DSS.950427 Class Minutes #28, Dead Sea Scrolls, 27 April 1995
University of Pennsylvania, Religious Studies 225, Robert Kraft
Recorded by Vincent Liu, checked by Arthur Cho.


##General (Burning) Questions about the DSS##

**In what directions is DSS research going today?

Schiffman, who recently spoke to our class, is overplaying a 
position by reading the DSS primarily through the eyes of 
classical Judaism. Because the DSS people broke off from the 
stream that produced the ancestors of classical Judaism, and 
because this rift apparently led to a dead-end in Judaism (or at 
best to the Karaites), it is difficult to do justice to the DSS 
evidence in terms of mainstream Judaism alone. An example of 
this is the identification of the DSS community as the Sadducees, 
about whom we know so little. Identifying "Sadducees" at the 
roots of the DSS community does not necessarily produce an 
understanding of the Sadducees presented to us by Josephus or the 
classical Jewish sources, and vice versa, since the respective 
"Sadducee" movements have not necessarily developed in the same 
ways since the "split." The DSS Zadokites appear to be 
preoccupied with eschatological, messianic, predestinarian 
perspectives that find no eleucidation in the more traditional 
sources of information about Sadducees. Thus they can 
legitimately be "reclaimed" for Jewish history, but part of the 
response to that move will be a similar reclaiming of early 
"Christianity" for Jewish history, which will deepen the 
appreciation for the complexity of "Judaism" in this period, and 
for the relevance of the DSS for understanding Christian origins. 
As Arthur Darby Nock, that renown student of the hellenistic 
world, liked to say, scholarship is like a drunken person 
progressing down an alleyway, lurching from side to side. The 
early emphasis on Christian reflections in the DSS is now being 
countered with more classicly Jewish understandings. This will 
probably produce another opposite lurch, in a progressively 
narrowing alleyway. 


**What are the "Christian" connections? 

The DSS attest attitudes, expressions, approaches, and even 
practices that throw light both indirectly and sometimes even 
directly on the early development of the Jewish "Jesus 
movements," and this evidence is extremely important both for 
what Judaism was and became, and for how Christianity came about 
and developed. In many ways, the "reclaiming" of the DSS for 
understanding early Judaism goes hand in hand with reclaiming 
earliest Christianity for that purpose as well. 


**What is the most important next step in DSS research?

A step that has not yet been completed is the mechanical piecing 
together and comparing of all of the various fragments to 
determine which are physically related and unrelated. 
Eventually, the fragments and documents will all be cross 
referenced and disparities in different copies will be noted and 
studied. Another step is to continue to study the various genres 
of material, such as the exegetical or the parabiblical or the 
poetic, and decide where the various types and styles belong in 
relation to other known documents. Areas of investigation would 
include literary studies of poetic structure, and studies of 
repetitive terminology embedded in these Jewish writings. 


**Who wrote the documents? Are they related to Qumran/Essenes?

This question still remains and will not be resolved until we 
find or convincingly create more evidence. The assorted 
documents from the Qumran DSS discoveries are not transparently 
homogenous. If we only had documents from cave 1 we might be 
able to find more homogeneity in the documents, but with the 
numbers of fragments found elsewhere, especially in cave 4, the 
lines become extremely blurred. The most important step in 
answering this question is to begin by developing a system of 
careful definitions and controls, and deciding which pieces of 
evidence can be used as firm foundations. For example, if we 
could agree to trust the Carbon-14 dating of the various 
documents (not to mention whatever DNA tests develop), this would 
provide a starting point around which we could begin to assess 
the relationships between documents. Another question is how 
much we can trust our basic ancient secondary sources, like 
Josephus, since we don't know how his biases or the biases of his 
sources may have influenced his writing about various groups. If 
one were to follow Schiffman's reconstruction, for example, it 
would be important to find an explanation for how these Sadducees 
who care so much about Halakha could also become embroiled in 
apocalyptic and eschatological concerns, despite the claims of 
some of the ancient secondary witnesses about "the Sadducees." 


**Who wrote the Damascus Document?

The time it seems to have been written is probably too early for 
the supposed emergence onto the historical scene of the Essenes, 
Pharisees, and Sadducees, according to Josephus. It is tempting, 
however, to link it with the ancient Jewish "Hasidim" (meaning 
those loyal to the covenant; pious ones) who are said to have 
been among the first to become restless and confrontational with 
respect to the threat of "hellenization" in the prelude to the 
Maccabean/Hasmonean rebellion. The writers of the document 
identify themselves as the sons of Zadok, although it is 
possible, and even probable, that at least some of their 
opponents also identified themselves similarly -- tensions within 
the priestly house of Zadok may well be indicated. The authors 
of the document may well have been the founders of what modern 
scholars so simplistically style "the Qumran community," or the 
document may have been written by some other early group, now 
otherwise lost to us, but later it served to rally dissidents 
who eventually developed into the people who collected and 
deposited the DSS in the Qumran caves. 


