Wealth in the Dead Sea scrolls and in the Qumran community /
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This volume is concerned with exploring sectarian attitudes toward wealth and the economic practices that gave rise to and issued from those attitudes. An introductory chapter establishes the state of the question. Three subsequent chapters focus on major sectarian texts: the Damascus Document, the Rule of the Community, and 4QInstruction A. Other sectarian and non-sectarian texts that mention wealth are discussed in a fifth chapter, while archaeological evidence from the Qumran region and contemporary documentary texts are introduced in chapters seven and eight. Finally, ancient secondary testimony on Essene economic practices is discussed. The book breaks new ground in arguing for several biblical rationales for the practice of shared wealth. Its integration of archaeological and documentary evidence sheds surprising new light on the economic organization of the Qumran community.
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1 online resource (xxi, 672 pages, 10 pages of plates) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 541-571) and index. :
9789047400653 :
0169-9962 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The self as symbolic space : constructing identity and community at Qumran /
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This volume investigates critical practices by which the Qumran community constituted itself as a sectarian society. Key to the formation of the community was the reconstruction of the identity of individual members. In this way the "self" became an important symbolic space for the development of the ideology of the sect. Persons who came to experience themselves in light of the narratives and symbolic structures embedded in the community practices would have developed the dispositions of affinity and estrangement necessary for the constitution of a sectarian society. Drawing on various theories of discourse and practice in rhetoric, philosophy, and anthropology, the book examines the construction of the self in two central documents: the Serek ha-Yahad and the Hodayot.
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1 online resource (x, 376 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 353-364) and indexes. :
9789047405153 :
0169-9962 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.