In the Genesis Apocryphon, Lamech worries that his son is illegitimate and accordingly confronts his wife about her fidelity. Bitenosh answers these accusations with a surprising response: she asks her husband to recall the sexual pleasure that she experienced during their intercourse. Scholars have clarified this rhetorical strategy by connecting the episode to Greco-Roman theories of embryogenesis

Although the Visions of Levi (so-called Aramaic Levi Document) is a Jewish priestly composition written in the second or third century BCE, the largest part of its text comes from the trove of Jewish medieval manuscripts found in the Genizah of the Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo. Among the Genizah scrolls housed at the University of Manchester Library, Gideon Bohak found a new fragment (P 1185) of the

Since the 1960s, most scholars have distinguished between two types of compositions in the Hodayot, those that represent the persona of the Teacher of Righteousness and those that represent the spiritual experience of the Community in general. This theory, however, was developed before scholars had access to a reliable reconstruction of 1QHa or to the fragmentary manuscripts of the Hodayot from Cave

In the course of the last eighteen years more than 75 new “Dead Sea Scrolls” fragments have surfaced on the antiquities market. These are commonly referred to as post-2002 Dead Sea Scrolls-like fragments. A growing number of scholars regard a substantial part of them as forgeries. In this article, we will discuss four more dubious fragments, but this time from the 20th Century—or at least from pre-2002

Two of the unidentified Cave 4 fragments preserving text of the Damascus Document which were mistakenly associated with 4Q269 should instead be assigned to 6Q15, since they join to 6Q15 fragment 1. This is the first case of a join between fragments claimed to have come from different caves. Also PAM 41.734 does not clearly distinguish between all Cave 4 and Cave 6 fragments.

In this article an overview is given of the verbal valence patterns of the verb ‮נתן‬‎ in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Four patterns are distinguished for this verb: 1. ‮נתן‬‎ + OBJECT to produce; 2. + ‮נתן‬‎ OBJECT + RECIPIENT to give to; 3. ‮נתן‬‎ + OBJECT + LOCATION to place; 4. ‮נתן‬‎ + OBJECT + 2ND OBJECT to make into. All occurrences of the verb in the DSS corpus used, consisting of 1QHa, 1QS, 1QM,

The most authentic portrait of Second Temple Hebrew is afforded by the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially by those texts actually composed in Hellenistic and Roman times. On salient linguistic points Dead Sea Scrolls Hebrew agrees with the vocalization of the Tiberian reading tradition against the testimony of the written, i.e., consonantal, tradition of Masoretic Classical Biblical Hebrew material. This

A negative polarity item (NPI) is a word or expression that occurs grammatically in negative clauses and a variety of other types of clauses such as interrogatives and conditionals, but not in ordinary affirmative sentences. Examples from classical Biblical Hebrew include the pronoun ‮מאומה‬‎ “anything” and the semantically-bleached noun ‮דבר‬‎ “a thing,” which has been produced from the ordinary noun

The Hebrew quantifier ‮כל‬‎ is used both as a universal quantifier (equivalent to English all) and as a distributive quantifier (equivalent to English each, every). In Qumran Hebrew, as in Biblical Hebrew, the quantifier ‮כל‬‎ occurs in four syntactic constructions depending upon the type of noun phrase that follows it in order to indicate nuances of individuation and specificity in addition to universal

Despite 4QMMT having been informally called a “Halakhic Letter” since its first publication, more recently some scholars have expressed skepticism as to the original genre of this text. This article aims to provide empirical and theoretical support for what one might call the orthodox position: that this text was in fact a letter originally. By means of a detailed linguistic comparison between 4QMMT

Certain words in the prayer of Sir 36:1–22 that appear to be secondary exhibit nationalistic and eschatological tones that are otherwise alien to the book of Ben Sira. These elements likely reflect the interpretation and reading of the text in the course of its transmission in the first millennium CE. In its present form, therefore, the nationalistic/eschatological themes are accented in a way that

