Qumran, The Essenes And The Dead Sea Scrolls

22 Pages 5563 Words

nitial disappointment of finding no complete scrolls or jars they “ literally examined the floor of the cave with their fingernails. What they found allowed them to come to some astonishing conclusions” (“they found fragments and potsherds relating to Graeco-Roman times, dating from 30 B.C. to A.D. 70. Six hundred tiny scraps of leather and papyrus made it possible to recognize Hebrew transcriptions from Genesis, Deuteronomy, and the book of Judges, pieces of linen fabric which had served to wrap up the scrolls completed the meager spoils.” (Keller,406-407)
Professor Lankester Harding stated in a journal article for the Society of Oriental Research in 1956 that
These unexpected discoveries are perhaps the most sensational archeological event
of our time. There have been 400 manuscripts including 100 Biblical manuscripts
discovered. These include every book in the Old Testament with the exception of
Esther. The best known is the complete book of Isaiah. The scrolls and fragments
Which come from Qumran date from 200 B.C. to A.D. 68. Those from Wadi Murabba’at
go up to A.D. 132-135. In the Khirbet Qumran near the cave where the first discoveries
were made there has been found the ruins of a cemetery and a settlement which had been
the nucleus of a Jewish community which Father de Vaux views as possibly being
the wilderness retreat of the Essenes. It will take a whole generation of Biblical scholars to
assess the value of these manuscripts” (Harding, 1956)

Introduction
Indeed, some 50 years have elapsed and many Biblical scholars have assessed the manuscripts.
It will not be the purposes of this paper to debate the validity of the documents nor enter into archeological debate, this paper however will in Section 1, provide further historical ev...