**Who are the Kittim?

It seems probable that "Kittim" is not used to refer to a 
specific group that is always the same, in historico-political 
terms, but has been generated by scriptural usages for the main 
enemy at any given time (see, e.g. Numbers 24.24, Daniel 11.30, 1 
Maccabees 1.1). For example, during the Maccabean rebellion the 
Kittim might have been the Greek Seleucids, while during the 
later first century bce and onward, it probably referred to the 
Romans. 



##Oddities in the DSS## (specifically in the Astronomical Texts, 
Calenders, and Horiscopes): 

**Coded -- Backwards, and mixed up writing.
In the description on GM 444, it is noted that some fragments are 
"copied in code." Not only is the writing in 4Q186 (GM456) 
backwards but it also contains various letters of different 
alphabets mixed together. 

**Magical -- Brontologion (GM 452, frg. 2, 2.6).
Brontos means thunder. This is a genre of literature (in Latin 
and Greek) that predicts the future (especially political) 
through clues of nature, specifically by the timing between 
thunder. It was commonly used in the Greco-Roman world. It is 
suprising to some interpreters to find "magic" (astrology) 
throughout various Jewish documents, since in classical Judaism 
it apparently was considered bad and evil and similar activities 
are discouraged in certain scriptural passages (e.g. Deuteronomy 
18.10ff). Interestingly, Zodiac signs have been found on the 
floors of early Jewish synagogues in Palestine labelled in Greek 
or with the names transliterated (even translated) into Hebrew. 
For classical Judaism, this type of overt activity seems to have 
been both forbidden and condemned. Still, there exist many 
"magical" processes that have been incorporated even into 
classical Judaism (as with most religions), such as mechanical 
devices intended to influence the spiritual world. 

**Funny Math? -- Sabbaths.
On GM 422 (line 30), reference is made to the song of the 
sacrifice of "the seventh sabbath of the seventeenth of the 
month." If one were to chart all of the sabbaths in the 
predictable DSS 364 day solar calender (as, e.g. 4Q327 = GM 455), 
the seventh sabbath would fall on the sixteenth day of the second 
month, not the seventeenth. Note that on GM 425, frg. 3, the 
sixteenth of the month is given, although the first part of the 
word "sixteenth" is contained in brackets meaning that GM wasn't 
completely sure that this was the correct reading. Whether or 
not this is a problem (on GM 422) that arose during translation 
or transcription is not clear. It might be a typo. 

**Long lists of numbers and odd names --
In some places the naming system associated with certain periods 
in the months is rather different from what is expected based on 
the other DSS: for example the fragments on GM 452ff (see also GM 
27ff, in one of the 4Q Rule fragments). As VanderKam notes 
(114f), these refer to the 24 priestly shifts or watches (see 
1 Chronicles 24.7-18), which are charted in terms of the more 
normal sequences of sabbaths and months. Sometimes the lunar 
calculations are also included, alongside the solar.

**The beginning of festivals -- sunset, sunrise, or midnight.
There is evidence that the festivals mentioned in the DSS 
documents began at sundown, such as GM 41 = DD 10.15. 
Discovering when the festivals commenced in the DSS community 
could aid in placing them in a specific time period and with 
particular associations in the evolution of Judaism (see 
Schiffman's arguments regarding Sadducean halakha in 4QMMT). 

**Titles on the inside and outside of rolled up documents -- 
The document found on GM 414-417 (4Q504) is of special interest 
because it contains a "title" written on the reverse of fragment 
8 (presumably the final portion), implying that when the scroll 
was rolled up, one could identify the document from the outside, 
without having to unroll it. Whether it also had a title on the 
reverse of the starting column is not known, or whether the text 
began with a title such as the one preserved at the end. 

**ShirShabb -- (pg. 420, frag. 4)
As with parts of Ben Sira, the "Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice" 
materials are found at both Qumran and Masada. This is 
especially interesting because this document includes some
belligerent language. 

**Debir -- GM 423, etc.
What is it?

**Angelization -- GM 433 = 1Q28\b 4.24ff and 5.20ff
This may be an example of a leader of the community being 
"divinized" by the community. This presents a potentially 
interesting precursor to the common practice of raising leaders 
to "sainthood" in classical Christianity, and the "power" 
language even has some resemblance the depiction of Christ in 
Revelation 1. 

**Melki-resha -- (GM 434 = 4Q280, line 3).
This literally is the opposite of Melchi-zedek (see GM 139 = 
11Q13), and means "king of evil." 

**Body Parts -- (GM 437 = 4Q436, line 5).
"You sharpen my kidneys so that I do not forget your laws." This 
"psychological/physiological" idiom was found in another place 
earlier and provides our Dead Sea Scrolls class with a sense of 
closure for the year!
 
//end dss.950427//