First Glance

A new generation of Dead Sea Scroll scholars may change our understanding of the history of Judaism and Christianity. Deeply immersed himself in Scroll research, Lawrence H. Schiffman surveys “The Significance of the Scrolls.” Recently granted a peek at the long awaited, but still-unpublished, text known as MMT, Schiffman assesses this document and finds in it evidence that the origin of the Qumran sect is Sadducean, rather than Essene.

Schiffman is professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University, where he also serves as director of graduate studies in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. During the 1989–1990 academic year, he was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he spent the past year as part of a research group dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls. The most recent of his six books are The Eschatological Community of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Scholars Press, 1989), Text and Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Ktav, 1990) and, as editor, Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Sheffield/ASOR, 1990).