In this episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete and co-host Cynthia Shafer-Elliott learn from Jamal-Dominique Hopkins about the history of sacrifice in the Qumran community and the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls in understanding Judaism during the Second Temple period, exploring the interplay of tradition and innovation in ancient Jewish communities. Join them as they explore the following questions:
What are the Dead Sea Scrolls and why should people care about them?
Where did the name “Dead Sea Scrolls” come from?
Why did the community at Qumran leave Jerusalem?
Who are the Essenes?
What kind of historical context do we have for this setting around the Dead Sea Scrolls?
What’s the relationship between sacrifice and the temple?
What does spiritualized sacrifice mean?
Were there any alternatives to sacrificing animals that were seen as legitimate to the community in Qumran?
Why was the calendar so important to the community in Qumran?
Did the community in Qumran view the writing of their text as a sacred practice or devotion?
What are the Masoretic texts?
Can we trace back even further to a time when worship and sacrifice had to be reimagined?
What is the book of Jubilees and how does it relate to the Dead Sea Scrolls?
What kind of archaeological evidence, if at all, did Jamal use in the research of sacrifice at Qumran and the Dead Sea Scroll community that lived there?
Tweetables
Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
“Being a community that was called to sacrifice and called to tend to the temple, no longer having access to the temple, now you have to find ways of preserving that spiritualized understanding.”Jamal Hopkins@theb4np
“[The Dead Sea Scrolls] represent a priestly Jewish community during the late Second Temple period that began in Jerusalem but eventually ended up in the Judean desert at a place called Khirbet Qumran.”Jamal Hopkins@theb4np
“The idea of who preserves the most authentic form of Judaism during this time was a contentious issue.”Jamal Hopkins@theb4np
“The Essenes, this priestly community that is the principal community related to the Dead Sea Scrolls, were the ones that felt that they were the rightful priests that belonged in Jerusalem.”Jamal Hopkins@theb4np
“This priestly community who understood themselves as the preservers of temple purity and sacrifice now find themselves in this desert community where there is no temple. There's only one temple, and that one temple is in Jerusalem.”Jamal Hopkins@theb4np
“How do you preserve the integrity of the temple or even the various sacrificial customs that were very much part of Israel's history? How does one maintain that when you have no access to the temple?”Jamal Hopkins@theb4np
“The calendar played a key role in observing holiness and purification in Israel.”Jamal Hopkins@theb4np
“This [argument about the calendar] is all around how one should conduct themselves to maintain a sense of purity. Because if one had wanted to have a relationship with God, one needed to maintain a sense of purity and holiness.”Jamal Hopkins@theb4np
“If we could think of the versions of Bible today, we have all these different English versions, modern language versions, German, French, etc. Within the Dead Sea Scrolls, you find four versions of the Hebrew Bible.”Jamal Hopkins@theb4np
“I think the idea behind sacrifice is that sacrifice is this practice that mirrors or mimics one's heart, one's right attitude before God.”Jamal Hopkins@theb4np
“That's the idea, that the right heart behind sacrifice is what God is after. Not necessarily just the sacrifice of slaughtering animals without a right heart.”Jamal Hopkins@theb4np
“During the time of Jesus and the Second Temple period, there wasn't necessarily a canon, but there were authoritative writings, authoritative sources. We call it authoritative pseudepigraphy.”Jamal Hopkins@theb4np
“What my research looks at is asking the question: was there actual sacrifice at Khirbet Qumran among these people?”
Mentioned in This Episode
Class: April class “Divine Violence in the Old Testament”
Books: Cultic Spiritualization: Religious Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls by Jamal-Dominique Hopkins
Join: The Society of Normal People community
Support: www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give
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Pete: You're listening to The Bible for Normal People, the only God ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete Enns.
Jared: And I'm Jared Byas.
