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Course 6 · Lesson 6.4

Sources: the Dead Sea Scrolls, the deuterocanonical books and Josephus

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 6 outline

Module 1: Israel in the Ancient Near East

  1. Egypt, Mesopotamia and Canaan: the world of the Old Testament
  2. What archaeology and ancient texts can and cannot show
  3. Genesis 1 to 3 beside other ancient creation accounts
  4. Ancient cosmology and how Christians and Jews read Genesis

Module 2: Covenant: Abraham and Moses

  1. What a covenant is, and covenant forms in the ancient world
  2. The covenants with Noah and Abraham
  3. The exodus and the covenant at Sinai
  4. The Torah: law, worship and the tabernacle
  5. Covenant in Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox and Reformed thought

Module 3: Kingship in Israel

  1. From the judges to the first kings
  2. David, Jerusalem and the promise of a lasting house
  3. Solomon, the temple and the divided kingdom
  4. How Samuel and Kings tell the story: sources and purpose

Module 4: The Prophets, Exile and Restoration

  1. What a prophet was in Israel and in the ancient world
  2. Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah: justice, loyalty and judgment
  3. Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the fall of Jerusalem
  4. The return, Ezra, Nehemiah and the rebuilt temple
  5. How the prophetic books were formed: the debate over Isaiah and others

Module 5: Wisdom and Apocalyptic Writing

  1. Proverbs and the way of the wise
  2. Job and Ecclesiastes: wisdom that questions
  3. What apocalyptic writing is: Daniel and its setting
  4. Reading apocalyptic images responsibly

Module 6: Second Temple Judaism and the Development of Jewish Thought

  1. Persian, Greek and Maccabean periods
  2. Temple, synagogue and the main groups in Jewish life
  3. Development in Jewish thought: angels, resurrection, wisdom and law
  4. Sources: the Dead Sea Scrolls, the deuterocanonical books and Josephus

Module 7: Messianic Expectation and the Shape of the Covenants

  1. Anointed ones in the Old Testament: king, priest, prophet
  2. Messianic texts in the prophets and psalms
  3. How Jews and Christians read the messianic texts
  4. The promise of a new covenant
  5. Mapping the development of covenant across the Old Testament

All courses

Program / Course 6: Old Testament Theology and History / Lesson 6.4

What you will learn

  • Describe the discovery and contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the debate about who wrote them.
  • List the deuterocanonical books and explain how the churches differ about them.
  • Evaluate Josephus as a source, including his strengths and biases.
  • Explain how a historian weighs different kinds of ancient evidence.

The big idea

Three kinds of source tell most of what is known about Judaism between the exile and the Roman destruction of the temple. The Dead Sea Scrolls give original manuscripts, including the oldest copies of biblical books and the writings of a strict community. The deuterocanonical books show Jewish thought and history in Greek and Hebrew texts that Catholics and Orthodox accept as Scripture. Josephus, a Jewish priest and historian writing for Romans, gives a continuous narrative that is valuable and biased.

Key terms

Dead Sea Scrolls
Manuscripts found from 1947 onward in caves near the Dead Sea, including near the site of Qumran, dating from about the third century BC to the first century AD.
Qumran
A ruined settlement on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, near the caves where many scrolls were found.
Deuterocanonical
A term, meaning second canon, for books in the Greek Old Testament that are not in the Hebrew Bible. Catholics and Orthodox accept them as Scripture.
Apocrypha
The name used by Protestants for the deuterocanonical books, which many Protestants consider useful but not Scripture.
Pesher
A type of commentary found at Qumran that applies prophetic texts to the history and hopes of the community.
Josephus
Flavius Josephus (about AD 37 to 100), a Jewish priest and commander in Galilee who became a Roman client and wrote histories of the Jewish people.
Genizah
A storeroom in a synagogue for worn-out sacred texts. The Cairo Genizah preserved thousands of medieval documents.

Background

Historians of this period work with a small and unusual set of sources. There is no large body of Jewish historical writing between Ezra and the Maccabees. The Greek and Roman writers who mention Jews often knew little about them. For the Jews’ own thought, scholars rely on texts that happen to have survived, usually because a religious community preserved them.

