It has now been 75 years since Bedouins found ancient scrolls in caves near the Dead Sea, the Finds of Qumran.
They were a sensation and are still the most important found texts for biblical studies.
They contain the oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, illuminate their origin and collection and also offer many new insights into the Jewish world in which Jesus once appeared.
After a long history of processing the fragments, which are often only the size of a stamp, all texts have been edited since 2010.
Nothing is hidden from those who read Hebrew.
This definitely puts an end to the speculation and conspiracy fantasies that have formed around the scrolls.
No, the Vatican is not withholding the truth about the scrolls;
the texts also say nothing directly about Jesus, and they do not lead to a completely different picture of the emergence of Christianity.
The time of sensational writing is over.
But the texts still offer sensational insights into the understanding of the Bible and canon, and above all of Judaism at the time when the Jesus movement began.
Insights into “Biblical Judaism”
The new overall presentation by the Göttingen Old Testament scholar Reinhard G. Kratz offers comprehensive insights into the current state of research.
The subtitle is significant: while previous research initially asked what the texts contribute to the emergence of Christianity, more recent research has shown that the corpus of texts consists entirely of Jewish texts.
It is therefore primarily about insights into Judaism.
Kratz uses a dazzlingly anachronistic term to speak of “biblical Judaism”.
Early Christianity and later rabbinical Judaism are mentioned only in a brief concluding section.
This shows the focus and at the same time the limitations of the introduction of Kratz, for example in comparison with the work of his predecessor in Göttingen at the Qumran research center, Hartmut Stegemann, whose book from 1993 is still entitled "The Essenes, Qumran, John the Baptist and Jesus". was.
Kratz rightly states that the Jesus movement is not dependent on Qumran, but only on common dependence on biblical and ancient Jewish traditions.
It is clear that more could be said here.
Kratz stays in his area of expertise here.
No monk rules
Although Kratz edited the Old Testament in a very German, especially Göttingen tradition, preferably with the means of diachronic literary criticism, he is opposed to the historical hypotheses developed in older Qumran research on the origin of the Qumran community, the teacher of justice, the "Essenes" or very reticent about the functioning of the Qumran site.
Hence the structure of the book.
Individual topics are treated using relevant texts, and these texts are described individually, so that a more or less historical sequence emerges.
The passage goes from the history of the find through the archaeological findings and the observations of the manuscripts to the community witnessed there and the themes that follow the parts of the Hebrew Bible (Torah,