Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? - The BAS Library
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The Dead Sea Scrolls

Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Most scholars believe the Dead Sea Scrolls (more than 900 of them) were either written or collected by a sect of Jews called Essenes, who are described by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus and the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo. However, the scrolls themselves make no explicit reference to the Essenes. Scholars infer the connection because of the congruence of Essene philosophy and doctrine as reflected in the scrolls and as described in Josephus and Philo. The Essenes lived from about the second century B.C.E. to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E. In this, they were no […]

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Footnotes

1.

See Lawence H. Schiffman, “The Significance of the Scrolls,” Bible Review, October 1990. But see James C. VanderKam, “The People of the Dead Sea Scrolls—Essenes or Sadducees?” Bible Review, April 1991.

2.

This is the view of Yitzhak Magen and Yuval Peleg, as well as Norman Golb, as expressed in “Qumran—The Pottery Factory,” BAR 32:05.

Endnotes

1.

Todd S. Beall, s.v. “Essenes” in Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam, eds., Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000).