Many of those sources were preserved by Christians and not by Jews. The books of Maccabees, Sirach, Enoch and the writings of Josephus survived in Christian libraries because Christians valued them. After the rabbis fixed the contents of the Hebrew Bible, many Jewish writings in Greek were not copied in Jewish circles. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the twentieth century thus provided a major new body of evidence, from the Jewish side.

This lesson looks at three sources in turn and then at how historians use them together.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The Dead Sea Scrolls

In 1947, a shepherd found jars with scrolls in a cave near the Dead Sea. Over the following years, eleven caves near Qumran yielded fragments of about nine hundred manuscripts, most in Hebrew, some in Aramaic and a few in Greek. About a quarter are copies of biblical books, including every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther, with the great Isaiah scroll from about 125 BC. These are about a thousand years older than the oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts that scholars had before. They show that the text of Scripture was copied with great care, and also that several forms of some books existed.

The rest of the scrolls include non-biblical writings: the Community Rule, which sets out the discipline of a group; the War Scroll, about a battle between the sons of light and the sons of darkness; the Temple Scroll, a rewriting of laws; commentaries such as the Habakkuk Commentary; and hymns. A document similar to the Damascus Document had been found earlier in the Cairo Genizah.

Step 2: Who wrote the scrolls?

The most common view since the 1950s is that the scrolls belonged to a community at Qumran, a sect of Essenes, who deposited them in the caves, possibly as the Romans approached about AD 68. The community, as the Community Rule describes it, was led by priests, held property in common, kept strict purity and expected a final conflict. Some of the writings speak of a Teacher of Righteousness and a Wicked Priest, whose identities are debated.

Other scholars have argued that Qumran was a fortress, a pottery factory or a villa, and that the scrolls came from libraries in Jerusalem hidden in the caves for safety. The debate continues, and many scholars take a middle course. The scrolls may be the product of a movement that included but was not limited to the Qumran settlement. None of the scrolls mention Jesus or the early Christians, contrary to some popular claims.

Step 3: The deuterocanonical books

The Greek Old Testament used by early Christians included books not in the Hebrew Bible. The Catholic Church lists Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees, with additions to Esther and Daniel. The Council of Trent confirmed this list in 1546. The Orthodox churches accept these and others, such as 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees and Psalm 151, with differences among them. Protestants, following the Reformers, place these books outside the canon. Luther’s Bible included them as useful reading but not equal to Scripture, and early English Bibles such as the King James Version printed them in a separate section.

The reason for the difference is debated. Jerome, who translated the Latin Vulgate, held to the Hebrew canon but included the other books, and Augustine accepted them. Scholars argue about whether there was a closed Jewish canon in the first century and whether the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria had a larger one. Fragments of several deuterocanonical books, such as Sirach and Tobit, were found at Qumran in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Step 4: Josephus

Josephus was born into a priestly family in Jerusalem. He took part in the revolt against Rome as a commander in Galilee, was captured, and gained favor with the future emperor Vespasian by predicting that he would rule. He lived in Rome and wrote The Jewish War about AD 75, Jewish Antiquities about AD 93, an autobiography, and a defense of Judaism called Against Apion. His writings are the main source for the history of the Hasmoneans, Herod and the revolt.

He has to be used with care. He wrote for Roman patrons and for Jews and Gentiles who might be hostile. He shapes his stories to flatter, to excuse himself and to explain the revolt as the work of extremists. His numbers are often inflated. His passage about Jesus, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, is generally thought by scholars to have been partly altered by later Christian copyists, though most think it has a genuine core. His account of the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes is among the best that survives.

  1. What kind of information do the Dead Sea Scrolls provide that no other source does?
  2. Why is it difficult to be sure who owned the scrolls?
  3. What distinguishes the deuterocanonical books from other Jewish writings of the period?
  4. Why do the churches differ about these books?
  5. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Josephus as a historian?
  6. How should a historian combine evidence from several sources that disagree?

Examples

The Great Isaiah Scroll

The scroll from the first cave contains the whole book of Isaiah and is dated to about 125 BC. It differs from the later standard text in some spellings and readings, but agrees with it closely. It shows both the stability and the variety of the text.

The Habakkuk Commentary

The commentary quotes a verse of Habakkuk and then explains what it means for the community, naming figures like the Teacher of Righteousness. It shows how the community read the prophets as speaking about their own time.

