The Major Dead Sea Scrolls: Summaries

About 900 to 1,000 manuscripts were recovered from eleven caves near Qumran between 1947 and 1956. Roughly a quarter are biblical; the rest are previously unknown works. Together they describe a movement, usually identified with the Essenes, that regarded itself as the true remnant of Israel, followed a stricter interpretation of the law than the Jerusalem establishment, kept a 364-day solar calendar, rejected the current temple administration, and expected an imminent final war and purification.

A NOTE ON WHY THE TEXTS THEMSELVES ARE NOT PRINTED HERE. Every complete English translation of the non-biblical scrolls was made in the twentieth or twenty-first century and is under active copyright: Vermes, Wise-Abegg-Cook, Garcia Martinez-Tigchelaar, and the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert volumes. Unlike the King James Version, the World English Bible, or the Charles translations used elsewhere in this volume, none of them can be reproduced. What follows is descriptive summary only. For the texts, the standard one-volume options are Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, and Wise, Abegg and Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation. Photographs and transcriptions of many scrolls are freely viewable through the Israel Antiquities Authority's Leon Levy Digital Library and the Israel Museum's Digital Dead Sea Scrolls.

COMMUNITY RULE (1QS, Serekh ha-Yahad). The central rule book. Covers admission through a multi- year probation, the annual covenant renewal ceremony, the ranked structure of the community, common property, pure meals, and a detailed penal code with penalties for lying about property, interrupting, sleeping in session, and spitting in the assembly. Its theological core is the Treatise of the Two Spirits: God created two spirits, of light and darkness, that struggle within every person until the appointed end.

DAMASCUS DOCUMENT (CD, plus Qumran copies). Known first from two medieval copies found in the Cairo Genizah in 1896, half a century before the caves. Opens with a historical review of a remnant that God raised up after the exile and a Teacher of Righteousness sent to guide it, and warns against a figure called the Scoffer or the Man of the Lie. Its legal half covers Sabbath restrictions, oaths, purity, marriage, and dealings with outsiders. It legislates for members living in towns with wives and children, so it describes a broader movement than the celibate- looking community of 1QS.

WAR SCROLL (1QM). A manual for the final forty-year war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, the latter led by the Kittim, most likely the Romans. Specifies trumpet calls, banner inscriptions, troop formations, cavalry, the ages of combatants, priestly conduct, and the prayers to be recited. The battle swings back and forth in seven lots until God intervenes directly.

THANKSGIVING HYMNS (Hodayot, 1QH). Some twenty-five to thirty poems in the first person, each typically opening with thanks to God. Recurring themes: human nothingness and impurity, election by grace, revelation of hidden mysteries, betrayal by former friends, and rescue from enemies. A subset, the so-called Teacher Hymns, are often read as the voice of the Teacher of Righteousness himself.

PESHARIM (continuous commentaries). Verse-by-verse commentaries on prophetic books, most fully preserved for Habakkuk, Nahum, and Psalms. Each quotes a lemma and then decodes it as a prediction of the community's own recent history, its Teacher, and its opponents: the Wicked Priest, the Man of the Lie, and the Kittim. The Nahum pesher is unusual in naming Demetrius and Antiochus outright and in describing men hanged alive. These are the earliest known continuous biblical commentaries.

TEMPLE SCROLL (11QT). At over eight meters, the longest scroll found. Rewrites the law of Deuteronomy and the priestly legislation as first-person divine speech, removing the mediating voice of Moses. Contains a vast idealized temple plan with three concentric courts, a festival calendar with additional first-fruits festivals, purity rules for the city, and a law of the king restricting his army, wives, and wealth.

MIQSAT MA'ASE HA-TORAH (4QMMT). A letter-like text listing roughly twenty points of legal disagreement over sacrifice, purity, and marriage, addressed to a leader in terms that are firm but not hostile. Frequently read as an early document from the separation itself.

OTHER MATERIAL. The Genesis Apocryphon, an Aramaic expansion of Genesis; the Copper Scroll, an inventory of buried treasure incised on metal; the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, a liturgical cycle of angelic worship; 4QInstruction, a long wisdom text; the New Jerusalem text; calendrical rosters of priestly courses; horoscopes; and Aramaic works related to Enoch, Levi, and Daniel.