Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
The Qumran literature consists of a number of manuscripts of books of biblical and para-biblical literature, some of which were already known and some hitherto unknown. Many of the manuscripts are very fragmentary; they are written for the most part in Hebrew, but there are some in Aramaic and a few small fragments in Greek (see list p. 183). They were found in caves at a desolate spot on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea known as Qumran, close to the ruins of a set of buildings. It is impossible to understand the Qumran literature except against the background of the appropriate period in the history of Israel. After the scrolls were first discovered this was difficult to determine, until de Vaux and Harding undertook a thorough archaeological investigation of the ruins in 1952-6, and at the neighbouring Ain Feshka in 1958. These investigations made clear that the period in question was the end of the Hasmonaean and the beginning of the Roman period (roughly 160 bc to ad 68).
De Vaux has given a lucid account of his, findings in his Schweich Lectures for 1959, published in French in 1961; they were ‘reissued with revisions in an English translation in 1973’, the revisions leaving the main findings unaltered. They have well stood the test of examination by scholars, and the vast majority accept de Vaux's conclusions as correct and build upon them, a process to be followed here.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.