THE IMPACT OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS?

The following topics are not meant to be exhaustive, but rather are offered to indicate the nature of the assignment and to stimulate your own interests. You are encouraged to consider a topic more aligned with your own interests and to submit a topic statement and sources. The professor will work with you to be certain that the topic suits the course. As students choose topics, their names and e-mail addresses will be accessible from this page so that you can contact them to share resources and ideas. The topics are arranged into eight categories:

Historical Economic Sociological Legal Scientific Literary Theological Sensational

Who Hid the Dead Sea Scrolls?
There are conflicting theories about who deposited the Dead Sea Scrolls in the eleven caves in the Judean desert. The consensus view is that the scrolls were deposited by the people living in the nearby compound, perhaps over the entire period of their occupation of that site or perhaps just before the compound was destroyed in 68 C.E. Norman Golb contends that they represent part of the archive of the Jerusalem temple, deposited in the desert by refugees during the First Jewish Revolt (66-74 C.E.). In this paper, you should explore as many theories as you can about the topic, and determine which is the most convincing.

Who Lived at Qumran?
There are several theories about lived at the Qumran site. Were they Sadduccees, disgruntled over the Hasmonean take-over of the Jerusalem temple? Were they the Essenes mentioned by Philo and Josephus, seeking a wilderness encampment for their ascetic lifestyle? Were the residents a wealthy family, or a military group, or a commercial enterprise? Explore as many theories as you can about the topic, and determine which is the most convincing.

Was John the Baptist an Essene?
John the Baptist, a prophetic figure mentioned in each of the four canonical Christian gospels, was an ascetic who preached judgment and repentance along the Jordan River. Because of his lifestyle and apocalyptic message, many think he sounds an awful lot like the people who wrote the Community Rule and other Dead Sea Scrolls. Your task will be to study the evidence and determine whether, in the end, John the Baptist might have been an Essene at some point in his life.

Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Some scholars have argued that Jesus was connected to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some think Jesus might have been the Teacher of Righteousness, the early authority mentioned in the sectarian scrolls. Others consider that Jesus' brother James was the Teacher. Still others believe that a few of the scrolls themselves refer to a "pierced messiah" and therefore to Jesus' crucifixion and messianic role. Your task in this essay is to explore and evaluate these theories.

Were the People at Qumran Communists?
The Rule of the Community requires initiates to integrate their property with that of the community. Does this mean that the people at Qumran were Communists? In this essay, your task will be to define Communism and apply it to the ancient community, analyzing not only what they were doing but what they thought they were doing in advocating such a distinctive economic practice.

Economic Ethics in the Scrolls
Economics is the study of the production and distribution of goods and services. As such, it is the subject of a great deal of legal treatment in all societies. Your task in this essay will be to explore how the sectarian community who wrote and compiled the Dead Sea Scrolls viewed the economic arrangements of their culture and sought to construct an alternative to it within their own community.

Restraints on Commerce in Qumran Law
Commerce is the exchange of goods and services. In a sectarian community, any kind of intercourse with outsiders is restricted, and so it is not surprising to find a lot of discussion in the Rule and the Damascus Document that governs how commercial transactions were to take place and with whom. In addition, a few commercial instruments, such as I.O.U.'s, deeds of sale, and deeds of gift, were discovered at Qumran among the scrolls or on ostraca (pieces of clay jars with writing). Finally, we have the evidence of ancient secondary sources like Philo and Josephus who fill us in on the commercial practices of the Essenes. Your task will be to examine this evidence and to render an account of how and why commerce was restricted at Qumran.

The Coins of Qumran and the Economy of Palestine 100 BCE - 68 CE
The coins found at Qumran range from the Seleucid period (223-129 B.C.E.) to the Second Jewish Revolt (132-135 C.E.), and thus provide some data for determining the extent of political and commercial power of those governing the region (at various times, Seleucids, Hasmonean kings, Roman prefects and procurators, and a few Jewish client kings of the Romans). In this research project, you will study the economy of Hasmonean or Roman Palestine: trade patterns, taxation practices, special pressures during drought and famine, etc.) You will then apply what you have learned to the evidence at Qumran, asking whether this sectarian community somehow managed to opt out of the larger economy, just as it withdrew from other social institutions.

Fictive Kinship in Essene Communities
In advocating that initiates withdraw from the "sons of darkness," the rule texts imply that members broke ties with others in their usual company, such as their families. This is a striking and yet familiar pattern in sectarian development, as the sect establishes tight boundaries around itself that preclude the previous networks in which members traveled. Your task in this essay will be to explore the ways families worked in Jewish Palestine in the period of the scrolls, and then to examine how the Qumran residents broke those kinship patterns and established their own. You will discover that the community uses the language of family ("fathers," "mothers," "sons of") to describe relationships of otherwise unrelated community members, just as it assumes some of the economic, political and religious responsibilities normally exercised by one's kin.

