The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept of a Library

Abstract

Editors Sidnie White Crawford and Cecilia Wassen have assembled an excellent collection of studies that address an important topic. In their introduction (pp. 1–3), the editors note that since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls many scholars have spoken of “library,” while others are not so sure, speaking instead of “collection” or simply “scrolls.” How this question is answered will have implications for how the Scrolls are interpreted and perhaps also for the question of canon.The book under review is divided into five parts. In part 1, “General Studies,” we have Devorah Dimant, “The Library of Qumran in Recent Scholarship” (pp. 7–14), and Årstein Justnes, “On Being a ‘Librarian’: Labels, Categories, and Classifications” (pp. 15–29). In part 2, “The Greco-Roman Context,” are essays by Monica Berti, “Greek and Roman Libraries in the Hellenistic Age” (pp. 33–54), Corrado Martone, “The Qumran ‘Library’ and Other Ancient Libraries: Elements for a Comparison” (pp. 55–77), and Ian Werrett, “Is Qumran a Library?” (pp. 78 –105).In part 3, “The Collection as a Whole and the Question of a Library,” we have Sidnie White Crawford, “The Qumran Collection as a Scribal Library” (pp. 109–31), Stephen Reed, “The Linguistic Diversity of the Texts Found at Qumran” (pp. 132–54), Mladen Popovic, “The Ancient ‘Library’ of Qumran between Urban and Rural Culture” (pp. 155–67), and Stephen Pfann, “The Ancient ‘Library’ or ‘Libraries’ of Qumran: The Specter of Cave 1Q” (pp. 168–213). In part 4, “Collections within the Collection: Specific Evidence for a Library?” we have Helen R. Jacobus, “Calendars in the Qumran Collection” (pp. 217–43), and Daniel A. Machiela, “The Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls: Coherence and Context in the Library at Qumran” (pp. 244–58). Finally, in part 5 “Implications for the Identification of the Qumran Collection as a Library,” we have an essay by Armin Lange, “The Qumran Library in Context: The Canonical History and Textual Standardization of the Hebrew Bible in Light of the Qumran Library” (pp. 261–79).All of the studies make useful contributions. Dimant argues that even the so-called sectarian writings at Qumran should no longer be viewed as reflecting a narrow group. Justnes cautions against importing our modern categories when we label and catalog the texts of Qumran. I found the essays by Berti, Martone, and Werrett especially interesting. They compare the Qumran library to the libraries of the Greco-Roman world (and Martone even reaches back to the ancient Near East). Berti discusses the political motives behind the development of royal libraries at major centers such as Alexandria and Antioch on the Orontes. Werrett concludes that Qumran fulfills most of the criteria that have been developed for identifying a library. Accordingly, he finds that it is “both historically and grammatically appropriate to describe the scrolls from Qumran as the remains of a Jewish library” (p. 105). In an especially insightful essay, Crawford suggests that the library of Qumran reflects the interests of an elite group of scribes and may have served as an archive, that is, a repository of records. She concludes that it is best to use the label “library with archive” in describing the Qumran Scrolls (p. 131).Reed ponders the possible implications of the multilingual character of Qumran’s library, which has texts written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. We should not assume that everyone at Qumran could read all three languages. Popovic suspects the Qumran library probably originated in 100–50 BC and, if so, would have reflected Hellenistic patterns, not Roman or Herodian patterns, of book collection. In a lengthy and learned study, Pfann inquires into the mere chance that Cave 1 was the first cave to be discovered. What if other caves had been found first? How might we today look at the entire collection? Jacobus throws the discussion of Qumran calendrical texts into a new light when she raises interesting hermeneutical questions about how some of the calendars would have been interpreted by the residents. Machiela supports the view that the Aramaic texts should be interpreted as a “distinctive subgroup.” Lange agrees that the scrolls constitute a library, but he finds that “neither the canon of the Hebrew Bible nor its proto-Masoretic standard text developed as a consequence of the Hellenistic religious reform and the Maccabean wars” (p. 279).The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran concludes with a lengthy bibliography and several indexes. This outstanding collection of studies will serve well both biblical scholars and classicists who are interested in book culture in late antiquity.