Qumran Dictionary

The research project Qumran Dictionary focused on one of the most remarkable and significant manuscript discoveries of the 20th century. In 1947, a Bedouin boy searching for a runaway goat stumbled upon scrolls stored in clay jars within a cave near the ruins of Khirbet Qumran on the western shore of the Dead Sea. Additional manuscript finds in the surrounding area followed until 1956.

The sheer scale and antiquity of these texts made them an unparalleled source for understanding ancient Judaism, the Old Testament, and the historical context behind the emergence of the New Testament. Around 900 scroll fragments dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 2nd century CE have been recovered. Since 2006, as part of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities’ programme, the project has aimed to compile a comprehensive dictionary encompassing the entire vocabulary of the non-Biblical Dead Sea texts. This dictionary presents the material etymologically, morphologically, and semantically, bridging a linguistic gap between the earlier Biblical Hebrew and the later rabbinical Hebrew and Aramaic.

The project has developed a continually updated database containing all source texts, interpretations, and linguistic analyses of individual words. Additionally, the research centre maintains a specialised library with every edition of the Dead Sea texts, which is regularly expanded.

Qumran-Digital