Mystery Training, or How to Educate an Essene
The Rule of the Congregation, 1QSa, which was attached to the Rule of the Community, specifies how a member of the community was to be educated in the Book of Hagy, the precepts of the covenant, and the regulations of the community. Adult initiates were also apparently trained; Rule 6.14-16 stipulates that the Instructor is to introduce would-be members to the covenant and the regulations of the community. What was the mysterious Book of Hagy, and how exactly was an Essene to be educated? Education is, after all, a way to increase the size of your community by training people to become good members.

http://www-relg-studies.scu.edu/facstaff/murphy/courses/sctr108/research-text.htm>

The Living Law at Qumran
Although it appears that the core of the Jewish law, the Torah, was fairly well established at Qumran in its written form (Genesis-Deuteronomy), that does not mean that the law was static or rigid. This apocalyptic community gave its instructors great latitude to interpret that law in a manner that was at once faithful to it and at the same time very creative with it. Your task in this essay is to explore the kind of interpretive latitude that the scrolls community gave itself, and to discuss some of the unique interpretations of the law that resulted (suggested foci include purity laws, economic laws, family law).

Who Owns the Copyright to the Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls were written 2000 years ago. Needless to say, the original authors and copyists have long since relinquished copyright privileges. But should the scholars who were originally assigned to publish these manuscripts own the rights to them? What if they violate their responsibility by not publishing in a timely manner? If the photographs of the fragments are available to everyone, does that mean anyone can or should publish their version of what the documents say, or should this activity be restricted to those who were originally given permission? And who gives this permission, anyway? In this paper, you will explore these questions, focusing on one case between a scholar and an American magazine editor that made it all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court.

Dating Techniques Used on the Scrolls
There are several methods scholars use to determine the age of an ancient artifact. If the item is made of organic material (e.g., wood, parchment), they can employ Carbon-14 or the more recent AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) tests, although the resulting date will be for the material rather than the writing on it. If the artifact has writing, scholars can examine the paleography or writing style and compare it to typologies of the approximate period. Writing may also contain inner allusions to historical events, which will mean the scroll must have been written during or after that event. If the item is inorganic (e.g., clay, metal), scholars must rely on typologies of similar artifacts and stratigraphy, the archaeologist's careful dating of a site as s/he digs down through layers of debris. Your task in this paper will either be to survey all of these methods or to choose one to explore more deeply.

Photography and Ground Imaging
Photographic innovations have augmented the study of the scrolls in tremendous ways. Since many of the scroll fragments are illegible to the naked eye, infrared and satellite-imaging technologies are sometimes the only way to discern the carbon-based ink against its dark background. Satellite imaging technology developed by Greg Bearman of the NASA Jet-Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and applied to the scrolls by Bearman, Bruce Zuckerman of USC, Sheila Spiro (ANE Image, Pasadena), and Michael Phelps and Marilyn Lundberg of the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center in Claremont, CA has also made it possible to read lower layers of text stuck to upper layers and otherwise unavailable to view. Finally, ground-imaging radar promises to be able to scan archaeological remains under the surface at archaeological sites to determine where promising remains lie. Your task in this essay is to explore these technologies and their applications.

Paleo-Anthropology: What Skeletons Can Tell Usm
There has been a lot of debate lately about the skeletons exhumed at Qumran. Do the female skeletons at the site date to the sectarian occupation, or are they recent Bedouin burials? How would one find that out? Were the skeletons of people who died old or young? How and when did they die? Can we determine their diet or pathologies from the state of their bones? People have tried, and in this project you will explore what they are discovering.

The yahad gave itself a great deal of latitude to interpret the Jewish scriptures as it saw fit. With regard to Jewish law in the Torah, it generally rendered ethical regulations that are stricter than later Rabbinic legislation. In terms of the narratives in the Bible, the community collected para-biblical materials that amplified the biblical accounts in ways that sometimes corresponded to beliefs of the community (e.g., the para-biblical book of Jubilees amplifies Genesis in the direction of a solar calendar and a somewhat apocalyptic cosmology). We have the pesharim on Psalms and the prophetic corpus which, along with other collations of prophetic texts, relate the ancient prophetic sayings to the life experience of this community. And in the targumim, the group has collected Aramaic translations of scripture which sometimes add explanatory comments. Your task in this essay will be to select one of these styles of interpretation and explore its use at Qumran.

There was no Bible at Qumran, at least not in the way we think of a set collection of certain books judged to be sacred and published between two covers. Instead, we have lots of scrolls whose relative authority is difficult to judge. There are, to be sure, the books of the Jewish canon (except Esther). There are also some apocryphal works (those are the ones you'll find in a Catholic but not in a Jewish or Protestant Bible), like Tobit, Judith, and extra parts of Daniel. There are even some other books that seem to be authoritative for the community (because they quote them in legal contexts or use them as a basis for their sectarian beliefs) - books like Jubilees, Enoch, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. These are not in anyone's Bible today. Even more interesting, perhaps, we sometimes have multiple copies of single "biblical" books at Qumran, and they are not always the same. That is, the sectarians did not seem too concerned, as later Jews and Christians will be, to have just one form of the text in use. Your task in this essay will be to pick one of the above groups of literature, or even one book in one group, and to study how that text differs from later Bibles and functioned as sacred Scripture at Qumran.

