Final Exam

Dead Sea Scrolls

Today I began my research using www.dictionary.com, because I was unclear about the topic so I just wanted to know the meaning. In the search box, I typed in Dead Sea Scrolls. I found out that Dead Sea Scrolls are a number of leather, papyrus, and copper scrolls dating from c100 b.c. to a.d. 135, containing partial texts of some of the books of the Old Testament and some non-Biblical scrolls, in Hebrew and Aramaic, and including apocryphal writings, commentaries, hymns, and psalms: found in caves near the NW coast of the Dead Sea beginning in 1947. And the citation for this source is: "dead sea scrolls." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 04 Dec. 2007. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dead sea scrolls>.

Then I went to Britannica online just to like compare and to gain more general understanding of the topic. So I went back to our library website and looked up the term “dead sea scrolls” in Britannica online. I got 91 results. One of them which I found interesting gave me an introduction of what Dead Sea Scrolls were. It mainly talked about how mostly Hebrew, manuscripts (of leather, papyrus, and copper) were first found in 1947 on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls is among the most important finds in the history of modern archaeology. Study of the scrolls has enabled scholars to push back the date of a stabilized Hebrew Bibleto no later than AD 70, to help reconstruct the history of Palestine from the 4th century BC to AD 135, and to cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and of rabbinic Judaism and on the relationship between early Christian and Jewish religious traditions. And the citation for this source is:"Dead Sea Scrolls." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.4 Dec. 2007 <http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9029628>. Next I decided I would choose another content source. At first I used the Encyclopedia Britannica now I’ll try using the dictionary which is what I wanted to do from the start. I typed in the search term Dead Sea Scrolls and there were no results.
And from what I’ve learnt in class about finding out if the source is reliable or not, I’m pretty confident that this article is based on facts and should be reliable considering the source is an authorized encyclopedia like what you’ve told us before in class.
Now that I am feel much more confident about my topic. I decided to use the first database I learned about in class which was the Academic Search Premier. I entered the term Dead Sea Scrolls into the search box and got 934 results. I found a book review that I thought was relevant to my topic. The title of the book is The Dead Sea Scrolls: What Have We Learned? And the Persistent link is: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=27426989&site=ehost-live
Then I tried playing around with the terms. I used "DEAD Sea scrolls" and got 345 results. I noticed that they were similar results to the previous one. Next I just typed in “SCROLLS” and I got 30 results. I found an article that which I thought would be helpful in my research. The title of the article is Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls--Current Issues. It talks about how purity in early Judaism has fascinated modern scholars and proved to be a particularly fruitful vein of study in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The recovery, transcription and publication of numerous fragments of texts over the last two decades have changed the portrait of the Scrolls and the communities behind them from what was previously envisaged. To the original characterization of the sectarian Scrolls as the work of pious monks awaiting the eschaton, we can now detect a strong emphasis on Jewish law throughout these texts. Matters of purity and cult form the majority of these laws. And the bibliographic data for that article is Harrington, Hannah K.Currents in Biblical Research; Jun2006, Vol. 4 Issue 3, p397-428, 32p and the Persistent link is: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=21332161&site=ehost-live
Then I tried using the term dead sea and scrolls even though I got more results than the previous search term I entered it all seemed the same, I saw only few new topics.
Next I tried searching in the science direct database hoping I would get closer to what I’m looking for since it’s related to archaeology but found nothing useful at all. I did a quick search with the term Dead Sea Scrolls and I found 4 articles related to this topic. For a moment, I got confused thinking that since it’s a science related database I should be getting more relevant results to my topic so why is it that I’m getting nothing?
My next attempt was JSTOR. The reason why I chose J STOR was because I think going through journals would give me the idea and more depth of my topic. So I typed in Dead Sea Scrolls. For my previous research assignment I had used JSTOR and it gave me a lot of results. So this time I was expecting the same. This time I got 4090 results. I was like wow, but as you told me earlier in my blog comment that it's not the number of results; it's the number of relevant results that can be explored in depth. So I took your advice. One journal that interested me was, The Origin of the So Called Dead Sea Scrolls Tovia Wechsler The Jewish Quarterly Review > New Ser., Vol. 43, No. 2 (Oct., 1952), pp. 121-139 Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-6682%28195210%292%3A43%3A2%3C121%3ATOOTSC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z
And the other journal that I found interesting wasThe Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Approach A. N. Poliak The Jewish Quarterly Review > New Ser., Vol. 49, No. 2 (Oct., 1958), pp. 89-107 Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-6682%28195810%292%3A49%3A2%3C89%3ATDSSAN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N
This journal talks about how the Dead Sea Scrolls studies are currently polarized by debate over whether or not an Essene community dwelling at Qumran produced the Scrolls. For over thirty years interpretations of the Scrolls were dominated by the "traditional" (as it is now called) assumption that the Dead Sea Scrolls were copied, collected and stored by Essene sectarians at Qumran. The last decade has witnessed growing dissent to that traditional viewpoint.
Next I tried the HAYSTAC. I entered the search term Dead Sea Scrolls and got around 86 relevance topics. I found 2 books which I thought were most relevant to my topic. To my surprise I didn’t find anything from the reference section. But as for as I read the abstract of the book I think it would really help me on my research. The first one is
The Dead Sea scrolls : a very short introduction Lim, Timothy HOxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2005
Location: Book Stacks
Call no. : BM487 .L54 2005

And the other book is

Archaeology and the Dead Sea scrolls Vaux, Roland de, 1903-1971London, published for the British Academy by the Oxford University Press, 1973
Location: Book Stacks
Call no. : DS110.Q8 V313 1973



I tried to choose books according to the year so that I could compare the old material and the new ones.
Finally, I decided to do what I do best. And that was search in World Wide Web. At first I was so tempted to google the term Dead Sea Scroll out since I didn’t quite get the topic but then I thought I’d just understand the meaning and try it the way we learnt it in class first. So I looked up my search terms on www.google.com. In google I tried manipulating the words around: dead sea scrolls, “dead sea scrolls”, dead sea, scrolls, dead sea, dead sea scrolls pictures but at the end I ended up using the term Dead Sea Scrolls and got 1,540,000 results. I was really overwhelmed by the results I got. And one of the links was: http://www.centuryone.com/25dssfacts.html and I am pretty sure this source is reliable because it’s copy righted from the century one bookstore.
Through the World Wide Web I found out about the The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in eleven caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between the years 1947 and 1956. The Scrolls can be divided into two categories biblical and non-biblical. And in all, scholars have identified the remains of about 825 to 870 separate scrolls. And also that, the Dead Sea Scrolls enhances our knowledge of both Judaism and Christianity. They represent a non-rabbinic form of Judaism and provide a wealth of comparative material for New Testament scholars, including many important parallels to the Jesus movement. They show Christianity to be rooted in Judaism and have been called the evolutionary link between the two.
By doing this research today I’ve definitely learned more about Dead Sea Scrolls. And the 2 databases that I would search for more information would be CQ researcher and Proquest Newspaper. My two topic questions are: What is Qumran and what relation do the Dead Sea Scrolls have to it? And How did the scrolls come to be deposited in the caves?