Manuscripts From the time the Old Testament canon was finalized (ca. 400 B.C.) until about A.D. 100 (when the Old Testament text was normalized), we have convincing evidence that proves that the desire save this

Qumran excavations and the problem of the origin of Christianity On the coast of the Dead Sea over the last decade, a large number of material and written monuments related to the life and ideology of the Essenes have been found. An entire Essenian settlement has been excavated

QUMRAN TEXTS ancient manuscripts, mainly. *intertestamental period, found in caves near the Dead Sea. Name K.t. received from the first discoveries made at the “wadi” (dry riverbed) of Qumran. K.t. - the most important source for biblical studies, especially for the New Testament.

MURABBAAT MANUSCRIPTS fragments of manuscripts of the 1st–2nd centuries. AD, found in the caves of Wadi Murabbaat, south of *Qumran. The first fragments were delivered in 1951. *De Vaux Bedouins. In January 1952, he, together with I. Yadin, participated in an expedition to Wadi Murabbaat. The search went to

NAG-HAMMADIYAN MANUSCRIPTS Coptic manuscripts of the ancient New Testament. *apocrypha found in Egypt. The exact date of their discovery is unknown; in 1946 the Cairo Museum acquired them from an antique dealer. A year later, a Frenchman met them. historian and coptologist Jean Dorses. He dated the manuscripts to the 3rd–4th centuries.

BIBLE MANUSCRIPTS Before the era of printing, the Bible was distributed in the form of handwritten copies (manuscripts). They took two forms: *scrolls and *codes. From the 5th century AD appeared *illustrated editions of the Bible. Manuscripts were written on papyrus, parchment, leather and paper. Bible R.

Revival of the manuscript The next hero of our story is the current owner of the manuscript of the Gospel of Judas. This is Frida Chakos-Nussberger, a native of Egypt, of Greek nationality. From a very early age, Frida traveled to different countries. She studied at the School of Translation

B. QUMRAN FINDS No other finds of this kind were attested until 1947. That year, several Arab shepherds came across the cave, and their discovery led to what was soon hailed as the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century. A special story

Chapter 4 THE QUMRAN ESSENES The Essenes who lived at Qumran were just a small part of the wider Essenes movement in the country. According to Josephus and Philo, the number of Essenes was approximately four thousand. Estimates of how many people may have lived in the Qumran area are

C. THE QUMRAN ESSENES AND THEIR PLACE IN JUDAISM It is interesting to read some book about Judaism of the late second temple period, published before 1947, and compare it with a book containing information about the discovery of the scrolls. There remain many uncertainties about these times, despite the increase

Thus, in the first half of the twentieth century we had, without a doubt, a highly accurate text of the Old Testament. The differences between the Masoretic texts, the Targums, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint sometimes seemed quite large at first glance, but overall they had virtually no impact on the general understanding of the meaning of the biblical text. Yet sometimes scholars wished for a clearer guideline by which they could choose among several options, especially where the Masoretic text did not inspire confidence and the Septuagint seemed to offer a more acceptable solution. In 1947, a major event occurred that solved many problems of this kind and provided almost fantastic confirmation of the accuracy of our current Jewish biblical text.

In early 1947, a young Bedouin, Muhammad Ad-Dib, was looking for his missing goat in the area of ​​the Qumran caves, west of the Dead Sea (about 12 km south of the city of Jericho). His gaze fell on a rare-shaped hole in one of the steep rocks, and the happy thought came to him to throw a stone there.

In these caves of Qumran, near the Dead Sea, many ancient biblical manuscripts were found in 1947.

To his surprise, he heard the sound of breaking pottery. Having examined the hole, which turned out to be the entrance to the cave, the Bedouin saw several large jugs on the floor; Later it turned out that they contained very ancient leather scrolls. Although research has shown that the scrolls had been in the jars for about 1,900 years, they were in amazingly good condition because the jars were carefully sealed.

The Qumran scrolls were kept in such clay vessels. Along with the manuscripts of the Essenes sect, fragments and entire scrolls of biblical books were found. These Qumran scrolls confirm the fantastic accuracy of the Hebrew text of the Bible. Fragments of all the books of the Old Testament were discovered except the book of Esther.

Five scrolls from Cave No. 1, as it is now called, were, after many adventures, sold to the archbishop of an Orthodox Syrian monastery in Jerusalem, the other three to Professor Sukenik of the local Jewish University. At first, this discovery was generally kept silent, but by a lucky coincidence, in February 1948, the archbishop (who did not speak Hebrew at all) let scientists know about “his” treasure.

After the end of the Arab-Israeli war, the world quickly learned of the greatest archaeological discovery ever made in Palestine. During subsequent surveys of the area, manuscripts were discovered in ten more caves. It turned out that all of these caves were connected to a nearby ancient fortification, possibly dating back to around 100 BC. was created by the Jewish sect of the Essenes. The Essenes moved with their extensive library into the desert, to the fortification of Khirbet Qumran, probably fearing the invasion of the Romans (which followed in 68 AD). Cave No. 1 alone probably originally contained at least 150-200 scrolls, while Cave No. 4 yielded fragments of more than 380 scrolls. Subsequently, biblical scrolls dating back to the second century AD were also found in the Murabbaet caves, southeast of Bethlehem. Biblical scrolls discovered in 1963-65 during excavations at Massada, a fortification in the Judean Desert, also turned out to be valuable.

