A Jewish sect that opposed the Pharisees; sometimes identifies as a group of Sadducees. A recent review holds that the Hebrew term bytwsyn, bytysyn, traditionally rendered as “Boethusians,” in reality were slightly altered forms of byt ‘ysin “House [='school or 'community'] of Essenes.” Top of Page
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Cairo Genizah manuscripts
Contents of the genizah (storage area) of the Palestinian synagogue of the Jews in medieval Fustat (Old Cairo, Egypt). Includes letters, legal documents and literary texts many of which contain dates and datable historical references. See also genizah.
canon
A collection of those biblical books accepted as holy scripture. Canonization refers to the process whereby certain books came to be regarded as authoritatively holy while others were excluded.
carbon-14
A heavy radioactive isotope of carbon, with mass number 14, used in dating archaeological and geological materials. Very useful as a dating method though sometimes its precision and accuracy are not as well correlated as some would like to believe.
CE
Common Era; indicates that a time division falls within the Common/Christian era; same as AD.
Christianity
A religious tradition whose roots reach deeply into the Judaic traditions current in the first century BCE Depending on who one reads, it was in its infancy a mystery-school form of Judaism, a form of revolutionary Judaic nationalism, a sub-sect of the Essenes, emerged from the mainstream of Judaic thought at the time, was an off-shoot of the Zealots, was wrested from its founders by Saul of Tarsus (Paul) whose heresy of preaching to non-Jews forever separates him and it from its Judaic foundation, etc.
All of this cannot be true. In fact, none of it necessarily has to be true. It is clear, however, that it is much easier to define Christianity in terms of its current Canon, complex as that may be, than in terms of its historical roots which are vague at their best, propagandist at their worst, and clouded by the effects of time, mishap and generations of intervening redactors.
codex (pl. codices)
A group of manuscript pages stitched together on one side to form a book; as opposed to pages sewn together on both sides to form a continuous scroll that had to be rolled up for storage and unrolled to be read. Codices were more compact and easier to read, carry and store and for these reasons largely replaced the scroll in early Christian times.
colophon
An inscription, usually at the end of a manuscript, giving the name of the work, its author, date and place of composition, and sometimes other information.
“consensus”
The term used by Robert Eisenman and Robert North to describe and interpret the contents and provenance of the Dead Sea Scrolls as the work of a small group of celibate, extremist, Jewish sectarians, sometimes called the Essenes but without any concrete evidence for that assignment, who lived at Qumran and copied the large library of scrolls that were found in the caves nearby. It is perhaps better to refer to this as the early working hypothesis which some, like Norman Golb, have dubbed the Qumran-Essene hypothesis or the less specific Qumran-Sectarian hypothesis. As Eisenman, Golb and others have long recognized, the overwhelming weight of all the available evidence makes this hypothesis almost totally untenable. It became an ideological agenda for those who controlled the scrolls and has effectively stiffled open and scholarly debate of the contents, meaning, origins and significance of the scrolls for almost 50 years.
At the time of the discovery of the scrolls the available scientific community able to handle the tasks of excavating the caves and the Qumran environs, conserve, translate and publish the scrolls, and interpret their larger significance was limited and, in fact, included no world recognized authorities in any requisite field; not scroll scholarship, not archaeology, not stratigraphy, not Jewish history, not ancient middle eastern languages, not even classical Roman history. Nevertheless, the local group headed by Pere de Vaux determined to keep it a local and to the extent possible a limited and united effort. That group had almost fifty years to generate their consensus while denying any else access to their cache of material.
A well organized and modern attack on the same problem, if it were to be undertaken today, would include many authorities from many disciplines from the very beginning. Instead what the world got was an amateurish and ultimately incompetent effort whose 50 year reign of non-communication is only now coming to an end with the wider dissemination of photographs of the the scrolls that for so long have remained hidden.
In spite of that, it is difficult to undo or properly redo the excavations that were undertaken so long ago or even to force the wider community of scholars to rethink the widely promulgated assumptions disguised as scientific discoveries by a lazy band of third rate scholars with an agenda that they do not acknowledge to this day.
contradictions, Jesus’
If his message is mostly peaceful and passivist, why are there Zealots in his inner circle? Why did he overturn the table of the money-changers in the Temple? Why did he instruct his followers to arm themselves with swords before going to Gethsemane? Why did Peter lop off the ear of one of the men in the High Priests entourage? If he was as militant as some would have him, why was he so willing to ‘give unto Caesar’ what was Caesar’s (assuming he actually said that)?
crucifixion
A form of execution under Roman law reserved for revolutionary activity. Top of Page
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dating the Dead Sea Scrolls
It should always be remembered that there are at least four important dates for each scroll;
the date the hide was taken, for parchment scrolls, or the date of harvesting, for papyrus scrolls,
the composition date of the text,
the transcription date of the scroll, and
the storage date of the scroll.
