Dead Sea Scrolls. Qumran manuscripts. Qumran manuscripts Ancient scrolls of the Qumran caves of Palestine
APOCRYPHA OF GENESIS
(I Q Gen. Ar.)
The manuscript, called Genesis Apocryphon (Apocrypha of Genesis), was discovered in 1947 in the 1st Qumran cave, among the first seven scrolls found in the Dead Sea area. While three scrolls - Hymns of Thanksgiving (I Q H), "War of the Sons of Light" (I Q M) and a short text of Isaiah (1Q Is b) - were acquired by Professor Sukenik, this scroll, along with the other three, is the Charter (1Q S) , Commentary on the book. Habakkuk (1Q pHab) and the full text of Isaiah (1Q Is a) - first ended up in the hands of the Syrian Metropolitan Athanasius. It was only in 1954 that the manuscript was acquired along with three others by Professor Yadin and is now kept in a special book depository in Jerusalem.
From this time on, the sequential study of the scroll begins. Moreover, the research
the manuscript turned out to be very difficult due to its extremely poor condition. Of all
Of the seven manuscripts discovered in the first cave, ours turned out to be the worst preserved.
The reason was that the manuscript was not hidden in a jug and lay there for a long time
on the cave floor, exposed to adverse atmospheric influences. A lot of work
Unrolling the scroll and preserving it was carried out by a prominent specialist in this field
Bieber-Kraut, who had already taken part in the preservation and processing of the first three scrolls.
A full description of the appearance of the manuscript and its paleography is given in the first
*“*1 2 preliminary edition by Avigad and Yadin. According to their information, the manuscript lacks
beginning and end, the skin of the manuscript is thin, light brown, the text is written in
outer side of the skin. The surviving part of the manuscript consists of four pieces,
sewn together with tendons. The three seams that hold these four panels of leather together
completely preserved. There is also a fourth
1 Avigad-Yadin. Genesis Apocryphon.
2 Ibid., p. 12-15.
a seam that connected the next, still undiscovered piece of leather to the manuscript.
The panels are lined with horizontal lines. The lines were made with a sharp instrument, most likely bone, and therefore the lines are somewhat lighter in color than the leather. The number of lines, and thus the number of lines, is not the same on different panels of leather. On the first there are thirty-seven of them, on the second and third - thirty-five each, on the fourth - thirty-four.
Each individual piece of leather is divided by incised vertical lines that define the space between the columns. The width of the space between individual columns is 17 mm, but near the seams it reaches 26-36 mm. The width of the columns is also not uniform, varying from 8 to 13 cm, on average it is 12 cm. The height of the columns, depending on the number of lines, is from 25.5 to 27 cm. The upper margins are 22-26 mm wide, and the lower ones are 26-26 mm wide. 30 mm. The pieces of leather are also of unequal length. The first, not completely preserved, is about 45 cm and contains the remains of four columns (I-IV), of which the second column is most fully preserved; on the rest, only a few words are readable at the end of the lines. The second piece of leather, approximately 64 cm long, contains the remains of five columns (V-IX). On the third, 64 cm long, traces of seven columns (X-XVI) are visible, and the fourth, 82 cm long, includes six columns (XVII-XXII). The total length of the surviving part of the scroll is 2.83 m, width 31 cm. In total, the scroll has 22 columns, of which the most complete are columns II, XIX-XXII. The method of writing, as noted by Yadin, is the same as in other Qumran
manuscripts. The lines are written under the drawn lines. The scribe's handwriting is clear, missing letters are rare. The scribe himself corrected his mistakes: he put the missing letter above the word to which this letter belonged; According to the system generally accepted in manuscripts, he denoted the extra letter with a dot above it. There is a distance between words, although sometimes one word overlaps another. There is no separation between sentences, but chapters are separated from each other in various ways. If a chapter ends in the middle of a line, the next chapter usually begins at the beginning of the next line, sometimes indented on a new line, and at times even on the same line on which the previous chapter ended, with a little space between them.
As for the paleographic characteristics of the manuscript, according to Avigad and Yadin, the handwriting of the manuscript is not particularly different from the handwriting of some other Qumran manuscripts and is closest to the handwriting of the War of the Sons of Light scroll. According to Yadin's observation, waw and yod are not always easily distinguished in the manuscript. There are ligatures, even the middle mem is often associated with the following letter.
Avigad and Yadin pay special attention
to connect two nuns in a word. The scroll quite clearly distinguishes between the middle and final forms of writing the letters kap, mem, nun, pyo, sade.