The most important of the Qumran finds are the famous scroll of Isaiah A, discovered in cave No. 1, the oldest complete Hebrew book of the Bible that has come down to us, dating back to the second century BC, as well as a commentary on the book of the minor prophet Habakkuk and an incomplete scroll of Isaiah B. In the cave No. 4, among other things, a fragment of the book of Kings of the 4th (!) century BC was discovered. - probably the oldest existing fragment of the Hebrew Bible. From cave No. 11 in 1956, a well-preserved scroll of Psalms, a miraculous scroll with part of the book of Leviticus and the Aramaic Targum of Job were recovered. Overall, the finds are so extensive that the collection covers all the books of the Bible (except Esther)! Thus, scientists got their hands on something they never dreamed of: a large part of the Hebrew Bible, which is on average a thousand years older than the Masoretic texts.

And what came to light? These ancient scrolls provided stunning evidence of the authenticity of the Masoretic texts. In principle, it is even difficult to believe that the text copied by hand has undergone so few changes over a thousand years. Take the scroll of Isaiah A for example: it is 95% identical to the Masoretic text, while the remaining 5% are minor errors or differences in spelling.

Part of an excellently preserved complete scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Today the scroll is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

And where the Qumran manuscripts diverged from the Masoretic text, their coincidence was revealed either with the Septuagint or with the Samaritan Pentateuch. The Qumran scrolls also confirmed various amendments to later texts proposed by scholars. It is not difficult to imagine that as a result of these discoveries, a whole new scientific direction arose, generating a large stream of literature and producing more and more amazing discoveries.

Let us not forget one of the important areas on which the Qumran findings had a serious impact: the camp of Bible critics. We will look at these questions in more detail in chapters 7 and 8. For example, the scroll of Isaiah B simply sweeps off the table many of the arguments that critics have made about the issue of the origin of this book. This concerns both theories about the time when this book was written, and claims that it is a collection of works by many authors. Of course, we must not lose sight of the fact that the books of the Bible, copies of which were discovered at Qumran, were first written down on paper hundreds of years earlier. As a rule, there was a significant period of time between the writing of a book and its widespread popularity and inclusion in the Holy Scriptures. Added to this is the slow pace of text transmission - due to the difficult, time-consuming instructions of the scribes. This also applies to the book of Daniel and some of the Psalms, which some critics once claimed did not originate until the second century B.C. The Isaiah scroll dates back to the second century BC, so the original must have been written several centuries earlier. This will refute a number of theories that claim that certain parts of the book of Isaiah were written in the third or even second century BC. Bernard Doom even wrote in 1892 that the final version of the book of Isaiah did not appear until the first century BC.

The discovery of the Isaiah scroll was also a bitter pill for liberal critics, who believed that chapters 40-66 of this book did not come from the pen of Isaiah, but were added much later by an unknown prophet (Isaiah the Second) or even - in part - by Isaiah the Third, who then he added them to the book of the prophet Isaiah. But it turned out that in the scroll of Isaiah, chapter 40 is not even highlighted with a new interval, although this was quite possible (moreover, chapter 40 begins in the last line of the column!). But such an interval can be found between chapters 33 and 34, i.e. right in the middle of the book. It consists of three blank lines and divides the book into two equal parts. In addition, both parts of the book differ in the structure of the text: either the scribe used different originals to copy the first and second parts of the book, or the work was carried out simultaneously by two scribes with different handwriting characteristics (probably this happened often). Therefore, the complete absence of such a separator between the 39th and 40th chapters is even more striking. Among all the arguments against the “theory of two Isaiahs,” the decisive one is the fact that nowhere among the Jews is there any reference to several authors of this book. On the contrary, even the apocryphal book of Jesus, son of Sirach (about 200 BC), in ch. 48, 23-28 attributes the entire book to the prophet Isaiah, directly pointing to chapters 40, 46 and 48!

Nikolay Borichevsky

One of the most important questions of all generations is the question of the inerrancy and truth of the Bible. Is the Bible God's "legislation" and "guidance" for the inhabitants of planet Earth, or is it only a collection of historical and religious documents written by mostly obscure authors? Are the facts set forth in the Bible the personal and private view of the author on the history of his people, or does the totality of all sixty-six books of the Bible represent the true and infallible legislation of the Creator?

If the Bible truly is the Word of God, then using God's own claims to the accuracy and inerrancy of the Scriptures, critics only need to find a few errors to discredit the entire Bible. For example, God in Scripture said the following: “Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who trust in Him” (Prov. 30:5) or “God is not a man, that He should lie, and not a son of man, that He should change” (Num. 23). :19). Indicating a high standard of accuracy, can the books of Scripture stand the test of time that has been going on for several millennia?

