Tuesday, May 08, 2018

Altered festivals in the Temple Scroll

PROF. MARVIN A. SWEENEY: How the Temple Scroll Rewrote the Festival of Bikkurim (TheTorah.com).
Throughout the Bible, we find that the land of Israel is blessed with grain, wine, and oil (דגן, תירוש, ויצהר). In the Torah, however, the festival of Bikkurim, “First Produce,” only celebrates the wheat harvest. In Qumran, the Essenes rewrote the biblical festival calendar to include two further bikkurim festivals to celebrate wine and oil.

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