[Intro music plays]
Jared: Alright, folks, it's time to tell you about our April class, which is part of our spring semester in the Old Testament taught by our very own Pete Enns. This April class is called Divine Violence in the Old Testament: Exploring Violence in the Biblical Text.
Pete: How do we make sense of the many stories in the Bible that portray God as, at best, ignoring violence, and at worst, explicitly calling for it? Is God violent? These questions have plagued readers of the Bible for centuries, moving beyond theory to practical and devastating applications, including the justification of human acts of violence.
So in this class, we're going to challenge simplistic interpretations that assume that we need to accept these depictions of God as violent, just uncritically.
Jared: Because we're so generous, this class is available for you to watch instantly when you purchase it. And like always, it's pay what you can, but only from April 1st to 15th, and then it will cost $25 to download. As with all of our spring classes, it comes with a study guide, so you can stay engaged while you watch, and so you can write down your questions for the live Q&A with Pete that's coming at the end of the semester.
Pete: And if you're a member of our online community, the Society of Normal People, you'll get automatic access to the class and study guide on the 1st. Plus an exclusive video of our nerds in residence having a roundtable discussion about the class. Membership to SoNP costs just $12 a month and when you sign up you'll get access to all of our classes, an online community to talk about the Bible with, live podcast recordings, and more.
Jared: For more information and to sign up for the April class go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/divineviolence.
Pete: Folks, I am truly excited for today's episode of The Bible for Normal People. Why? Because I have a wonderful co-host with me today, and that's our very own nerd in residence, the amazing, the one and only, Cynthia Shafer Elliott. And Cynthia's been on the podcast before. You remember that, don't you, Cynthia? [Cynthia laughs] But now she's been demoted to co-host, I guess. That's how we think about that around here. [Cynthia chuckles again]. So, uh, good to have you!
Cynthia: Oh, it's great to be on this side of the mic.
Pete: Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do in your own professional world?
Cynthia: Yeah. Well, I am an associate professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. And I'm interested in the intersection between text and archaeology. So I'm really interested in daily life, how did your average ancient Israelite man, woman, and child live? And so as far as the corpus or group of texts that I like from the Hebrew Bible, uh, seem to reflect that in the time period I'm interested in is the former prophet. So the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. I am an archeologist. I work at a couple of sites in Israel, and yeah, I love what I do and I love being a nerd.
Pete: Yeah, it's fun being a nerd, isn't it?
Cynthia: [Laughing] It is.
Pete: Yeah, and not getting beat up for it. So that's good.
Cynthia: We have a good time.
Pete: So actually, you're a really good co host for this particular topic. We're talking today about Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls with Dr. Jamal-Dominique Hopkins.
Cynthia: Yes. So Jamal is an associate professor of Christian scriptures also here at Baylor, but in the George—
Pete: What a coincidence!
Cynthia: [Chuckles] What a coincidence! But he's located at the Truett Theological Seminary as well as being part of the Christ and Being Human Pedagogical Fellow with Yale University Center for Faith and Culture. And he is the only known expert of African descent on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which you can read about in his book entitled Cultic Spiritualization: Religious Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Which I have right here on my desk.
Pete: Okay. Well, let's get into the episode!
[Jaunty music plays over teaser clip of Jamal speaking]
Jamal: “Being a community that was called to sacrifice and called to tend to the temple, no longer having access to the temple, now you have to find ways of preserving that spiritualized understanding. And so they kind of adopt this idea of themselves, this community, as temple. And the fruit of their lips becomes like a sacrifice, that becomes the heart of their practices while they are away from the temple.”
[Ad break]
Pete: Jamal, welcome to our podcast. It's so good to have you here.
Jamal: It's great to be here. Great to be here.
Pete: Tell us just, you know, who are you? You teach, you got into this stuff at some point. What do you do? And how'd you get into it?
