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Liber XIX · Judaism

Liber XIX · Judaism · Chapter I: Ancient Israel & the Temple

The Dead Sea Scrolls: Discovery, Enoch, Angels and Exorcism

The Dead Sea Scrolls explained: the 1946–47 discovery at Qumran, the Essene debate, the Aramaic Enoch fragments, angelology, exorcism songs and horoscopes.

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The Dead Sea Scrolls are the remains of some nine hundred Jewish manuscripts, written mostly between the third century BCE and the first century CE, found from 1946–47 onward in eleven caves near Khirbet Qumran on the north-western shore of the Dead Sea. Besides the oldest surviving copies of books of the Hebrew Bible, they preserve the original Aramaic of the Book of Enoch and a rich literature of angels, demons, heavenly worship, exorcistic songs and even horoscopes, making them a key source for the history of Jewish mysticism and magic.

The Discovery at Qumran, 1946–1947§

The traditional story begins with Muhammad edh-Dhib, a young shepherd of the Ta'amireh Bedouin, who threw a stone into a cave opening while searching for a stray animal and heard pottery break. Inside were tall jars holding leather scrolls wrapped in linen. The find is usually dated to the winter of 1946–47, though the Bedouin's own accounts vary in detail.

Seven scrolls from this first cave reached the antiquities market through Khalil Iskander Shahin, known as Kando, a dealer in Bethlehem. Four were bought by Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, the Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan of St Mark's Monastery in Jerusalem: the Great Isaiah Scroll, the Community Rule, a commentary (pesher) on Habakkuk and the Genesis Apocryphon. Three others were acquired in late 1947 by Eleazar Sukenik of the Hebrew University, who was among the first to recognise their age: the War Scroll, the Thanksgiving Hymns and a second Isaiah scroll. In 1954 the Metropolitan's four scrolls were advertised for sale in the Wall Street Journal and bought on behalf of the State of Israel through Sukenik's son, the archaeologist Yigael Yadin. All seven are now displayed in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum, opened in 1965.

Eleven Caves and a Library of Some Nine Hundred Manuscripts§

Archaeologists led by Gerald Lankester Harding and the Dominican scholar Roland de Vaux excavated the first cave in 1949 and the nearby ruins of Khirbet Qumran between 1951 and 1956. Ten more caves were located, often by Bedouin before archaeologists. Cave 4, found in 1952, held tens of thousands of fragments from hundreds of manuscripts; Cave 3 yielded the enigmatic Copper Scroll, a list of hidden treasures; Cave 11, found in 1956, produced the long Temple Scroll and a major Psalms scroll.

Roughly a quarter of the manuscripts are copies of biblical books, covering every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther (see the Hebrew Bible). The rest include works previously known only in translation, such as Jubilees, Tobit, Sirach and 1 Enoch; rules and laws for a community; biblical commentaries; liturgical and poetic texts; calendars; and wisdom writings. Most are in Hebrew, a substantial minority in Aramaic, and a few in Greek. Palaeography and radiocarbon tests broadly agree on dates from about 250 BCE to the destruction of the Qumran settlement by Roman forces around 68 CE.

Publication was slow. The fragments were entrusted to a small international team, and decades passed with much of Cave 4 unpublished. In 1991, amid public pressure, a computer-assisted reconstruction based on a concordance appeared and the Huntington Library opened its photographs to all scholars. Under the editorship of Emanuel Tov the official series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert was then largely completed, and today the scrolls can be studied in full editions and high-resolution images.

Who Wrote the Scrolls? Qumran, the Essenes and Other Theories§

Sukenik and de Vaux identified the community behind the sectarian texts with the Essenes, a strict Jewish movement described by Philo, Josephus and Pliny the Elder, who places an Essene settlement on the western shore of the Dead Sea. The Community Rule, with its stages of admission, shared property, ritual washings and communal meals, matches many features of these ancient descriptions, and the Essene hypothesis in some form remains the majority view.

It has been challenged and refined. Some scholars, notably Norman Golb, argued that the scrolls were libraries brought from Jerusalem and hidden during the Jewish revolt against Rome; others have pointed to legal positions close to those later attributed to the Sadducees, or have argued that Qumran was one of several settlements of a wider movement. What is widely agreed is that the collection includes both texts composed by a particular sectarian group and texts shared with Judaism at large, so it offers a broad window onto the religious world of the late Second Temple period.

The Aramaic Enoch Fragments and the Watchers§

For the history of esotericism, few discoveries are more important than the Enochic manuscripts of Cave 4 (see the Book of Enoch). Before 1947 the full text of 1 Enoch survived only in Ge'ez (classical Ethiopic), brought to Europe by the explorer James Bruce in 1773 and translated into English by Richard Laurence in 1821, along with Greek and Latin fragments. The Qumran caves yielded fragments of about a dozen Aramaic manuscripts of Enochic works, published by J. T. Milik in 1976.

