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Dead Sea Scrolls: Centuries
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Undoubtedly the Dead Sea Scrolls are the most controversial archaeological discovery of the 20th Century. The Art Gallery of New South Wales together with the Israel Antiquities Authority will present an exhibition of these enigmatic manuscripts for the first time in Australia. The exhibition will subsequently travel to Melbourne to be on view at the National Gallery of Victoria (Russell Street), opening in March 2001.
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MOBILE, Ala. (BP)--The 1948 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls proved to be the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century. But more than 50 years after their discovery, many questions remain as to who wrote them and who actually lived at the Dead Sea community of Qumran where they were discovered.
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The two fortresses of Qumran and Macherus "on either side of the Dead Sea, within direct sight of each other, could mutually communicate by either fire signals or carrier pigeon, and this way correspondence with Jerusalem could be readily maintained. In time of need troops could be sent straight across the sea to Macherus by boat from landing situated near Khirbet Qumran. The boats employed for this purpose were perhaps of the type used in the Dead Sea as depicted in the Madaba map (sixth century A.D.), which had both oars and sails and could generate considerable speed on the highly buoyant waters of the sea. Khirbet Qumran was ... an integral part of the defense system of encircling fortifications designed to ward off attacks against the capital and the heartland of Judea; and it also served as a stronghold, in times of both peace and war, to guard the route carrying salt, balsam, asphalt, and sugar from the Dead sea region to the capital."
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The first-century ascetic Jewish philosophers known as the ‘Therapeutae’, described in Philo’s treatise De Vita Contemplativa, have often been considered in comparison with early Christians, the Essenes, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. This study, which includes a new translation of De Vita Contemplativa, focuses particularly on issues of historical method, rhetoric, women, and gender, and comes to new conclusions about the nature of the group and its relationship with the allegorical school of exegesis in Alexandria. Joan E. Taylor argues that the group represents the tip of an iceberg in terms of ascetic practices and allegorical exegesis, and that the women described point to the presence of other Jewish women philosophers in Alexandria in the first century CE. Members of the group were ‘extreme allegorizers’ in following a distinctive calendar, not maintaining usual Jewish praxis, and concentrating their focus on attaining a trance-like state in which a vision of God’s light was experienced. Their special ‘feast’ was configured in terms of service at a Temple, in which both men and women were priestly attendants of God.
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