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Qumran

Reinhard G. Kratz

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of Biblical Judaism

What the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal about the time of Jesus The written fragments and ruins discovered at the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956 are still confronting us with mysteries. Was the community living there a kind of cloister, a peculiar sect, or a writing workshop? Was this where John the Baptist and Jesus came from? In this groundbreaking book, Reinhard Kratz takes leave of many conventional hypotheses and shows that in Qumram there is evidence of the origins of "biblical Judaism" still alive today in Judaism and Christianity, which is different to other forms of Yahweh worship.

The fragments of around one thousand Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts brought to light in caves near the settlement of Hirbet Qumran were one of the most spectacular discoveries of the twentieth century. These texts provide insights into the lives and intellectual worlds of a Jewish group from Hellenistic-Roman times that had been completely unknown until then. Reinhard Kratz explains the history of the findings and their research, reconstructs how the community was organized, and explains how and why so many texts were written here. In a masterful tour through the most important writings, he clearly demonstrates that the community was part of a movement that invoked biblical writings, in particular those of the Torah and the Nevi'im, and distanced itself from the traditional Jewish sacrificial cult. With great clarity and in vivid detail, Reinhard Kratz paints a new, three-dimensional picture of the diversity of ancient Judaism and the devotional movement from which Christianity also emerged.

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Published 2022-02-17 by C.H.Beck , ISBN: 9783406781742

Main content page count: 320 Pages

ISBN: 9783406781742