Until the manuscript was read, scholarly reviews referred to it simply as the "fourth scroll" or "unidentified fourth scroll." When professors Albright and Trever, as a result of preliminary acquaintance with the manuscript, managed to read the names of Lamech and his wife Bitenosh on a small fragment, the researchers decided that this was an apocryphal book of Lamech, and therefore, when publishing fragments of the Milik scroll in the 1st volume of the collection of manuscripts of the Judean Desert ( DJD, I) the work was called "The Apocalypse of Lamech" (1Q 20).
However, when the manuscript was opened in full and its first publishers, Avigad and Yadin, became acquainted with the entire scroll, it turned out that the manuscript was much broader in content and that it spoke not only about Lamech, but also contained other stories from the book of Genesis, in particular, about the flood, about Noah, about Abraham. Therefore, the publishers gave it the name MGYLH HY$WNYT LBR"SYT, or Genesis Apocryphon (Apocrypha of the Book of Genesis). And despite the fact that this name met with objections from some researchers, it, as given by the first publishers of this scroll, is still preserved in the scientific literature If we turn to the contents of the manuscript, we can immediately see that it is very closely related to the first chapters of Genesis, since in accordance with their order, episodes from the life of the first patriarchs are presented. In essence, we have a free retelling of their individual stories. book of Genesis with the addition of a number of new details. Three main themes can be distinguished in the content: the first theme, telling about the miraculous birth of Noah, is associated with biblical characters: Lamech, the father of Noah, Methuselah, the father of Lamech, and Enoch, the grandfather of Lamech (about this). the remnants of table I, table II and fragments of tables III and V are told). the flood, about Noah's covenant with God, about the division of lands between Noah's heirs. The much better preserved tables XIX-XXII are devoted to the third topic - the history of the patriarch Abraham.
Despite the extreme fragmentation of the above tables, a coherent text is completely restored. The second table is better preserved. It tells about the events that tell of the miraculous birth of Noah: about the suspicions of his father Lamech regarding the origin of the child, about the explanation of Lamech on this matter with his wife, about the appeal of Lamech to his father Methuselah and through him to his grandfather Enoch regarding the origin of Noah. The story is told in the first person, from the point of view of Lamech. This was the reason that at the first partial acquaintance with the manuscript, the work was identified as the book of Lamech and was initially called “The Apocalypse of Lamech” 1. In content, but not in form and detail, this text is very similar to the story of the miraculous birth of Noah in chapters CVI-CVII of the book. Enoch. However, there, unlike our monument, the speech is conducted on behalf of Enoch. In addition, in an excerpt from the book. Enoch is completely absent from Lamech's dialogue with his wife Bitenosh. There is no such story in the Bible at all. The preliminary edition of Avigad and Yadin gives a photographic reproduction of the second table and its transcription in square script.
As for the following tables, due to their extreme fragmentation, the publishers
In the spring of 1947, two boys from the nomadic Taamire tribe were herding goats. And quite by accident, while searching for a runaway goat, we discovered a cave. Hoping to find a treasure, they climbed inside - and were very disappointed. Instead of gold and precious stones, there were clay vessels with leather scrolls wrapped in linen. An attempt to cut leather into belts failed - the material was too old and dilapidated. Then, on the advice of their fellow tribesmen, they sold leather scrolls with incomprehensible inscriptions to a Jerusalem antique dealer...This is the official version of the discovery of the Qumran scrolls. However, it is possible that the Bedouins specifically combed the caves in search of treasures. In any case, when the opportunity arose to trade finds, they did not fail to take advantage of it. In 1952, an international scientific expedition set out in the Judean Desert in search of new scrolls. And here a real archaeological war broke out between scientists and local tribes. The nomads tried to be the first to take possession of the manuscripts and then sell them to archaeologists. Often they were lucky, and the scientists had to buy back the scrolls. In this case, the most valuable information was lost - in which caves and how the manuscripts were found, how they were located, etc. Therefore, archaeologists, in turn, sought to get to the storage facilities before the Bedouins did.
The “cold” archaeological war, thank God, did not develop into a “hot” one, but still bore its sad fruits. Many legends regarding the Qumran finds are connected precisely with the fact that scientists did not have the opportunity to quietly carry out their work, and the first manuscripts found and published, as it turned out later, were not directly related to the main part of what was stored in caves on the shores of the Dead Sea. The work of archaeologists and the painstaking desk work of scientists deciphering and translating manuscripts lasted for four decades. Meanwhile, the sensation-loving public was discussing the “Quumran secrets,” which supposedly were supposed to blow up our entire understanding of the era of Jesus Christ and refute the Gospel.
