ABSTRACT Archaeological interpretation is arguably, at its core, an act of cultural translation: a tri-modal semiotic, contextual, and diachronic decoding of material remains that recasts ancient lifeworlds for present-day audiences. As a preliminary attempt to test this argument, this article applies a tri-modal model of cultural translation – semiotic decoding, contextual negotiation, and diachronic transformation – by analyzing across three case sites: Göbekli Tepe (ritual symbolism that resists direct gloss), Angkor Wat (architectural hybridity forged in a cultural third space), and the Dead Sea Scrolls (textual-material entanglement). Comparative analysis exposes patterned ‘interpretive resistance’ and curator bias, showing that what cannot be cleanly translated often drives deeper insight rather than failure. The study demonstrates how archaeology, as a form of cultural translation, negotiates meaning across millennia through iterative re-contextualization, and how these negotiations inform modern identity formation and historical consciousness. The outcome is a diachronic, Translation-Studies-inflected model that sharpens archaeological hermeneutics while extending translation theory beyond language into lived material worlds.

The Dead Sea Scrolls at Seventy: “Clear a Path in the Wilderness”: Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, Cosponsored by the University of Vienna, New York University, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Israel Museum, 29 April–2 May, 2018, by Esther G. Chazon, Ruth A.

Abstract While several scholars have suggested that there was a universal education for boys and girls in the Qumran communities based on 1QSa 1:4–8, 4Q266 9 iii 6–9/CD 13:17–20, and CD 15:5–15, there are a few necessary questions that must be asked before one can affirm such a reality. What is meant by “education” in these passages? We need to evaluate precisely what we mean by education in order to be clear what we mean by universal. Does universal education indicate simply oral recitation and memorization of the community laws, or does it mean an education that included reading and writing, or, perhaps, even training in the elite profession of a scribe? A comparison with data from other parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), as well as a childist perspective on Jewish and Greco-Roman society regarding the formation of children, can help us clarify the questions, even if they cannot be answered definitively. A literate education, let alone a scribal education, was reserved for few people in antiquity. The majority of boys and girls received education in agriculture, trades, crafts, and in the domestic sphere. Moreover, girls rarely received formal education and often married at puberty. When we consider the possibility of universal education, though, we must consider the sectarian context of the DSS since the increased need for members of these communities to follow the laws of the community perfectly might have led to greater literacy and formal scribal training, perhaps even for girls.

Abstract This article provides an overview of the entire history of fake Dead Sea Scrolls, from the earliest fake fragments presented to Roland de Vaux in 1952 to the post-2002 forgeries. It then looks at two putative Iron Age papyri that have emerged more recently, the “Jerusalem Papyrus” and the “Ishmael Papyrus,” reviewing problems concerning the acquisition and ownership history of these items as well as evidence suggesting that they are forgeries. The article offers a model for understanding the appearance of specific types of forgeries, and uses this model to suggest a relationship between the rise and fall of fake Dead Sea Scrolls and the market for authentic examples.

This article examines the scholarship of John Allegro on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the role his status as a scholar has played in the reception of his The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. While the Dead Sea Scrolls play no prominent role in the book, people promoting Sacred Mushroom and its unorthodox proposals stress that Allegro is a respected scholar with great philological acumen by appealing to status as an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls. But Allegro’s contribution to the field is much more mixed than is often acknowledged by proponents of Sacred Mushroom. Allegro was also one of the first to promote the corrosive conspiracy theory that the rest of the editorial team was being controlled by the Vatican. Recognizing that Allegro’s scholarship is infused with a kind of conspiratorial ideation helps understand his method and approach in Sacred Mushroom—that the evidence that Christianity began as a sacred mushroom cult was intentionally obscured by New Testament authors. To agree with Allegro, one must grant that the evidence is hidden and below the surface. The renewed popularity for Allegro’s work, which is out of sync with his reputation among Qumran scholars, can be understood as one example of the broader phenomenon of the popularity of conspiratorial theories in contemporary culture

Abstract In this article we aim to demonstrate conceptual correspondences between Mesopotamian, Greek, Israelite, and Jewish texts (including Dead Sea Scrolls and Greek Jewish texts) by using the concept of תַּבְנִית (“archetype, blueprint, likeness, model, paradigm, or pattern”) and its ancient Near Eastern and Greek equivalents as case example to unfold a peculiar thread that runs through the Mesopotamian and ancient Israelite through the Jewish-Hellenistic sources: from divinely inspired architectural blueprint to its transformation into a divinely inspired ethical ideal of human creativity and imitatio dei.

