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| English: Dead Sea Scroll - part of Isaiah Scroll (Isa 57:17 - 59:9), 1QIsa b (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The Dead Sea scrolls very rarely travel outside Israel, but they represent one of the major archeological discoveries of the
last century. Since they were first found around sixty years ago, they have
yielded ground breaking new scholarship. Many of the interpretations and
reconstructions are heavily discussed and contested. Not only do they contest
previously held insights among scholars, but they also give new insights into
two of the major religious traditions: Christianity and Judaism. Themes include
the nature of Judaism at the time, the nature of the community of people living
at Qumran, but also whether the notion of a suffering
Messiah was
already present before the time of
Jesus.
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| Fragments of the Dead Sea scrolls on display at the Archeological Museum, Amman (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The
exhibition in Assen is the result of a cooperation between the Drents museum Assen, the Israeli Antiquities Authority and Mladen Popovic, director of the Qumran
institute at the University of Groningen. It can be visited until the
5th of January 2014.
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| Photographic reproduction of the Great Isaiah Scroll, the best preserved of the biblical scrolls found at Qumran. It contains the entire Book of Isaiah in Hebrew, apart from some small damaged parts. This manuscript was probably written by a scribe of the Jewish sect of the Essenes around the second century BC. It is therefore over a 1000 years older than the oldest Masoretic manuscripts. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
During the 2nd century bce and 2nd century ce the majority of
the Dead Sea
Scrolls were written. The Scrolls clarify our understanding of the
fundamental differences between different Jewish sects, such as the Pharisees,
Sadducees, and Essenes. at that time the people working at reproducing the
writings of the Holy Scriptures considered their work very important and looked
at the older writings as Sacred Scriptures where no fault could be allowed in
the reproduction.
The non-biblical texts show profound discrepancies in the ways that the
different groups, different Jewish sects, such as the Pharisees, Sadducees,
and Essenes, interpreted their Scripture and obeyed its guidelines.
The texts shown on the exhibition may shed light on philosophical
disputes about issues such as the Temple and priesthood, the religious calendar
and the afterlife. They also present us with the more practical disputes at the
time with the focus on everyday law and observance.
The Leon
Levy Dead Sea Scrolls digital library of the Israeli Antiquities Authority has
a beautiful website with background information in English, as well as
high quality images of the scrolls themselves.
Popovic
explaining the significance of the scrolls on the Dutch new programmeKnevel and van den
Brink (Dutch,
towards the end of the program)
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| Portion of a photographic reproduction of the Great Isaiah Scroll, the best preserved of the biblical scrolls found at Qumran. It contains the entire Book of Isaiah in Hebrew, apart from some small damaged parts. This manuscript was probably written by a scribe of the Jewish sect of the Essenes around the second century BC. It is therefore over a 1000 years older than the oldest Masoretic manuscripts. This picture shows all of Isaiah 53 (and is mostly identical to the Masoretic version). (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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