by Geza Vermes
Among the texts previously known, all the books of the Hebrew Scriptures are extant at least in fragments save Esther, the absence of which may be purely accidental.28 Even Daniel, the most recent work to enter the Palestinian canon in the mid-second century BCE, is attested to by eight manuscripts.29 There are also remains of Aramaic and Greek scriptural translations.
Furthermore, the caves have yielded some of the Apocrypha, i.e. religious works missing from the Hebrew Scriptures but included in the Septuagint, the Bible of Greek-speaking Jews. Caves 4 and 11 revealed the Book of Tobit in Aramaic and in Hebrew, Psalm cli, described in the Greek version as a ‘supernumerary’ psalm, and the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira or Ecclesiasticus in Hebrew. Part of the latter, chapters xxxixxliv, has also survived at Masada, and hence cannot be later than 73/4 CE, the date when the stronghold was captured by the Romans, and two medieval manuscripts, discovered in the storeroom (genizah) of a synagogue in Cairo in 1896, have preserved about two thirds of the Greek version.
A third category of religious books, the Pseudepigrapha, though very popular in some Jewish circles, failed to attain canonical rank either in Palestine or in the Diaspora. Some of them, previously known in Greek, Latin or Syriac translations, have turned up in their original Hebrew (e.g. the Book of Jubilees) or Aramaic (e.g. the Book of Enoch). A good many further compositions pertaining to this class have also come to light, such as fictional accounts relating among others to Joseph, Amram, Moses, Joshua or Jeremiah, as well as apocryphal psalms, five of which have survived also in Syriac translation, others being revealed for the first time at Qumran.
The sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls, thought to have been composed or revised by the Qumran Community, constitute, with one exception,30 a complete novelty. This literature comprises rule books, Bible interpretation of various kinds, religious poetry, Wisdom compositions in prose and in verse, sectarian calendars and liturgical texts, one of them purporting to echo the angelic worship in the heavenly temple. To these are to be added several ‘horoscopes’ or, more precisely, documents of astrological physiognomy, a literary genre based on the belief that the temper, physical features and fate of an individual depend on the configuration of the heavens at the time of the person’s birth, and a text (brontologion) predicting prodigies if thunder is heard on certain days, with the moon passing through given signs of the Zodiac. Finally, the Copper Scroll alludes in cryptic language to sixty-four caches of precious metals and scrolls, including another copy of this same inventory written without riddles.
After a first few gaffes committed before the excavation of the site, the palaeographical, archaeological and literary-historical study of the evidence produced a general consensus among scholars concerning (a) the age, (b) the provenance and (c) the significance of the discoveries. Holders of fringe opinions have recently tended to explain this consensus as tyrannically imposed from above by Roland de Vaux and his henchmen. The truth, however, is that the opinio communis has resulted from a natural evolutionary process - from arguments which others found persuasive even when advanced by single individuals often unconnected with the international team - and not from an almighty establishment forcing an official view down the throats of weaklings.
(a) The Dating of the Manuscripts
Palaeography was the first method employed to establish the age of the texts. Despite the paucity of comparative material, experts independently arrived at dates ranging between the second century BCE and the first century CE. By the 1960s, in addition to the Qumran texts, they could make use also of manuscripts from Masada (first century CE), as well as from the Murabba‘at and other Judaean desert caves yielding first- and second-century CE Jewish writings. A rather too rigid, but useful, comprehensive system was quickly devised by F. M. Cross.31 While admittedly controversial if unsupported either by actual dates in the manuscripts themselves (a phenomenon, alas, unknown at Qumran) or by external criteria, these palaeographical conclusions were to receive a twofold boost from archaeology and radiocarbon dating. The archaeological thesis, based inter alia on the study of pottery and coins, was formulated by R. de Vaux (cf. note 5 on p. 4). He assigned the occupation of Qumran to the period between the second half of the second century BCE and the first war between Jews and Romans (66-70 CE).
