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How many books of the Hebrew Bible have not been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls?
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Answer: 1
Thanks to the recent discovery of the Book of Nehemiah among some previously unknown Dead Sea Scroll fragments, the only book of the Hebrew Bible still not identified among the more than 900 scrolls is the Book of Esther. It’s still not known why Esther doesn’t make an appearance at Qumran. Perhaps the male-dominated and strictly observant Jewish sectarians of Qumran had an aversion to a story centered on a Jewish female protagonist who marries a gentile Persian king. Or maybe they found it problematic that Esther is one of the few books (in addition to the Song of Songs) in which God is not mentioned by name. Or, as is perhaps most likely, the story was known and read at Qumran but simply did not survive among the scrolls that have been recovered. Indeed, as reported by scroll scholar Sidnie White Crawford in Bible Review, fragments of a different but very similar book to Esther were found in Cave 4 at Qumran (designated 4Q550 by scholars and sometimes called “proto-Esther”), which may have been a source for many of the themes and figures that appear in the Esther story.
How many books of the Hebrew Bible have not been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls?
082 Answer: 1