The Bible, or Holy Scripture, was created over 15 centuries by more than forty authors who held a wide variety of public positions. But not only were they the authors of the books of the Old Testament - also the special influence of the Holy Spirit guaranteed the inerrancy of their work. This influence of God on the work of an individual is called divine inspiration (Greek: theopneustos), and it is expressed in the special guidance of God, but at the same time the individual characteristics of the author's writing are preserved, including the stylistic features of his language, the worldview corresponding to his era, etc. It should be clarified that the inspired, inerrant text of the Scriptures are the original books, or autographs. An additional difficulty in verifying the accuracy of Bible translations was the fact that no autographs have reached us, but only numerous copies and translations. Most of them appeared much later than the originals written. The question arises of consistency and error-free translations, preservation of the style and structure of writing. Moreover, a number of religious and anti-religious movements based their dogma on this assumption, arguing that the accuracy of the Bible has been lost and only they have true knowledge of the meaning of the Holy Scriptures. These include Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and others. Atheist scientists, in turn, claim that the Bible that exists today and the one that existed two thousand years ago are very different from each other and are, in fact, different books. They claim that the texts of the Bible were repeatedly rewritten depending on the political situation, which often changed over thousands of years. A number of academic researchers have questioned the dates of writing the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel, and also disputed the authorship of these prophets in favor of their followers, who allegedly wrote these books several centuries after their lives.

Also, the Hebrew language, in which most of the books were written, had its own structural features, which made it difficult to create error-free translations. For example, the Hebrew alphabet did not have vowels; only consonants were written, and in a continuous order, almost without division into words. The pronunciation of words was transmitted orally. The tradition of correct pronunciation of texts was reliable and stable, but, nevertheless, left room for occasional errors.

The scholars who in subsequent centuries came to be called Masoretes were distinguished by their exceptional dedication to preserving and transmitting the accuracy of Scripture. They copied the text with the greatest care and over time even began to number the verses, words, and letters of each book. Their greatest achievement was the introduction of “vowels” into the text - signs denoting vowel sounds following consonants, which made reading easier. (Samuel J. Schultz. “The Old Testament says...”. Spiritual Revival, Moscow, 1997, p. 13.)

In order to answer skeptics and critics of the Scriptures, as well as to study and deepen knowledge of the meaning of difficult passages of ancient books, textual scholars and exegetes needed new confirmation of the truth of the Bible. They subjected the books of the Bible to textual criticism in order to restore as accurately as possible the original meaning of the text.

In 1947, an event occurred that opened a new era in the history and science of biblical studies. A fifteen-year-old Bedouin shepherd named Muhammad Ed-Dib was tending a flock of sheep in the Judean Desert, near the shore of the Dead Sea, thirty-six kilometers east of the city of Jerusalem. While searching for the lost sheep, he noticed one of the many caves in the steep slopes of limestone cliffs. Throwing a stone at one of them and hearing the sound of a breaking vessel, he came to the conclusion that he had found a treasure. Together with his partner, he climbed into this cave and discovered several clay vessels, inside of which there were scrolls of old leather. At first, the shepherds wanted to use the leather for their own purposes, but it was very dilapidated. Then they noticed that unfamiliar writing was visible on them. Soon the scrolls fell into the hands of archaeological scientists. This is how the world-famous manuscripts of the Qumran caves were found, from which they got their name - the Qumran manuscripts. They are also called the Dead Sea Scrolls, due to the proximity of the sea to the discovery site.

After a short time, the search for new scrolls resumed and the archaeological world accepted the most ancient texts and writings into its treasuries for research. Over the course of several years, from 1952 to 1956, archaeologists recovered from 11 Qumran caves more than 10 well-preserved scrolls, as well as about 25,000 fragmentary passages, some the size of a postage stamp. From these scraps and pieces, through complex analysis and comparison, it was possible to identify about 900 fragments of ancient texts.

The discovered manuscripts were of the following categories: about 25% of all manuscripts were Old Testament books or fragments thereof, and the remaining were divided into: 1) biblical commentaries; 2) apocrypha of the Old Testament; 3) teaching literature with non-biblical content; 4) statutory documents of an unknown community; 5) letters. Most of the scrolls were written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and very few were written in ancient Greek. It is also important to note that from among the Old Testament manuscripts, parts or fragments of all the books of the Old Testament have been found, with the exception of the book of Esther.

The uniqueness of the found scrolls lies, first of all, in their antiquity. Various methods for determining the date of writing have indicated the age of the manuscripts to be between 250 BC. and the third quarter of the 1st century AD, when the first Jewish revolt began (66-73 AD). Without exaggeration, we can say that this archaeological event divided biblical textual criticism into two periods - before the Qumran manuscripts and after.

Very often the Bible, as a historical book, has been questioned, including historical dates and names. It was not easy to counter these objections, since before the Qumran scrolls the most ancient manuscripts of the Bible that have survived to this day dated no earlier than about 900 A.D., namely the British Museum manuscript (895 A.D.) , two manuscripts from the library of the city of St. Petersburg (916 and 1008 AD) and a manuscript from Aleppo (Code of Aaron Ben-Asher) - 10th century AD. All other manuscripts date back to the 12th-15th centuries AD .X. Thus, the biblical manuscripts found at Qumran turned out to be more than a thousand years older than those that were known to scientists before! The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was the most important and significant event of the twentieth century for biblical studies. The ancient scrolls confirmed that the Bible is historically accurate.

