Early Judaism

New Insights and Scholarship

Frederick E Greenspahn, Frederick E. Greenspahn

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781479809905
• eBook ISBN: 9781479825226
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish History

An exploration of the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism drawing on primary sources and new methods

Over the past generation, several major findings and methodological innovations have led scholars to reevaluate the foundation of Judaism. The Dead Sea Scrolls were the most famous, but other materials have further altered our understanding of Judaism’s development after the Biblical era.

This volume explores some of the latest clues into how early Judaism took shape, from the invention of rabbis to the parting of Judaism and Christianity, to whether ancient Jews considered themselves a nation. Rather than having simply evolved, “normative” Judaism is now understood to be the result of one approach having achieved prominence over many others, competing for acceptance in the wake of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70 CE. This new understanding has implications for how we think about Judaism today, as the collapse of rabbinic authority is leading to the return of the kind of diversity that prevailed during late antiquity. This volume puts familiar aspects of Judaism in a new light, exposing readers to the most current understanding of the origins of normative Judaism.

This book is a must for anyone interested in the study of Judaism and its formation. It is the most current review of the scholarship surrounding this rich history and what is next for the field at large.

Part I

Early Diversity

1

The Dead Sea Scrolls

James VanderKam

The Dead Sea Scrolls have attracted much attention from the public and from a decent-sized cadre of scholars who devote much of their research time to studying these texts. The latter group has produced and continues to produce so many studies that it is difficult even for someone in the field to stay abreast of the results.1 This chapter examines some key aspects of Scrolls studies that are debated by contemporary scholars and surveys what is being said about them.

This chapter thus takes up three broad topics: (1) the archaeology of Khirbet Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered); (2) the community associated with the scrolls; and (3) questions regarding the “biblical” scrolls. There are certainly other areas of inquiry that could have been selected, since the scrolls have exercised influence on the study of many areas of early Jewish literature and have stimulated debates in them, but the three discussed here should provide insight into the world of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship. Before turning to those topics, let me give a quick overview of the subject.2

The term “Dead Sea Scrolls” refers to the remains of approximately nine hundred manuscripts. We tend to call them “scrolls,” but only a few complete or nearly complete scrolls were discovered; most of the texts are fragmentary remains, often very fragmentary, of once intact scrolls. They have fallen apart due to deterioration caused by moisture, other substances, animals, and the like.

Most of those manuscripts were made of parchment, that is, treated animal hides; a number of them are on papyrus, while one is made of copper. They were found in eleven caves situated near the northwest corner of the Dead Sea. The manuscript-bearing caves were found in 1947 (cave 1), 1952 (caves 2–6), 1955 (caves 7–10), and 1956 (cave 11). The most successful hunters for caves containing written material were Bedouin, Arab natives of the area. In 1947 three of them found the first cave. Bedouin also located most of the others, including caves 4 and 11, which, with cave 1, contained the largest amount of written material. Archaeologists found just a few of the caves, most of which had the modest remains of only a small number of texts.3

The caves are located in the vicinity of building ruins at a place called Qumran in Arabic (Khirbet Qumran means “the ruin of Qumran”), where, according to most experts, the group that used the scrolls had carried out their communal life. Archaeological evidence suggests that the site was used from after 100 BCE until 68 or 70 CE, with a short break in occupation around the turn of the eras. The structures are unusual in comparison to other building ruins in the area or elsewhere in Judea (more on that below). Distinctive pottery—long, tall scroll jars—found both in the caves and at the site was a first clue that the scrolls in the caves were associated with the people who used the site.

The scrolls, all of which have been published, contain examples of many categories of Jewish literature.4 The most famous type is probably the “biblical” scrolls. Of the books in the Hebrew Bible (Protestant Old Testament), all are represented except Esther, with a total of 222 separate copies (including Greek and Aramaic translations). If we include the books in the Catholic Old Testament (that is, the Protestant Old Testament plus Apocrypha), the total is a little higher.

It is worth highlighting that in examining the subject of the Dead Sea Scrolls we are really dealing with two major phenomena: the site of the building ruins (Khirbet Qumran) and the scrolls from the eleven nearby caves. No scroll or scroll fragment has turned up in the building ruins. As we will see, the relationship between the site and the scrolls has been debated, although almost all experts who work in this field agree that the two are related in the sense that the people of the scrolls used the site.

Now let us turn to the three topics listed above.

The Archaeology of Khirbet Qumran

It is often instructive in studying the Dead Sea Scrolls to go back to the earliest published articles and books about them. Here is an example. The first discoveries of manuscripts in a cave took place in 1947 (or at least that is the most likely date); it was not until late that year and early in 1948 that scholars obtained some of them and began to study these amazing finds.5 Other than the Bedouin and a few of their acquaintances, no one even knew where the cave was until January 1949. At that point the first two archaeologists in the field, Father Roland de Vaux and G. Lankester Harding, excavated the cave and also visited the ruins located more than half a mile away—Khirbet Qumran. The first conclusion de Vaux drew upon briefly visiting the site was that the scrolls in the cave and the nearby site were unrelated.6 Later, when a distinctive kind of jar (for holding scrolls) found in the cave turned up at the site, a relation between them became much more likely. That likelihood greatly increased as the scrolls and the site were examined in more detail.

