Search results for ""Author Charlotte Hempel""

In this volume, Charlotte Hempel offers the first comprehensive commentary on all twelve ancient manuscripts of the Rules of the Community, works which contain the most important descriptions of the organisation and values ascribed to the movement associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls. The best preserved copy of this work (1QS) was one of the first scrolls to be published and has long dominated the scholarly assessment of the Rules. The approach adopted in this commentary is to capture the distinctive nature of each of the manuscripts based on a synoptic translation that presents all the manuscripts at a glance. Textual notes and Commentary deal with the picture derived from all preserved manuscripts. The publication of the Cave 4 manuscripts in 1998 can be likened to a volcanic eruption that challenged prevalent notions of the Community Rules that were founded on the quasi-archetypal status of the Cave 1 copy published in 1951. Since then the smoke has lifted and, as the pieces have begun to settle, we see green shoots emerging in the scholarly debate.. This commentary embraces the post-volcanic landscape of the Community Rules, which is carefully sifted for clues to establish a fresh reading of the material in conversation with the latest research on the Scrolls. The evidence suggests that some of the practices described as the beating heart of the movement's organization reflect the aspirations of a privileged sub-elite from the late Second Temple Period.

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Ever since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls the Community Rule has been at the forefront of the scholarly imagination and is often considered a direct channel to life on the ground at Khirbet Qumran - an ancient version of 'reality television'. After the full publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls one might legitimately have expected that the complete spread of evidence would present us with most of the answers that we have been looking for. Instead, scholars increasingly recognize the significance of the Scrolls as a rich text world from a period when texts, traditions, interpretation, and scholarship laid the foundations of Western civilisation. While the literary, scribal, and textual aspects reflected in the Rule texts are becoming clearer, the social and community realities are becoming ever fuzzier. Ultimately the Scrolls present us with a complex and sophisticated collection of literature rather than a window into the inner workings of a group, let alone particular individuals. Such a scholarly trajectory mirrors the history of biblical scholarship and invites further dialogue between both fields. The studies by Charlotte Hempel gathered in this volume deal with several core Rule texts from Qumran, especially the Community Rule (S), the Rule of the Congregation (1QSa), the Damascus Document (D), and 4Q265 (Miscellaneous Rules) and uncover a complex network of literary and more murkily preserved social relationships. The author further investigates the Rule literature within the context of wisdom, law, and the scribal milieu behind the emerging scriptures. The volume ends with an exploration of the distinctive character of Qumran Cave 4, the home of the majority of Rule texts, as an eclectic collection of ancient Jewish higher learning."These essays are essential reading for anyone interested in the Rulebooks found at Qumran."John J. Collins in Revue de Qumran 26 (2014), S. 483-485"In truth, Hempel's volume is as much a commentary on the development, similarities, and differences between the Rule texts as it is an observation on the state and direction of Qumran Studies."Ian Werrett in Journal for the Study of Judaism 46 (2015), S. 443-445

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This volume comprises the lectures delivered at a conference on the sapiential texts from Qumran hosted by A. Lange and H. Lichtenberger in Tubingen (1998) as well as a number of additional contributions. This literature, although found in the Qumran library, is mostly of non-Essene origin and can be dated to the third and second century BCE with a single exception which might be even older. The sapiential texts from Qumran add to the sparse corpus of postexilic sapiential literature and shed new light on the later Israelite and Jewish wisdom as well as on the sources from which early Christian wisdom traditions originated. Therefore, the volume attempts to understand the wisdom literature from Qumran in the broader context of sapiential thought in the Ancient near East, the Hebrew Bible, Ancient Judaism and the New Testament. Beyond this, the volume further includes treatments of introductory and linguistic questions as well as articles on specific sapiential texts.

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