Dead Sea Scrolls, Dead Sea Scrolls

It was first excavated by Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux from Feb 15 to Mar 5, 1949. VanderKam, James C., The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994. p. 9.

VanderKam, James C., The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994. p. 10.

VanderKam, James C., The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994. p. 10-11.

Cave 4 is the most famous of Qumran caves both because of its visibility and its productivity. It is visible from the plateau to the south of the Qumran settlement. It is by far the most productive of all Qumran caves, producing ninety percent of the Dead Sea Scrolls and scroll fragments (approx. 15,000 fragments from 500 different texts), including 9-10 copies of Jubilees, along with 21 tefillin and 7 mezuzot.

Cave 5 produced approximately 25 manuscripts, while Cave 6 contained fragments of about 31 manuscripts. VanderKam, James C., The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994. p. 10-11.

The Temple Scroll, so called because more than half of it pertains to the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem, was found in Cave 11, and is by far the longest scroll. It is now 26.7 feet (8.15m) long. Its original length may have been over 28 feet (8.75m). The Temple Scroll was regarded by Yigael Yadin as "The Torah According to the Essenes." On the other hand, Hartmann Steggemann, a contemporary and friend of Yadin, believed the scroll was not to be regarded as such, but was a document without exceptional significance. Steggemann notes that it is not mentioned or cited in any known Essene writing. Stegemann, Hartmut. "The Qumran Essenes: Local Members of the Main Jewish Union in Late Second Temple Times." Pages 83-166 in The Madrid Qumran Congress: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid, 18-21 March, 1991 , Edited by J. Trebolle Barrera and L. Vegas Montaner. Vol. 11 of Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah. Leiden: Brill, 1992.

The various theories concerning the origin of the scrolls are as follows: Qumran-Essene Theory The prevalent view among scholars, almost universally held until the 1990s, is the "Qumran-Essene" hypothesis originally posited by Roland Gurin de Vaux de Vaux, Roland, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Schweich Lectures of the British Academy, 1959). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.

The main point of departure from the Qumran-Essene theory is hesitation to link the Dead sea Scrolls specifically with the Essenes. Most proponents of the Qumran-Sectarian theory understand a group of Jews living in or near Qumran to be responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, but do not necessarily conclude that the sectarians are Essenes.

Schiffman who proposes that the community was led by a group of Zadokite priests (Sadducees). Schiffman, Lawrence H., Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: their True Meaning for Judaism and Christianity , Anchor Bible Reference Library (Doubleday) 1995 The most important document in support of this view is the "Miqsat Ma'ase Ha-Torah" (4QMMT), which cites purity laws (such as the transfer of impurities) identical to those attributed in rabbinic writings to the Sadducees. 4QMMT also reproduces a festival calendar that follows Sadducee principles for the dating of certain festival days.

Karl Heinrich Rengstorf first proposed that the Dead Sea Scrolls originated at the library of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Rengstorf, Karl Heinrich.

Golb, Norman, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Search for the Secret of Qumran , New York: Scribner, 1995.

All the manuscripts were placed originally under the control of a small committee of scholars appointed by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities (a responsibility assumed after 1967 by what is now the Israel Antiquities Authority), who, some claim, monopolized access to the scrolls. Most of the longer, more complete scrolls were published soon after their discovery. The majority of the scrolls, however, consists of tiny, brittle fragments, which were published at a pace considered by many to be excessively slow. Even more unsettling for some was the fact that access to the unpublished documents was severely limited to the editorial committee. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/154274/Dead-Sea-Scrolls This rule was eventually broken, first by Ben Zion Wacholder's publication in the fall of 1991 of 17 documents reconstructed from a concordance that had been made in 1988 and had come into the hands of scholars outside of the International Team; next, in the same month, by the discovery and publication of a complete set of facsimiles of the Cave 4 materials at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, which were not covered by the "secrecy rule". After further delays, these photographs were published by Robert Eisenman and James Robinson as A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Eisenman, Robert H. and James Robinson, A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls in two volumes (Biblical Archaeology Society of Washington, DC, Washington, DC, 1991) As a result, the "secrecy rule" was lifted.

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