Dead Sea Scrolls Research Articles

Colonizing Frank Moore Cross: The Dead Sea Scrolls in 1950s Popular Media

Abstract Early presentations of the Dead Sea Scrolls in popular media relied on orientalist tropes and a narrow Christian horizon to create relevance and prestige for the scrolls, which contributed to strong religious interest in them and a market for unprovenanced Dead Sea Scrolls fragments and forgeries. Such a strategy also constructed public authority for the Bible scholars working on the scrolls. This article treats the colonialist approach in the earliest popular works on the scrolls in the United States, written by Edmund Wilson, Frank Moore Cross, and Alex Small, and shows how the stories they tell set the stage for religious veneration of the scrolls and popular acclaim of the scholars.

The First Apocalypse of James in a Socio-Linguistic Perspective: Three Greek and Coptic Versions from Ancient Monastic Egypt

The discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices (NHC) in 1945 rates as one of the two most profound occurrences for Biblical archaeology and interpretation during the last hundred years, along with the Dead Sea Scrolls (1946–1956). The codices allow us to document Christian monastic culture, gnostic Christianity and gnostic offshoots in the desert climate of Late Ancient Egypt. The recovery of the related Codex Tchacos (CT) brought further excitement for contemporary readers by 2006, it being sensational that narratives of “Judas the betrayer” and “doubting Thomas” were found in the whole collection of writings. The text named the [First] Apocalypse of James, significantly, was found to be in both NHC and CT in different Coptic versions (from near the sacred sites of Chenoboskion and El Minya), but yet another more fragmentary version in Greek had turned up much earlier among the huge cache of papyri found at Oxyrhynchus (also, like the other places, on the banks of the Nile). Given the opportunity for comparison, what distinguishes the three versions? Does comparative analysis better tell us what this ancient text is about? Does the strong presence of Gnostic Christian insights in the Coptic texts still imply a historical Jamesian community is being honoured? This paper concentrates on three comparable passages in the three versions that apparently contain historical memories of James and his followers. It works on the reasonable hypothesis that the Greek version of Oxyrhynchus Papyri (P.Oxy. 5533) (hereafter = PO) is prior and read with different purposes than the two Coptic translated versions of CT (CT 2.10–30) and NHC (NHC V,3. 24–44). When a critical approach, involving a socio-linguistic comparison, is applied, we will see that the three versions of the text were not directly related to each other, but that narratives about James the Just were available to desert monastics from the second century CE. The paper argues for a literal transmission of traditions from a Jewish Christian community around James into Egypt, that the textual figure of James in the Oxyrhynchus fragments points to a ‘mutual familiarity’ between PO and CT, while the NHC tradition of James has been further elaborated by processes of compilation and addition.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices: Selected Papers from the Conference “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices” in Berlin, 20–22 July 2018, by Dylan M. Burns and Matthew Goff (eds.)

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices: Selected Papers from the Conference “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices” in Berlin, 20–22 July 2018, by Dylan M. Burns and Matthew Goff (eds.)

Melzer and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Anna Seghers’s GDR novel Die Entscheidung (1959)

Abstract This article is about German-Jewish author Anna Seghers (1900–1983), who spent half of her productive life in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Though Seghers is known for her works from the 1930s and 1940s such as The Seventh Cross (1942), about a prisoner who escapes from a concentration camp, little has been published about her writings under communism, after she returned from fourteen years of exile, having survived National Socialism while active in the resistance. Her mother and aunt were murdered in the Shoah, and Seghers ostensibly discontinued addressing the National Socialist German past once the GDR was founded (in 1949). However, as this article demonstrates, her ‘socialist realist’ novel, Die Entscheidung (1959), complicates this seeming erasure of Seghers's Jewish identity, which can be seen not only in response to the increasing antisemitism in eastern Europe during the Cold War, but also attests to her actual and continuous—albeit ‘hidden’—engagement with the Jewish culture and history of her childhood and youth. Through the autobiographical character Herbert Melzer, it becomes possible to identify secret references and allusions to the Dead Sea Scrolls, first discovered in Qumran in 1947–1953—the same time at which Seghers set the novel. While she was confronted with surveillance, travel restrictions, and censorship, Seghers maintained her own personal exploration of Judaica, as evidenced by her published letters and the contents of her personal library (now the Anna Seghers Archive). This article argues that Seghers persisted in retaining and expressing her original Jewish self-identification through fiction, even in this, her seemingly most ‘socialist realist’ novel.