This essay presents the results of an extended study of verbal argument structure in the War Scroll (1QM). I first establish a method based in generative linguistic theory. I then illustrate this method with a discussion of the argument structure of Qal ‮יצא‬‎ in 1QM and other Dead Sea Scrolls. Following this case study, I present the data from 1QM on verb argument structure—specifically, instances

This paper will revisit the frequent use of the periphrastic construction of a form of the verb ‮היה‬‎ + participle in the Temple Scroll (TS). As others have noted, TS preserves by far the largest number of cases of this construction in the Qumran corpus, and these cases overwhelmingly involve the yiqṭol of ‮היה‬‎. The use of the construction has also been given compositional weight, serving as a source-critical

This paper evaluates the attitudes toward the contemporary Jerusalem priesthood and cult on evidence in the Visions of Amram. To the extent that this issue has been treated, scholars have generally argued that the Visions of Amram originated among groups that were hostile to the Aaronid priesthood. Such treatments, however, have left some of the most germane fragments unexamined, several of which deal

The “Four Empires” scheme appears in literature from around the ancient Near East, as well as in the biblical book of Daniel. Daniel’s scheme was adopted in subsequent Jewish literature as a basic division of world history. In addition, the book of Daniel appears to have had a prominent place in the Qumran library. Scholars have identified, or suggested, the existence of the “Four Empires” scheme in

The short sapiential poem known as 4QWiles of the Wicked Woman (4Q184) describes the body of an unnamed female who ensnares the righteous into sin and ultimately death. This poetic description of a body has sometimes been compared to the Waṣf, a type of poem which provides a thick description of the body, listing and describing body parts in a movement descending from head to toe. In this essay, I

This article presents and discusses the results of an online survey undertaken in 2018, which targeted scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls and associated research fields. Respondents were asked questions on the state of knowledge in the field regarding provenance issues and related ethics and policies. The goal of the survey was to establish the levels of awareness within Qumran and related studies concerning

Drawing on insights from the field of Book History, the article draws out connections between the material aspects of the Qumran corpus on the one hand and textual pluriformity on the other, paying particular attention to the Serekh ha-Yaḥad. The article suggests that the large-scale pluriformity exhibited by texts such as the Serekh is best understood in light of certain material features particular

Omission is a common strategy in ancient texts that rework biblical narratives and the author of the Book of Jubilees frequently employs the strategy. Particularly striking is the omission of chronological material, for the dating of events is a primary feature of Jubilees. This essay examines two cases in which Jubilees omits biblical chronological data. One involves the age of Noah; the other the

The Babatha archive contains thirty-five legal papyri dating from 94 to 132 CE. They belonged to a Judean woman Babatha, from Maoza on the south-eastern shore of the Dead Sea, where date cultivation was a valuable cash crop. The Salome Komaise archive, also concerning a family of date farmers until the kingdom became the Roman province of Arabia in 106. These papyri provide a rich array of evidence

A consideration of both the palaeographic and material features of a scroll provides scholars the opportunity to investigate the scribal culture in which a particular manuscript emerged. This article examines the papyrus opisthograph from Qumran containing 4QpapHodayot-like Text B, 4Q433a, and 4QpapSerekh ha-Yahad(a), 4Q255, on either side. There has been scholarly disagreement about this opisthograph

While the Damascus Document, like other writings found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, has been mined for historical information, with which to reconstruct the history of the Yaḥad, including the process and conditions of its formation and development over time, the present study is interested in discerning the text’s own understanding of the place in history occupied by its community of auditors and learners

This study reveals a mosaic of artful rearrangement, rewriting, and creative interpretation of prophetic texts within the Admonitions of the Damascus Document. Many explicit quotations from scriptures and implicit allusions are interwoven and interpreted in the Admonitions through various methods, including pesher interpretation. The textual backdrop of the Admonitions helps us to determine the borders

