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The Qumrân Scrolls: A General Survey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2024

Joseph Bourke O.P.
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Up to a few years ago it used to be said that it was still far too early to make more than a cautious interim evaluation of the importance of the Qumrân scrolls. Today one feels almost that the opposite is true, that in a certain sense it is too late. It has been done so often already. So many popular presentations of the subject have appeared, many of them highly competent, some few sensationalist in approach and grossly misleading, but all of them attempting to answer the same basic questions: What exactly has been discovered and how? What sort of people were the members of that strange Jewish sect who owned, and in many cases who must actually have written the scrolls? What is the bearing of these documents on the origins and on the sacred books of Judaism and Christianity? These are, I think, the questions everyone would like answered. My excuse for going over the same ground again must be primarily that the answers suggested have often been so bewilderingly different.

First, then, what has been discovered is the relics of a sect whose history in its total span (c. 125 B.C. to 68 A.D.) overlapped the lifetime of Christ, and the emergence of the Christian Church from Judaism. These relics are of two kinds: documentary, and archaeological, and the one exactly complements the other. Coins and pottery from the community building which has been found are identical in type and date with coins and pottery found in the caves which contained the documentary remains.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 40 , Issue 469 , April 1959 , pp. 154 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © 1959 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Footnotes

1

A talk given at the Aquinas Centre, London, in January 1959.

References

2 Two particularly useful books have appeared recently. In his latest book, More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls (Secker and Warburg); Dr Millar Burrows gives an exhaustive survey of the more important interpretations which have been suggested, especially with regard to the bearing of Qumrân on Christianity. This author’s absolute mastery of the whole complex subject, and the cool balance of his judgments make his contribution unsurpassed. The sole defect that must be noticed in this work is the vagueness and inadequacy of its references to other works cited. As a shorter and more popular survey of the whole subject, Fr Van der Ploeg’s new book The Excavations at Qumrân (Longmans; 16s. od.) is most warmly to be recommended.

3 J. Fichtner: ‘Jahwes Plan in der Botschaft des Jesaja’, Z.A.T.W., 1951, pp. 16-33.

4 IQH is the recognized abbreviation for the Hodayot psalms found in Cave I. IQpHab. is the Habacue Commentary. IQS is the ‘Manual of Discipline’.

5 G. von Rad: Der heilige Krieg im alten Israel. Zürich 1951.

6 cf, ‘The Religious Vows and the Holy War’, in The Life of the Spirit, November 1958, pp. 203-212.

7 In Biblica, xxxii, 1951, pp. 549-563.

8 For a forthright and refreshing condemnation of this sort of treatment, cf. H. H. Rowley’s little book, The Dead Sen Scrolls and the New Testament (London, S.P.C.K., 1957).

9 An invaluable collection of essays on this aspect of Qumirân is The Scrolls and the New Testament, edited by K. Stendahl (London, S.C.M. Press; 35s. od.).