Jamal: So, you know, I probably would describe myself as somewhat of an eclectic, an academic, an artist. So, I kind of got into this as my first introduction to education undergraduate. I was a film major, television film, coming off of wanting to do something with my interest in acting. As a child, I did some theater and some commercials and television. I guess everybody in Southern California does that at one point or another. [Pete laughs]
And so I was in film school, an undergraduate at Howard University. And my film professor would always see me kind of off in the corner on the side, somewhere in between classes, reading my Bible. And so he, you know, asked a couple of questions and as he got to know me, he said, you know, you probably should consider maybe going to seminary after graduation, because my aspirations were to do an MFA in film and to kind of continue to pursue this kind of acting, theater world.
But it piqued my curiosity. I didn't, never heard of seminary or theological education. So I began to explore only to find that there was an actual, there was a seminary in my hometown in Pasadena, California. And so I explored that and enrolled in that and fell in love with scholarship, academic study, uh, particularly biblical languages, Greek and Hebrew, and was introduced in one of my last courses at seminary, at Fuller Seminary, uh, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the rest is history.
Cynthia: Wow. Well, thank you for that, Jamal. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what the Dead Sea Scrolls are and why should people care about them?
Jamal: Yeah. So the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish body of ancient literature. I say there's three types of literature you can find: Hebrew Bible, um, what we would now call Hebrew Bible; sectarian literature or sectarian writings like calendrical documents or texts, legal texts, hymns, and rule texts; and then lastly, you have pseudepigrapha writings, which are documents that are falsely ascribed, which is a common biblical genre during this Second Temple Period or late Second Temple period. And so you find these types of literature within the Dead Sea Scrolls that all make up the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And they represent a priestly Jewish community during the late Second Temple period, a community that 9began in Jerusalem, but eventually ended up in the desert, in the Judean desert at a place called Khirbet Qumran, where we believe that, uh, they left a lot of their, uh, documents and, and manuscripts and scrolls and things like that in these caves overlooking Khirbet Qumran, uh, near the Dead Sea area Ein Feshka, hence we call it the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Cynthia: You mentioned just a second ago that they were a priestly community that left Jerusalem. Why do you think they left Jerusalem?
Jamal: So, they left Jerusalem, so if you can imagine during the time of, let's say, you know, as we read, you know, our Bibles, we see the Babylonian captivity, you know, 585-97. And so, as time goes on and these returnees from Israel are coming back from that captivity, Babylon falls to the Mesa Persians, and eventually those who had been taken away are now beginning to come back to the area of Palestine and Israel.
And as they're coming back, there were those who never left, there were those communities that never left. And so the idea of who preserves, I guess, the most authentic form of Judaism during this time was a contentious issue. And you have the influence of after Alexander the Great, you know, not to do a history lesson, but after Alexander the Great—
Cynthia: Oh, but we like it.
Pete: Yeah! [All chuckling]
Jamal: Yeah. So after Alexander the Great dies, you know, his two leading generals, uh, Ptolemy of Egypt and Seleucius of Syria remain as those who, uh, pretty much get to maintain the lion's share of, uh, what, uh, Alexander was able to conquer. And you had this kind of division between the Syrians and the Egyptians.
And eventually the Syrians wrestled control away from the Egyptians, Ptolemy, and the region of Palestine and Israel. And so you have these Jewish groups and Jewish factions that are emerging during this time. All of those who are saying, those who are saying that we represent, we are the remnant that represents the most authentic form of Judaism that goes back before, uh, the captivity.
And so you find the rise of the Sadducees, the rise of the Pharisees, the rise of, uh, the Essenes, which we believe is, among the studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls that, uh, those who were responsible, the principal community behind the Dead Sea Scrolls were the Essenes. You have the Zealots, you have the Samaritans, and so you have all these Jewish factions, these Jewish groups emerging around this time, which essentially is the beginning or kind of the midway or the Second Temple period, if you will.
