Esther

Sources

• Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library (Israel Antiquities Authority) (opens in a new tab)

  Explore the archive by manuscript, site, and language

• Michael J. Kruger, “The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Esther, and the Argument from Silence” (opens in a new tab)

  Canon Fodder (michaeljkruger.com), on why the absence of Esther at Qumran proves little

Objections & responses

Esther’s absence might mean the Qumran community rejected it as Scripture, which undercuts the idea of a settled canon in this period.

That is one plausible explanation: Esther never mentions God and centers on a festival, Purim, that the Qumran community did not observe. It bears on the history of the canon, not on transmission, which is what this claim is about. Nobody here argues that the canon was fixed at Qumran, only that the books the community did copy were copied carefully. Esther’s later text is checked against the Septuagint and the Masoretic tradition instead.

Appears under 1 claim in this case

• The Dead Sea Scrolls show the Old Testament text was copied with remarkable stability across about a thousand years, alongside a documented plurality of text forms.