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An ancient Hebraic document created more than 1,000 years ago and hive up forth in Cairo may unlock a secret of theDead Sea Scrolls .
Scholars of the scrolls have long wonder why so many fragment of the occult manuscripts — more than 15,000 firearm of more than 900 original document — were hidden in cave around Qumran , in the James Jerome Hill of the Judean Desert just west of the Dead Sea inIsrael , seemingly far from any major settlement .
A conservator of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) shows fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls at their laboratory in Jerusalem on 22 December 2024.
The nearby archaeologic internet site of Qumran itself also presents similar mysteries . For example , why was its pantry so well - stocked , with more than a thousand pottery storage vessel and C of sports stadium , plates and cups — but excavations show very few people ever lived there ? What was the purpose of a large opened - air patio call the " southern esplanade " in Qumran , and why is it fence in off from a nearby cemetery ? And why were Qumran ’s many ritual bath , or " miqva’ot,“so large ?
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Now , research suggest Qumran was in fact the site of a immense annual ceremony of the mystical Judaic faction of the Essenes , in which its members gathered from cities and rural community all over Israel to keep a fundamental ritual eff as the Covenant of Renewal . Qumran ’s peculiar construction , the researcher suggest , mull over this ceremonial function . Fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls also cite a fete that seems to be consult to the same gathering of the Essenes , the research worker said .
Solomon Schechter studies boxes of manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah.
According to the unexampled theory , many of the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves could have been written by Essene communities throughout the country and bring to Qumran at the time of the one-year fete to study and be stored there .
" The countrywide gather in Sivan [ the third month of the Jewish calendar , which falls inMay or June ] was a large and well - regulated event for which unclouded and detailed rules were established,“Daniel Vainstub , an archaeologist at Ben - Gurion University of the Negev , told Live Science . " All this fits the archaeological remains of the site . "
Dead Sea gathering
In a young survey , published online at the conclusion of July in the journalReligions , Vainstub indicate that Qumran was the locating of this annual gathering based on a interlingual rendition of the rules of the spiritual residential district contained in what ’s call the Damascus Document or Damascus Covenant .
The Damascus Document — so - mention from its numerous references to the city in Syria , possibly because Damascus was once govern by Israel ’s King David — was copied from an other Hebrew source in about the 10th C A.D. It was finally put in in the Cairo Genizah , a storage room march a Jewish tabernacle in Fustat , the original Arabic capital of Egypt that eventually became a southern neighborhood of the city of Cairo .
demolish any text that contains God ’s name is forbidden in Judaic religious law , even accidently , and any document from Cairo ’s Jewish residential district were ultimately stash away in the genizah just in pillow slip , at least until they could be officially buried .
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As a result , writings accumulated over many C in the Cairo Genizah ; and in the 1890s , Cambridge University scholarSolomon Schechter visited the siteand discover a a treasure trove of hundreds of thousands of ancient manuscript , including Hebrew religious text , as well as works in several language on art , literature , philosophy and science .
The most complete versions of the Damascus Document were found in the genizah , and fragments of it have since been receive among the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves .
And harmonise to Vainstub , the version from the genizah in Cairo contains a fuller verbal description of a ceremony referred to in the Dead Sea scroll fragment , which was misunderstood until now . The Cairo Geniza description suggests Qumran was the land site of an annual gather in the calendar month of Sivan , when the vacation of Shavuot is observed to label the renewal of the Jewish covenant with God .
" I contend that the Damascus Document stop the bylaw or principle that regulates the yearly assemblage , " Vainstub enjoin Live Science in an e-mail . " No one noticed this before me . "
Qumran mysteries
The passage in question in the Damascus Document refers to the Torah — the first five books of the Hebrew Bible — and reads : " And all [ the denizen ] of the camps shall assemble in the third month and unchurch anyone who diverge either to the right [ or to the left from the ] Torah . "
Vainstub intimate the " camps " were Essene spiritual groups scattered throughout Israel , often as isolate rural community but also within major cities . He argue the passageway shows that a gathering took place at a specific clip , and that hoi polloi from different places were call to convoke in one web site .
Previously get a line archeological evidence propose the ancient complex at Qumran would have tolerate relatively few member of the sect for most of the year , but the new text suggests it swell to host several hundred people at the fourth dimension of the annual gathering .
" Some wads of permanent residents of Qumran … had to host many 100 of people at the site once a year in ever - increasing telephone number , " Vainstub publish in the study . " The site of Qumran , with its facilities , caves and airfoil , accords with the evidence for the yearly assemblage that emerge from the curlicue . "
The pilgrims who stayed at Qumran only for a few days did not call for to be regularly housed , Vainstub wrote ; instead , they may have slept in the capable or in one of the many cave in the area — such as the caves where the first fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 .
Vainstub ’s proposal explains why the public buildings at Qumran , such as its pantry filled with crockery and storage vessels , were large enough to serve G of people , but no evidence of them has ever been found . He argue that the adjoining southern esplanade was an external feeding domain that had to be fence in off from the nearby cemetery to maintain religious purity ; and his theory also explains the large size of it of the numerous ritual baths at the land site , which were an essential part of Judaic worship at that time .
The idea that the Essenes gather at Qumran once a twelvemonth might also explain the location of the scrolls , as the sect members may have left their religious writings there in the caves that they slept in , Vainstub write . " My theory is also logical with the fact that the scrolls did not of necessity spring up from Qumran , but rather were brought to the caves from all over the country and left in the cave over the decennary . "
Originally published on Live Science .