This study examines the crucial role of Second Temple literature in bridging the historical and theological gap between the Old and New Testaments. Writings such as the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and the Qumran texts offer valuable insights into the socio-religious context of this transitional period. Key events, such as the rededication of the Second Temple and Jesus’ conflicts with the Pharisees, can be more fully understood through these sources. This study also highlights how Second Temple literature contains numerous allusions to and quotations from the Old Testament, enriching canonical and textual studies of the Hebrew Bible. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has further confirmed the continuity and integrity of the biblical text. The novelty of this study lies in its emphasis on Second Temple literature as a hermeneutical foundation for understanding Jewish religious identity and the emergence of early Christianity. Author Biography Harman Ziduhu Laia, Sekolah Tinggi Teologi Injili Indonesia SurabayaScopus ID: 58954546000Google Scholar: pHG6TXQAAAAJ

Determining by means of palaeography the chronology of ancient handwritten manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls is essential for reconstructing the evolution of ideas, but there is an almost complete lack of date-bearing manuscripts. To overcome this problem, we present Enoch, an AI-based date-prediction model, trained on the basis of 24 14C-dated scroll samples. By applying Bayesian ridge regression on angular and allographic writing style feature vectors, Enoch could predict 14C-based dates with varied mean absolute errors (MAEs) of 27.9 to 30.7 years. In order to explore the viability of the character-shape based dating approach, the trained Enoch model then computed date predictions for 135 non-dated scrolls, aligning with 79% in palaeographic post-hoc evaluation. The 14C ranges and Enoch's style-based predictions are often older than traditionally assumed palaeographic estimates, leading to a new chronology of the scrolls and the re-dating of ancient Jewish key texts that contribute to current debates on Jewish and Christian origins.

Dead Sea Scrolls analysis may force rethink of ancient Jewish history

Cultic Spiritualization: Religious Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Jamal-Dominique Hopkins

Emerging Sectarianism in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Continuity, Separation, and Conflict, by John J. Collins and Ananda Geyser-Fouché (eds.)

Material and Digital Reconstruction of Fragmentary Dead Sea Scrolls: The Case of 4Q418a, by Jonathan Ben-Dov, Asaf Gayer, and Eshbal Ratzon, with the assistance of Anna Shirav and Einat Tamir

Despite the long-standing tradition of translating תשׁוקה as “desire” in its three biblical occurrences (Gen 3:16; 4:7; Cant 7:11 [Eng. 10]), recent studies have put forth alternatives such as “turning, return,” “preoccupation, devotion” and “driving.” This essay examines these possibilities in light of the usage of תשׁוקה in the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QM 13:12; 15:10; 17:4; 1QS 11:22; 4QInstrb 2:4). The meaning “desire” is shown to be particularly problematic, not only as a result of its absence in the earliest biblical versions, but also due to the expression לעפר תשׁוקתו immediately after a depiction of mankind being created from dust (עפר) in 1QS 11. The standard translation, “for dust is [mankind’s] desire,” appears incongruous, and parallels in Hodayot reinforce the likelihood that a “return” to dust is in view. The meanings “preoccupation, devotion” and “driving” also lack plausibility in 1QS 11, and “turning, return” proves problematic in 1QM 13 and 15. It is suggested the semantic range of תשׁוקה includes both “a focused movement toward” and “a focused movement back toward.” As such, it denotes “preoccupation, devotion” in most of its occurrences, yet indicates “return” in 1QS 11, and possibly Gen 3:16.