One of the anti-Gospel theses says that many of the things that the Gospel talks about were invented by Christianized Greeks, but they could not have existed in the ancient Jewish environment. In fact, the Greeks were accused of having either invented or edited the Gospel. For example, the expression “Son of God” is often found there. They said that this expression in relation to Christ arose not at all in the Jewish environment, but in the Hellenized Christian communities of Asia Minor, that this was a purely pagan motive, inspired by Greek mythology about the supernatural birth of various heroes. Meanwhile, such an expression is found in the Qumran manuscripts, and it refers specifically to the coming Messiah.
How the myth was born
Oddly enough, the main “culprit” for the emergence of rumors was... the priest. This was a prominent Catholic biblical scholar, the leader of an archaeological expedition, Father Roland de Vaux. He suggested that the ruins of Qumran were a monastery that belonged to the ancient Jewish sect of the Essenes. Four of the seven scrolls that were found first and immediately published spoke about the structure and life of this sect.
Remains of fortifications were found at Qumran, and many manuscripts were found nearby in caves. Trying to determine what exactly he was excavating, Abbot Roland de Vaux thought in terms of a Catholic monastery. It is known that medieval Catholic (as well as Orthodox) monasteries were not only centers of spiritual life, but also military fortresses and centers of education, where books were stored and copied. In any monastery, the central place was occupied by the library and scriptorium (room for copying books). As it seemed to the leader of the expedition, he discovered all this among the ruins of Qumran. In addition, the life of the Essene community, described in published manuscripts, was very reminiscent of the monastic way of life.
In itself, the hypothesis of Father Roland de Vaux is quite acceptable. However, around the work of scientists who deciphered the manuscripts, there were absurd rumors - the same type as newspaper “sensations” about how Christ was “really” born, or that “science has proven” that Christ visited the Himalayas... in a word, something that has nothing to do with real science.
In the first published manuscripts, a certain “Teacher of Righteousness” was repeatedly mentioned. As a result, a scheme emerged: monastery + Essenes + Teacher of Righteousness. This is where speculation about a certain “Essene Christ” was born, stories about which, they say, inspired the authors of the Gospel when telling about Jesus. This myth existed for decades and collapsed only after the publication in 1991 of all the scrolls and the revision of the conclusions made by the archaeological expeditions of 1951-1956.
Of the 900 texts found near Qumran, only 11 were in complete scrolls, and all the rest had to be reconstructed from about 25 thousand fragmentary scraps, many of which were no larger than a postage stamp. The work on restoring the texts was completed only by the beginning of the 60s. And only in the 90s of the last century it became possible to systematize the Qumran scrolls.
All of them date back to the 3rd century. BC - beginning of the 1st century according to R.H. and are written in Hebrew and Aramaic, a small number in ancient Greek. Only a third of them were written by members of various Jewish sects: Essenes, Sadducees, Zealots, etc. About a third are biblical scrolls, in which all the books of the Old Testament are presented in fragments, with the exception of the book of Esther. Their text as a whole does not differ from the now standard Masoretic, but still has a number of interesting discrepancies. About a quarter are non-biblical, non-sectarian texts. They are especially interesting because they allow us to analyze the religious beliefs of the Jews of Palestine during the Second Temple period (538 BC - 70 AD). The remaining texts are too poorly preserved and cannot be identified.
It has been established that most (perhaps all) of the scrolls were written outside of Qumran.
What did you dig up...
What does modern science say about Qumran? Firstly, the “monastic” hypothesis of Father R. de Vaux is called into question. Archaeologists have concluded that the “monastery” was most likely the well-fortified country estate of some noble Jew. They were engaged in agriculture and crafts. Many luxury items and money were found on the territory of Qumran. This is absolutely impossible for the settlement of the Essenes, who were a mendicant sect and shunned any connection with the world of material wealth.
Secondly, Roland de Vaux’s beautiful theory about the Qumran scriptorium, where books were copied, did not stand up to criticism. Only one inkwell was found in the ruins, while an examination of the handwritings showed that the texts were written by more than five hundred different people! Not even the largest medieval monastery could boast of so many scribes.
Today it is obvious that the Qumran manuscripts are not the result of the activities of monastic scribes, but a library. More precisely, library collections, most likely taken here from Jerusalem shortly before the siege of the city by the Romans in 68 AD. They were taken to different places in Judea and there they were placed in vessels for safekeeping, so that they could later return and be used again. It is even possible that the Jews evacuated the library, which was located directly in the Jerusalem Temple, and what was found at Qumran is a small part of it.
The Essenes were finally “evicted” from Qumran after the publication of all the manuscripts in 1991-92, when, following the hypothesis of the monastic scriptorium, the myth that the library belonged to the Essene community collapsed. About 900 texts were found at Qumran. All of them date back to the 3rd century. BC - beginning of the 1st century according to R.H. Of these, only a few dozen turned out to be “Essene”. In modern terms, the four sectarian scrolls, which were published first and misled everyone, turned out to be part of the “special storage” of a large library. Basically, the Dead Sea Scrolls are well-known biblical texts, in which almost all the books of the Old Testament are presented in fragments, as well as non-biblical non-sectarian manuscripts.