Scientists have put forward several hypotheses as to how such a large accumulation of scrolls was collected in one place and to whom they belonged. One option says that the settlers of Qumran were members of one of the Essene communities - a religious movement in Palestine between the 3rd century before the Birth of Christ and the 1st after His birth. Others claim that all these scrolls did not belong to the Essene community, but to the Jerusalem Temple, from where they were removed for preservation before destruction in 70 AD. To support this theory, its proponents argue that it is unlikely that a small community could own such a large number of scrolls on such a diverse subject.
Another version that Qumran was a “monastic printing house” is also extremely doubtful, since only a few inkwells were discovered there, and hundreds of scribes are needed to copy such a huge number of manuscripts.

Consequently, it was not possible to do this at Qumran, at the location of the caches.

Found materials from the pre-Christian period made it possible to make an exegetical analysis of the Old Testament and New Testament books, studying the beliefs of the Jews who lived on the eve of the birth of Christ. One of the most striking moments is the study of the messianic ideas and views of the Jews of that time. The Qumran manuscripts confirm that messianic expectations were common ideas at the time they were written, i.e. 200 years before the birth of Christ.

For the interpretation of the Old Testament, as well as confirmation of the divinity of Jesus Christ, the term “Son of God” is very important, which indicates the Divine nature of the Messiah. The psalm says: “The Lord said to Me: You are My Son, today I have begotten You” (Ps. 2:7). This proves that Christ is the Son of God. Many critics and skeptics opposed this title of the Lord, arguing that Christianity introduced into Judaism an understanding of the Messiah as the Son of God, alien to the Old Testament tradition, allegedly borrowed from Hellenism. Critics argued that at the time of Christ, Roman emperors were officially proclaimed “gods”, “sons of God”, therefore assigning this title to Christ is “arbitrary” of Greek Christians outside Palestine.

The Qumran manuscripts provided an answer to this anti-Gospel statement. One of the scrolls found after its research was called “Son of God”. It talks about a King who will come to conquer the nations and rule with justice. Here is a quote from a scroll found in Cave No. 4: “But Your Son will be great on earth, and all nations will be reconciled to Him and serve Him. For He will be called the Son of the Great God, and He will be called by His name. He will be called the Son God, and they will call Him the Son of the Most High... His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all His ways will be in righteousness. He will judge the earth with righteousness, and all will remain in peace" (4Q246 1:7b-2:1, 5-6).

This is convincing evidence that the expression "Son of God" was common in messianic expectations even before the birth of Christ, who would establish an eternal reign of peace and justice. This text complemented the testimony of the Gospel that the born Jesus “will be called the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32).

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the discovered Dead Sea manuscripts for biblical studies and textual criticism. In particular, textual analysis of the Scripture texts found at Qumran suggests that in the 3rd-1st centuries BC. There were several types of Hebrew text. Based on one of them, a translation was made, which is the only translation of the Holy Scriptures into Greek and which is well known to us under the name Septuagint. It was from this text that the Bible was translated into many languages, including Russian, the translation into which was carried out in the 9th century by Cyril and Methodius.

The most important fact is that this archaeological discovery confirmed the authenticity and inerrancy of the books of the Old Testament. When scientists examined the book of the prophet Isaiah, found in Qumran, and compared the text with the already existing version, the coincidence of the text turned out to be incredibly high, as is commonly believed in textual criticism. The text from Qumran and the text of the currently used standard Bible coincided by more than 95%! The remaining 5% were minor spelling errors. What is important is that there was no semantic difference in both versions. This once again proves the care and accuracy of the work of the copyists of ancient manuscripts and gives us confidence in the truth and infallibility of the Holy Scriptures.
Without a doubt, the Qumran discovery proves that God has preserved His Word from errors and inaccuracies throughout the centuries, preserving It from disappearance, modification and involuntary errors. The ancient keepers of these manuscripts deliberately hid their priceless archives, trusting the God they wrote about in their documents, having no doubt that He would preserve the texts for future generations. And this time turned out to be our era almost 2000 years later!

They are Jewish religious texts. Until this day, no one dared to talk about the Qumran scrolls. Sometimes they say that everything that happens to them is the result of a confluence of happy accidents, almost miracles, which, perhaps, occur according to a plan unknown to us. There have been too many mysterious events and coincidences around these relics since the discovery of the scrolls...

In 1947, he accidentally discovered an entrance to a cave in a rock, which was much higher than his height. Thinking that the missing animal could have taken refuge in this cave, he threw a stone into its hole, but instead of the bleating of a goat he heard the sound of broken pottery. Having with difficulty climbed the rock and penetrated inside the cave, the young man discovered ancient clay vessels with leather scrolls in them.

One day in 1947, a Bedouin boy Muhammad Ed-Din from the nomadic Taamire tribe, after a long tedious search for a missing goat, sat down to rest in the shade and began to have fun throwing pebbles into the darkness. And suddenly I heard a ringing. Out of curiosity, the teenager went deeper into the cave and saw a broken jug, from which pieces of good leather were sticking out. He took them for himself and after some time sold them to a shoemaker in Bethlehem. He immediately realized that he had come across something worthwhile, and displayed the parchments in the window of his shop. There they were seen by a certain antique dealer, who reported the rare find to his friend, professor at the University of Jerusalem Eliezer Sukenik. Three texts fell into his hands - “Hymns of Thanksgiving”, “War of the Sons of Light” and the so-called short text of Isaiah.

