Israeli Scholarship on the Qumran Community

Abstract

Israeli research into the Qumran Scrolls starts with the discovery itself, so in a way its history and development reflect the general quest to understand these unique documents and the community that owned them. Israeli scholars investigated chiefly the Scrolls in the possession of the State of Israel or those whose photographs were published. Two of Sukenik's followers, his son Yigael Yadin and his assistant Jacob Licht, published editions and detailed commentaries on two of these Scrolls in Hebrew. Two other prominent scholars played a key role in early Israeli scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls, namely Shemaryahu Talmon (1920-2010) and David Flusser (1917-2000). The most significant achievement of Israeli scholarship on the Qumran Scrolls is its major contribution to the new picture of the Qumran group and library as a central component for the understanding of Second Temple Judaism. Keywords:Dead Sea Scrolls; Israeli scholarship; Qumran; Sukenik's; Temple Judaism