The Essenes are a religious sect that arose in Judea in the 2nd half of the 2nd century. BC and existed until the 1st century. according to R.H. According to ancient authors (Philo of Alexandria, Pliny the Elder, Josephus, St. Hippolytus of Rome), the Essenes lived throughout Palestine, including in cities, in rather isolated communities, which were characterized by common property, collective work and life. They condemned war, slavery and trade, rejected blood sacrifices, and had a special ritual of ritual ablutions. Some Essenes led a celibate lifestyle.
The Essenes have long been considered the forerunners of the Christians. However, the similarity is purely external. Their religious views and spiritual practices have little in common with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
What have you read
After the publication of the entire Qumran corpus of manuscripts, the answer to the question became obvious: do they refute the gospel history. Unfortunately for fans of sensations: no. Moreover, the Qumran scrolls fully confirm it. The “Teacher of Righteousness” turned out to be a character characteristic only of sectarian scrolls, while non-sectarian manuscripts are filled with prophecies about the coming Messiah, Whom the Jews of that era were eagerly awaiting and writing about. The last texts found at Qumran were created shortly before the Birth of Jesus Christ, so they very accurately reflect the then mood of that era. The Jewish people were waiting for the birthday of the Messiah, but we knew about this even before Qumran.
However, the Dead Sea Scrolls provide very clear evidence of why, having waited for Christ, the Jews rejected Him. Among the Qumran scrolls were found the manuscripts “Messianic Collection” and “Messiah of Heaven and Earth.” This is a collection of biblical prophecies and non-biblical texts that show exactly what kind of Messiah the Jews were waiting for. And here, again, Qumran did not give anything new. The Messiah from the non-biblical texts of Qumran is a political and military leader who will miraculously defeat all the enemies and enslavers of Israel and place the Jews at the head of the nations of the world.
It is interesting that among the manuscripts there is also a biblical book of the prophet Isaiah, who is called the Old Testament evangelist. It is precisely Isaiah that contains prophecies that the Messiah, being God, will become a man, being seedlessly born of a virgin, that He will take upon himself the sins of the world and voluntarily accept death for people. The authors of the Gospel constantly refer to these prophecies. But the idea of the Messiah's suffering was not popular among the Jews. None of the Qumran non-biblical manuscripts contain a description of the Savior's suffering for the sins of His people - only descriptions of His power, glory and power.
The Gospel Christ, Who came to free people from slavery to sin, Who said: “My kingdom is not of this world,” did not at all correspond to the ideal of the Messiah, Who was expected in Judea at the turn of the epochs. In this sense, Qumran does not add anything new to the conflict between Jesus and the religious teachers of Israel, which the Gospel speaks of and which ultimately ended with Calvary...
This is the result of almost fifty years of research into the Dead Sea manuscripts. They did not refute the Gospel or shake Christianity. Moreover, from the point of view of science, the Gospel has received additional weight; it has been tested once again, this time by Qumran. And even though some people with esoteric romanticism continue to talk about sensational discoveries at Qumran, supposedly revealing secret knowledge or hidden truth, from the point of view of modern science, all these statements are nothing more than outdated gossip that arose in the 60s of the last century. And there is no need to drag them into the new century.
The term "sect" was coined by Josephus in the 1st century AD. to describe the religious life of Palestine at that time and is more consistent with the modern concept of “religious movement.” In the modern world, a sect is thought of as something not only separated from the general direction, but also opposing itself to it (for example, the “White Brotherhood” in relation to the Orthodox or Catholic Church, etc.). In Palestine at the time of Christ there was no single general direction, but a number of religious movements that were not only comparable in number of members, but also mutually influenced each other.
(8 votes: 5.0 out of 5)- Brockhaus Biblical Encyclopedia
- prot. D. Yurevich
- priest D. Yurevich
- A.K. Sidorenko
Qumran manuscripts- a set of ancient religious manuscripts discovered in the Qumran area, compiled at the end and beginning (for some reasons, this time dates back to the period: 3rd century BC - 68 AD).
Where does the story of the discovery and publication of the Qumran manuscripts begin?
In 1947, two Bedouins, Omar and Muhammad Ed-Dib, herding cattle in the Judean Desert, near the Dead Sea, in the Wadi Qumran region, came across a cave, inside which, to their surprise, they discovered ancient leather scrolls wrapped in linen. According to the explanation of the Bedouins themselves, they came to this cave quite by accident, while searching for a missing goat; according to another version, which seems no less plausible, they purposefully looked for antiquities.
