The scrolls in context

The group at Qumrān has been identified with many Jewish sects of the time. Even though some scholars believe the community to have been a branch of the Sadducees or Zealots, most believe that they were Essenes. The group is believed to have fled, or been driven out, to the Judaean wilderness as a result of a dispute with the priestly leaders in Jerusalem over the sacred calendar and matters of legal interpretation. At Qumrān this group not only preserved their beliefs but developed a worldview that rejected the rest of the Jewish people, espoused a highly dualistic view of the world (i.e., a world sharply divided between good and evil, light and darkness), and looked for an imminent divine judgment of the wicked. They also cultivated a communal life of extreme ritual purity, necessitated by their rejection of the Temple cult.

The history of the Qumrān community can be glimpsed, though darkly, through the scrolls. The “Union” was apparently founded by a messianic figure called the “Teacher of Righteousness.” The group may have split off from a wider movement that lived in its own settlements and urban quarters throughout Palestine. Whatever its origins may have been, the community offers a fascinating example of a Jewish messianic movement, and thus a sociological parallel to the early Christians. Other parallels between the two groups, such as the belief that Scripture foretold the history of their own times, have sometimes been thought to indicate a direct connection, but such parallels can just as easily be explained by the Jewish background common to both groups.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are important not only because they offer insight into the community at Qumrān but because they provide a window to the wider spectrum of ancient Jewish belief and practice. A quarter of the texts are biblical manuscripts—to which can be added copies of works such as the books of Enoch, Jubilees, and Tobit, previously known and not thought to be sectarian. Thus, the scrolls shed light on more than merely the sect that possessed them. Indeed, it has been argued that the Qumrān scrolls actually represent the contents of libraries in Jerusalem, hurriedly hidden shortly before the Roman siege of the city during the First Jewish Revolt (66–73 ce), and thus reflect quite varied Jewish origins. This is not an improbable explanation for the concealment of the scrolls, but the diversity of these scrolls is not as wide as this account would suggest. Clearly, many scrolls originate from outside the sect, and this realization makes the importance of the scrolls to ancient Judaism even greater than if they were entirely sectarian.

Indeed, because the scrolls reflect the beliefs and practices of Jewish groups during a highly volatile period of Judaean history, this unique collection of sectarian and nonsectarian writings is the most important archive for understanding late Second Temple Judaism. By contrast, the New Testament was written by and for both Diaspora Jews and non-Jews; and rabbinic literature was composed at a later period and under quite different circumstances.

Above all else, the contents of the scrolls show the remarkable flexibility and variety of Jewish thought and practice and demolish any notion of a uniform “Judaism” at that time. They show that the notion of cultic holiness and sacrifice could be contemplated without the Temple, that different liturgical calendars (implying different times for festivals and different priestly rituals at the Temple) existed at the same time, that the distinction between Israel and the Gentiles could be displaced by a notion of two predestined groups of saved and damned individuals, that the worship of the celestial Temple could be witnessed and described (foreshadowing a tradition of Jewish mysticism), and that good works could replace sacrifice. They also show a variety of beliefs that may have been shared by some or all of the Judaisms of the period, including the imminent culmination of history, the advent of a messianic figure, and the absolute necessity of complete obedience to the Law of Moses (however interpreted).

The Dead Sea Scrolls also testify to a period of theological creativity, of social fissure, of intense expectation and passion within the wider perspective of Judaism and Christianity. The scrolls’ occasional contradictions betray tensions between the goals of personal holiness and national redemption; between human and heavenly redeemers; between faith and knowledge as the means of salvation; between free will and predestination; and between an anthropology of human holiness and an anthropology of human depravity. They also exhibit typical features of a sectarian mentality: traces of a persecution complex and a corporate identity fortified by official opposition. In this ferment can be seen, with hindsight, the matrix of the two great systems of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, which, though each took centuries to form, drew in different ways on the heritage that the Dead Sea Scrolls dramatically document.