And so the Essenes, this priestly community that is the principal community related to the Dead Sea Scrolls, were the ones that felt that they were the rightful priests that belonged in Jerusalem. Well, at this time, of course, the temple in Jerusalem in the Second Temple period, this late Second Temple period, especially under the rule of the Syrian Antiochus and these rulers who would understand themselves as, as in these kind of defined forms. And they got, a name that he had for himself was Antiochus Epiphanes, right?
As you read some literature, there was a play on that and that they called him Antiochus Epimanes, like madman. [Pete laughs] And so those who understood themselves as the rightful priests, these Essenes, which, within the Dead Sea Scrolls sectarian writings, they refer to themselves as the Sons of Zadok, the Bnei Zadokim, those who were installed or implemented or established as priests during the time of David and Solomon.
And so, these Essenes understand themselves as the rightful priests, well, you had this kind of homogeneous or this eclectic activity going on in the Jerusalem temple, everyone kind of sacrificing when they had their turn. And that to the Essenes, these Zadoks, was viewed as defiling the temple, defiling the city of the temple, Jerusalem.
And so they eventually were either banned from the temple because of their push and intentionality of maintaining purity of the temple in Jerusalem, or they voluntarily left. The reason I say they were either banned or they voluntarily left, is you have Josephus, a Jewish historian that writes in Jewish antiquities, the way that Book XVIII, the way that it's recorded, and this is an eclectic text, which means that there's about five or six or seven different fragments of this passage, but no one fragment has the passage preserved in its entirety.
So they've kind of taken all these different fragments of this passage and they kind of create an eclectic text. But this one particular word that could be translated in the Greek—I'm really going down the rabbit hole here—but they could translate this word, this ergomenoi, as either a middle verb or a passive verb. So they were either banned, passive, or they separated themselves, middle. One way or another, you know, they eventually leave Jerusalem and they retreat into the Judean desert, a place called Khirbet Qumran.
Pete: Well, and in that, Jamal, you have an area of interest in that whole historical thing you just set up for us with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Qumran community concerning temple and sacrifice. So, could you, uh, I mean, explain just the idea of temple and sacrifice to our audience in non-academic terms?
Jamal: So, this priestly community who understood themselves as the preservers of temple purity and sacrifice, sacrificing on behalf of the people of Israel, now they find themselves in this desert community, this desert area, where there is no temple. Right? There's only one temple, and that one temple is in Jerusalem.
And so how do you preserve the integrity of the temple or even what sacrifices—the atoning sacrifices and the various sacrificial customs that were very much part of Israel's history—how does one maintain that when you have no access to the temple?
And so what this term actually comes out in time, this notion of spiritualization. So what is the actual spiritual understanding behind the actual sacrifice? So it's not just about taking unblemished pure animals to slaughter them and kill them, you know, and sprinkle the blood and atone. But it was actually whether or not one had a right heart, what was behind that, because anybody, someone evil or evil community, they can actually do sacrifices.
And so being a community, a priestly community that was called to sacrifice and called to tend to the temple, no longer having access to the temple, now you have to find ways of preserving that spiritualized understanding. And so they kind of adopt this idea of themselves, this community, as temple. They themselves represent the temple. And the fruit of their lips, their praise, their practice, becomes like as sacrifice. And that becomes the heart of their practices while they are in the Judean desert, uh, away from the temple.
And so this notion of the community as temple that makes spiritualized sacrifice is just as viable and just as legitimate as those who are actually priests at Jerusalem, slaughtering animals and sacrificing on behalf of the people. So, uh, that's what you have with this community that's residing in the desert. They themselves now are, are, uh, a temple community.
[Ad break]
Cynthia: Maybe you could elaborate a little bit more on what kind of alternatives to sacrifices were seen as acceptable to them since, you know, you mentioned that there's other things they were doing that were in place of the actual physical sacrifice.
Jamal: Yeah, so like I talk about those three different types of literature that are found among the Dead Sea Scrolls: the sectarian writings. So you have calendrical writings or texts that talk about the calendar. So there was an issue with the calendar, whether or not one should follow a lunar solar calendar, which was 354 days, or a solar lunar calendar, 364 day calendar.
