Out of the wilderness: studies on the Qumran war tradition

De Vries, Michael (2023). Out of the wilderness: studies on the Qumran war tradition. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to provide a fresh reading of the Qumran war tradition based on the more complete picture now available of the movement itself, its beliefs and ideologies, including its eschatological imagination. Our proposal is that the authors of the Qumran war tradition drew upon priestly and holiness traditions, specifically priestly warfare ideology, wilderness traditions, and traditions regarding purity and pollution as a framework for the imagined eschatological struggle. These traditions coalesce with the Joshua conquest tradition as well as ideologies of the authors and their movement, such the self-understanding of being exiles in the desert, calendrical concerns, cosmological ordering, the communion with angelic beings, and the eschatological renewal of the earth. What results is a new expression of priestly warfare tradition, one that frames the eschatological struggle between the forces of light and darkness as a return from exile in the wilderness, re-entering the land for the purpose of purifying the earth from the pollution of the wicked. For those who shaped and transmitted the Qumran war tradition, the destruction of the enemy and the re-possession of the land by the elect of God represented the purification and renewal of the earth, so that “there will no longer be any guilt in the land” (4QRenewed Earth [4Q475] 4).

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):