New Perspectives on the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Abstract

At the closing ceremony of the Congress organized by the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Hebrew University and the Shrine of the Book to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls on July 1997 in Jerusalem, Professor Hartmut Stegemann delivered a memorable lecture. This chapter compares this lecture to Hartmut Stegemann's magisterial summing up of the challenges the Scrolls pose for biblical research in general and for research in Early Judaism in particular. In the author's opinion, the single element, which really opens new perspectives on the study of the Scrolls, is the fact that now and after fifty years we have available for study, all the materials recovered in the eleven caves of Qumran. Stegemann postulates an origin completely independent of the Qumran group; many others, on the contrary, have considered the Temple Scroll to be one of the characteristic products of the Qumran community. Keywords: Dead Sea Scrolls; Early Judaism; Hartmut Stegemann; Jerusalem; Qumran community