DNA Testing Can Help Solve the Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Scholars currently agree that the ancient manuscripts found in the Qumran caves came from the library of a Jewish sect that lived there before the destruction of the Second Temple in the 1st century CE. But despite the extensive research done on these texts, there remains much debate over which were written in Qumran and which were written elsewhere, and about how different fragments fit together. Rossella Tercatin explains how genetic testing can provide answers:

Almost all the fragments analyzed turned out to be made from sheep skins, a species compatible with the desert environment, yet the parchment of two fragments was identified as cow hide. “Cattle breeding in principle is not possible in the desert, as cows require a lot of grass and water—therefore most likely those parchments were not produced locally but brought from outside,” the Bible scholar Noam Mizrahi said.

Moreover, one of the two fragments written on cow hide, featuring some text from the biblical book of Jeremiah, was previously believed by many experts to be part of the same scroll of another two fragments from the same book. However, the research proved that this was not possible, as the parchment was different.

The researchers did not stop at the animal species: they were able to ascertain more than whether two fragments were made of parchment manufactured from the same animal or from genetically related animals.

Among the fragments analyzed was a scroll uncovered in Masada featuring the Song of the Sabbath Sacrifice, considered very connected to the Qumran community. The artifact confirmed one of the pillars of the theory that refugees from Qumran made their way to Masada after its destruction by the Romans in 68 CE. However, that parchment was created using the skin of a sheep that seems genetically unrelated to the ones used for the Qumran copies examined, suggesting that the scroll was actually not originally from there.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Archaeology, Dead Sea Scrolls, Genetics

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF