Temple Scroll

Eight Metres of Very Thin Skin

The Temple Scroll is the longest manuscript from the Qumran caves: eighteen sheets of parchment, three or four columns to a sheet, running to 8.146 metres. The skin is extraordinary — a tenth of a millimetre thick, the thinnest of any scroll from the site — and the second half, which lay on the inside of the roll, survived far better than the first. The Israel Museum records that it was "almost certainly discovered in 1956 in Cave 11", two kilometres north of the Qumran ruin, by Bedouin rather than archaeologists. It then spent eleven years with the Bethlehem antiquities dealer Kando before Yigael Yadin obtained it in 1967, during the Six-Day War. Exactly how is not agreed: the Israel Museum's own credit line says the scroll was "purchased for the Shrine of the Book with the aid of a grant from the Wolfson Foundation", other accounts describe Israeli officers demanding it and Kando being paid afterwards, and the figure named is variously $105,000 and $108,000. It is catalogued under three accession numbers, H95.57.25, H95.57.23 and H95.82.120.

Two other manuscripts carry the same composition — a second Cave 11 copy and a fragmentary text from Cave 4 — and the Israel Museum reports that most scholars date the original work to the second half of the second century BC, earlier than any of the surviving copies. What the work does is rewrite the law. In the museum's description it "claims to provide the details of God's instructions (to Moses?) in regard to the construction and operation of the Temple", combining the Temple and sacrificial legislation of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers with a new version of the laws of Deuteronomy 12-23. The Israel Antiquities Authority puts the purpose more sharply still: the scroll "seeks to bring into accord several conflicts found in the biblical legal code." It is a harmonisation, presented as revelation.

A Temple Nobody Could Have Built

A large part of the scroll is architecture. In the Israel Antiquities Authority's summary, "a significant portion of the text comprises an architectural description of the temple and the surrounding city of Jerusalem" — and the measurements are the problem. The same note says plainly that "the vast dimensions of both the temple and the city seem unrealistic." Nothing on the scale described could have stood on the Temple Mount, or in the Jerusalem of the second century BC.

That does not make it a vision of the world to come. The same note is careful on the point: "it is apparent that the author did not compose a utopian vision of the end of days, but rather a description of the proper way the temple and its rituals should be conducted during his own lifetime" — and the reason for saying so is inside the scroll, which distinguishes this Temple from a further, greater one that God will build at the end of days. So the document is a programme. Somebody in second-century-BC Judea believed the Temple then standing in Jerusalem was wrong, wrote out what a right one would be, and put it in God's own mouth.

Whose Book Was It?

Yigael Yadin, who brought the scroll into Israeli hands in 1967 and produced its first edition ten years later, read it as the community's own book of the law. Hartmut Stegemann argued against that in "The Origins of the Temple Scroll" in 1988: on his reading the work is not a sectarian composition at all. The Israel Antiquities Authority sets the question out without taking a side — "it is unclear whether the Temple Scroll is a sectarian composition or an earlier composition that was later adopted by the Dead Sea Scrolls community as an authoritative text" — and the Israel Museum states both positions in the same breath: "Many scholars still attribute the Temple Scroll to the isolated community living at Qumran. But others reject any connection with the Qumran community, affirming that the work originated in certain priestly (possible Zadokite) circles." The evidence pulls both ways. Its legal positions have real parallels in the Damascus Document and the Community Rule; but as the museum notes, the sectarian markers are missing — no Sons of Light, and no predestination.

What follows for a Christian reader is a matter of proportion rather than doctrine. If the Temple Scroll is not sectarian, it is evidence that dissatisfaction with the Jerusalem Temple was broader than one group by the Dead Sea; if it is sectarian, it is evidence of how far that one group went. Either way it belongs to the same century as the buildings Jesus walked through and the argument he walked into, and it shows that a Jew of the period could believe the standing Temple was wrong without ceasing to believe in the Temple. What it is not is a blueprint for a future building, or a prophecy. It is a proposal, and nobody adopted it.

Scripture references

• Deuteronomy 12:5-14 — The legislation the scroll rewrites at greatest length
• Ezekiel 40:1-5 — The other ancient description of a Temple that was never built
• Mark 11:15-18 — Jesus in the Temple this scroll's author thought had gone wrong
• Hebrews 9:11-12 — A New Testament answer to the same dissatisfaction, in a different direction

Sources

• Holding institutionThe Israel Museum, Jerusalem — The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls: The Temple Scroll — The Israel Museum, Jerusalem — Shrine of the Book · The museum's own object record: "Qumran Cave 11", "Late 1st century BCE - early 1st century CE", "H: 24-26; L: 814 cm", "Accession number: H95.57.25, H95.57.23, H95.82.120", "almost certainly discovered in 1956 in Cave 11", eighteen sheets and a total length of 8.146 m, "the thinnest parchment scroll ever found in the caves of Qumran", and the two further copies 11Q20 and 4Q524. Served over http onlySupports: The dimensions, thickness, sheet count, accession numbers, find year and the other copies
• Holding institutionIsrael Antiquities Authority, Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library: 11Q Temple Scroll (11Q20) — Israel Antiquities Authority · The authority's own account of the composition: "the longest non-biblical composition discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls"; "the vast dimensions of both the temple and the city seem unrealistic"; "the author did not compose a utopian vision of the end of days, but rather a description of the proper way the temple and its rituals should be conducted during his own lifetime"; and "Scholars still debate the source of this text, and it is unclear whether the Temple Scroll is a sectarian composition or an earlier composition that was later adopted by the Dead Sea Scrolls community"Supports: The scale of the described Temple, the scroll's own purpose, and the open question in section three
• ScholarshipF. García Martínez, E. J. C. Tigchelaar and A. S. van der Woude, Qumran Cave 11.II (11Q2-18, 11Q20-31) — Florentino García Martínez, Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar and Adam S. van der Woude · Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 23 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 357-409 — the official edition of the second Cave 11 copy, named as such in the Israel Antiquities Authority's own record for 11Q20. Print onlySupports: The publication record for the composition's second copy
• ScholarshipEmanuel Tov, "The Text of Isaiah at Qumran" — Emanuel Tov, Hebrew University of Jerusalem · In Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran: Collected Essays (TSAJ 121; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 42-56, note 12: the Great Isaiah Scroll is the longest preserved biblical scroll at 7.34 m, "surpassed only by a nonbiblical composition, 11QTa (8.148 m; reconstructed total length 8.75 m)"Supports: That this is the longest scroll from the caves, and its reconstructed original length
• ScholarshipHartmut Stegemann, "The Origins of the Temple Scroll" — Hartmut Stegemann, University of Göttingen · In Congress Volume Jerusalem 1986, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 40 (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 235-256. The standard statement of the case against Yadin: that the Temple Scroll is not a sectarian composition · paywalledSupports: The counter-position in section three
• ScholarshipYigael Yadin, Megillat ha-Miqdash / The Temple Scroll — Yigael Yadin, Hebrew University of Jerusalem · Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University and the Shrine of the Book, 1977 (Hebrew), in three volumes; revised English edition 1983. The editio princeps — the scroll was never published in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert. Yadin announced the acquisition in "The Temple Scroll", The Biblical Archaeologist 30:4 (1967), 135-139, DOI 10.2307/3211021. Print onlySupports: The first edition, and that the scroll stands outside the DJD series
• EncyclopediaWikipedia: Temple Scroll

Further reading

• The Israel Museum: The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls
• The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library
• Wikipedia: Temple Scroll

Reflect

Somebody wrote out, in detail, what the house of God ought to look like, knowing it would never be built. What have you planned carefully and never seen happen?