This note suggests a new reading and reconstruction of the oft-cited 11QMelchizedek 2:6–8. This passage is a part of the “pesher for the last days” expounding on Lev 25:13 and Deut 15:2. Its vision of future liberation from spiritual captivity to Belial relies on the language and conceptual framework of the Jubilee Year. Moreover, the pesher refers to a temporal scheme of ten Jubilees. The new reading

This essay builds on the monumental material reconstruction of the Cave 1 hodayot scroll (1QHa) first proposed by Hartmut Stegemann and brought to completion by Eileen Schuller in the critical edition available in DJD 40, which is, and will remain, an invaluable scholarly resource. At the same time, the proliferation of scholarly editions of the Cave 1 hodayot projects to modern readers an illusory

Although it has long been acknowledged that 1QS, 1QSa, and 1QSb are part of the same manuscript, most scholars follow J.T. Milik’s interpretation of the columns of 1QSa and 1QSb as appendices to 1QS. This article examines the circumstances out of which this “appendix hypothesis” emerged, highlights its weaknesses, and takes up Philip Alexander and Geza Vermes’s call to consider the sections of the

1QS 2 recounts a ritual in which the community convenes and shares in the annual recitation of blessings and curses for the purpose of reaffirming its communal, ritual boundaries as it is beset on all sides by darkness and transgressive ways. This group needs purifying through the ejection of the morally impure, those whose actions are judged to be ‘out of place.’ Conversely, in 4QBerakhot, the entirety

That a single scribe copied 1QS, 1QSa, 1QSb, 4Q53 (4QSamc), 4Q175 is commonly recognized. However, what has not been emphasized previously is that certain orthographic / phonological idiosyncrasies appear prominently, if not exclusively, in only one of these texts, 1QS, even though these idiosyncrasies would seem to be involuntary and, for this reason, should appear evenly distributed throughout the

This contribution offers a critical evaluation of John Screnock’s hypothesis that the basic word order in 1QM is subject-verb, with inversion triggered by fronting of non-subject elements or by the use of intransitive verbs. After a detailed examination of the evidence, the opposite conclusion is reached. Basic word order is verb-subject, with inversion to subject-verb order with pragmatically marked

This article is focussed on the question how to interpret the phrase בני שית in 4Q417 1 i 15. The analysis is based on a novel reconstruction of the preceding word, which is only poorly preserved. The common reconstructions (namely ‪עולות‬, עו(ו)נות or עלילות) have a negative meaning. Hence, the בני שית are understood as a group that will be punished by God due to their sins. However, it is also possible

This paper investigates the psychological mechanisms that underpin Qumran sectarian dualism and its construction of in-group/out-group boundaries. Specifically, evidence from experimental and developmental psychology and cognitive anthropology is used to argue that Serek ha-Yaḥad and the Two Spirits Treatise (1QS 3:13–4:26) reflect a deeply-engrained psychological essentialism wherein non-group members

In this article, I examine descriptions of community meetings in Rule Texts to outline the content, authority, and functions of membership’s oral performance in the sectarian movement associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls. In particular, I explore portrayals of oral performance during local chapter meetings (1QS 6:1b–7a), nightly study sessions (1QS 6:7b–8a), general membership meetings (1QS 6:8b–13a;

The question of how to classify the different texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls is a central issue in scholarship. There is little agreement or even little reflection, however, on the methodology with which these classifications should be made.This article argues that recent developments in computational stylometry address these methodological issues and that the approach therefore constitutes a necessary

The people who produced and used the scrolls offer us a particularly fascinating example of the extent to which we might call the people/communities of the scrolls “Hellenistic Jews.” The default concept of antiquity that scholars use, the way the term “sectarian” gets employed, and the geography of the Hellenistic world all separate the yaḥad from the larger Hellenistic world. Yet, the scrolls compare

Soon after the discovery of 1QS, comparisons with private associations from the Hellenistic and Roman world were suggested. There are clearly some parallels in internal organization. However, scholars using this comparison to explain features of the yaḥad have rarely taken the environment that made associations in the Hellenistic world possible into account. By way of a comparison of attitudes towards