In the Greco-Roman era there was a settlement here, but it was destroyed in 31 BC. powerful earthquake. In 1-4 AD. the settlement was rebuilt and fortified again, but destroyed by the Romans in 68. From 70 to 90 there was a Roman garrison here, and during the Bar Kokhba revolt, the rebels turned Khirbat Qumran into one of their bases.

In 1956, about ten more caves were found and explored in Qumran. By that time, scientists had nine almost complete scrolls at their disposal. After 1967, when as a result of the Six-Day War this territory came under Israeli jurisdiction, several expeditions constantly worked in the area. Their efforts led to the discovery of about 14 thousand manuscripts, of which only one and a half thousand are well preserved.

This is how the world-famous manuscripts of the caves of Wadi Qumran were found, from which they received the name Qumran manuscripts or manuscripts of the Dead Sea, which was located near this place. The Qumran find turned out to be a sensation for both Science and the Church, since before that the most ancient manuscripts of the Bible were: a manuscript from the British Museum (895 AD), two manuscripts from the Leningrad Public Library (916 and 1008 AD). ) and a manuscript from Aleppo (Code of Aaron Ben-Asher) - 10th century AD. e. All other manuscripts date from the 12th to 15th centuries AD. Therefore, when archaeologists announced that the Qumran manuscripts and settlement dated back to the 4th century BC. - 1st century AD, the tension in the scientific world has increased, because if indeed ancient Biblical texts, almost 1000 years older than any of the originals that have survived, are in the hands of scientists, then by comparison it will be possible to find changes in the Bible - and in general discover a lot of new things about events that period.

500 m east of the Qumran caves, at a place called Khirbet Qumran, researchers discovered the remains of a stone building, apparently a monastery, with a large number of halls, where there were many cisterns and pools, a mill, a pottery storeroom with a pottery oven and granaries. In one of the interior rooms, table-like structures made of plaster with low benches and inkwells made of ceramics and bronze were discovered; Some of them still contain traces of ink. It was probably a scriptorium, i.e. a writing room where many of the found texts were created. To the east of the building was a cemetery containing more than 1,000 graves. It is noteworthy that no objects were found in any of the excavated graves.

A huge number of shards were found, and in the caves - many biblical, apocryphal and liturgical manuscripts in Hebrew and Aramaic (tens of thousands of fragments included in more than 600 books). The excavations were nearing completion when two unique copper scrolls with Hebrew text engraved on them were found. The copper oxidized to such an extent that it was extremely difficult to unroll the scrolls (then they had to be sawn apart). The initial assumption that they contained lists of treasures, in particular gold and silver, probably hidden from the Romans, indicating the location of the treasure, began to be confirmed after reading the texts, but there is still no consensus on their contents.

By looking at the totality of all available information, especially the coins found, scientists are trying to reconstruct the history of the community that owned the Dead Sea Scrolls. The founding of the Qumran settlement appears to date back to the Maccabean era, possibly to the time of King John Hyrcanus of Judea, as the earliest coins date back to his reign (135-104 BC). The discovered series of coins covers the entire period of Hasmonean rule until 37 BC, after which there is a break until 4 BC, when the building probably remained uninhabited. This is most likely explained by an earthquake that, according to Josephus, occurred in 31 BC; Traces of damage are visible on the structure itself.

Another series of coins covers the period from 4 BC. to 68 AD Historical sources speak about the reason for its sudden cessation. In 68 AD Vespasian suppressed the 1st Jewish revolt. Josephus reports that in that year Vespasian marched with his Tenth Legion to Jericho and the Dead Sea. The building may have been taken by storm, as all the rooms are strewn with iron arrowheads, and layers of ash indicate a fire. Indeed, on one coin there is the inscription Legio X Fretensis, which indicates the presence of soldiers of the Tenth Legion. However, the inhabitants most likely received warning of the approach of the Romans and hid the library in the surrounding caves. The ruins remained uninhabited from 68 to 132 AD, after which coins reappeared. This is the period of the 2nd Jewish revolt led by Bar Kochba (132-135 AD)

That the ruins were used during this time is indicated by one of the most remarkable manuscripts - a letter written by Bar Kochba himself, the “Prince of Israel.” The rebels were defeated and the building was finally abandoned. The significance of the found scrolls and their fragments is enormous. If the complete scroll of the book of Isaiah shows minor discrepancies with the accepted text of the Bible, then its fragments are almost completely consistent with it and, thus, confirm the reliability of the later Jewish texts. However, even more important are the manuscripts of non-biblical content, reflecting a previously little-known aspect of Jewish thinking of that era. They talk about people who lived and were buried at Qumran, who called themselves the Community of the Covenant.

Tens of thousands of fragments found in the Qumran caves once amounted to about 600 books. Of these, only twelve scrolls from the 1st and 11th caves have survived completely or in large part. All other books survived in the form of fragments of varying sizes, down to the smallest scraps, on which individual characters can barely be distinguished. Most of the found fragments - the remainder of about 400 books - are in the 4th cave, which was artificially created and apparently was the main repository of books of the Qumran community.