"KERESZTYÉNNEK LENNI NAGY ÉS SOKSZOROS HŰSÉGET JELENT” PÁKOZDY LÁSZLÓ MÁRTON TEOLÓGUS PROFESSZOR, VALLÁSTÖRTÉNÉSZ, BIBLIAFORDÍTÓ MUNKÁSSÁGA

The world-famous theologian professor spent a significant part of his life in Debrecen. Between 1928 and 1932, he studied at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Debrecen, where he graduated, and in 1942 he received his doctorate in theology. At the end of 1945, he was appointed public extraordinary professor at the same faculty, and in the summer of 1949, he was appointed public ordinary professor. In the academic year 1949/50, as Dean of the Faculty of Theology, he was responsible for the establishment of the organizational structure of the Debrecen Theological Academy of the Tiszántúli Church District, which had been separated from the university by government action and had become an independent institution. In 1966, the church leadership transferred Pákozdy and his department from Debrecen to the Reformed Theological Academy in Budapest, where he taught future pastors for about two decades. Professor Pákozdy, a religious historian, has been awarded honorary doctorates by two foreign universities for his scholarly research on the Old Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and for his translation of the Bible into Hungarian. In the twilight of his life, obtaining the Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences degree was made possible.

Ghost Scrolls—Rumoured and Longed-for Dead Sea Scrolls

ABSTRACT There are myriads of bank boxes and vaults in the world and judging by some of the stories under scrutiny in this article, many of them contain Dead Sea Scrolls. The article analyses tales linked to three so-called ghost scrolls whilst focussing on contemporary manuscript tales as a phenomenon: What characterises such stories? How are they developed, kept alive, and passed down? What are their functions? I will argue that these tales serve as adaptable templates for market players and bring colour and glamor to the grey market. The ghost scroll is not so much a container of text as a placeholder for hype, dreams and longing. It influences contemporary academic imaginations, expectations, desires and affects scholars’ interpretational frames.

Performance Analysis of Handwritten Text Augmentation on Style-Based Dating of Historical Documents

One of the main questions paleographers aim to answer while studying historical manuscripts is when they were produced. Automatized methods provide tools that can aid in a more accurate and objective date estimation. Many of these methods are based on the hypothesis that handwriting styles change over periods. However, the sparse availability of digitized historical manuscripts poses a challenge in obtaining robust systems. The presented research extends previous research that explored the effects of data augmentation by elastic morphing on the dating of historical manuscripts. Linear support vector machines were trained on k-fold cross-validation on textural and grapheme-based features extracted from the Medieval Paleographical Scale, early Aramaic manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and volumes of the French Royal Chancery collection. Results indicate training models with augmented data can improve the performance of historical manuscript dating by 1–3% in cumulative scores, but also diminish it. Data augmentation using elastic morphing can both improve and decrease date prediction of historical manuscripts and should be carefully considered. Moreover, further enhancements are possible by considering models tuned to the features and documents’ scripts.

Black surfaces on ancient leather tefillin cases and straps from the Judean Desert: Macroscopic, microscopic and spectroscopic analyses.

Tefillin are Jewish ritual artifacts consisting of leather cases, containing inscribed slips, which are affixed with leather straps to the body of the tefillin practitioner. According to current Jewish ritual law, the tefillin cases and straps are to be colored black. The present study examines seventeen ancient tefillin cases discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls in caves in the Judean Desert. All seventeen cases display grain surfaces with a very dark, nearly black appearance. We start with a hypothesis that the cases were intentionally colored black in antiquity using either a carbon-based or iron-gall-based paint or dye. The aim of this study is to test this hypothesis by subjecting these tefillin cases to a battery of examinations to assess the presence of carbon and iron used as pigments, and of organic materials which may have been used as binding agents in a paint. The tests deployed are: (1) macroscopic and microscopic analyses; (2) multispectral imaging using infrared wavelengths; (3) Raman spectroscopy; (4) Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR); and (5) scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy. The results of these tests found no traces of carbon-based or iron-gall-based pigments, nor of organic compounds which may have served as binders in a paint. These results suggest that our posited hypothesis is unlikely. Instead, results of the SEM examination suggest it more likely that the black color on the surfaces of the tefillin cases is the result of natural degradation of the leather through gelatinization. The Judean Desert tefillin likely represent tefillin practices prior to when the rabbinic prescription on blackening tefillin was widely practiced. Our study suggests that the kind of non-blackened tefillin which the later rabbis rejected in their own times may well have been quite common in earlier times.

