על נתינים ונביאי שקר

Two Dead Sea Scroll fragments are published here. Although containing barely a dozen complete words, they grant us new information on the world of the Qumran sect. Fortunately both fragments preserve the opening lines, and thus we can become acquainted with their contents. The first, a list of names of netinim (4Q340), is written in Hebrew, and it may be regarded as Qumranic, i.e. Essene, composition. The other, a list of False Prophets (4Q339), is in Aramaic, a fact that probably indicates its non-Qumranic origin, but we can assume that its viewpoint was accepted by the sect. The list of the netinim seems to us to be a list of people of low marriage-eligibility status.