There is a Sound Series, Dead Sea Scrolls: The scrolls in context

Shidonna Raven
2 hours ago
3 min read

ByPhilip R. Davies

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Last Updated: May 22, 2025

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Source: Britannica

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The scrolls in context

The group at Qumrān has been identified with many Jewish sects of the time. Even though some scholars believe the community to have been a branch of the Sadducees or Zealots, most believe that they were Essenes. The group is believed to have fled, or been driven out, to the Judaean wilderness as a result of a dispute with the priestly leaders in Jerusalem over the sacred calendar and matters of legal interpretation. At Qumrān this group not only preserved their beliefs but developed a worldview that rejected the rest of the Jewish people, espoused a highly dualistic view of the world (i.e., a world sharply divided between good and evil, light and darkness), and looked for an imminent divine judgment of the wicked. They also cultivated a communal life of extreme ritual purity, necessitated by their rejection of the Temple cult.

The history of the Qumrān community can be glimpsed, though darkly, through the scrolls. The “Union” was apparently founded by a messianic figure called the “Teacher of Righteousness.” The group may have split off from a wider movement that lived in its own settlements and urban quarters throughout Palestine. Whatever its origins may have been, the community offers a fascinating example of a Jewish messianic movement, and thus a sociological parallel to the early Christians. Other parallels between the two groups, such as the belief that Scripture foretold the history of their own times, have sometimes been thought to indicate a direct connection, but such parallels can just as easily be explained by the Jewish background common to both groups.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are important not only because they offer insight into the community at Qumrān but because they provide a window to the wider spectrum of ancient Jewish belief and practice. A quarter of the texts are biblical manuscripts—to which can be added copies of works such as the books of Enoch, Jubilees, and Tobit, previously known and not thought to be sectarian. Thus, the scrolls shed light on more than merely the sect that possessed them. Indeed, it has been argued that the Qumrān scrolls actually represent the contents of libraries in Jerusalem, hurriedly hidden shortly before the Roman siege of the city during the First Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), and thus reflect quite varied Jewish origins. This is not an improbable explanation for the concealment of the scrolls, but the diversity of these scrolls is not as wide as this account would suggest. Clearly, many scrolls originate from outside the sect, and this realization makes the importance of the scrolls to ancient Judaism even greater than if they were entirely sectarian.

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