Manuscripts can very roughly be divided into four categories. The former mainly contain “technical information” relating, for example, to grain procurement. The second group is liturgical manuscripts. Then follow philosophical works (in particular, about the battle of the sons of Light with the sons of Darkness, which describes the famous Armageddon). In addition, this also includes manuscripts that belonged to the pen of the founder of the sect - the Teacher of Righteousness. In particular, the so-called Temple Manuscript is, by and large, a squabble between the author and the then king of Judah, who was also the temple high priest. There was only one such person in history - Alexander Yannai, and it was this consideration that made it possible to approximately date the manuscript - 103-76 BC. In this manuscript, the author covers Yannai with his last words, but at the same time expresses deep philosophical thoughts. For example, there is given almost verbatim the text that will later end up in the New Testament under the title The Sermon on the Mount of Christ. Which in itself is curious, since this text was written long before the birth of Jesus.

And finally, the fourth category of manuscripts, or rather, this is the only manuscript considered the most valuable - the so-called Copper Scroll. It is now in the Amman Archaeological Museum, unlike the rest of the scrolls, which are kept in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. This scroll was found in the form of three copper tubes. From what we have already read, for example, it was possible to understand that the Qumranites were either fatalists or seers. They write about the coming destruction of Jerusalem, that the Jews will go into exile for two thousand years, and only when they can return back will their manuscripts be found. And so it happened - the scrolls were found in the year of the UN decision to create the state of Israel.

An absolutely fantastic coincidence! And the description of Armageddon: has this fateful hour long been in the past or is it still ahead? Finally, the Copper Scroll states that valuable temple utensils from Jerusalem, as well as at least 200 tons of gold and silver hidden in the mountains, will be found when the Third Temple appears in Jerusalem. And here’s what’s strange: as if in mockery, the scroll even describes certain caves where valuables are hidden. For example, from the Bear cave one hundred steps to the left, then two hundred steps up - and you will come to the treasury. But what kind of cave is this - Bear? Where is it? The shore of the Dead Sea in the area where the Qumranites lived and where the manuscripts were discovered has been explored up and down by researchers for many years. It would seem that every cave in the area that could be found had been explored. But there is no trace of any treasure. Perhaps the key to the solution lies in the unread fragments of the manuscripts?

It is believed that the manuscripts prove the existence of John the Baptist. Perhaps it was he who was the very ideologist of the sect, but here’s the problem - it turns out that he lived in the 2nd - 1st centuries BC. e. If we take into account that the age difference between John the Baptist and Jesus was, as is commonly believed, 6 months, then it turns out that the latter lived more than a century earlier... So the Qumranite manuscripts require not only careful handling, but also careful interpretation. And it is not surprising that so many hypotheses and guesses arise around manuscripts written in several languages.

The longest discovered scroll, the Temple Scroll, is also one of the most important finds from Qumran. The essay reflected four themes: halakhic regulations, religious holidays, the structure of the Temple and regulations regarding the king. The halakhic section contains a large number of rulings that are not only arranged in a different order than in the Torah, but also include additional halakhic laws. In the section on holidays, in addition to the well-known instructions about traditional ones, there is information about two additional holidays - the New Wine and the New Oil. These holidays occurred 50 and 100 days after Shavuot. The description of the Temple is fully consistent with the chapters of the book "Exodus", but also serves to fill in the "lost" instructions about the construction of the Temple, given by G-d to David. The last section establishes the number of the royal guard - 12,000 people, 1,000 from each tribe of Israel. The task of this guard is to protect the king from an external enemy. The guard should consist of “God-fearing people who hate self-interest.”

“The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness” is a description of a war lasting forty years, which will end with the victory of the righteousness embodied in the sons of light over the prophet, whose carriers are the sons of darkness. The work is a midrash to the book of Daniel 11:45.

Their importance was realized immediately after their discovery, and an international committee for their publication was created back in 1953. About ten years later, much was published in the form of the seven-volume Oxford series “Discoveries in the Judean Desert,” but several thousand fragments remained in private hands, representing scraps of about a hundred manuscripts, and now their publication was suspended for unknown reasons, and access was limited to a narrow circle people, it included about twenty people, no more. These people published isolated fragments for many years, often without even serious analysis. All calls to publish the entire material went unheeded, and the undignified skirmish among scholars over the Dead Sea Scrolls continued until the very beginning of the 90s. Then the proponents of public publishing took a drastic, if unprecedented, step. Herschel Shanks, the publisher of the most important biblical journal, Biblical Archeology Review (BAR), somehow obtained photographs of unpublished fragments and, with the help of Californian professors R. Eisenman and D. Robinson, voluntarily published them in the form of a two-volume edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls Facsimile Edition. Thus, they all finally became available for wide scientific study.

It must be said that even the first scrolls found in the caves around Qumran surprised historians. In addition to two copies of the book of the prophet Isaiah and some previously unknown versions of the book of Genesis and the book of Psalms, there were also documents of a ritual nature, which later received the name “Charter of the Community” from experts. They described the rules of conduct for members of a certain religious community, which in many ways was fundamentally different from the Jewish community of that time, but in some ways anticipated the community and principles of early Christianity, as set out in the New Testament.