Radiocarbon tests were first applied to the cloth wrapping of one of the scrolls as early as 1951. The date suggested was 33 CE, but one had to reckon with a 10 per cent margin of error each way.32 However, with the improved techniques of the 1990s, eight Qumran manuscripts were subjected to Accelerator Mass Spectrometry or AM S. Six of them were found to be definitely pre-Christian, and only two straddled over the first century BCE/first century CE dividing line.33 Most importantly, with a single exception - the Testament of Qahat being shown to be about 300 years earlier than expected - the radiocarbon dates confirm in substance those proposed by the palaeographers. Unfortunately, the manuscripts tested in 1990 did not include historically sensitive texts. But in 1994 the IAA invited the Arizona AMS Laboratory at the University of Arizona, Tucson to analyse eighteen texts and two linen fragments. Thirteen of the manuscripts came definitely from Qumran and one of these had already been carbon-dated in Zurich. Three texts were ‘date-bearing’. The general conclusion is as follows: ‘Measurements on samples of known ages are in good agreement with those known ages. Ages determined from 14C measurements on the remainder of the Dead Sea Scroll samples are in reasonable agreement with paleographic estimates of such ages, in the case where those estimates are available.’34 On the whole, the results of this second radiocarbon analysis are somewhat disappointing in that, while the dates arrived at accommodate the palaeographic proposals, the margin of error is considerably greater than that appearing in the 1990 Zurich tests. Nevertheless, Arizona has scored on one highly significant point: the Habakkuk Commentary, chief source of the history of the Qumran sect, is definitely put in the pre-Christian era between 120 and 5 BCE. In consequence, fringe scholars who see in this writing allusions to events described in the New Testament will find they have a problem on their hands. In sum, the general scholarly view today places the Qumran Scrolls roughly between 200 BCE and 70 CE, with a small portion of the texts possibly stretching back to the third century BCE, and the bulk of the extant material dating to the first century BCE, i.e. late Hasmonaean or early Herodian in the jargon of the palaeographers.
(b) The Provenance of the Manuscripts
With negligible exceptions, scholarly opinion recognized already in the 1950s that the Scrolls found in the caves and the nearby ruined settlement were related. To take the obvious example, Cave 4 with its 575 (or perhaps 555) documents lies literally within a stone’s throw from the buildings. At the same time, the Essene identity of the ancient inhabitants of Qumran gained general acceptance. Today the Essene theory is questioned by some, but usually for unsound reasons. They adopt a simplistic attitude in comparing the two sets of evidence, namely the classical sources (Philo, Josephus and Pliny the Elder) and Qumran, and any disagreement or contradiction between them is hailed as final proof against the Essene thesis. Yet, if its intricacies are handled with sophistication, it is still the best hypothesis today.35 Indeed, it accounts best for such striking peculiarities as common ownership of property and the lack of reference to women in the Community Rule, the probable coexistence of celibate and married sectaries (in accordance with Flavius Josephus’ account of two kinds of Essenes), and the remarkable coincidence between the geographical setting of Qumran and Pliny the Elder’s description of an Essene establishment near the Dead Sea between Jericho and Engedi. I admit of course that the Scrolls and the archaeological data surrounding them do not always fully agree with the Greek and Latin notices, and that both the Qumran and the classical accounts need to be interpreted and adjusted, bearing in mind that the Scrolls represent the views of initiates against those of more or less complete outsiders.36 But since none of the competing theories associating the Qumran group with Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, or Jewish-Christians c
an withstand critical scrutiny, I remain unrepentant in upholding my statement formulated in 1977 as still valid today: ‘The final verdict must ... be that of the proposed solutions the Essene theory is relatively the soundest. It is even safe to say that it possesses a high degree of intrinsic probability.’37
(c) The Significance of the Qumran Scrolls
The uniqueness of the Qumran discovery was due to the fact that with the possible exception of the Nash papyrus referred to earlier (p. 3), no Jewish text in Hebrew or Aramaic written on perishable material could previously be traced to the pre-Christian period. Before 1947, the oldest Hebrew text of the whole of Isaiah was the Ben Asher codex from Cairo dated to 895 CE, as against the complete Isaiah Scroll from Cave I, which is about a millennium older. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, save the Hebrew Ben Sira and the Aramaic fragments of the Testament of Levi from the Cairo Genizah, had survived only in translation. The sectarian writings found in the caves, apart from the already mentioned Damascus Document (p. II), count as a total novelty.