The ages of the linen in which some scrolls were wrapped and the ages of the pottery jars in which some were stored have also to be determined. These can affect our understanding of the age and meaning of the scrolls.
There are other interesting items to consider. For example, it is likely though hardly certain,
that texts were composed over years, if not decades or centuries,
that the age of the scroll material is younger than the age of the text transcribed onto it, and
that the age of the linen is younger than the age of the scroll material wrapped inside it.
All of these are mere likelihoods, not certainties. A common date is impossible, a narrow range of dates is unlikely. A diversity of dates is almost a certainty. Until much more is known, however, the question of dates for the scrolls will remain an area of active scholarly interest and speculation.
Questions such as the following may never be answered in a fully satisfactory manner.
How long were the hides cured and stored in the desert before text was transcribed onto them?
Is it possible that some of the parchment is actually older than the composition written on it due to long storage times.
Can the method of storage of the scrolls effect the measured values of their dates, either by contamination with organic matter of a different age, or ages, or by desiccation and loss of organic matter from the parchment due to the aridity of the environment?
How faithfully were the oldest compositions transcribed onto the parchments found in the caves at Qumran?
Dead Sea Scrolls
The first modern recognized discovery was in 1947 by Bedouin herdsmen. The reputed discoverer was a boy at the time named Muhammad ed-Dhib, or Muhammad the Wolf, a member of the Tac mireh tribe. In another version there were three of them; Khalil Musa, Jumca Muhammad and Mohammadan ed-Dhib. He (they) claimed to be looking for a lost goat.
Most of the scrolls are of leather (parchment) and many were wrapped in linen and stored in earthenware jars with ‘bowl-like’ lids. One scroll on copper was eventually discovered. Some were written on papyrus.
The total number of scrolls collected in this initial round of discovery is uncertain. Various sources claim that from three to seven or eight complete parchment scrolls were eventually taken to a local sheik. He directed the Bedouin to a shopkeeper named Khalil Iskander Shahin (Kando) a member of the Syrian Jacobite Church. Kando contacted another Church member named George Isaiah. Kando and Isaiah then visited the original cave themselves and removed additional scrolls or fragments.
George Isaiah reported the discoveries to his ecclesiastical leader, the Archimandrite of the Syrian-Orthodox Monastery of St. Mark in Jerusalem, Mar Athanasius Yeshua Samuel, the spiritual leader of the Syrian Jacobite Church in Jerusalem. Just when this occurred is not clear, although April 1947 has been suggested.
Part of the Bedouin’s share of the Scrolls was sold to the Muslim sheik of Bethlehem. Kando purchased the remaining scrolls and in turn sold them to Mar Athanasius Yeshua Samuel for 24. This consisted of four scrolls originally thought to be five, but one of them was merely broken in half. These four scrolls consist of one twenty-four foot long copy of the book of Isaiah, the “Genesis Apocryphon’, a commentary on the “Book of Habakkuk’, and the so-called ‘Community Rule’.
Other subsequent discoveries by bedouin and others are also included under this rubric, whether on parchment, papyrus or copper. Most of the known scrolls are now housed either in the Shrine of the Book or in the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem.
Rumors of an underground scroll market for private collectors cannot be discounted and it is entirely possible that the entire library from the West Bank caves, if it could be collected together, would exceed the size of the known library by a wide margin. How the privately held scrolls might be located and purchased remains an interesting dilemma for modern scholars and presumably for the ‘investors’who originally purchased them.
Denarii
Roman Republican coins, originally cast in silver and worth 10 asses; known as a “penny” in the New Testament. The Library of Congress exhibition includes coins from the mid-first century BCE.
desert, the
This always refers to the Judaean wilderness, south of Jerusalem and west of the Dead Sea. It is an arid region with some springs and a fair amount of rain in the winter.
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Ecole Biblique et Archeologique
Academic home of Pere Roland de Vaux and most of the other original members of the editorial board for the largest cache of Dead Sea Scrolls, especially those that like him were Catholic clerics. Located in East Jerusalem and under the control of Transjordan and then Jordan until the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel took control of Jerusalem and the West Bank of the Dead Sea.
edito princeps
The first editon of a manuscript. This is not necessarily the final word on either the text or the translation of the text. Additional science may supplement or revise the former while almost any translator can produce a different version of the latter. In principle, if not in practice, this should be the first reference used to describe any manuscript. F. Garc a Mart nez2 includes an extensive listing of all the available edito princeps for the Dead Sea Scrolls as of the date of publication of his book. The edito princeps was intended to be the first work by the individual or group who worked most directly with the original document and thus were in the best position to make the most of the available science to clean, restore, reconstruct, perserve and ultimately to read the original. This work should reflect the effort that goes into all of those additional steps and the benefit, in terms of the clearest possible reading, that derives from them. Most subsequent translators will, of necessity, be working with photographs, or digital files of photographs, rather than with the original manuscript.