And so this mattered because the idea of, of not observing a holy day or not observing sacred practices on the right day would cause a sense of defiling, if you will. And so in Jerusalem and, and at the time of sacrifice in Jerusalem with real animal sacrifices, there were liturgical practices that accompanied them.
There were hymn and songs, but there were prayers, you know, you have daily prayers, you have Sabbath sacrifice prayers, you have prayers in the morning, prayers in the evening. And so these liturgical practices that normally would accompany the actual slaughtering of animals and sacrificing them in the temple at the right time or at these appointed times, if these same liturgical practices were being done and conducted, the fruit of their lips, as they were described, are the prayers that went up at the time of the sacrifice, the praise that went up that accompanied the sacrifice and the festivals, these practices were like or viewed as sacrifice.
So while you had no slaughtering, you had the recitation of the daily prayers. Uh, the recitation of the Sabbath sacrifice prayers, or the liturgy that accompanied the sacrifice and the festivals that would accompany the sacrifice. So those practices, which were the spiritualized practices that came out of the actual heart, these are still maintained during the rightful calendar when these sacrificial festivals were to be observed. And so those were the kinds of practices, um, you know, living holy life, but also observing that calendar was very important to this community here in the desert.
Pete: I mean, was the calendar important because of the loss of temple?
Jamal: It was, but you also had the day—so for instance, you have, you have a practice, um, I talk about in the book, [Hebrew], right? When is one declared clean? Is one declared clean on the 7th day after at sundown? Or on the 8th day at sunrise? And so that makes a difference in that, if one is declaring themselves and one has been declared clean and, you know, the sacrifice has taken place, but one is now walking around as if one is clean on the sundown on the seventh day, well, according to the solar lunar calendar one had to wait to the eighth day at the sunrise because the day begins at sunrise as opposed to the lunar solar calendar where the day begins at sundown.
And so the calendar played a key role in observing holiness and purification, uh, in Israel. And these sacrificial practices played a role as well. So yeah, it really did matter, which was such a contentious division among a lot of the different Jewish groups, you know, within the Dead Sea Scrolls. You know, you have a document like Miktzat Maaseh Torah, which describes a we crew telling a you crew not to be like a they crew.
Cynthia: Wow. [Chuckling] Some things have never changed.
Jamal: [Laughing] Yeah. And, and this is all around how one should conduct themselves to maintain a sense of purity because if one had wanted to have a relationship with God, of course, one needed to maintain a sense of purity and, you know, holiness.
Cynthia: Well, this kind of just is bringing up a question off the top of my head, Jamal, when you were talking about these things that kind of not replaced, but could be considered other types of, you know, devotion or sacrifice. Do you think that they viewed the actual copying of the Hebrew Bible text or writing down their own texts as one of these practices?
Jamal: Um, I think so. I think that was important. You know, within the Dead Sea Scrolls, you find four versions and, you know, if we could think of the versions of Bible today, we have all these different English versions, modern language versions, German, French.
But within the Dead Sea Scrolls, you find four versions of the Hebrew Bible. You find the source for the Septuagint, and we know the Septuagint is the Greek Hebrew Bible. But you find the source of the Septuagint in Hebrew, which legitimizes the Septuagint as an authentic Jewish witness. Secondly, you find fragments and sources that attest to the Masoretic Texts. You find the Samaritan Pentateuch fragments of that.
Pete: Explain the Masoretic Texts, Jamal, before we go on.
Jamal: So the Masoretic Texts, so you have during the time as Hebrew was dying out, especially the pronunciation, and I think this is largely or in large part attributed to a lot of the, I don't want to say the invasion, but say the Babylonian captivity, the Egyptian captivity.
