Exploring the Dead Sea Scrolls : Archaeology and Literature of the Qumran Caves

Among the most prominent hallmarks of the late Prof. Hanan Eshel’s scholarship are generosity, passion, and an integrative approach. As he described vividly in his introduction to his book The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hasmonean State, Prof. Eshel strove to create and maintain conversation between archaeologists and historians, and to link texts and realia, and the specialists interested in both. This commitment is highlighted also in the Festschrift dedicated to Hanan: Go Out and Study the Land (Judges 18:2): Archaeological, Historical, and Textual Studies in Honor of Hanan Eshel (JSJSup 148; ed. Aren M. Maeir, Jodi Magness, and Lawrence H. Schiffman; Leiden: Brill, 2012). Shortly before his untimely death, Prof. Eshel selected the essays in the current volume to serve as a legacy of that aim. In organizing the selections according to provenance, he contextualized the textual finds within their archaeological settings and within the contours of contemporary scholarship. The Qumran texts that stand at the center of these articles are correlated with archaeological and geographic information and with a variety of textual sources including epigraphic evidence and, especially, the Hebrew Bible, Josephus, and rabbinic texts. Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Previous Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 The Damascus Document Chapter 1: The Damascus Document’s “Three Nets of Belial”: A Reference to the Aramaic Levi Document? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Chapter 2: The Seventy-Weeks Prophecy in Two Compositions from Qumran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Chapter 3: CD 12:15–17 and the Stone Vessels Found at Qumran . . . . . 61 Cave 1 Chapter 4: Recensions of the War Scroll (co-authored with Esther Eshel) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Chapter 5: Two Notes on Column 2 of the War Scroll (1QM) . . . . . . . . 85 Chapter 6: The Two Historical Layers of Pesher Habakkuk . . . . . . . . . 99 Cave 3 Chapter 7: What Treasures are Listed in the Copper Scroll (co-authored with Ze’ev Safrai) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Chapter 8: Aqueducts in the Copper Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Cave 4 Chapter 9: The “Prayer of Joseph” from Qumran, A Papyrus from Masada, and the Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Chapter 10: Dibre Hame’orot and the Apocalypse of Weeks . . . . . . . . 164 Chapter 11: When Were the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice Recited? . . . . 170 Chapter 12: Abraham’s Fulfillment of the Commandment “Honor Your Father” in Early Jewish Exegesis and the Dead Sea Scrolls . . 183 Cave 11 Chapter 13: The Fortieth Anniversary of the Discovery of the Temple Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Chapter 14: Alphabetical Acrostics in Pre-Tannaitic Hebrew (co-authored with John Strugnell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Chapter 15: Psalm 155: An Acrostic Poem on Repentance from the Second Temple Period (co-authored with Shlomit Kendi-Harel) . . . 226 Beyond Qumran Chapter 16: Dating the Samaritan Pentateuch’s Compilation in Light of the Qumran Biblical Scrolls (co-authored with Esther Eshel) . . 257 Chapter 17: Megillat Ta‘anit in Light of Holidays Found in Jubilees and in the Temple Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Chapter 18: Some Notes Concerning High Priests in the First Century CE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Index of Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310

Among the most prominent hallmarks of the late Prof. Hanan Eshel (1958–2010) were his generosity, passion, and integrative approach. The eighteen essays in this volume were selected by Prof. Eshel shortly before his untimely death, to be printed as a collection aimed at contextualizing the textual finds of the Dead Sea Scrolls within their archaeological settings and within the contours of contemporary scholarship.The Qumran texts that stand at the center of these articles are correlated with archaeological and geographic information and with a variety of textual sources including epigraphic evidence and, especially, the Hebrew Bible, Josephus, and rabbinic texts. The essays are organized according to the provenance of the discovered material, with sections devoted to the Damascus Documentand the scrolls from Caves 1, 3, 4, and 11, as well as a final more general chapter.Half of the essays have been previously published in English, while the other half have been translated from Hebrew here for the first time. The book includes essays that have been co-authored with Esther Eshel, Shlomit Kendi-Harel, Zeev Safrai, and John Strugnell.

; Biographical note: Hanan Eshel, Ph. D., was Professor at the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Barnea Levi Selavan is an educational archaeologist; currently an MA Candidate at Tel Aviv University. Shani Tzoref, Ph. D., is Professor at the Abraham Geiger College and the School of Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam, Germany