Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reader from the Biblical Archaeology Review

Culled from the pages of Biblical Archaeology Review , edited by Shanks, these essays by scholars in the field shed further light on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in the Qumran caves east of Jerusalem in 1947. Eschewing the mainstream opinion that identifies the inhabitants of Qumran as members of a Jewish religious sect called the Essenes, Lawrence Schiffman radically links the sectarians with the priestly and scripturally literalistic Sadducees. The late Yigael Yadin describes his laborious efforts to acquire the crucial Temple Scroll, the difficult task of unrolling it and his belief that Jesus was anti-Essene even though the Essenes' rejection of the Jerusalem Temple and its cult influenced the early Christians. Hartmut Stegemann claims that the Temple Scroll is a lost sixth book of the Torah composed of material rejected when the Pentateuch was canonized under the influence of Ezra in the fifth century B.C. In a 1990 interview with an Israeli journalist, John Strugnell expresses anti-Semitic views; he was subsequently removed from his position as chief Scrolls editor. Illustrations not seen by PW. (July)