The Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Past Achievements and Future Perspective

The Qumran documents allude are best understood as pertaining to the Hasmonean kingdom in the second and first century BCE. The religious universe of the scrolls is marked by three fundamental notions: dualism, predestination and apocalyptic expectations. The community described by the scrolls was very similar to, even identical with, the Essene community described by Philo and Josephus.

However, one significant addition to the sectarian corpus should be mentioned, namely the group of sapiential texts. The most substantial exemplar of this genre is the so-called Instruction, a large wisdom work which presents the sectarian ideas from a new angle. A thorough
and systematic analysis of these wisdom texts as a homogeneous yet distinctive group is still awaited.

The Qumran library also contained compositions not authored by the members of the ascetic community. Undoubtedly, the literature assembled in their library appears related to, or respected by, the Qumranites. But this should not blur the fact that the sectarian literature is marked off by a peculiar set of terms, style and religious ideas, which is not shared by all the manuscripts in the Qumran library.

A related issue concerns the group of Aramaic texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. These were mainly two, the Ethiopic Enoch and the
Aramaic antecedents of the Greek Testament of Levi. But a substantial number of Aramaic works previously unknown were also recovered from the scrolls. As a group these display characteristics of their own, and therefore should be studied as a distinct corpus. This is one of the tasks still to be undertaken. The legal teaching of the Qumran community sparked much discussion during the early years of research as well as the Iranian influence.

A related line of enquiry should investigate the relationship between the fluid biblical text and the various exegetical methods employed by
the parabiblical texts. At present discussions of specific exegetical procedures are scattered through various treatments of individual
texts. But this branch of inquiry presents fertile soil for exploration. It is to be hoped that the future will bring with it systematic and comprehensive surveys of this important subject.

Another theme which needs thorough revision is the history of the Qumran community. The basic dating of this group is well established,
but the intricacies of its history remain as they were reconstructed in the first years of the research on the basis of the partial evidence available for study.