Elephantine
Island in upper Egypt, near Aswan, where a Judaean military colony was located in the fifth century BCE. Approximately forty Aramaic autograph texts, written by or to the inhabitants of the colony, and some legal documents were discovered there in 1906. The precise geological references contained therein show that they were written locally.
elephants
They were an important part of the Seleucid army though not native to Syria or the Middle East. Seleucus I, founder of the dynasty, imported 500 of the from India in about 300 BCE. Descendents of that original herd appear from time to time in military accounts through many centuries.
En Gedi
An ancient city less than 10 miles north of Masada. The hills above En Gedi are the location of the Essene community described by Pliny according to some readings of this Natural History. The consensus view is that Qumran is the Essene community and the “above” in Pliny should be read as north, about 20 miles north, in fact. Of course, it is also possible that Pliny made it up. He was never there and the identity and reliability of his sources is uncertain.
eschatology
That branch of religious literature and belief having to do with various aspects of the afterlife, the Final Judgement, bodily resurrection, immortality of the soul, etc.
Essenes (”Judah” in some Qumran writings)
One of the three orders of Jews during the Second Temple Period; a separatist group that formed an ascetic and esoteric, monastic communal society which, in response to apocalyptic visions, or unique sacrificial or purity requirements retreated to the wilderness.
As described by Josephus, Philo and Pliny the Elder they are noted for their communal way of life, their ascetic conduct, and their ideas about fate and immortality. Only Pliny the Elder among these three mentions that a group of Essenes lived near the Dead Sea. The smallest of the three main Jewish sects during the first century CE, numbering about four thousand according to both Josephus and Philo. They were very strict in avoidance of every form of commerce, owned no slaves, observed a strict Sabbath, avoided all oaths and maintained ritual purity.
Ethnarch
A Greek term meaning ‘ruler of a nation’, a less prestigious title than ‘king’, but still implying a degree of independence under an overlord.
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First Revolt
The Jewish rebellion against the Roman rule that began in 66 CE and ended in 74 CE with the capture of the Jewish held fortress at Masada by the Romans. Its climax occurs with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE.
First Temple Period ca. 950 – 586 BCE
The period of Jewish history from the construction of Solomon’s temple to the destruction of the First Temple and exile of the Hebrews to Babylonia.
Five Cities of the Plain
The five cities are Sodom, Gomorrah, Zoar, Admah, and Zeboiim. Some modern scholarship suggests but has yet to prove that these five cities sit at or near the mouths of five of the six major wadis that feed into the southeastern corner of the Dead Sea. All five wadis feed into the region above the Gohr which in earlier days may have been above water; thus the plain associated with these particular cities.
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Galilee
Northern region of ancient Palestine. Like Judaea it was an area of dense Jewish settlement during the intertestamental period.
genizah
(Hebrew: “storage room’) A designated place, often in a synagogue, for storing worn out, damaged or defective Hebrew writings and ritual articles which cannot be destroyed because of their holiness.
gloss
A marginal or interliner passage introduced into a text, usually by a glossator; i.e. someone other than the original author. During ancient and medieval times the glosses incorporated or blended into the the original text by later copyists. The glosses may sometimes be retrieved by careful textual analysis (e.g., by examining the logic and flow of the ideas being expressed).
gnosticism
A form of religious thinking widespread in the Roman Empire, and adopted in various forms by Jewish and Christian heretics. Taking its name from the Greek word for “knowledge,” it taught that its adherents could receive secret knowledge from the deity. Its most characteristic belief was a “dualism” emphasizing that the world and matter were evil and that the spirit alone was good. This lead some Gnostics to extreme asceticism and others to moral license.
Gospels
Apparently first hand accounts of the events taking place during and following the time of Jesus. Attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Extended by some to include the Acts of the Apostles, attributed to Luke.
Great Revolt
See First Revolt.
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halakhah (pl. halakhot, adj. halakhic )
Terms for Jewish ritual and civil law (e.g., Sabbath observance, tithing, contracts, etc.) and the texts concerned with them (as opposed to haggadic texts, which are concerned with theological or devotional matters); disagreement on these matters are thought by some to have caused the Judaean Desert sect to secede from Israel, although this presupposes such a sect actually existed.
Hasidim, Assidaeans, Hasidaeans
“Pietists”, “pious ones”; a religious sect of Jews devoted to strict observance of the law and opposed to the adoption of aspects of Greek culture by other Jews. They were the forerunners of both the Pharisees and the Essenes. They are first supported the Maccabean movement, but subsequently opposed it, regarding it as too political. It arose before the outbreak of the persecution by Antiochus Epiphanes (167 BCE), and continued to exist well into the time of the Hasmonaean dynasty.