Unable to appreciate the found manuscripts, the Bedouins tried to cut them into leather straps for sandals, and only the fragility of the material, corroded by time, convinced them to abandon this idea and look for a more suitable use for the find. As a result, the manuscripts were offered to antiquarians and then became the property of scientists.
As the manuscripts were studied, their true historical value became clear. Soon, professional archaeologists appeared at the site where the first scrolls were discovered. As part of the systematic excavations of 1951-56, carried out in the Judean Desert, many written monuments were discovered. All of them together received the name “Dead Sea manuscripts”, after the place of discovery. Sometimes these monuments are conventionally classified as Qumran, but often only those that were found directly in the Qumran area are designated as such.
What are the Qumran manuscripts?
Among the Qumran finds, several well-preserved scrolls were identified. Mainly, the finds revealed a mass of scattered, sometimes tiny fragments, the number of which reached approximately 25,000. Through long and painstaking work, a number of fragments were identified by content and combined into more or less complete texts.
As the analysis shows, the overwhelming majority of the texts were compiled in Aramaic and Hebrew, and only a small part - in Greek. Among the monuments, scriptures of biblical, apocryphal and private religious content were discovered.
In general, the Dead Sea Scrolls cover almost all the Books of the Old Testament, with rare exceptions. It is interesting to note that, for example, the Book of the Prophet Isaiah has been preserved in almost its entirety, and a comparison of the ancient text of this Book with modern copies indicates their mutual correspondence.
According to one theory, the Qumran manuscripts originally belonged to the Essev community that lived in that area, known from ancient sources. It was an isolated sect, within which observance of the law and strict (Old Testament) practices were practiced. Among other things, the conclusions from the study and the peculiar scientific interpretation of the ancient ruins found there are in favor of the above-mentioned assumption. It is believed that the Essenes could have lived in this area until it was captured by Roman soldiers in 68.
Meanwhile, there is another point of view, according to which at least some of the documents found are not of sectarian, but of Jewish origin.
In the spring of 1947, an unusual discovery was made in the Dead Sea area, in the Ras Feshkha mountains. Two Bedouin boys, who went in search of a goat that had strayed from the herd, noticed a narrow cleft in the rock. The crevice led to a small grotto, or rather a winding corridor, the dimensions of which were approximately 8 m in length, 2 m in width and 2.5–3 m in height.
What the Arabs saw in the cave was completely unexpected: here, among the scattered shards and debris, stood eight tightly closed clay jugs. All of them turned out to be empty, except for one: it contained three leather scrolls wrapped in old linen. The inside of the scrolls was covered with some letters.
Both Bedouins were illiterate, but they immediately realized that in front of them were antiques that could be sold at a profit. They took leather scrolls and several jars with them to show them to antiquities dealers in Bethlehem.
Thus began the long journey of mysterious scrolls, which two years later were destined to become a real world sensation. Some of them went to the head of the Jacobite Christians, Mar Athanasios Joshua Samuel, Archbishop of Jerusalem. Realizing that in front of him were fragments of Old Testament texts written in Hebrew, he attempted to determine the age of these manuscripts. At his request, specialists from the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, J. Trever and W. Brownlie, conducted an examination of the scrolls. Photocopies of the manuscripts were sent to one of the leading experts in the field of Palestine studies, Professor William F. Albright. Albright expressed no doubt about the authenticity of the manuscripts and determined that the texts were written approximately one hundred years BC.
World science has never known anything like this before. The oldest Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament known at that time, the so-called Cairo Codex, dates back to the 9th century AD. e. So the discovery of Old Testament texts dating back a thousand years became a genuine scientific sensation of enormous significance.
Scientists from the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem have undertaken a new search for ancient manuscripts. In particular, they managed to find those scrolls that the Bedouins sold to various antiquities dealers. A special archaeological expedition was sent to the place where the manuscripts were found, which included specialists from the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, the French Biblical Archaeological School in Palestine and the Palestine Archaeological Museum. Having carefully examined the grotto, scientists collected fragments of clay vessels and about 500 fragments of leather scrolls with ancient writings. According to archaeologists, in total this cave once contained about 50 vessels and about 150 scrolls. Some of them were probably stolen by robbers in ancient times.
Near the first cave, over the next few years, 11 more grottoes were discovered, from which about 15 thousand fragments of Old Testament texts and several hundred manuscripts of secular content were extracted.