Josephus on the Essenes

Josephus describes Essenes who share property, bathe before meals and avoid oaths. Because several of these details match the Community Rule, scholars use them to support the Essene link, though differences also exist.

Different perspectives

Jewish readers

Jewish scholars have taken a leading role in the study of the scrolls and view them as a window on the diversity of Judaism before the rabbis. The Hebrew Bible’s canon is the standard, and Sirach is quoted in rabbinic writings though not included.

Catholic readers

The Catholic Church holds that the deuterocanonical books are inspired Scripture, citing their use in the early church and in the Greek Old Testament. Catholic scholars also welcomed the scrolls as evidence of the Jewish background of the New Testament.

Orthodox readers

The Orthodox treat the Septuagint as the church’s Old Testament and its books as Scripture, with some variation among Orthodox churches about the exact list. They stress the use of these books in worship.

Protestant readers

Protestants hold the Hebrew canon, citing Jerome, Jewish usage and the Reformers. Many read the Apocrypha for history and devotion, while others do not. Some Protestant Bibles, such as the Anglican, include them in a separate section.

Scholarly views

Historians view all these sources as evidence to be weighed. They disagree about the Qumran-Essene hypothesis, about the date at which a closed canon existed and about how far to trust Josephus.

Why it matters

Without these sources the Jewish world of Jesus’s time would be known mainly from the New Testament and later rabbinic texts. The scrolls, the deuterocanonical books and Josephus fill in much of the background, correct stereotypes and show the range of Jewish belief. They also show how the biblical text and canon came to exist in the forms that different communities received.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: The Dead Sea Scrolls mention Jesus or the first Christians.

Correction: No scroll mentions Jesus or early Christians. Claims to the contrary rest on disputed readings of tiny fragments.

Misunderstanding: The deuterocanonical books were added by Catholics in the sixteenth century.

Correction: They were part of the Greek Old Testament used by early Christians. The Council of Trent confirmed their status in response to the Reformation.

Misunderstanding: Josephus is a neutral reporter.

Correction: He wrote for patrons and had personal reasons to shape the story. Historians use him with caution and compare him with other sources.

Misunderstanding: The scrolls changed the Bible.

Correction: They confirmed the stability of the text in most places and showed a few variant forms. Most differences are minor.

Knowledge check

What are the Dead Sea Scrolls and why are they important?

They are manuscripts found from 1947 onward in caves near the Dead Sea, dated from about the third century BC to the first century AD. They include copies of every Hebrew Bible book except Esther, about a thousand years older than the previous oldest manuscripts, and writings of a strict community. They show the variety of Judaism and the care with which Scripture was copied.

Who wrote the scrolls?

Most scholars have held that the scrolls were the library of a community at Qumran, likely Essenes, but the claim is disputed. Others suggest that the scrolls came from Jerusalem libraries or from several groups. The scrolls do not name the community directly, and the archaeology of Qumran is read in different ways. The question remains open.

Which books are called deuterocanonical and how do the churches treat them?

They include Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees and additions to Esther and Daniel. Catholics and Orthodox accept them as Scripture, with the Orthodox list somewhat longer. Protestants call them Apocrypha and do not treat them as canonical, though some Protestant traditions print them for reading.

How should a student use Josephus?

As a major source of information about Hasmonean, Herodian and Roman Judea, used with caution. Josephus wrote for Roman patrons, defended himself and blamed extremists for the revolt. His numbers are inflated and his reports about Christian figures may have been altered by later copyists. Historians compare him with archaeology, the scrolls and other writers.

Think it through

  1. What would it mean for your picture of ancient Judaism if only one kind of source had survived?
  2. Why might communities preserve some books and lose others?
  3. How does the discovery of a new source change what scholars can say?
  4. How do you decide how much to trust a source that has its own aims?

Independent assignment

Source evaluation sheet

In your own notebook, make a sheet with three columns for the Dead Sea Scrolls, the deuterocanonical books and Josephus. For each, list the type of source, its date, its main contribution, its limits and one question a historian should ask. Then write 250 to 350 words on how you would use the three together to describe the Pharisees or the Maccabean revolt. Keep it for yourself.

Further study