Biblical Archaeology Review

The exact size of the cubit referred to in the scroll is’ unfortunately, unknown to us. I have assumed, somewhat arbitrarily, that the cubit is 0.5 meter or 19.7 inches long, which is 10 to 15 percent longer or shorter than the length of the cubit according to various scholars.

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jesus, 20.219.

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 15.420.

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 15.421.

Dating the composition of the Temple Scroll to the second half of the fifth century B.C. results in some provocative suggestions for further research:

First: The Pentateuch as we know it from our Bible must have been finally redacted at least a century before the composition of the Temple Scroll; at least a century would be needed to develop all the additions and alterations of the text used in the Temple Scroll.

The Cambridge edition of the Septuagint by Allen E. Brooke and Norman McLean, The Old Testament in Greek According to the Text of Codex Vaticanus (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1906–1911), Vol. 1, Part I–III.

Yadin recognized this problem and tried to resolve it with the suggestion that in other scrolls from Qumran we are always dealing with high priests who are mentioned in contexts relating to the End of Days, with specific titles for them. But this is, at least, disputable: In those scrolls, the high priest at the End of Days is called ha-kohen, ha’aharon or sometimes meshiah ’Aharon, while kohen ha-rosh seems to be the more usual title used by the Qumran community, but strange to the Temple Scroll.

See Lawrence H. Schiffman, Sectarian Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Courts, Testimony and the Penal Code (Chico, CA: Scholar’s Press, 1983), p. 77.

The so-called “Damascus Documents” include two different books, the “Admonitions” represented by columns 18 and 19–20, and the “Laws” represented by columns 15–16 and 9–14. Both books were composed separately by the Essenes, and fragments of both of them were also found in the Qumran caves.