Of course, everyone was interested in the question: what kind of people left these mysterious scrolls in the caves? Who could have thought of living in this dead desert, among bare rocks devoid of any vegetation? Were there really any settlements here in ancient times? In the early 1950s, an archaeological expedition led by R. de Vaux, director of the Bible School of the Dominican Order in Jerusalem, and D. L. Harding, director of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, began exploring the Khirbet Qumran hill located near the mysterious grottoes. Arabic for "hill of rubble". Since the end of 1951, archaeologists have carried out systematic excavations here, which lasted six seasons. The remains of a whole complex of premises were excavated here with great care, dating back to 125 BC, judging by numerous finds of Syrian, Jewish and Roman coins. e. - 75 AD e. (a close date - from 167 BC to 233 AD - was also given by radiocarbon analysis of the scrolls). Of the 153 coins found during excavations, 72 belonged to the time preceding the reign of King Herod the Great (35-4 BC), one - to the era of his reign and 80 - to the 70-year period of time after his reign. This distribution of coins indicates that the settlement on the Khirbet Qumran hill was abandoned at the beginning of the reign of Herod the Great and repopulated after him. It is known from written sources that in the 7th year of Herod’s reign a strong earthquake occurred in Palestine. Most likely, it was the reason for the end of life in the settlement. Among the ruins of Khirbet Qumran, archaeologists discovered a large crack in the ground, stretching 15 m and damaging part of the buildings - this is probably a trace of that long-ago disaster. At the same time, the ground settled by almost half a meter and traces of this collapse are clearly visible today. It is also easy to notice that later the walls were corrected and restored. Many other traces - collapsed buildings, sometimes blackened by fire, "three-winged" Roman arrowheads - indicate that around 67–70, during the first Jewish uprising against Rome, the settlement on the Khirbet Qumran hill was taken and destroyed by Roman warriors. It was probably during this troubled time that the inhabitants of Qumran hid the sacred texts in a cave, carefully wrapping them in linen and placing them in clay vessels. They probably hoped to return for them someday, but none of them succeeded - they were killed, captured or scattered by the Romans.
But who exactly lived in this secluded settlement? Scientists are divided on this matter. Some researchers sided with the hypothesis that Qumran was the habitat of the Essenes, about whom Pliny the Elder wrote in his time:
“To the west of the Dead Sea, at some distance from the harmful coastal zone and beyond it, live the Essenes - a solitary and most amazing people of all, without women, without love, without money, living in a society of palm trees. However, they are renewed all the time, and new recruits come to them in large numbers - people tired of life or prompted by the vicissitudes of fate to choose their way of life. Thus, for thousands of centuries, no matter how incredible it is, this eternal people has existed, into which no one is born. Thus, thanks to them, the repentance that their life arouses in others bears fruit.”
It is impossible to understand who the Essenes were from Pliny’s message. Therefore, a heated debate developed around the hypothesis about the Essene origin of Qumran and the Qumran scrolls. According to some scientists, the Essenes were members of a certain religious sect who led a hermitic lifestyle. Other researchers suggest that this is simply some special community of Jews. The third group of researchers generally denies the existence of the Essenes.
First of all, the scrolls themselves could shed light on the mystery of the Qumran scrolls. To study the collected material - and its quantity turned out to be enormous - a special research group was created, which included specialists from different countries. The condition of the documents that fell into their hands was terrifying: apparently, in ancient times there was a tradition not to destroy old, worn-out manuscripts of sacred texts, but to hide them in secluded places. And over the past two thousand years, time has still thoroughly “worked” on them. And now before the scientists lay worn, partially torn, half-decayed leather scrolls, eaten away by insects and rodents. Before they could be read, they had to be strengthened and restored. One can imagine what colossal work is required in order to straighten each fragment, after moistening it with water vapor, then photograph it in infrared rays, then classify it according to the nature of the writing and the quality of the skin, and finally, try to match it with other fragments in order to obtain, if possible, connected text...
Meanwhile, when scientists were just beginning to unravel the Qumran scrolls, two “independent” researchers, a Frenchman and an Englishman, had already rushed to publish their own “sensational discovery”: they declared that the results of the study of the scrolls “represent a radical revolution in the history of Christianity.” As if from the Qumran texts it follows that the Essenes knew that a certain “teacher of righteousness” was crucified on the cross, his body was then taken down and buried, and the apostles expected the resurrection and return to earth of their “teacher”, that is, the image, and more precisely, the prototype of Jesus Christ supposedly already existed among the Essenes.
“The handwritten Dead Sea Scrolls are the greatest challenge to Christian teaching since the advent of Darwinism!” - the authors of the hypothesis pompously claim. This unfounded assertion, despite the heated protests and refutations of major scientists, was immediately picked up and disseminated by the world press. This topic was “covered” especially widely in the atheistic Soviet Union, where any stupidity was welcomed, as long as it was directed against Christianity.
