as embodied in its debates with its opponents. Early sectarian literature represents sectarian debates and polemics in terms of an exclusive understanding of the meaning of Scripture, the application of ritual and cultic law, and the identity of God's elect. These aspects become focal points of ideological debate as the community attempted to convince the "outsiders" of the correctness of the sectarian way. By tracing the development of these debates in sectarian literature, however, I reveal how they are transformed from innocuous elements of disagreement into focal points for the emergence of violence as a central preoccupation of the Qumran community. The "scarce resources" theory explains why these specific points of disagreement become infused with violence. The second narrative of violence involves the continued appearance of these debates within the community's eschatological literature as a rhetorical device to legitimize its violent expectations. Unlike related groups in Second Temple Judaism (e.g., the Zealots), for the Qumran community, violence outside of the framework of the eschatological battle is not legitimized and presumably did not exist. By delaying all punishment until the eschaton, the community simultaneously defused its own violent worldview. The simultaneous infusion and defusion of violence is explained in the context of the sectarian structure of the community.

The Sons of Noah and the Sons of Abraham: The Origins of Noahide Law

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 386-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew P. Van Zile
Keyword(s):  
Acts Of The Apostles ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Early Formation ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Hellenistic Judaism ◽  
Qumran Community

This article addresses the early formation of the rabbinic Noahide laws in light of Paul’s “sons of Abraham” motif and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Close examination reveals that Paul’s epistles, Acts of the Apostles, and rabbinic Noahide law represent one side of a debate among Jews about the eschatological fate of the nations. This development was in contrast to the homogenizing paradigms of Hellenistic Judaism and the anti-gentile apocalypticism of the Qumran community. The similarities between Paul’s “sons of Abraham” and the rabbinic “sons of Noah” suggest that both traditions originated from the same school of thought and may indicate a proto-rabbinic source from which Paul and the rabbis derived these requirements.

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