Signification et importance des manuscrits de la mer Morte. L'état actuel des études qoumrâniennes

Sense and Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Present State of Qumranian Studies. D. Dimant. The first syntheses on the manuscripts and the Dead Sea community have a preliminary character to the extent that they are based upon a limited number of texts. Now that the publication of the group of manuscripts, and in particular those of cave 4, is almost finished, it is worth reexamining the picture. The identification of the community and the site of Qumran as being essenian has certainly been confirmed by the recently published texts. However, the question of the duration of their establishment in Qumran and that of their relations with other settlements of the essenian sect remains unresolved. The Qumran library contains three literary ensembles: the biblical manuscripts, the community literature and the non-community literature. The so-called community texts can be distinguished from the others by their terminology and their content. The analysis of new fragments indicate that these texts have a long and complex literary history and that they use sources that can be traced to at least the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. E. Similarly, the fact that a third of the library consists of "non community" texts, leads us to reformulate the problem of the origin and formation of the community. The affinity of these texts on the one hand with common Jewish tradition and on the other with apocalyptic literature (of which a significant amount, written in aramean, recalls Jewish traditions which emerged from the babylonian and persian diaspora) indicate that the issue of the community origins must be considered within the vaster context of Judaïsm under the Second Temple as a whole. Far from constituting an obscur little group on the margins of Judaïsm, the Qumran community must have constituted a central group, situated within the very heart of the sacerdotal milieu.Dimant Devorah, Gillet-Didier Véronique. Signification et importance des manuscrits de la mer Morte. L'état actuel des études qoumrâniennes. In: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. 51ᵉ année, N. 5, 1996. pp. 975-1003