Online Exhibitions Intro   The Concept of Time   Shelter   Morning Prayer   Livelihood   Handicrafts   Purity   The Communal Meal   Study   Writing   Evenings and the Sabbath   Permanent Exhibitions   Archaeology of the Land of Israel   Neighbouring Cultures   Nunismatic Collection A Day at Qumran: The Dead Sea Sect and its Scrolls Curator: Dr. Adolfo Roitman     This exhibition - commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of two-thousand-year-old scrolls in a cave near Khirbet Qumran, situated on the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea - is devoted to the daily life of the people behind the scrolls. Our basic assumption, today accepted by most scholars, is that Khirbet Qumran and its environs were home to a Jewish group of Essenes. The Essene sect, along with the Pharisees, Sadducees, Samaritans, Zealots, and early Christians, formed the Jewish society in the Land of Israel during the late Second Temple period (167 BCE - 70 CE). Sources for the reconstruction of everyday life in ancient Qumran were the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus - who describes the daily routine of the Essenes from sunrise to sunset - as well as other classical sources (including Philo of Alexandria) and information from the scrolls themselves. We have tried to show how the sectarians' way of life reflected their concept of separation, which they so scrupulously observed. It is our hope that the exhibition will help fulfill the sectarians' belief, expressed by Josephus, "that the body is corruptible and its constituent matter impermanent, but that the soul is immortal and imperishable."
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