This introduction aims at situating the contributions of the Thematic Issue into wider debates on Hellenism and Hellenisation and changes taking place in scholarship. Essentialist notions of Hellenism are strongly rejected, but how then to study the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Qumran site during the Hellenistic period? Each contextualisation depends on the (comparative) material selected, and themes here

There is a rising scholarly consensus that consulting the divine will did not altogether cease in the Second Temple period. Rather, it took different forms, and one was consulting the divine will via existing texts. Meanwhile, the identity of such interpreters remains unclear. This paper explores the possible identities of interpreters by comparing the figures that interpret Jewish oracles with the

This article focuses on reading culture as an aspect of the Dead Sea Scrolls textual community in its ancient Mediterranean context. On the basis of comparative evidence, the article approaches reading in ancient Judaism as a multi-dimensional and deeply social activity by taking reading aloud, writing, and memorizing as intertwined practices occurring in group reading events. The evidence discussed

The time when Qumran was studied in splendid isolation is long gone, but much work remains to be done when it comes to situating the site in its wider context. In this paper, Qumran is contextualized, on the one hand, within the larger ecological history of the Mediterranean and, on the other, within the Mediterranean world of classical antiquity. Questions regarding the functions of the Qumran settlement

This article examines the instruction regarding the wood offering and the festival of new oil in fragment 23 of 4QReworked Pentateuch C (4Q365), and in particular its setting at a future temple (בית) in the land. It argues that while 4Q365 23 represents a departure from earlier versions of Leviticus, it should be considered nonetheless as part of an authoritative version of this book. In introducing

Over 30 fragments purportedly from the Dead Sea Scrolls belonging to two private collections were published for the first time in Summer 2016. Virtually all of these fragments in The Schoyen Collection and Museum of the Bible are non-provenanced apart from verbal guarantees made by their sellers. An unusual feature of these fragments is that almost all of them correspond to texts from the Hebrew Bible

In 2002 new “Dead Sea Scrolls” fragments began to appear on the antiquities market, most of them through the Kando family. In this article we will present evidence that nine of these Dead Sea Scrolls-like fragments are modern forgeries.

The Damascus Document ( CD 9:2–8) and the Serekh (1QS 5:24–6:1) amplify Leviticus 19:17–18 and carefully spell out the legal procedure for open reproof. In doing so, however, they both omit the key phrase of Leviticus 19:18b (ואהבת לרעך כמוך). This short note suggests that the omission is deliberate and results from a specific sectarian reading of Leviticus 19:17–18. The sectarians are construing this

This article briefly discusses the Dead Sea Scrolls-like fragments that have surfaced in the twenty-first century and presents a full list of these fragments as known to the author.

The present study presents and discusses the tefillin (phylactery) remains found in Cave 34 at Naḥal Ṣeʾelim within the framework of Yohanan Aharoni’s first 1960 expedition to the Judean Desert. Presented here are a leather tefillin case, never before reported upon, and two inscribed tefillin slips (34ṢePhyl A and 34ṢePhyl B) which have until now received only preliminary treatment. Very few close

This article argues that, in 1QHa 11:20–27; 20:27–39 and Sir 33:7–15, the use of allusions to humanity’s creation from dust in Genesis 2–3 and to its formation from clay in Isa 29:16; 45:9; Jer 18:4, 6 represents a conscious exegetical process in which the Genesis and prophetic traditions were read and used in light of one another. Although originating within different social environments—one sectarian

This article argues that 1QpHab 2:5–10 and 1QpHab 9:3–7 are later additions to Pesher Habakkuk. As these are the only passages in Pesher Habakkuk which explicitly refer to “the latter days,” I propose that these additions constitute an explicitly eschatological literary layer, which was presumably added to Pesher Habakkuk in the Herodian era. This literary development of Pesher Habakkuk demonstrates

This article reassesses the evidence for determining the form of 4Q369 “Prayer of Enosh” and, in light of this assessment, considers how the composition could function rhetorically. Based on textual and comparative literary evidence, the article proposes that the extant text is structured by a genealogical framework (1 i 9–10) in which historically-oriented prayers are attributed to specific patriarchal

