Qumran

We will visit Qumran, an ancient site along the Dead Sea during a 14 day trip to the Holy Land in May 2018. This is the village of the Essenes and the place where a shepherd boy found the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The settlement has a long and interesting history and has influenced our faith in many ways.

Qumran sits near the Dead Sea. It is an isolated location, far from Jerusalem and the populated areas of Israel. The men who moved to Qumran did so to get away from multitudes of people, what they felt was a corrupted priesthood and to avoid foreigners who were influencing the Israelites in wrong ways. Philo wrote “They flee the cities and live in villages where clean air and clean social life abound. They either work in the fields or in crafts that contribute to peace.”

The people who lived in Qumran were a monastic sect called the Essenes. Philo described them in this way, “They do not hoard silver and gold and do not acquire great landholdings; procuring for themselves only what is necessary for life. Thus they live without goods and without property, not by misfortune, but out of preference. They do not make armaments of any kind. They do not keep slaves and detest slavery. … With respect to philosophy, they dismiss logic but have an extremely high regard for virtue. They honor the Sabbath with great respect over the other days of the week. They have an internal rule which all learn, together with rules on piety, holiness, justice and the knowledge of good and bad.”

Pliney the Elder wrote, “To the west (of the Dead Sea) the Essenes have put the necessary distance between themselves and the insalubrious shore. They are a people unique of its kind and admirable beyond all others in the whole world; without women and renouncing love entirely, without money and having for company only palm trees. Owing to the throng of newcomers, this people is daily reborn in equal number; indeed, those whom, wearied by the fluctuations of fortune, life leads to adopt their customs, stream in in great numbers. Thus, unbelievable though this may seem, for thousands of centuries a people has existed which is eternal yet into which no one is born: so fruitful for them is the repentance which others feel for their past lives!"

Josephus says, “They renounce pleasure as an evil, and regard continence and resistance to passions as a virtue. They disdain marriage for themselves, being content to adopt the children of others at a tender age in order to instruct them. They do not abolish marriage, but are convinced women are all licentious and incapable of fidelity to one man. They despise riches. When they enter the sect, they must surrender all of their money and possessions into the common fund, to be put at the disposal of everyone; one single property for the whole group. Therefore neither the humiliation of poverty nor the pride of possession is to be seen anywhere among them.”

Josephus also wrote, “Before sunrise they recite certain ancestral prayers to the sun as though entreating it to rise. They work until about 11 A.M. when they put on ritual loincloths and bathe for purification. Then they enter a communal hall,where no one else is allowed,and eat only one bowlful of food for each man, together with their loaves of bread. They eat in silence. Afterwards they lay aside their sacred garment and go back to work until the evening. At evening they partake dinner in the same manner. During meals they are sober and quiet and their silence seems a great mystery to people outside. Their food and drink are so measured out that they are satisfied but no more.”

The men of Qumran are famous for their scrolls. The community copied scriptures, works written by others and writings of their own. The copyists worked in a disciplined manner so the product of their work would be error free. They counted letters to make sure each scroll was correctly copied, and then the scrolls were checked for style. Letters could not touch each other and the script had to conform to a specific style.

The Essenes assembled a library of scrolls. Every book of the Bible, with the exception of Esther, is contained in their library. Other great works both religious and nonreligious can be found also. Writings of their teachers are found among the scrolls and give clues to their theology.

During our 14 day trip to the Holy Land in May 2018 we will see the ruins of Qumran. We will see the Scriptorium, mikvah pools, craft houses and kitchen. We will also have the opportunity to walk up to caves where the scrolls were stored. We can climb into several caves to explore and see how they connect together.

The site was destroyed during the first Jewish-Roman War of 66-70 AD. With the dissolving of Jewish society the Essene communities ceased to exist.

Be’er-Sheva

Seven wells - this is more the story of our people than most of us would want to admit. We are aliens and strangers in a foreign land. We are a wandering people with no place to call home.

Seven wells - this is not our desire; we want a place to call home. The problem is that for most of history, events have prohibited my people from residing in their homeland. It seems that the story of Abram is hardwired within us and we are predestined as a nation to follow along, seemingly due to a genetic-like code. Descendants of Abraham have moved from Israel to Egypt, and back to Israel (Passover begins in two days). They then moved from Israel to Babylon and Persia. During the Second Temple period some people returned to Israel, while others continued the expansion of their influence to India (and beyond), and through Asia Minor and Macedonia to Rome. From 70 AD until 1948 the descendants of Abraham could not lay claim to their land, and even today most are in diaspora.

Abram was born almost 4,000 years ago in the land of Chaldea to the south of Babel. One tradition states that his father, Terah, was a government official. The king (Nimrod) had a dream that Terah’s child would become great, so out of jealousy the family of Nahor was banished from the land.

Terah moved his family up the Euphrates River to Haran, an ancient city which capitalized on its location along major trade routes. Abram spent his years as a young and middle-aged adult in this city. It is said that he met Noah and became a believer in the One God Most High through the stories of Noah.

When Abram was seventy-five years old, God told him to “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” In obedience to God’s words, Abram became a nomad. He journeyed first to Shechem, then to Bethel, and then to the Negev Desert where the ancient and modern cities of Be’er-Sheva are located. Abram, who was re-named Abraham, continued as a nomad without a land of his own for his whole life, living in Egypt for a time and finally being buried in Hebron.

Be’er-Sheva translated literally means “seven wells.” The name of the city bears witness to the nomadic nature of the Patriarchal families of Israel. Both Abraham and his son Isaac dug and claimed wells in this area (water is a valuable resource in the desert). However, these wells were contested. The Bible records treaties made (oath is another meaning of the word sheva) and broken between the fathers of Israel and King Abimelech (translated literally “father king”) of Gerar.

Settlement at Be’er-Sheva dates back to the Iron Age (4,000 BC), and by the time of Abraham the city was a trade center on the Central Ridge Highway, which led south from Israel to the land of Egypt. The city was built in the early Canaanite circular pattern with high visibility from watchtowers and a shape which enabled archers to aim their weapons in any direction.

On a 14 day trip to the Holy Land in May 2018, we will be sightseeing by bus and on foot, and seeing the places where the people of the Bible lived. On May 8th we will visit and spend the night in Be’er-Sheva, a city where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived. An itinerary of our journey can be found online. If you would like to join us on the trip of a lifetime, please sign up by using this link.