The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Comparative Analysis of The Community Rule and the Damascus Document
This five-page undergraduate paper examines The Dead Sea Scrolls, and focuses on comparisons and contrasts between the Damascus Document and the Community Rule fragments. The author notes that rival interpretations of The Community Rule documents and the Damascus Document provide a great deal of insight into the divisions in ancient Judaism, while redaction reveals the motivations of the redactors. In the final analysis, the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal ancient Judaic pluralism, and confirm that rival groups each claimed to be the True Israel, and zealously defended their interpretation of the Torah as true and condemned all others as false.