There is no doubt that Jewish sects existed even before the advent of Christianity. But the champions of “the greatest challenge to Christian teaching” can rest in this case. The Qumran texts contain absolutely nothing that could call into question the basic tenets of Christianity. The Essene community, as is clear from the documents found at Qumran, was deeply committed to traditional Judaism. Some parallels with Christianity in Esseneism, however, are present, but they are explained by the common roots of both teachings, which originate in the Old Testament. “Thus, if Esseneism contains a number of elements that fertilized the soil on which Christianity was subsequently born, then it is no less obvious that Christianity represents something completely new, something ultimately explainable only by the person of Jesus Christ,” - One of the largest researchers of the Qumran problem, J. T. Milik, an employee of the Paris National Center for Scientific Research, writes about this.
The discoveries at Qumran are, of course, interesting not because of the nonsense that “anti-religious” propagandists piled up around them. The Qumran manuscripts are valuable primarily because they enriched with invaluable information not only the general history and history of religion, but also linguistics (along with the main Hebrew dialects, seven other languages are represented in them), paleography - the science of ancient manuscripts, the history of literature, the history of law (some texts from Qumran represent contracts for purchase and sale). This circumstance ensured world fame for the Qumran scrolls, far beyond the limits of purely scientific interest. Today it is known that the bulk of the Qumran finds are predominantly biblical texts and apocrypha, that is, anonymous works of religious content that are not considered divinely inspired and therefore not included in the Bible. Created during the 3rd–1st centuries. BC e., they are the most valuable documents of the era.
Mysterious discoveries made in the second half of the 50s of the 20th century in caves on the shores of the Dead Sea can easily be called the greatest sensation of the century. They are ancient manuscripts called Qumran scrolls. Found in Massada, the caves of Qumran, Khirbet Mirda, as well as in a number of other caves in the Judean Desert, these artifacts not only confirmed the truth of the Biblical texts, but also revealed many previously unknown events of the past.
Discovery of the Qumran Scrolls
In early 1947, two youth shepherds from the Taamire tribe were herding goats in a desert area of the West Bank called Wadi Qumran, on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea (hence these manuscripts are also known as dead sea scrolls) 20 kilometers east of Jerusalem. A hole in the rock caught their attention. Having entered the cave through it, they, to their amazement, found eight large clay vessels there. One of them contained seven scrolls, sewn from pieces of parchment and wrapped in pieces of linen cloth. The parchment was covered with parallel columns of text in a language other than Arabic. The find remained with the young men for many weeks until they reached Bethlehem, where they offered the scrolls to a Syrian merchant, who sent them to the Syrian Metropolitan Yeshua Samuel Athanasius at the Monastery of St. Mark in Jerusalem. At the end of 1947, Professor E. Sukenik, an archaeologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, managed to acquire the three remaining manuscripts from a dealer in Bethlehem. All seven scrolls (complete or slightly damaged) are now on display in the Temple of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
In 1951, systematic excavations and surveys began in Qumran and nearby caves under Jordanian control. The surveys, which revealed new manuscripts and numerous fragments, were carried out jointly by the Jordanian government's Department of Antiquities, the Palestine Archaeological Museum (Rockefeller Museum) and the French Archaeological Biblical School.
From 1951 to 1955, they organized four archaeological expeditions to the area a few kilometers south of the first cave, and even further south to Wadi Murabbaat. More than 200 caves were explored, and many showed traces of human presence here. The finds ranged in time from the Bronze Age to the Roman era, with the later period being precisely dated by the discovery of a large number of coins. 500 meters east of the Qumran caves, at a site called Khirbet Qumran, researchers discovered the remains of a stone building, probably a monastery, with a large number of halls, where there were many cisterns and pools, a mill, a pottery storeroom, a pottery kiln and a granary. In one of the interior rooms, table-like structures made of plaster with low benches and inkwells made of ceramics and bronze were discovered; Some of them still contain traces of ink. It was probably a scriptorium, that is, a writing room, where many of the found texts were created. To the east of the building was a cemetery containing more than 1,000 graves.
With the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967, almost all of these finds, concentrated in the Rockefeller Museum, became available to Israeli scientists. In the same year, I. Yadin managed to acquire (with funds allocated by the Wolfson Foundation) another of the famous large manuscripts - the so-called Temple Scroll. Outside Israel, in the Jordanian capital Amman, there is only one of the significant Dead Sea manuscripts - the Copper Scroll.
The Qumran scrolls are written mainly in Hebrew, partly in Aramaic; There are also fragments of Greek translations of Bible texts. Hebrew of non-biblical texts was the literary language of the Second Temple era, some fragments are written in post-biblical Hebrew. The main type used is the square Hebrew font, a direct predecessor of the modern printed font. The main writing material is parchment made from goatskin or sheepskin, and rarely papyrus. The ink used was mainly carbon. Paleographic data, external evidence, and radiocarbon dating allow us to date the bulk of these manuscripts to the period from 250 to 68 BC (the period of the Second Temple of Jerusalem). They are considered to be the remains of the library of the mysterious Qumran community.
