"MYSTERY" (
RAZ) in the Dead Sea Scrolls and its Perso-Babylonian background:
Mystery, Secrecy and Esotericism in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Rigorous philology is still the best place to begin a study of ancient texts, and it can be well complemented by a clear interpretive/theoretical framework that seeks to bring focus to a particular angle of vision. But we should always be clear about the limits of our imaginative effort. Extracting history from ancient texts is difficult enough; trying to apprehend what ancient writers thought is an even dicier business.
The following essay is adapted from The “Mysteries” of Qumran: Mystery, Secrecy, and Esotericism in the Dead Sea Scrolls (SBLEJL 26; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009)
By Sam Thomas (Bible and Interpretation)
California Lutheran University
June 2010
Excerpt:
If raz was such an important word in Qumran texts and if its various associations played such a central conceptual role in the self-communication (or what Carol Newsom has called the “group self-fashioning”) of the Yahad and related groups, how can we explain this in a way that takes seriously the linguistic and social (and political) contexts in which these texts were produced? Moving backward rather than forward in time, it becomes clear that there is at least an indirect—if not direct—connection between the social and discursive worlds of the Yahad and earlier Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian (and perhaps Persian) priestly-scribal groups. A comparative study of these contexts throws new light on the uses of “mystery” language in the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially when buoyed by a more robust heuristic framework of secrecy and esotericism.