Exodus in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Mika S. Pajunen examines the reception of the exodus narratives within the Dead Sea Scrolls. His focus is on the approximately twenty Qumran texts which interact with this tradition, which he considers within three broad groupings: those (e.g. 4Q158; the Book of Giants; the Visions of Amram) which prophesy the exodus as a future event; historical summaries (e.g. 4Q370; 4Q422; 4Q470) and liturgical texts (e.g. the Festival Prayers and the Words of the Luminaries) whch retell and reinterpret these narratives, often with an exhortatory purpose; and those (e.g. the Damascus Document and the Barkhi Nafshi Hymns) which employ the exodus as a prototype of divine justice to explain contemporary events. This chapter, therefore, highlights the range of ways in which exodus motifs are used within the Scrolls to reinforce the community’s theology and ideology.