Memory and Oblivion: The Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls

by Rachel Elior

This book is concerned with a new perspective on the huge priestly library which was found in 11 caves in Qumran between 1947–1956. The noticeable fact that all the scrolls are sacred texts and many of them relate directly to the Jerusalem Temple, to the Priests from the house of Zadok, to the 24 priestly watches, to the Temple calendar and eternal cycles of sacrifices, to the Levitical tribe and priestly history, raise the question why these sacred texts were committed into nearly complete oblivion for 2200 years. Most of the scrolls reflect profound interest in holy time, holy place, holy ritual and holy memory and express ancient priestly memory related to biblical history with additions of angels, sacred calendar and heavenly temples. The priestly writers of ?the House of Zadok and their allies’ who were deposed from the Jerusalem Temple at 175 BCE, in the time of the conquest of Antiochus IV and wrote the scrolls that were found in Qumran, were involved in severe conflict with the new priestly house, the Hasmoneans, who ruled between 152 BCE–37 BCE. The biblical priestly group that became to be known as Saducees was rejected by the new hegemony of the Pharisees, who believed in oral law and human sovereignty, introduced a new order after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE), and committed into oblivion a great part of the previous priestly library that was based on written law and divine and angelic sovereignty. This rejected sacred library that was found in the 11 caves along the Dead Sea shores between 1947–1956 is now fully translated and published into all western languages and could be fully appreciated and analysed.

350 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2015

About the author

Rachel Elior served twice as the head of the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has been a member of the university’s faculty since 1978 and is the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Philosophy in the Department of Jewish Thought. She received her BA (1973) and PhD (1976), both summa cum laude, from the Hebrew University.
Prof. Elior's research interests include the history of Jewish mysticism – early Jewish mysticism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Heikhalot literature; Kabbalah – the early modern period, Messianism, Sabbatianism, Hasidism, Frankism; the presence and absence of women in Jewish culture and religious tradition, and the history of freedom; traditional sources of secular Judaism – identity, knowledge, criticism and creativity.
Prof. Elior has taught at the University of Chicago, Princeton University, Doshisha University at Kyoto, Tokyo University, Yeshiva University and Case Western University, the Shalom Institute at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Oberlin College and University College London. She has also been a research fellow at the Oxford Center for Jewish Studies at Oxford University.
Prof. Elior has written eight books on various periods of Jewish mystical creativity, six of which have been translated into English, Spanish and Polish. She has edited eight books, transcribed from manuscripts, edited and annotated three books and authored some hundred articles on this subject. She has received many awards, among them the Friedenberg Award of Excellence of the Israel National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Beracha-Yigal Alon Prize for Academic Excellence, the AVI Fellowship – Geneva award, the Warburg Prize, the Federman Foundation award, the State University of New York Research Foundation award, The Littauer Fund award, the Oxford Jerusalem Trust Visiting Fellowship, the Wolfson Foundation award and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Studies Fellowship. In 2006 the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities awarded her the Gershom Scholem Prize for Research in Kabbalah. Her book Israel Ba’al Shem Tov and His Contemporaries: Kabbalists, Sabbatians, Hasidim and Mitnaggedim was published in 2014 in Jerusalem by Carmel Publishing House.
Prof. Elior is a member of the international council of the New Israel Fund, the Council for Secular Judaism and the Tag Meir forum.