The Gospel of Matthew and the Pesher Interpretation

This study explores the pesher interpretation, a method of biblical exegesis used by the Qumran community, and whether early Christians like the author of Matthew's Gospel employed similar techniques. Since the 1950s, scholars have analysed the so-called “formula quotations” in Matthew, finding parallels with the pesharim commentaries found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Krister Stendahl argued Matthew comes from a “school” using pesher to radically reinterpret Old Testament passages as fulfilled in Jesus. Others like Richard Longenecker also find Matthew employing this Second Temple Jewish method, especially in texts with “fulfilment formulae”. However, objections have been raised. Joseph Fitzmyer notes the differences between Qumran pesharim and Matthew's use of scripture. Norman Hillyer wonders if the fulfilment formula indicates a distinct hermeneutic, not pesher. Ulrich Luz stresses Matthew proclaims fulfilment, not hidden meanings like pesharim. In conclusion, applying the ideas of pesher from Qumran to the New Testament raises problems. Similarities between pesher and Patristic exegesis are noted, but determining dependence requires examining the original historical meaning versus the contemporary application of prophecies. More analysis of whether early Christian use of scripture mirrors Qumran pesher or develops its fulfilment hermeneutic is needed. Keywords: pesher, fulfilment, formula quotations, Midrash, exegesis, Qumran, Eschatology, Second Temple, Matthew's Gospel, hermeneutics

Newly Identified Fragments of 4Q51 (4QSama)

Abstract The following paper is a preliminary publication of newly identified fragments of the book of Samuel that all belong to manuscript 4Q51. The fragments were discovered during the cataloging effort being carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) as part of the digitization project of the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library (www.deadseascrolls.org.il). Some of the fragments that will be presented were published in the past, but with various errors. Other fragments have never been published, although due to the placement of some of them on the museum plates it is clear that someone in the past recognized that they belong to 4Q51.

Rhetoric and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Purity, Covenant, and Strategy at Qumran , by Bruce McComiskey

Rhetoric and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Purity, Covenant, and Strategy at Qumran , by Bruce McComiskey

The Qumran Opisthographic Papyri as a Scribal Cluster of Manuscripts

Abstract This essay will explore to which the degree the opisthographic papyri from Qumran can be seen as a scribal cluster, which I understand to be a group of manuscripts that were produced and/or circulated within the same scribal context. This contribution will present a case study by focusing on the papyrus opisthographs 4Q433a/4Q255, 4Q499/4Q497, 4Q503/4Q512, and 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506. These manuscripts will be considered by combining material and textual approaches. Analysis from the perspective of palaeography and codicology will establish if these scrolls share significant material features, such as writing style, columnisation, and scribal markings. Textual analysis will assess the intertextual relations between these compositions and explore whether they share common themes and vocabulary. This case study aims to increase our understanding of how the scribes behind the Dead Sea Scrolls engaged with their texts, and explores different scholarly approaches to reconstruct ancient groupings of texts.

The Quality of Hasmonaean Biblical Manuscripts

Abstract Recent research has introduced the categories of deluxe or high-quality Dead Sea Scrolls. We reconsider this category and propose a classification of manuscripts on the basis of handwriting quality. As a test case, we classify all Hasmonaean-type biblical manuscripts as elegant, professional, or substandard. We discuss eleven scrolls with elegant handwriting and consider other physical, scribal, and textual features of these scrolls. Our study calls into question the idea that especially biblical manuscripts would have been copied according to the highest standards. We show that different quality standards were in operation for Hasmonaean-type biblical manuscripts.

