New Directions In Dead Sea Scroll Research
II: Original Biblical Text Reconstructed from Newly Found Fragments
Scrolls provide a fresh understanding of apocalyptic elements in late biblical religion
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Footnotes
The name of Nahash has often been taken as meaning “snake,” a not inappropriate appellation. In fact, it is a shortened term (nickname) of
The term haggadah is used by the Rabbis for those materials containing the interpretation of scripture, ordinarily exclusive of legal exposition.
See F. M. Cross, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the People Who Wrote Them,” BAR 03:01.
The term apocalyptic in its strict sense means “pertaining to an apocalypse,” a salient genre of the literature of the religious movement described below. Apocalypse means “revelation” in Greek and came to apply to the revelation of last things (eschatological events) to a seer, e.g., the apocalypse of John, commonly called the Revelation of John. We shall use the term “apocalyptic” in a wider sense, to designate a religious movement marked by an eschatological viewpoint found inter alia in the apocalypses.
Endnotes
See F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 266 and references.
For a detailed discussion (and photograph) of the fragment of Samuel, see F. M. Cross, “The Ammonite Oppression of the Tribes of Gad and Reuben: Missing Verses from 1 and 2 Found in 4QSamuela,” in History, Historiography, and Interpretation, H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld, eds. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1983), pp. 148–158.
See Alexander Rofé’s comments, Israel Exploration Journal (1982), pp. 129–133. I have anticipated such views in the paper cited in note 2.
See F. M. Cross, “Notes on the Ammonite Inscription from Tell Siran,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 212 (1973), esp. p. 15, where the title on the Tell Siran bottle and the Amman citadel inscription are discussed.