The Department of Old Testament and Hebrew Scriptures
in the Faculty of Theology and Religion hosted an international virtual
Qumran conference between 11 and 13 May 2021. Qumran Studies are still
scarce in South Africa and this was the first time that the Dead Sea
Scrolls received exclusive attention in an international conference at
the University of Pretoria; it was also the first exclusively
international Qumran conference hosted from South Africa.
The theme of this conference was ‘The Origin of the Sectarian Movement in the Dead Sea Scrolls’. This
is a much-debated topic that led to a lively conversation. The renowned
archaeologist, William Albright, said in 1948 after the discovery of
the Dead Sea Scrolls in Israel in 1947 that the discovery of the Dead
Sea Scrolls was the most important archaeological find in our time. More
than 900 manuscripts (including variants of the same document, and many
fragments) relating to 445 different literary compositions, were found,
most of which are in Hebrew and some in Aramaic. It was discovered in
eleven caves near Qumran between 1947 and 1956. Most manuscripts came
from Cave 4. Except for the Book of Esther, at least one copy of each
of the books of the traditional Hebrew canon was found among these
manuscripts. The scrolls contain religious manifests, manual of Jewish
rules, communal regulations, and biblical exegetical writings.
Prof John J. Collins, the Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism
and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School, who is appointed as an
honorary professor at the University of Pretoria in the Faculty of
Theology and Religion, Department of Old Testament and Hebrew
Scriptures, was the co-host of the conference with Prof Ananda
Geyser-Fouche. Prof Collins is a world-renowned Qumran scholar and his
research focuses on Apocalyptic Literature and Old Testament criticism.
Qumran studies contribute immensely to the understanding of early
Judaism. These studies provide the source of important information
regarding the different sects that existed in Israel, also during the
time of Jesus, as there are many references to the Pharisees, Sadducees,
Essenes, and Zadokites. The Dead Sea Scrolls contribute to our
understanding of the canonical and deutero-canonical gospels and enhance
our understanding of quotes from the Hebrew Scriptures in the New
Testament, some of which were previously inexplicable.
This conference was an excellent opportunity for
internationalisation. More than a hundred persons attended this
conference virtually, which included esteemed and renowned international
scholars like Profs George Brooke, Eileen Schuller, Albert Baumgarten,
Carol Newsom, Juta Jokiranta, David Hamidovic, Kenneth Atkinson, Jean
Duhaime, Jonathan Ben-Dov, Henryk Drawnel, Bill Schniedewind, Alexander
Rofe, Rob Kugler, Gert Steyn, Marcello Fidanzio, Fabry Heinz-Josef, and
Jörg Frey, to name but a few.
Esteemed international Dead Sea Scrolls’ scholars also participated
in this conference. They were inter alia Prof Esther Chazon (Associate
Professor of Hebrew Literature and Director of the Orion Center for the
Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls & Associated Literature at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem), Prof Charlotte Hempel (Professor of Hebrew
Bible and Second Temple Judaism and Head of the School of Philosophy,
Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham, UK), and Prof
Timothy Lim (Professor of Hebrew Bible & Second Temple Judaism at
the University of Edinburgh).
Other international scholars were participants from the USA, UK,
Switzerland, Israel, Malta, the Netherlands and Australia, which
included specialists in the Scrolls, in Second Temple Judaism and
literature, but also in archaeology and curating.
There were national scholars from the University of the Free State, the University of North West and from our own university.
Eighteen papers were delivered during the Qumran conference and the
reaction was astonishing. The programme with the titles of the
presentations, as well as links to the recordings are listed hereunder:
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13 May 2021 Sectarian/non-sectarian, DSS Language and Archaeology
|
|
Name
|
Title
|
Link to recording
|
|
Albert Hogeterp
|
The Origins of Sectarian Boundary Marking and the ‘Shifters of the Boundary’: The Damascus Document and Cultural Memory
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AHogeterp_Sectarian Boundary
|
|
Michael Jost
|
Sectarian and Non-sectarian Literature: What Does It Mean and How Does this Distinction Work Today? With a Short Case Study on the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice
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MJost_Sectarian Non-sectarian
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|
Esther Chazon
|
“Sectarian or Not – What is the Question?”
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EChazon_Sectarian or not
|
|
Cynthia Miller-Naude & Jacobus Naude
|
Qumran Hebrew and the Diachrony of Quantification: Implications for the Linguistic History of the Qumran Community
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Miller-Naude&Naude____VanDeventer
Unfortunately, this session was recorded with the next session – ends at 42.25minutes
|
|
Hannes van Deventer
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Purity and the Sabbath: A Spatial reading of the Damascus Document
|
Miller-Naude&Naude____VanDeventer
Unfortunately, this session was recorded with the previous session – starts at 42.30minutes
|
|
Dennis Mizzi
|
Qumran in the Late Hellenistic Period: An Archaeological Reassessment
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DMizzi_Archaeological
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John Collins
|
Wrap-up and Closing
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JCollins_wrap-up
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