Visualizing Pentateuchal Composition: A New View of the Creation of Ancient Hebrew Literature

This article describes a gap in scholarship on the Hebrew Bible, and demonstrates a way to address it via a digital humanities project that is at once a research tool and an interactive work of public scholarship. The gap results from the fact, well-known among scholars but still startling to much of the public, that ancient Israel had no Bible as we know it. This is the case for the Persian and Hellenistic period, when, as we know largely from the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the textual form of many biblical books and the biblical canon as a unit was not yet fixed. But it is also true in a different way for an earlier period in the history of the Pentateuch, before the texts were edited into their current form. With this consensus as a starting point, we present the opportunity to visualize the most widely-agreed on possible sources and layers of the Pentateuch separately, offering a glimpse of texts closer to what people in ancient Israel may have actually had, and let readers experiment with how they may have been combined.

The Text of the Pentateuch: Textual Criticism and the Dead Sea Scrolls by Sidnie White Crawford (review)

The Text of the Pentateuch: Textual Criticism and the Dead Sea Scrolls by Sidnie White Crawford (review)

A Preliminary Bibliography of Polish Publications Concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls (from 1947 to the Spring of 2022)

This publication presents a preliminary bibliography of material on the Dead Sea Scrolls for the years 1947–2022 (spring), which includes only Polish authors’ works which were published. The bibliography has been divided into four parts. The first part gives a list of recent Polish bibliographies, the second one contains monographs and collective works, the third one comprises book chapters and articles appearing in collective works, and the fourth part – papers published in periodicals. The entire work is preceded by a list of abbreviations.

A Star from Jacob, a Sceptre from Israel: Balaam’s Oracle as Rewritten Scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls , by Libor Marek

A Star from Jacob, a Sceptre from Israel: Balaam’s Oracle as Rewritten Scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls , by Libor Marek

When did Daimones become Demons? Revisiting Septuagintal Data for Ancient Jewish Demonology

AbstractRecent research on Jewish demonology has been significantly advanced by evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls. In light of these advances, this article revisits the use of daimones and related terms in the Greek translations of Jewish scriptures commonly called the Septuagint (LXX). Against the tendency to conflate these LXX data into one intermediate stage in the development of the demonology of the New Testament, it calls for further attention to the particular dates and translational tendencies in specific LXX texts, as well as further attention to contemporaneous Aramaic and Hebrew sources. Accordingly, it situates the daimones of LXX Deuteronomy, the Greek Psalter, and LXX Isaiah alongside the emergent demonologies in the Aramaic Enoch literature, Jubilees, 4Q560, and 11Q11. Taken together, these sources attest new literary creativity surrounding transmundane powers among Jews in the Hellenistic period, shaped by distinctive concerns that cannot be reduced to a transitional, proto-Christian moment.

“Much Clean Paper for Little Dirty Paper”: The Market for Dead Sea Scrolls in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract Since 2002, more than 100 “new” Dead Sea Scrolls fragments have surfaced on the antiquities market. They were launched with great stories and soon became big business. In this study, we analyze the market for post-2002 fragments. After a detailed chronological overview of the sales over the last 20 years, we discuss some of the most essential questions related to these sales: How did a market arise for Dead Sea Scrolls in the twenty-first century? What made some fragments especially attractive? How much money has been spent in total? Where did these new fragments come from? We argue that the post-2002 “saga” reads first and foremost as a story about Christian Dead Sea Scrolls.

Sans érasure

Abstract A curious phenomenon that is attested in the Ugaritic texts, elsewhere in the ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, medieval texts, and beyond is a scribal practice I call sans érasure, a case in which a scribe leaves an error uncorrected and proceeds to write or copy the correct letter, word, line, or verse following the error. In this article, a number of rather clear examples are adduced from the Ugaritic texts, and a number of examples from the Hebrew Bible are proposed. Several of these cases would seem to be recognized in the Masoretic tradition in instances of ‮לא קרי‬‎ (written but not read). Some of the biblical examples resolve longstanding philological cruxes. Among the examples are several from the book of Job and the last verse in Lamentations. An explanation for the practice is suggested.