The Judean Desert Scrolls And The History Of Judaism And Christianity

Abstract

This chapter provides an overall presentation of a small amount of what the Dead Sea Scrolls contribute to the understanding of the history of Judaism and Christianity, concentrating on what has been researched by those who have taught and studied at New York University. The discovery of a large corpus of materials - Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic - certainly has stimulated discussion about the linguistic situation in the Land of Israel in Late Antiquity. The Qumran texts reveal much about the status of the biblical canon in the sect itself and in the Second Temple period at large. The Judean Desert corpus has presented with a variety of Hebrew and Aramaic texts that, from a literary point of view, present new genres or marked differences from previously known exemplars of the same genres. Keywords: biblical canon; Christianity; Dead Sea Scrolls; Judaism; Judean Desert corpus; Qumran texts