You have a lot of influence and foreign kind of activity that the kind of, I wouldn't say weakens the, the practice or the understanding or the reading or the, the sound or the pronunciation of Hebrew. Because when you have Hebrew, you don't necessarily have vowels, it's just consonants. And the Masorites, they point, vowel point the Hebrew text. So now pronunciation becomes easier. Especially for those that may not have a tradition or, you know, may have forgotten or may not have had access, this kind of continuation of accessing and pronunciating and reading and praying in Hebrew.
So the Masorites, they come and they vowel point the Hebrew. And so you have the Masoretic text, if you will. And that's the version that's found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and of course, that serves as the body of manuscripts that are preserved, those are the manuscripts that we use and that we have, that our English Bible translations are found.
And so you find that source, which legitimizes that in no way does the Bible found among the Dead Sea Scrolls say anything different or compromising to what we read in the Old Testament, doesn't compromise that. It authenticates that. That's a good thing. But you find also the Samaritan Pentateuch. And then you also find a version that has not been attested before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. So there's a passage, 1 Samuel 16, and there's a large part where there's almost three lines of text or prose that is preserved, but that you can't find in any of the Masoretic sources or manuscripts. Can't find it in the Samaritan sources and manuscripts, but it's only found in this Dead Sea Scrolls version, if you will.
And so that's significant. It attests to these variant versions of what we would call the Hebrew Bible today. And that's, I think that's very important for how we understand the Dead Sea Scrolls and what they contribute to our understanding of Bible and, um, how we understand the rich and I would call it three-dimensional reality of the world of the Bible. So, uh, the Dead Sea Scrolls really preserves that.
Pete: Backing up a little bit, Jamal, there's some things you said before, too, that were piquing my interest, and I want to make sure that I'm getting it, what you're saying.
Jamal: Okay.
Pete: So, again, with the absence of temple, we have the Qumran community rethinking temple and rethinking temple worship, which is, you know, sacrifice, largely sacrifice. Can we trace that back even further? I'm just thinking of, this is not the first time that Jews had no temple.
Jamal: Right.
Pete: Right, I mean, so, are there roots for this sort of thing even long before the Dead Sea Scrolls, and if so, I mean, where might we locate the beginning of this kind of thinking of just reimagining, really, these core elements of the Hebrew tradition, which is temple and the worship of God and the proper worship of God in the temple, that had to be reconfigured by these people. Can you riff on that a little bit?
Jamal: So, so a couple of things, uh, and I write, I write in my book, Cultic Spiritualization: Religious Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls, I look at the book of Jubilees. And there were the descriptions of the patriarchs, um, Abraham, Moses. You have these patriarch figures that offer sacrifice whenever God shows up, whenever God manifests, whenever God reveals, uh, in some way. And at that moment and at that point, we see this within the Hebrew Bible, these patriarchs, they offer a sacrifice and these actual locations where God manifests to these individuals, where this sacrifice is offered, those places, that geographic location, that, that site becomes as a temple, kind of like as a sanctuary, if you will, the place where humanity meet God and God shows up. And an offering is given. And so you have those instances, those examples, kind of appearing, you know, before a temple.
So the idea of how does one reverence God, I think we see that, you know, within the Hebrew Bible. The second notion is there were temples that did exist, physical temples, I think of the temple in Leontopolis, Egypt. Where there was a Jewish community that was there and this was also around the time you had these Jewish factions, communities migrating or going back, leaving this Palestinian, larger Palestinian area, going into northern Africa. And there's a temple that was preserved in Leontopolis, Egypt.
Archeologists have talked about that, talked about the discoveries there. And so, likely, sacrifices were taking place there. But I think the idea behind sacrifice is that sacrifice is this practice that mirrors or mimics, the idea is that they are supposed to mirror or are supposed to mimic one's heart, one's right attitude before God.
And so, passages like Hosea 6 says God desires mercy rather than sacrifice, right? A right heart, a just heart. You know, Isaiah says, you know, I'm sick of your sacrifices. Your hands are full of blood, but your hearts are far from me. So that spiritualized idea that one's heart is right, and when one's heart is right, one makes this kind of atoning, this kind of offering, this kind of reverence, obeisance to God.
