Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Nine Unpublished Fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Times of Israel is reporting that nine Dead Sea Scroll fragments have been brought to light. These are phylactery parchments.

Here is an excerpt:
Professor Lawrence Schiffman, a vice provost at Yeshiva University and expert on Second Temple Judaism, explained that some of the tefillin texts from Qumran were identical to those used today, but others have the same text with additional passages, extended to include the Ten Commandments. He also pointed out that it would be interesting to see the order in which the scrolls were placed inside the tefillin compartments — a practice debated by rabbis for centuries. 
“From my point of view, the most significant thing about all of this is that they actually have tefillin from 2,100 and plus years ago,” Schiffman said of the Dead Sea Scrolls generally. The continuity of phylactery traditions — over the centuries and across the various sects that comprised Second Temple Jewry — was something he found remarkable.
One expects that traditional Hebrew verses such as Deuteronomy 6:4f will be the extent of the contents. Even so, I will be interested to learn what the results reveal.

-anthony

1 comment:

  1. Dr. Yonatan Adler [https://ariel.academia.edu/YonatanAdler] who publicised the find, in an environmentally controlled storeroom, has proven there is still much more to learn from the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Unfortunately some of the parchments were out of context, as Father Roland Guérin de Vaux OP (who died 10 September 1971) had removed the tiny scrolls from philacteries without noting the sequence!

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