The rules and halakhic material found in the Qumran caves stipulate ethical behavior that represents a rather strict interpretation of the Jewish law. Much emphasis was placed on observing the law and being judged for how well you did that. At the same time, and in some tension with the community's ethics, the scrolls also contend that God has already chosen the sons of light and the sons of darkness. That is, one's ethics are predetermined. Your task in this essay will be to explore the relevant texts and the tensions inherent in these two theological beliefs.

The End that Came and Went: Apocalyptic Expectation in the Scrolls
A brief passage in the Damascus Document suggests that the community's leader, the Teacher of Righteousness, had predicted that the end of the world on a certain date that passed without incident. The Document backs away from the prophecy and reinterprets it in the passage. Your task in this essay is to read the relevant passage, as well as secondary literature on the eschatology in the scrolls and sociological analyses of the aftermath of failed prophecies.

Conspiracy (and Other) Theories about the Scrolls
When you leave this course, you may hear about the Dead Sea Scrolls again, and chances are that if you do, it will be in the form of some sensational claim. Whether in the Star or The National Inquirer, or even (alas!) in The New York Times, sensational sells. Your task in this paper will be to explore one of the recurring sensational theories about the scrolls and to evaluate its claims. Possibilities include the Vatican suppression of the scrolls, the Chinese additions to the Rule of the Community, and the belief that some scrolls were discovered but have since disappeared. You could also look into the treasure hunt that John M. Allegro, one of the original scrolls scholars, embarked upon to find the treasures mentioned in the Copper Scroll.

***Your task in this essay will be to pick one of the above groups of literature, or even one book in one group, and to study how that text differs from later Bibles and functioned as sacred Scripture at Qumran.***

This presupposes that any book found at Qumran was considered sacred Scripture. I have a copy of the Book of Mormon on my shelf. I also have Sean Hannity's book and a Bible on the same shelf.

Are these of equal value as sources of wisdom to me?

This lady may think so, but I consider one the Word of God, one a good read and the other a cult manual.

Its really interesting that restornu brought up the Dead Sea Scrolls in the other thread. Before I went to Chicago for Thanksgiving I put on the BYTV channel and guess what program was on? You're right, a show on the Dead Sea Scrolls. I tried watching but it was so dead boring, I gave up and put Buffy on.

Hey, rest, did you happen so see that show?

Some more interesting bits.

In advocating that initiates withdraw from the "sons of darkness," the rule texts imply that members broke ties with others in their usual company, such as their families. This is a striking and yet familiar pattern in sectarian development, as the sect establishes tight boundaries around itself that preclude the previous networks in which members traveled.

The first couple sentences are interesting. The pattern is seen amoung many cults, including the Mormons.

Although it appears that the core of the Jewish law, the Torah, was fairly well established at Qumran in its written form (Genesis-Deuteronomy), that does not mean that the law was static or rigid. This apocalyptic community gave its instructors great latitude to interpret that law in a manner that was at once faithful to it and at the same time very creative with it

It looks like there were a bunch of liberals at Qumram. The Law was not rigid, but in fact static and allowed creative interpretations.

Calvin may not have been a Qumram dude. It looks like there was some emphesis on works leading to some salvation.

The Shape of the Bible at Qumran There was no Bible at Qumran, at least not in the way we think of a set collection of certain books judged to be sacred and published between two covers. Instead, we have lots of scrolls whose relative authority is difficult to judge. There are, to be sure, the books of the Jewish canon (except Esther). There are also some apocryphal works (those are the ones you'll find in a Catholic but not in a Jewish or Protestant Bible), like Tobit, Judith, and extra parts of Daniel. There are even some other books that seem to be authoritative for the community (because they quote them in legal contexts or use them as a basis for their sectarian beliefs) - books like Jubilees, Enoch, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. These are not in anyone's Bible today. Even more interesting, perhaps, we sometimes have multiple copies of single "biblical" books at Qumran, and they are not always the same. That is, the sectarians did not seem too concerned, as later Jews and Christians will be, to have just one form of the text in use. Your task in this essay will be to pick one of the above groups of literature, or even one book in one group, and to study how that text differs from later Bibles and functioned as sacred Scripture at Qumran.

Smile.

Hope you're feeling better soon.

The Chinese would say something is "out of harmony" internally, and that causes your sinus problems. Perhaps you're thinking too much, doctor.

Relax your forehead. . . Breathe in . . . breathe out. . . Relax your eyebrows. . . Breathe in . . . Breathe out. . . Relax your eyes . . .

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