Once it became evident that the buildings at the site and the scrolls in the cave were related, archaeologists began more thoroughly investigating the ruins occupying a nearby plateau. The leader of five seasons of excavation (1951 and 1953–1956) was de Vaux, who was affiliated with the École Biblique, a French Dominican school in Jerusalem. He was an experienced archaeologist and, because of his prominent role in excavating the site, in an ideal position to articulate a comprehensive interpretation of data.7

De Vaux identified two principal periods of occupation. First, in the eighth to seventh centuries BCE, a small city occupied the site. (It may be the one named Secacah in the Bible, in Josh 15:61.)8 The ruins of a rectangular building were traced to this phase. Second, after a gap of several centuries there is evidence for renewed occupation when the people associated with the scrolls used the area. De Vaux divided the two centuries that he thought were involved in this second occupation into two phases, the first of which he further subdivided. A brief third phase seems to have followed.

Phase Ia

Few remains survive from this early reoccupation because later construction and destruction removed most of them. On the basis of coins and other artifacts from the next phase, de Vaux concluded that the short phase Ia began not far from 140 BCE.

Phase Ib

De Vaux argued that phase Ib began probably during the reign of the Hasmonean ruler and high priest John Hyrcanus (134–104 BCE). The people who utilized the site added upper stories to the existing structures and expanded the buildings to the west and south. They extended the water system, built an aqueduct that brought water from the hills into the building complex, and coated the entire system with plaster. The remains from phase Ib indicate that the population of the area grew considerably beyond the number there in phase Ia. A fire and an earthquake—they may have happened simultaneously—led to the end of the phase. The Jewish historian Josephus (37–about 100 CE) dates an earthquake in the area to the year 31 BCE, so this marked the end of phase Ib for de Vaux.

Phase II

De Vaux believed that the site was abandoned after the earthquake until the death of King Herod in 4 BCE. Phase II lasted from that time until 68 CE, when Roman troops who were putting down the Jewish revolt in the area (the revolt lasted from 66 to 70) attacked and destroyed the buildings, whose ruins also show evidence of a fire. De Vaux inferred the date of 68 from the fact that eighty-three bronze coins of the second year of the revolt (67 CE) were found at Qumran, but there were only five from the third year (68 CE). Some Roman arrowheads made of iron and belonging to a type known in the first century CE were found at Qumran.

Phase III

Roman soldiers who were stationed at Qumran after the end of phase II built a few barracks, mostly in the southwestern corner of the central building. The coins of this phase extend to about 90 CE, although ones from the Bar Kokhba period (132–135 CE) suggest that rebels used the site at this later time.

De Vaux did not think that the buildings at Qumran were residential in nature. For him it was a community center (for eating, meeting, working) while the people who used the buildings may have lived in less permanent shelters, perhaps even in some of the caves. The furniture and two inkwells found in the room designated locus 30 led de Vaux to conclude that at least some scrolls from the caves were written there.

In the post–de Vaux debate about the Qumran site, there have been experts who largely accept his interpretation while adjusting the chronological limits for the phases of occupation that he hypothesized; others have read the evidence far differently. All look forward to the time when the evidence from the digs at Qumran will be published in full. A short summary of the post–de Vaux discussions follows below.

Jodi Magness’s monograph The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls is the most widely cited study since de Vaux’s book.9 Building on work by others and her own analysis, she defends the following points regarding the phases distinguished by de Vaux:

1. 1. There was no period corresponding to de Vaux’s Ia.
2. 2. De Vaux misdated the beginning of Ib (the large number of coins from the reign of Alexander Jannaeus [103–76 BCE] suggested to him that it had been occupied by this time whereas they entail only that the coins could not have come from a time earlier than his reign). Magness thinks that the occupation of Qumran occurred some time between 100 and 50 BCE and that the site was sectarian (Essene) from the beginning (the size and number of the ritual baths are one piece of evidence for her conclusion). That is, there is no indication in the archaeological data suggesting a change of function.
3. 3. The gap in occupation between Ib and II was not nearly as long as de Vaux thought. Magness’s argument involves the interpretation of a collection of 561 Tyrian silver coins; she places them in phase I and thinks they show that occupation continued until 9/8 BCE. The earthquake of 31 BCE did not cause Qumran to be abandoned; a fire that broke out decades later did, but only for a short time. Soon (early in the reign of Archelaus [4 BCE–6 CE]) the site was rebuilt to look much as it did before—suggesting that the same people were involved.

Unlike Magness, the Israeli archaeologist Yitzhar Hirschfeld thought that the site did undergo a change in function: in his view, before 37 BCE it was a field fort and road station; after that it became a manor house.10 It never was a sectarian site, and the buildings at Qumran are unrelated to the scrolls in the caves. The scrolls came from the Jerusalem Temple and were deposited there just before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem (a view defended by others before him).

The French archaeologist J.-B. Humbert thinks Qumran at first was a Hasmonean villa associated with farming in the area.11 Occupation began during de Vaux’s period Ia, and the villa was destroyed in 57 or 31 BCE. After 31 BCE, Essenes (one of the Jewish groups existing at the time) turned the site into a cultic center with an altar on the north side facing Jerusalem. It continued without a break in occupation. Only a small number of “guardians” lived in the buildings; others, the people who worked there, came from elsewhere. The site was destroyed in 68 CE.

One problem with Hirschfeld’s suggestion that Qumran was for a time a manor house is that no similar structures are known. His theory does not account for the large cemetery adjacent to the site (more than 1,100 individual graves), and both the numerous, large ritual baths and the cemetery are more consistent with a sectarian interpretation. The idea that the people of the site and the scrolls are unrelated is exceedingly difficult to accept. Humbert’s theory encounters the problem of demonstrating a change in function for the buildings, and there is no certainty about sacrifice at Qumran, though it may have occurred.12

Magness’s views appear to be the best interpretation of the evidence; and she, like de Vaux, thinks the inhabitants of the site were the owners of the scrolls. The site is unique in several ways and does not app...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I. Early Diversity
• Part II. Emerging Normativity
• About the Contributors
• Index