Review: הלכות שבת בקומראן: בין לשון המקרא למסורות ההלכה Alex Jassen, Scripture and Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Cambridge 2014

Despite the centrality of Sabbath observance to Jewish practice in antiquity, Scripture provides only the scantiest instructions, which appear mainly in the prophets (Isaiah 58; Jeremiah 17). In his recent book, Jassen seeks to trace the literary roots of some details of Qumran Shabbat laws to scriptural formulations, thus uncovering both the exegetical methods of Qumran authors and the canonical status of the prophets in their view. The literary approach adopted in this book locates Qumran legal formulations within the narrow framework of “rewritten bible”; that is, as clearly distinct from the rabbinic midrashic treatment of the biblical material. In contrast to Jassen’s approach, this review essay suggests that the various sources on the laws of the Sabbath in Qumran should be situated within a wider tradition of legal development, which incorporates, besides the commitment to biblical exegesis, additional practices and conventions shared with other groups. I argue that Qumran law cannot be read against the backdrop of Scripture alone, but must rather be interpreted as an integral part of Second Temple legal and ideological discourse.