The Dead Sea Scrolls And Rabbinic Judaism After Sixty (Plus) Years: Retrospect And Prospect

Chapter Summary

In the early years of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship, few were interested in its impact on the study of rabbinic literature or Judaism, dominated as the field was by scholars of either "Old Testament" or "New". If we survey the bibliography of scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls overall, we find that relative to the enormous industry of relating the scrolls to the New Testament and early Christianity, studies relating the scrolls to rabbinic Judaism are few and far between. Scholars who responsibly draw connections between the scrolls and rabbinic literature have remained a distinct minority in a field that has been more interested in the significance of the scrolls for the textual criticism of the "Old Testament" and for the "intertestamental" "background" to the New. The chapter also highlight two factors that contribute to the recent return of rabbinic Judaism back onto the screen of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship.

Keywords: Dead Sea Scrolls; New Testament; Old Testament; rabbinic Judaism