Angels at Qumran

Angels at Qumran
Author: Maxwell Davidson
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 398
Release: 1992-03-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781850753322

A comprehensive study of the perspectives on angels of Qumran sectarian authors and of the authors of those sections of 1 (Ethiopic) Enoch represented in the Qumran library. Marked differences emerge as the roles of angels are considered in relation to various topics. These include beliefs about how the sun entered the world, events at the close of the present age, the means by which divine revelation is communicated to God's people and the ways in which the author thought about the relationship of the pious to angels, both in this age and in the eschaton.

Studies in Qumran Law

Studies in Qumran Law
Author: Joseph M. Baumgarten
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2023-04-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004667474

Articles previously published in various periodicals.

The Boundaries of Jewishness in the Southern Levant 200 BCE–132 CE

The Boundaries of Jewishness in the Southern Levant 200 BCE–132 CE
Author: John Van Maaren
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2022-06-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110787482

Recent research has considered how changing imperial contexts influence conceptions of Jewishness among ruling elites (esp. Eckhardt, Ethnos und Herrschaft, 2013). This study integrates other, often marginal, conceptions with elite perspectives. It uses the ethnic boundary making model, an empirically based sociological model, to link macro-level characteristics of the social field with individual agency in ethnic construction. It uses a wide range of written sources as evidence for constructions of Jewishness and relates these to a local-specific understanding of demographic and institutional characteristics, informed by material culture. The result is a diachronic study of how institutional changes under Seleucid, Hasmonean, and Early Roman rule influenced the ways that members of the ruling elite, retainer class, and marginalized groups presented their preferred visions of Jewishness. These sometimes-competing visions advance different strategies to maintain, rework, or blur the boundaries between Jews and others. The study provides the next step toward a thick description of Jewishness in antiquity by introducing needed systematization for relating written sources from different social strata with their contexts.

Josephus' Description of the Essenes Illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls

Josephus' Description of the Essenes Illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls
Author: Todd S. Beall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2004-12-23
Genre: Bibles
ISBN: 9780521609418

This study provides an analysis and commentary on Josephus' description of the Essenes in the light of the new material from Qumran. A fresh translation is provided alongside the Greek text of the passages in Josephus, as well as a full commentary on the major passages in which he describes this group.

Qumran Interpretation of the Genesis Flood

Qumran Interpretation of the Genesis Flood
Author: Jeremy D. Lyon
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2015-09-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498220096

The Dead Sea Scrolls have opened up for modern readers the ancient world of Jewish interpretation of the Bible during the Second Temple period. Among these scrolls are several manuscripts dating to the first century BC, the oldest surviving texts dealing with interpretation of the Genesis Flood. A literary analysis of the four primary Qumran Flood texts (1QapGen, 4Q252, 4Q370, and 4Q422) reveals how ancient Jews interpreted and employed the Genesis Flood narrative. These texts contain commentary, paraphrase, and admonition, among other things, addressing issues such as the cause, chronology, and purpose of the Flood. In addition, these fragmentary treasures reveal such ancient understandings of the Flood as a reversal and renewal of creation, a restoration of Eden and anticipation of the Promised Land, and an archetype of eschatological judgment.

Unveiling the Hidden—Anticipating the Future

Unveiling the Hidden—Anticipating the Future
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2021-02-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004445706

Unveiling the Hidden—Anticipating the Future investigates the Jewish components of Jewish divination, showing practitioners and their practices within their cultural and intellectual contexts, along with their fears, wishes, and anxieties, drawing from original sources in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Judaeo-Arabic.

The Pesher Nahum Scroll from Qumran

The Pesher Nahum Scroll from Qumran
Author: Shani Berrin
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2018-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9047404246

The underlying premise of this study is the close relationship between Pesher Nahum (4Q169) and its biblical base-text. Historical and literary considerations, as well as theological, sociological, halakhic, textual, and linguistic data, are examined in terms of their exegetical functions. This edition includes a transcription and translation of 4QpNah, with textual notes. The treatment of 4QpNah follows the natural division of the extant text into five thematic literary sections, or “pericopes,” each consisting of a series of “lemma/pesher units”. For each pericope, proposed historical contextualizations are evaluated on the basis of exegetical criteria. “Equivalents” are “mapped” for each unit, such that individual elements of each lemma are aligned with corresponding elements from the biblical base-text. A focus upon “lemma/pesher correspondence” provides the framework for systematic exegetical analysis of 4QpNah.

The Meaning of the Letter of Aristeas

The Meaning of the Letter of Aristeas
Author: Ekaterina Matusova
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2015-05-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3647540439

Ekaterin Matusova offers a new approach to the old problems of interpretation of the "Letter of Aristeas".Chapter 1 deals with the question of the structure of the narrative. Matusova argues that at the time of Aristeas compositions of the kind of the Reworked Pentateuch, or Rewritten Bible were circulating in Egypt in parallel with the LXX and were a source of interpretations of the Hebrew text different from the LXX and of specific combinations of subjects popular in Second Temple Judaism. In particular, Matusova further argues that the leading principle of the composition of the Letter is that of the Reworked Deuteronomy, where subjects referring to the idea of following the Law among the gentiles were grouped together. The analysis is based on a broad circle of Jewish sources, including Philo of Alexandria and documents from the Qumran library. The principle of the composition discovered in this part of the study is referred to as the Jewish paradigm.Chapter 2 offers a new interpretation of the frame story in the narrative, i.e. of the story of the translation in the strict sense. Matusova shows that two paradigms are skilfully combined in this split story: the Jewish one, based on the Bible, and the Greek one, which involves Greek grammatical theory. She further argues that the story, when read in terms of Greek grammar, turns out to be a consistent story not of the translation, but of the correction of the LXX, which is important for our understanding of the early history of the translation. The analysis involves extensive excurses into Greek grammatical theory, including a discussion of Aristotle, Dionysius Thrax and other Hellenistic grammarians.In Chapter 3 Matusova tries to find the reason for the combination of these two paradigms, namely the Jewish biblical paradigm and the Greek grammatical ones, and to interpret their interconnected meaning, by placing it in the broad historical context of the Ptolemaic state