The Greek translation of the Hebrew (and Aramaic) text of the Bible is commonly called the Septuaginta. In this collection, there are Biblical books that are translated from Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek as well as Biblical books that were originally written in Greek. Studying how the translators went about is helpful when attempting to reconstruct the Old Greek text and the Hebrew underlying text on the basis of which it was rendered. In some cases, the Old Greek text and its revisions shed light on the evolution of the Hebrew Biblical text. Moreover, for some books or parts thereof, not a text resembling the Old Greek text as it left the hands of the translators, but a revision of that Greek text is transmitted. The earliest revisions came from Jewish hands and are most commonly associated with the names of Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus. Their texts (or traces thereof) were being used by the later Christian revisers, such as Origen and Lucian. In the texts of the Old Greek as well as in the later revisions, one can observe the phenomenon of rewriting, which is also attested in texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

ABSTRACT: This article studies the Vero Essene Yahad, a messianic new religion in the United States that consults the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) in order to reconstruct the earliest church. Interviews with affiliates, religious services, and the movement’s internal documents demonstrate how the Yahad builds community around academic study as a sacred act, drawing on the DSS and DSS scholarship as resources to sculpt their own theology and rituals. While the movement is small, the Yahad shows one trajectory of the fastest growing religious demographic in the United States—those unaffiliated with a mainstream religious tradition. This article also considers how DSS scholarship has driven the scrolls’ revitalization in new religions. The Vero Essene Yahad is part of the reception history of the DSS and demonstrates the importance of including theology as data in the scientific study of religion.

In 1970, John Marco Allegro published The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, in which he argued that Jesus of Nazareth was a mushroom. The Gospels, he claimed, are not biographies of a teacher who lived and breathed but troves of sacred mushroom knowledge written down in coded language by members of a drug cult. Allegro’s thesis caught many off guard, especially since, in his earlier work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, he considered Jesus to be a historical figure. This paper will explore the evolution of Allegro’s thinking about Jesus from 1964-1970 based on archival research I have conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom. We will discover that Allegro’s thinking about Jesus evolved over time and that he arrived at his mushroom hypothesis years after he initially began work on what would become The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.

This paper focuses on the study of the contents of inkwells dating to the Early Roman period, using an array of analytical techniques: portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (pXRF), Raman spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy combined with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). Our goal was to shed light on the chemical composition of the inks used for writing in the late Second Temple period in Israel, particularly those which may have been similar to that used in the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). An understanding of the ancient ink's chemistry has important implications for conservation and preservation purposes, and may reveal important information about ancient scribal practices and writing schools. Although most of the analyzed inkwells revealed no ink residues, molecular traces of bone-derived carbon were detected in one sample, plausibly originating from bone black pigment used in ancient ink. Organic residues from three other inkwells may be the remains of ink binders.

Abstract This article offers a critical reassessment of a common scholarly claim about the social location of Second Temple Enoch literature in light of the full publication of the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls. Many scholars, especially since the 1990s, have suggested that the books of 1 Enoch were composed and compiled over the course of several centuries within scribal circles whose self-identity can be described as Enochic in some meaningful sense. The evidence of the Aramaic Scrolls, however, casts doubt on the existence of such an Enochic group or movement. Instead, the Aramaic Scrolls attest to the fact that literary traditions about Enoch circulated alongside traditions about various other exalted protagonists, including Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Levi, Amram, and Daniel. The Aramaic Scrolls help demonstrate that elite scribes in ancient Judea incorporated any number of these traditions, including Enoch traditions, into their compositions, refashioning them in accordance with their particular literary aims.

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the divinatory methods the Jews used to address their questions in the Greco–Roman era. Scholars have previously examined how authors of the Hebrew Bible are aware of numerous divinatory techniques. The texts of the Greco–Roman era, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls, preserve even more references illuminating the ancients' interest in divination. In this article, I first address how the texts of the Greco–Roman era present people inquiring about the divine will through inspiration, the lot oracle, astrology, physiognomy, and death oracle. I argue that it was not indifferent which method an individual chose for their inquiry but that each technique served purposes that the ancients knew. As people could typically not access all methods, both the technique and its accessibility were considered when individuals decided how to inquire about their questions.

Abstract The argument of this article is that there are remarkable affinities between early configurations of Jewish prayer in the Second Temple period and the later rabbinic liturgical system. The article examines Greek and Hebrew sources that exhibit a process of deepening and purification in which sacrificial worship is reinterpreted and relegated to other domains of non-sacrificial worship and service. Furthermore, the article explores elements of the sacrificial cult that are incorporated into prayers from the Second Temple period. My argument relies on both textual and material evidence, including the works of Philo of Alexandria, the Dead Sea Scrolls, excerpted texts and tefillin, and the Septuagint of Daniel.