The full publication of 4Q208 and 4Q209 in 2000 has enabled a renaissance of research on the Enochic Astronomical Book, illumining its deep connections with Babylonian scholasticism and spurring debate about the precise channels by which such “scientific” knowledge came to reach Jewish scribes. This article asks whether attention to Aramaic manuscripts related to the Astronomical Book might also reveal

This article proposes that parallel traditions among the Dead Sea Scrolls offer a comparative data-set by which to reassess “the Synoptic problem” in the New Testament gospels. The Dead Sea materials, not only shared traditions but also differences between them, whether in the manuscripts of the same work or overlapping portions of different works, show similarities to the ways in which the Gospels

Second Temple Judaism witnessed the rise of a new approach to sin impurity. While in the Hebrew Bible sin impurity was associated with improper actions, and there was no formula to dissipate it, this form of impurity underwent a process of reification during the Second Temple period and was consequently identified with specific objects and people, such as idols, gentiles and “outsiders” in general

This article places the contributions of the thematic volume in the larger research context where the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Christian source texts have been juxtaposed and compared with each other. Whereas earlier scholarship was keen on identifying direct links and dependencies or, alternatively, underlining dissimilarities between the Scrolls’ Judaean priestly movement and the Galilean non-elite

Narratives about the Garden of Eden from Genesis 2–3 were popular among both early Jewish and Christian interpreters. More than other compositions found at Qumran, 4QInstruction gives sustained attention to these chapters of Genesis when offering instruction. Observations about how creation traditions are used in 4QInstruction provides the opportunity to assess the intense debates about the use of

The article discerns in both Qumranic sources and in those coming from the nascent Jesus movement responses to their shared experience of disappointment vis-a-vis postponement of the expected redemption. The discussion, focusing on 1QpHab and a number of New Testament epistles, highlights the usage in this context of the language of God’s mystery, standing for reinterpretation of redemption-centered

In order to understand Jesus’s violent outburst in the temple, scholars frequently turn to Jewish texts from the late Second Temple Period, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. The same texts are used to support contrasting explanations of the event. This paper evaluates these interpretations and offers an analysis of the key texts on the Jerusalem temple in the Scrolls. It concludes that the negative attitudes

This article deals with the puzzling fragment 24 in scroll 4Q541 for which many explanations have been proposed. A fresh examination of the text itself and a comparison to fragment 2ii+3+4i in the same scroll suggests that the topic of the fragment is a dove which seeks asylum from birds of prey. This examination also contributes to understanding some linguistic issues. In light of the semantic field

To paraphrase Victor Shklovsky, the idea that 4QInstruction presents a combination of distinct apocalyptic and sapiential components has survived the downfall of the theory that supports it. Scholars increasingly describe wisdom and apocalypticism as coexistent, mutually influencing currents of thought within a broader Hellenistic environment. Nevertheless, characterizations of their co-presence in

Two cryptic A fragments of Serekh haEdah from cave 4 are hereby physically joined, and a third one constitutes a distant join. The composite text parallels 1QSa 1: 8–12 albeit with significant variants. The join is proven here in terms of the continuity of papyrus fibers and partial letters, as well as by the coherent composite text. The join requires separating a fragment that had been assembled by

This paper discusses the rhetorical functions of quotative frames in the dialogue between Tobiah and Edna (4Q197 4 iii 3–8, Tob 7:1–5) and of Hebrew loan words in the Aramaic Tobit fragments and suggests a new explanation for the puzzling קשיטא in 4Q197 4 iii 2 (Tob 7:1), which might be a mistranslation of a Hebrew original.

This article examines the concept of the body within a wide range of Qumran literature. In a comparison with the biblical tradition, which does not evince a consistent and systematic idea of the body, this article demonstrates that the sectarians developed their own somatic model. The sectarian model, as revealed through a close reading of such texts as Hodayot, 1QS, 1QSa, CD and 1QM, is one that repeatedly