To begin with, the Qumran Scrolls and the other Judaean Desert finds have created a new discipline: ancient, i.e. pre-medieval, Hebrew codicology. We now possess concrete evidence that scribes carefully prepared the leather or papyrus on which they were to write, often ruling them, with vegetable ink, kept in ink-wells. Paragraphs and larger unit openings were indicated by symbols in the margins. Longer compositions were written on scrolls, on one side of the sheets only, some of them numbered, which were subsequently sewn together. Papyrus documents were often reused, with a different text inscribed on the verso. Short works such as letters were recorded on small pieces of writing material: leather, papyrus, wood or potsherd. By contrast, no book or codex, with pages covered with script on both sides and bound together, has come to light at Qumran, or in any other Judaean Desert site.
The Qumran finds have also substantially altered our views concerning the text and canon of the Bible. The many medieval Hebrew scriptural manuscripts, representing the traditional or Masoretic text, are remarkable for their almost general uniformity. Compared to the often meaningful divergences between the traditional Hebrew text and its ancient Greek, Latin or Syriac translations, the few variant readings of the Masoretic Bible manuscripts, ignoring obvious scribal errors, mainly concern spelling. By contrast, the Qumran scriptural scrolls, and especially the fragments, are characterized by extreme fluidity: they often differ not just from the customary wording but also, when the same book is attested by several manuscripts, among themselves. In fact, some of the fragments echo what later became the Masoretic text; others resemble the Hebrew underlying the Greek Septuagint; yet others recall the Samaritan Torah or Pentateuch, the only part of the Bible which the Jews of Samaria accepted as Scripture. Some Qumran fragments represent a mixture of these, or something altogether different. It should be noted, however, that none of these variations affects the scriptural message itself. In short, while largely echoing the contents of biblical books, Qumran has opened an entirely new era in the textual history of the Hebrew Scriptures.38
The Community’s attitude to the biblical canon, i.e. the list of books considered as Holy Writ, is less easy to define, as no such list of titles has survived. Canonical status may be presumed indirectly either from authoritative quotations or from theological commentary. As regards the latter, the caves have yielded various interpretative works on the Pentateuch (the Temple Scroll, reworked Pentateuch manuscripts, the Genesis Apocryphon and other commentaries on Genesis) and the Prophets (e.g. Isaiah, Habakkuk, Nahum, etc.), but only on the Psalms among the Writings, the third traditional division of the Jewish Bible. From the texts available in 1988, I collected over fifty examples of Bible citations which were used as proof in doctrinal expositions, thus indicating that they were thought to possess special religious or doctrinal importance.39
On the other hand, the Psalms Scroll from Cave 11 contains seven apocryphal poems, including chapter L1 of the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira, not annexed to, but interspersed among, the canonical hymns. This may be explained as a liturgical phenomenon, a collection of songs chanted during worship; but it may, and in my view probably does, mean that at Qumran the concept ‘Bible’ was still hazy, and the ‘canon’ open-ended, which would account for the remarkable freedom in the treatment of the text of Scripture by a community whose life was nevertheless wholly centred on the Bible.
There are two Apocrypha attested at Qumran. In connection with Tobit one can note that four out of the five Cave 4 manuscripts are in Aramaic and only one in Hebrew, but they all reflect the longer version of the Greek Tobit. So the long-debated original language of this book is still uncertain, but Aramaic has become the likeliest candidate. On the other hand, the Hebrew poem from Ben Sira L1 has a patently better chance of reflecting the original than either the Greek translation by the author’s grandson, preserved in the Septuagint, or the Hebrew of the medieval Cairo Genizah manuscripts, because the Qumran version alone faithfully reflects the acrostic character of the composition with the lines starting with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph, bet, gimel, etc.
