Scrolls of the Qumran Caves

Three types of documents have been found in the caves near Qumran: copies of books of the Hebrew Bible, e.g., Isaiah, of which two almost complete scrolls have been found; copies of books now collected in the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, e.g., Tobit, 1 Enoch, and Jubilees; and documents composed by an ascetic community, e.g., a book of community rules called The Manual of Discipline, an allegorical account of the community called The War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness, a group of devotional poems called The Thanksgiving Psalms, a commentary on the Book of Habakkuk, and an extensive work, known as the Temple Scroll, containing ritual law.

Documents from the third group have been identified by some scholars with the Essenes, a Jewish religious sect living an ascetic communal agricultural life in the region between the 2d cent. B.C. and 2d cent. A.D. It has also been hypothesized that the Qumran scrolls are the secreted library of a community, perhaps Essene, that lived at Qumran, and thus survived the destruction of the settlement in c.A.D. 68. Startling parallels in expression and thought between the Qumran materials and the New Testament have led to speculation as to their influence on early Christianity. The Temple Scroll, for instance, revealed a list of rules of conduct resembling standard Christian ethics. Some scholars have tried to establish that Jesus and John the Baptist were influenced by, or members of, a Qumran Essene community, but such interpretations are widely disputed. More recent work by other archaeologists and biblical scholars has questioned the association of the scrolls with the Qumran ruins and the Essenes.

Other Texts

Other texts, not related to the Qumran scrolls, have been found in the area around the Dead Sea. At Masada other scrolls were found, including manuscripts of Sirach and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. In the caves at Wadi Murabbaat, c.11 mi (18 km) S of Qumran, many documents were found concerning Bar Kokba's army, as well as more biblical manuscripts. Other documents from the Bar Kokba era were discovered in caves S of En Gedi. These findings, written in Greek, Aramaic, and Nabataean, included biblical fragments, psalms, various legal documents, and a lost Greek translation of the minor prophets. The oldest documents, found at a site 8 mi (13 km) N of Jericho, were left by Samarians massacred by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C.

Control and Publication of the Scrolls

Most of the originals of the scrolls are at the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem; the rest are at the Israel Museum's Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. The intact scrolls and other materials were published in the decades following their discovery, but many fragments remained unpublished and under the control of a small group of scholars, originally appointed by Jordanian officials, and their intellectual heirs. As a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, control of all the scrolls passed to the Israeli Antiquities Authority. International dissatisfaction with the limited access allowed to, and the slow rate of publication of, the scrolls that remained unpublished led the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., to allow (1991) scholars access to its set of master negatives of the scrolls despite the objections of the Israeli Antiquities Authority. Subsequently the authority removed its restrictions on the use of the unpublished scrolls, and expedited the publication of them.

Situated between steep, rocky cliffs, 2,500 to 4,000 ft (762-1,219 m) high, the sea is divided by the Al Lisan peninsula into two basins—a larger northern basin c.1,300 ft (400 m) deep, and a smaller, shallow southern basin, now separated from the northern basin and divided into salt ponds. The lake is fed by the Jordan River and a number of small streams; it has no outlet. Because it is located in a very hot and dry region, the Dead Sea loses much water through evaporation; its level fluctuates during the year. Inflow has been greatly reduced by the increased use of the waters of the Jordan for irrigation, and water levels are falling.

One of the saltiest water bodies in the world, the sea supports no life. It yields large amounts of mineral salts; potash and bromine are commercially extracted. The ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were on the southwestern shore; present-day Sodom is the site of mineral-salt extraction works. The Dead Sea coast in Israel is the site of beaches, spas, and tourist hotels. Biblical names for the Dead Sea include Salt Sea, East Sea, and Sea of the Plain.

Caches of ancient, mostly Hebrew, manuscripts found at several sites on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea (1947–56). The writings date from between the 3rd century BC and the 2nd century AD and total 800–900 manuscripts in 15,000 fragments. Many scholars believe that those deposited in 11 caves near the ruins of Qumrān belonged to a sectarian community whom most scholars believe were Essenes, though other scholars suggest Sadducees or Zealots. The community rejected the rest of the Jewish people and saw the world as sharply divided between good and evil. They cultivated a communal life of ritual purity, called the “Union,” led by a messianic “Teacher of Righteousness.” The Dead Sea Scrolls as a whole represent a wider spectrum of Jewish belief and may have been the contents of libraries from Jerusalem hidden during the war of AD 66–73. They also cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and the relationship of early Christian and Jewish religious traditions. Seealso Damascus Document.

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Landlocked salt lake between Israel and Jordan. The lowest body of water on Earth, it averages about 1,312 ft (400 m) below sea level. It is 50 mi (80 km) long and up to 11 mi (18 km) wide. Its eastern shore is Jordanian, while the southern half of its western shore is Israeli; the northern half of the western shore is within the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War (1967). The Dead Sea lies between Judaea to the west and the Transjordanian plateaus to the east; the Jordan River flows in from the north. It has been associated with biblical history since the time of Abraham.

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Ancient Egyptian collection of mortuary texts made up of spells and charms and placed in tombs to aid the deceased in the next world. It was probably compiled and reedited during the 16th century BC. Later compilations included hymns to Re. Scribes produced and sold copies, often colorfully illustrated, for burial use. Of the many extant copies, none contains all of the approximately 200 known chapters.

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