One of
the last two undeciphered Dead Sea Scrolls has been read by researchers at the
University of Haifa in Israel.
The 900
scrolls, discovered in desert caves at Qumran in the 1940s and 50s, are the
work of scribes belonging to an ancient Jewish sect and include some of the
earliest biblical manuscripts.
The newly
decoded document is made up of more than 60 tiny sections written in a secret
code. They were originally thought to have belonged to different scrolls, but
researchers Dr Eshbal Ratson and Prof Jonathan Ben-Dov showed they were from a
single document.
The
scroll – originally written in code – gives an insight into the unique 364-day
calendar used by the sect. According to the researchers, this calendar was
involved in one of the fiercest debates between different groups during the
late Second Temple period. The lunar calendar, which Judaism follows to this
day, requires a large number of human decisions. People must look at the stars
and moon and report on their observations, and someone must be empowered to
decide on the new month and the application of leap years. By contrast, the
364-day calendar was perfect. Because this number can be divided into four and
seven, special occasions always fall on the same day. This avoids the need to
decide, for example, what happens when a particular occasion falls on the
Sabbath, as often happens in the lunar calendar.
'The
Qumran calendar is unchanging, and it appears to have embodied the beliefs of
the members of this community regarding perfection and holiness,' the
researchers explain.
Dr Ratson
told Haaretz that arguments about the calendar 'may be one of the reasons this
sect left the Temple and went to the desert. They had many disputes and this
was one of them – they couldn't celebrate holidays together.'
The
scroll gives the most important dates in the Qumran sect's calendar, including
two special occasions not mentioned in the Bible. It also provides, for the first
time, the name of the day marking the transition between the seasons –
'tekufah' or 'period'.
According
to the university, the scroll also reveals that the person who wrote the scroll
– probably one of the leaders of the sect familiar with the secret code –
forgot to mention several special days marked by the community. Another scribe
corrected the errors, adding the missing dates in the margins between the
columns of text.
'The
scroll is written in code, but its actual content is simple and well-known, and
there was no reason to conceal it,' the authors say. 'This practice is also
found in many places outside the Land of Israel, where leaders write in secret
code even when discussing universally-known matters, as a reflection of their
status. The custom was intended to show that the author was familiar with the
code, while others were not. However, this present scroll shows that the author
made a number of mistakes.'
Source: https://www.christiantoday.com/article/researchers.decipher.dead.sea.scroll.assembled.from.tiny.fragments/124407.htm
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