The famous Israeli historian Professor Sukenik was the first to suggest, back in 1953, that the Qumran community was made up of the Essenes - a small sect in the then Judaism, known from the descriptions of Philo of Alexandria and Josephus, as well as the Greek historian Pliny the Elder. According to Josephus, the community at that time numbered no more than four thousand people in all of Israel, was scattered throughout the country and was distinguished by a sharply critical attitude towards the then leaders of the Temple, emphasized by the desire for almost monastic asceticism, purity and deep interest in the “mysteries of the Torah.” Pliny, unlike Josephus, reported that the Essenes lived mainly on the western shore of the Dead Sea, near Ein Gedi.

Thus, with the light hand of Sukenik, de Vaux, Yigal Yadin and other authoritative researchers, the opinion was established that Qumran is the central Essene settlement in ancient Palestine, and, accordingly, all Qumran manuscripts are part of the library of this settlement, and since some Qumran texts , as already said, contained similarities to early Christian ideas, the Essenes were soon declared to be the direct predecessors of the first Christians. This idea (in the form of a hypothesis) was first expressed in 1955 by the American literary critic Edmund Wilson in his book “The Dead Sea Scrolls”; later it became almost canonical.

However, this “canonical” interpretation is replete with contradictions. For example, during excavations at Qumran, a cemetery was found in which more than a thousand people were buried - a lot for a secluded “monastic” community. Even more strange is that a good half of these burials belonged to women, which does not at all fit into the idea of ​​an ascetic sect, whose members, as Pliny claimed, took a vow of celibacy.

How can we explain that in the ruins of Qumran there were thousands of the same type of clay plates and jugs, as if they were made for sale or for use in some large household? Or a large, clearly fortress-looking tower? Or the lack of living quarters with many pottery workshops, iron casting furnaces, and animal stalls? There are a lot of such examples of oddities and inconsistencies, and for each, the “canonical” version was forced to look for a separate - often very strained - explanation.

Researchers have tried in vain to firmly connect the problem of Qumran with the problem of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Meanwhile, scrolls similar to the Qumran ones, as well as different from them, but also containing ancient texts and simply documents from that ancient era (letters, notes, promissory notes), which are not in Qumran, were found in many other places around the Dead Sea. This enormous paleographic heritage reflects the spiritual and everyday reality of Judea at the turn of the millennium, and many scholars began to understand that the Dead Sea Scrolls should be studied against this background, and not in the blinders of a “proto-Christian” approach. And then the problem of Qumran will appear in a completely different light. Professor Norman Golb was the first to talk about this, back in 1984. In his opinion, the famous Qumran scrolls are not of Essene origin; Qumran was not an “Essene monastery.”

Most recently, the sensational excavations of Yitzhak Magen and Yuval Peleg, who conducted research at Qumran for ten years, have further complicated the problem. They discovered in the ruins of Qumran precious jewelry, the remains of clearly imported glass vessels, stone bottles for exquisite cosmetics, luxuriously decorated combs, in other words, luxury items that clearly had no place in the Essene monastery. But if Qumran was not an Essene settlement or monastery, then what is the origin of the Qumran scrolls?

Norman Golb stated that at least 150 scribes were involved in writing the scrolls - there were fewer within the Qumran community. Paleographic analysis of the Qumran manuscripts also showed that these texts do not have the same way of writing letters - a specific semi-cursive - that was characteristic of the 1st century. This was also confirmed by the radiocarbon dating method. Perhaps the dating of the Qumran manuscripts to the 1st century was dictated by a subconscious desire to prove the historicity of Jesus Christ. Be that as it may, Greg Doudna, in his review article "Redating the Qumran Scrolls," concludes that all the evidence available today leads to a decisive conclusion: the Qumran Scrolls were written no later than the end of the 1st century BC.

A more precise date is suggested by Michael Wise, who analyzed the hidden hints in the text of these scrolls. As a result, he found that six such allusions refer to people and events that existed in the 2nd century BC, twenty-six - to people and events of the 1st century BC, and not a single one that belonged to a time later than 37 BC . On this basis, Wise concludes that "nearly 90 percent of all the 'Essene' manuscripts of Qumran were written (or rewritten) in the 1st century BC, with 52 percent of them in the decade between 45 and 35 BC . Then this activity ends. Undoubtedly, there is some kind of mystery hidden here.”

Doudna writes in his review: “Without contradicting all the data available today, one can think that the main, or at least a significant part of these texts was imported to Qumran, that is, delivered from outside, while some, indeed, could have been compiled on the spot... As for their discovery in caves, there may be three explanations. It could have been a permanent repository, from which the scrolls were not planned to be removed - they were simply stored there, because these were sacred texts, which among the Jews, even if they became outdated or became unusable, were not destroyed, but were stored in a special room. Or it was a kind of working book depository, which was used until war or other disaster disrupted the previous order of life and forced it to be abandoned. Or, finally, the scrolls could have been hidden there during the same war, and the people who hid them could no longer return for them because they were killed or deported. And it is possible that each of these explanations applies to different caves.”

The most radical explanation of the riddle of the Qumran scrolls was proposed by Norman Golb, and it is this that is gaining more and more supporters. Today, many reputable archaeologists and historians working on Qumran speak in its favor. According to Golb, the Dead Sea Scrolls had nothing to do with Qumran at all, regardless of whether there was any sectarian (Essene?) community there or not. The wide range of these documents, reflecting a variety of currents and approaches in contemporary Judaism, can only be explained, Golb argues, by the assumption that they all originally belonged either to the Temple Library or, even more likely, to a variety of groups and individuals. In this case, they could have ended up in the caves for the simplest reason - the owners hid them there when they fled Jerusalem from the Romans, at the end of the First Revolt.