And so even going back and backing up, let's say even to the Cain and Abel story, when Cain offers an offering and Abel offers an offering. Well, God rejects the offering of Cain, but accepts the offering of Abel. There's no temple per se, but that offering is this kind of, that the place where that offering is given to God is sanctuary-like. And so that's the idea, that the right heart behind and that leads to sacrifice, is what God is after. Not necessarily just the sacrifice of slaughtering animals and the blood, uh, without a right heart.
Cynthia: Well, you mentioned the Book of Jubilees, but I'm not sure if too many of us can really put in a nutshell what that is. Do you think you can briefly tell us what the Book of Jubilees is?
Jamal: So, I know some, some have called Jubilees a kind of baby Genesis in that you have a lot of the narratives, a lot of the, a lot of the stories, a lot of the accounts that you see within the Pentateuch, within Genesis, kind of retold in the Book of Jubilees, kind of giving a different perspective or a different nuance.
And so, during the time of Jesus and the Second Temple period and even back, there wasn't necessarily a canon, but there were authoritative writings, authoritative sources. We call it authoritative pseudepigraphy. And certainly, pseudepigraphic writings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Jubilees, you know, they could serve as authoritative pseudepigraphy in that the Book of Jubilees kind of duplicating or providing commentary on what we see within Genesis and Exodus gives us kind of other nuances, if you will. Maybe not quite like, you know, a four gospels or a synoptic gospel, but similar in the sense that you have a perspective that talks about certain accounts that we see within the Old Testament.
[Ad break]
Cynthia: Right. So I need to ask you this because you're talking about Qumran. And of course, you know, I love looking at the archaeology. I'm just wondering, were you, what kind of archaeological evidence, if at all, were you able to use in your research of sacrifice at Qumran and the Dead Sea Scroll community that lived there?
Jamal: Yeah, so the archeology that yielded the cave, the material literature of the cave, uh, of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Uh, so I talk about Jubilees, I talk about the Temple Scroll, which is another sectarian writing. Uh, so Jubilees would be pseudepigraphic writing found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Temple Scroll would be a sectarian writing. The Damascus document, the Rule of the Community. So these are sectarian writings, uh, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. Of those documents, you find multiple copies of those preserved from the different caves, the 11 caves that were discovered in this year between 47 and 56. And you find multiple copies, but you also find multiple copies of Bible manuscripts, and in some points, some places, you find maybe like up to 17, 16 copies of the Temple Scroll among several of the caves, which testifies to its importance to the community that's preserving these or that preserved them.
And if you find, let's say, 17 to 21 fragments of, let's say, Leviticus and Exodus. Well, that also says that this is a very important witness, has this authoritative value among the community that preserves these. And so that attests to the importance, the value of what was found and what kind of helps to tell the story of these people, of Qumran.
But if we move from the cave to the actual site where it's believed that the principal community lived at Khirbet Qumran, you find scribal activities. And so kind of going back to the question of whether or not preserving these writings and actually scribing, you know, scribal activity, writing sectarians and copying documents was part of the practice of preserving. I think so. I think that also was a practice as well as maybe we consider it kind of like devotional kind of practice, maybe, but preserving as a way of, let's say, sacrifice unto God, if you will. There's some scribal activities like inkwells. You find pottery, lots of pottery, pottery evidence, and that is actual some pottery shards that were found among the site at Khirbet Qumran that you find in the caves that are very similar, that connects the caves.
And the site and the people who lived at the site connected with potentially those being the ones who deposited the literature in the caves. And so that's how we make the connection, because the connection is not crystal. It's not like, it's not a slam dunk, but just finding this evidence kind of connects this, the cave, the site and the people at the site and the practices.