According to their content, the Qumran scrolls can be divided into three groups: biblical texts (this is about 29% of the total number of manuscripts); apocrypha and pseudepigrapha; other literature of the Qumran community. Between 1947 and 1956, more than 190 biblical scrolls were discovered in eleven Qumran caves. Basically these are small fragments of the books of the Old Testament (all except the Books of Esther and Nehemiah). One complete text of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah was also found.
The founding of the Qumran settlement appears to date back to the Maccabean era, possibly to the time of King John Hyrcanus of Judea, as the earliest coins date back to his reign of 135-104 BC.
From the first years of work on the found texts, the prevailing opinion in scientific circles was that the Qumranites’ own works (“Charter of the Community”, “War Scroll”, “Commentaries”, etc.) were written in the 2nd-1st centuries BC. Only a small group of scholars chose to date the scrolls to a later time.
Of the hypotheses in which the manuscripts date back to the 1st century AD, the version of the Australian orientalist Barbara Thiering caused the greatest resonance - if not in the scientific community, then at least in the media. The main person appearing in the scrolls is the leader of the community, called the Righteous Mentor, or Teacher of Righteousness. Identifying him with historical figures of the 2nd-1st centuries BC encountered great difficulties. At the same time, many Qumran scholars point out that there are many similarities between the teachings of this man, as reflected in the manuscripts, and the preaching of John the Baptist. Tiering put an equal sign between these people. Moreover, she was not the first who decided to do this. As early as 1949, the Austrian scholar Robert Eisler, known for his study of the Slavic translation of The Jewish War, pointed out that the Righteous Master was John the Baptist.
Dead Sea Scrolls
It is interesting to note that, apparently, not all dead sea scrolls fell into the hands of scientists. In 2006, Professor Hanan Eshel presented to the scientific community a hitherto unknown Qumran scroll containing fragments of the Book of Leviticus. Unfortunately, this scroll was not discovered during new archaeological excavations, but was accidentally seized by the police from an Arab smuggler: neither he nor the police suspected the true value of the find until Eshel, who was invited to the examination, established its origin. This incident once again confirmed that a significant part of the Dead Sea Scrolls may be in the hands of thieves and antiquities dealers, gradually falling into disrepair.
Of particular interest is the connection between the Qumran Scrolls and early Christianity. It turned out that the Dead Sea Scrolls, created several decades before the birth of Christ, contain many Christian ideas, for example, about an imminent change in the course of history. The Qumran community itself, which arose several centuries before this event, was similar to a monastery in the Christian sense of the word: strict rules, shared meals, obedience to the abbot (called the Righteous Mentor).
Almost all Qumran scholars agree that the scrolls were hidden in the caves during the war with the Romans - most likely in 68 AD, shortly before Qumran was captured by the latter. It is obvious that the comments were created by witnesses to the events described in them.
The significance of the found scrolls and their fragments is extremely great. The found fragments almost completely correspond to the texts of the Bible, and thus confirm the authenticity of later Jewish texts. Also important are manuscripts of non-biblical content, reflecting a previously little-known aspect of Jewish thinking of that era. They talk about people who lived and were buried at Qumran, who called themselves the Community of the Covenant. The order of life of the community is fixed in its Charter. The ideas expressed in it are similar to those attributed to the Jewish sect of the Essenes, who, according to Pliny, lived on the western shore of the Dead Sea, where Qumran is located. The Temple Scroll, discovered in 1967, contains detailed instructions for the construction of a large temple and touches on topics such as ritual impurity and purification. The text is often given as being spoken in the first person by God himself.
Before the Qumran finds, analysis of the biblical text was based on medieval manuscripts. The Qumran scrolls have significantly expanded our knowledge of the text of the Old Testament. Previously unknown readings help to better understand many of its details. Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the reliability of ancient translations has been confirmed, primarily the Septuagint - the Greek translation of the Old Testament, made back in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC in the Egyptian city of Alexandria.
Some commentators say there is historical continuity between the teachings of the Essenes and the ideas of early Christianity. In addition to ideological similarities, a certain chronological and geographical coincidence of the two groups is emphasized. Thus, the formation of the Christian church is associated with the revival of the Qumran monastery between 4 BC and 68 AD. Moreover, these scholars point out that when the Word of God was revealed to John the Baptist, he withdrew into the Judean Desert near the mouth of the Jordan River. There he baptized Jesus Christ. Thus, the discovery and study of the Qumran scrolls helped scientists get closer to the circumstances of writing the Bible - the main book for millions of people.