The same idea is repeated by Isaac Magen: “They could have been brought here by anyone, including refugees fleeing the Romans. Some of them took precious scrolls with them, but later, having crossed the Judean hills and finding themselves having to make their way along the seashore, they did not want to carry them with them and decided to hide them. Thus, these are not sectarian writings, Essenes, Sadducees, or Temples, but the literature of Judaism as a whole, the literature of Second Temple Judaism. It belongs to the entire Jewish people."

Developing this “escape hypothesis,” Norman Golb published an article, “Small Texts, Big Questions,” in which he proposed a detailed possible picture of such an escape. In the book of Josephus, Golb recalls in his article, it is said that the Jews who fled Jerusalem captured by the Romans in the 70th year of the new era were sent along two main routes - to the south and to the east. Golb believes that the destination of the first stream, which went through Bethlehem (Bethlehem), Herodium and the Ein Gedi wadi, was Masada, while the second, eastward stream of refugees, moved towards another mountain fortress - Macerus, on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea , in Trans-Jordan. This stream could branch - some people went around the Dead Sea by land, from the north, while others waded or swam across it at the nearest convenient place.

This “nearest convenient place” turns out to be Qumran. And so it was here, preparing to continue their journey by water, that the fugitives parted with the precious burden captured from Jerusalem - each with his scrolls, which he did not want to leave for desecration by the Romans. Hence the unusual accumulation of these scrolls in the Qumran caves. Some of the fugitives continued on their way to Makerus, others remained in Qumran. These latter soon died at the hands of the Romans, who came in their wake and destroyed the Qumran fortress. At one time, those who hoped to take refuge in Makerus also died, as did the defenders of Masada. But the scrolls remained.

Perhaps the most mysterious is the two and a half meter long "copper scroll", written on three plates of a soft copper alloy. It is dated to 30-135 AD. The contents of the scroll are a detailed inventory of all the treasures with their burial places. The document contains many place names for Judea in those years and allows them to be compared with other mentions in ancient texts. The total weight of gold and silver indicated in the scroll must reach from 140 to 200 tons. If these treasures are real, then it can be assumed that the scroll reports treasures from the Temple and other places rescued by the defenders of Jerusalem in the final stages of the war against the Romans. Among the treasures are listed incense, valuable wood, tithe jars, etc. The use of such expensive material as copper for recording allows us to hope that the treasures described are real. Perhaps the scroll does not belong to the Qumran community, but belonged to the Zealots, who hid it here when the Roman troops approached.

But the most interesting thing is what is contained in the scrolls themselves. Namely: they mention the story of a certain Teacher (obviously not Jesus Christ), who preached among his followers, then was betrayed by one of them and executed, and then resurrected from death. The first researchers of the scrolls paid attention to this story, which seemed strange: after all, in this case, it turned out that the story of Jesus simply repeated in detail what happened earlier. The official Church at first remained silent, and then actively joined the discussion of the topic, trying with all its efforts to force scientists to believe that the Qumran scrolls describe exactly the events of the life of Jesus Christ and belong to the Essene Christians.

Thus, the Church’s angry accusations against the “heretic scientists” who studied the Qumran scrolls were replaced by enthusiastic articles by theologians, in which they openly fantasized, passing them off as “vivid and convincing evidence of the historicity of the Gospel Events.” For example, this is exactly how the Qumran scrolls appear to this day in Orthodox encyclopedias - as supposedly “scientific proof of the life of Jesus.” However, the new findings of scientists put Christian theologians in an absurd position: as it turned out, the scrolls were not written by Christians, but by Jews. And they were written a century before the Gospel Events. It turns out that the Church, hastily recognizing the authenticity of the scrolls and their spiritual value, has driven itself into a dead end.

None of the surviving Qumran manuscripts has a date of its creation or correspondence. Meanwhile, to understand the contents of the manuscripts and their relationship, it is necessary to know. when the works were created, when the copies that reached us were written, and when they were hidden in caves. This confronted science with the most difficult problems, the final solution of which has not been achieved to this day, although much has been done.

Biblical manuscripts from Qumran brought to the disposal of science various versions of the biblical text - the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, proto-Samaritan and Samaritan, proto-Masoretic and close to the Masoretic, as well as intermediate and varying versions. This opens up prospects in the study of the extremely complex problem of the history of the biblical text, in the reconstruction of the various branches of the biblical tradition and their relationships.

The most valuable thing that can be in the Qumran manuscripts are biblical stories and descriptions of the life of the Qumranites, the ideology of their community. The Dead Sea Scrolls are 90 percent read, and the most important information is already known. However, there is a Copper Scroll that is still waiting in the wings. What could be there is unknown. It should be noted that thanks to the scrolls, it became obvious that the Bible that has survived to this day is poorer in subject matter and has different textual traditions.

All manuscripts have been published, so nothing new can be gleaned from them. The most important knowledge that the manuscripts gave was that they shed new light on early Christianity, and, as it turned out, there is no gap between it and Judaism.