And so what my research looks at is asking the question, was there actual sacrifice at Khirbet Qumran among these people? So even though there's Bible material and even sectarian writings that preserves and talks about actual literal animal sacrifice, I'd say that even though you find animal bones, the way in which they were buried, the way in which they were, where they were found, and because there was no altar found at Qumran, you didn't actually have an actual animal sacrifice. But you had maybe ritual meals, meals that were practiced there, and a kind of testament to, you know, everything that was part of the community was set up like a temple-like community, if you will, because you even have cisterns and mikvah. And these big, large cisterns in mikvah would be these kinds of basins where one would walk into running water to be ritually purified as one enters into more holier spaces in, you know, into the interior of the community.
You find latrines outside of the community. Uh, you find the cemeteries outside in the areas of the community. But as you enter into this community at Khirbet Qumran, you find what you would consider more holy, more sacred places, like the refractory, where they would eat their meals, and there you would find pottery, and you'd find animal bones preserved, carefully discarded.
Pete: I mean, there's, there's so much here, Jamal, that we can discuss. And, you know, one thing that I'm, maybe we can end with this and feel free to give your own thoughts about this. But what I find very important about this, you know, we're on a narrow topic here of the Dead Sea Scrolls and sacrifice, right? But it's part of a bigger milieu. It's part of bigger things happening in Judaism. And I'm always astounded and actually encouraged by how Judaism was a diverse faith very early on, and also, I think, a flexible faith. Because again, I just, I want to drive home for our listeners that how Judaism itself had to morph in order to survive.
Jamal: Yes, yes, definitely. Oh yeah. And I think the elements of that adapted, not adaptability, but the openness for all of humanity was always there all along. But I think as communities that live with this and God lives with these communities. I think it begins to manifest itself in these various nuanced ways. So yeah, I think you're right.
Pete: I mean, traditions are so contextual. You can only have a religious system built around a temple if you have a temple, right? Once that's gone, what do you do now? Right? So I just, the, the living, you know, for Christians who might still harbor some sort of a characterization of Judaism as being this one thing, and then Jesus came and changed it all, Judaism was never very good at being one thing. It was very diverse, and it still is, just like Christianity is diverse. And, and I think at least one, um, one point to take away from this discussion is look at what this Jewish community was doing and why they had to do it, and what they came up with, and how they might have tied themselves to earlier iterations of this.
I mean, again, with that, with the exile, they had to figure out how to be Jewish without priests, without temples, without land, without a king. They almost had to reinvent themselves in a sense and get new ways of sacrificing, new ways of worshiping. And I mean, I could go on and on, but it just, you know, then you get to the New Testament and all these things sort of start firing and they make sense some things we read in the New Testament about alms and prayer and, you know, the kinds of things Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount. So, Cynthia, anything you want to add to this?
Cynthia: Yeah, I think it's a fascinating subject and I'm always Interested to learn more about, you know, this Second Temple period, because I think so many people from Christian backgrounds, you know, we dive deep into the New Testament and maybe a little bit into the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, but that, you know, that time period, you know, in between, we really don't know a lot about it.
Pete: And yet it's so important!
Cynthia: And so important. I completely agree. So thank you, Jamal, for all your hard work on this topic.
Jamal: Yeah, no, thank you. And you know, it's so much. I think you're saying, I think you're right. I mean, you're talking about maybe a small period of time, but there is so much. And you really just kind of make it make sense. I say it's probably the most important body of literature to study alongside the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament because it helps to make sense and bridge this gap, which what I think you rightly said—this fluidity, this multivalence, this variance, uh, of Judaism.
Pete: Well, thank you, Jamal. Again, thank you for being on, for taking the time. It was great.
Jamal: This has been fun. Hope to come back.
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Outro: You've just made it through another episode of the Bible for Normal People! Don't forget you can catch our other show, Faith for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People Team: Brittany Hodge, Stephen Henning, Wesley Duckworth, Savannah Locke, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Natalie Weyand, Lauren O'Connell, Jared Cazel, Jessica Shao, and Naiomi Gonzalez.