These fragments include the Book of the Watchers (chapters 1–36), the story of angels who descend to earth, take human wives and teach humanity sorcery, root-cutting, metallurgy, cosmetics and the reading of signs in the heavens; their offspring, the giants, become evil spirits after the flood. The fragments confirmed that this myth was being copied by the third or second century BCE, earlier than many scholars had assumed, and that it originated in Aramaic. Other parts of the Enochic corpus appear too, including a longer version of the Astronomical Book. The Parables (chapters 37–71), with their figure of the Son of Man, are absent, which has fed the debate about their later date.

Alongside these came the Book of Giants, an Aramaic work on the deeds and dreams of the Watchers' sons, which had previously been known mainly from fragments of a Manichaean version (see Manichaeism and Mandaeism). The scrolls thus document the early stage of a myth that would shape Jewish, Christian and later occult demonology for two thousand years.

Angels, Belial and the Heavenly Liturgy§

The sectarian texts imagine a cosmos divided between light and darkness. A section of the Community Rule known as the Treatise on the Two Spirits teaches that God created a Prince of Light and an Angel of Darkness, and that human beings walk in the ways of one or the other until the appointed end. The War Scroll describes the final battle of the "sons of light" against the "sons of darkness" led by Belial, with the names of the archangels Michael, Gabriel, Sariel and Raphael inscribed on the shields of the battle towers. Belial as leader of evil spirits recurs throughout the collection and is a key stage in the history traced in the history of Satan and the Devil. A fragmentary text on Melchizedek presents him as a heavenly figure who executes judgement on Belial.

Most striking to students of mysticism are the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, a cycle of thirteen songs for the first quarter of the year, preserved in several copies at Qumran and one at Masada. They describe angelic priests serving in a heavenly temple, seven chief princes of the angels, and a throne-chariot whose wheels and structures praise God. Their language of the heavenly sanctuary and the chariot anticipates the later Merkavah and Hekhalot literature, though historians debate whether there is direct continuity.

Exorcism, Protective Songs and Divination at Qumran§

The scrolls also show how protection from evil spirits was practised or imagined. The Songs of the Sage (4Q510–511) are hymns that the community's instructor recites to frighten and terrify hostile beings, listed as destroying angels, spirits of the bastards (the giants' offspring), demons, Lilith and other night creatures. A Cave 11 manuscript contains several non-biblical psalms against demons followed by Psalm 91, long read as a psalm of protection, and seems to name Solomon, already famed as a master of spirits (compare Solomon and Asmodeus). A small Aramaic text (4Q560) preserves incantation formulas against fever and evil spirits of a kind later known from amulets.

Narrative texts point the same way. In the Genesis Apocryphon Abram expels a spirit afflicting Pharaoh by prayer and the laying on of hands; in the Prayer of Nabonidus a Jewish diviner or exorcist helps the Babylonian king; the copies of Tobit tell how the angel Raphael teaches Tobias to drive off the demon Asmodeus; and Jubilees says Noah was given remedies against the spirits of Mastema.

Divination appears as well. A Hebrew text in cipher (4Q186) combines physiognomy with astrology, describing how a person's bodily features reveal the proportion of their spirit in the "house of light" and the "house of darkness" and mentioning birth under a sign of the zodiac. An Aramaic text (4Q318) follows the moon through the zodiac and interprets thunder according to the sign in which it occurs. These works show that astrology was not foreign to the circles that copied the scrolls, despite later polemics against it.

The Scrolls in the Modern Imagination§

The scrolls quickly attracted speculation beyond scholarship. John Allegro, a member of the original team, later argued in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) that Christianity grew out of a hallucinogenic mushroom cult, a thesis rejected by nearly all specialists. In 1991 Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh's The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception alleged a Vatican cover-up, a claim scholars regard as unfounded and overtaken by full publication.

In esoteric circles, the Essenes had long been imagined as an initiatory brotherhood of healers and adepts, and some modern groups and authors presented "Essene gospels" or teachings; these have no basis in the Qumran manuscripts. For historians the real interest lies elsewhere: the scrolls preserve, in their original languages, the Enochic myths, angel names and protective practices from which much later Jewish, Christian and occult lore developed. They should not be confused with the later Coptic codices of Nag Hammadi.

Frequently asked questions§

When and where were the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered?§

The first scrolls were found by Bedouin shepherds in a cave near Khirbet Qumran, on the north-western shore of the Dead Sea, in the winter of 1946–47. Further finds in ten more caves followed until 1956.

Does the Book of Enoch appear in the Dead Sea Scrolls?§

Yes. Aramaic fragments of about a dozen manuscripts of Enochic books were found in Cave 4, including the Book of the Watchers and the Astronomical Book, though not the Parables. A related Book of Giants was also found.

Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?§

Most scholars associate the sectarian texts with the Essenes or a closely related movement, but the collection also contains works shared by Jews generally. Some scholars argue the scrolls came partly or wholly from Jerusalem libraries.

Do the Dead Sea Scrolls contain magic?§

They contain protective hymns against demons, exorcism narratives, an Aramaic incantation formula and astrological texts. Their authors would have seen these as part of piety, but they are important evidence for the history of Jewish protective magic and angelology.

Sources and further reading§