Qumran has also added to the Pseudepigrapha several new works dealing with biblical figures such as Joseph, Qahat, Amram, Moses, Joshua, Samuel. Among the works in this category which were previously known, the Aramaic fragments of Enoch deserve special mention because they appear to attest only four out of the five books of the Ethiopic Enoch.40 Book 2 (i.e. chapters XXXVII-LXXII), which describes the heavenly apocalyptic figure called son of man, a subject on which New Testament scholars have wasted a considerable amount of ink without approaching even the vaguest consensus, is missing at Qumran. Thus the Aramaic Enoch does not support their speculations any more than do the Greek manuscripts, which are also without chapters XXXVII-LXXII of the Ethiopic Enoch.41
The contribution of the Scrolls to general Jewish history is negligible, and even to the history of the Community is fairly limited. The chief reason for this is that none of the non-biblical compositions found at Qumran belongs to the historical genre. The sectarian persons and events mentioned in the manuscripts are depicted in cryptic language as fulfilment of ancient prophecies relating to the last age. The chief sources of sectarian history, the Damascus Document and the Bible commentaries or pesharim, identify the Community’s principal enemies as the kings of Yavan (Greece) and the rulers of the Kittim (Romans). Also, the Nahum Commentary’s historical perspective extends from Antiochus (no doubt Epiphanes, c. 170 BCE) to the conquest by the Kittim (probably 63 BCE). Names familiar from Jewish or Graeco-Roman history appear here and there. The Nahum Commentary alludes to Antiochus, and to another Syrian Greek king, Demetrius (most likely Demetrius III at the beginning of the first century BCE). Very fragmentary historical calendars from Cave 4 contain the phrase ‘Aemilius killed’, meaning no doubt Aemilius Scaurus, governor of Syria at the time of Pompey’s conquest of Jerusalem in 63. They mention also Jewish rulers of the Maccabaean—Hasmonaean era (second-first centuries BCE), Shelamzion or Salome-Alexandra, widow and successor of Alexander Jannaeus (76-67 BCE); Hyrcanus and John (Yohanan), either John Hyrcanus I (135/4-104 BCE) or more likely II (63-40 BCE),42 and King Jonathan, Alexander Jannaeus or, in my opinion, more likely Jonathan Maccabaeus (161-143/2 BCE).43 In one respect, despite the absence of detail, the evidence is telling: all these characters belong to the second or the first half of the first century BCE. So also do most of the coins discovered at Qumran.
The mainstream hypothesis, built on archaeology and literary analysis, sketches the history of the Scrolls Community (or Essene sect) as follows.44 Its prehistory starts in Palestine - some claim also Babylonian antecedents - with the rise of the Hasidic movement, at the beginning of the second century BCE as described in the first book of the Maccabees (I Mac. ii, 42-44; vii, 13-17). Sectarian (Essene) history itself originated in a clash between the Wicked Priest or Priests (Jonathan and/or possibly Simon Maccabaeus) and the Teacher of Righteousness, the anonymous priest who was the spirit
ual leader of the Community. The sect consisted of the survivors of the Hasidim, linked with a group of dissident priests who, by the mid-second century, came under the leadership of the sons of Zadok, associates of the Zadokite high priests. This history continues at Qumran, and no doubt in many other Palestinian localities, until the years of the first Jewish rebellion against Rome, when possibly in 68 CE the settlement is believed to have been occupied by Vespasian’s soldiers. Whether the legionaries encountered sectarian resistance - such a theory would be consonant with Josephus’ reference to an Essene general among the revolutionaries45 and to a massacre of the Essenes by the Romans46 - or whether the threatening presence of the contingents of Zealot Sicarii, who had already expelled the Essenes from Qumran, provoked a Roman intervention, are purely speculative matters. One fact is certain, however. No one of the original occupants of Qumran returned to the caves to reclaim their valuable manuscripts.
A variation on this theme, called the Groningen hypothesis, postulates a whole series of six Wicked Priests, and identifies the Community not with the main Essene sect but with one of its splinter groups.47 The Zealot theory, elaborated in the 1950s in Oxford by Sir Godfrey Driver and Cecil Roth,48 is hard to reconcile with the totality of the available evidence, as most of the Qumran documents predate the Zealot period.
More recently Norman Golb of Chicago has launched a forceful attack on the common opinion. His objections, reiterated in a series of papers,49 culminated in 1995 in a hefty tome.50 The target of his criticism is the provenance of the scrolls found at Qumran. According to him, the manuscripts originated in a Jerusalem library (or libraries), the contents of which were concealed in desert caves when the capital was besieged between 67 and 70 CE. The chief corollary of the hypothesis is that the Essenes had nothing to do either with the Qumran settlement - a fortress in Golb’s opinion51 - or with the manuscripts.