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This is the second of five chapters on the Old Testament and the reader, and presents an analysis of the Bible in Qumran (the site occupied by the early Jewish monastic community who lived near the shores of the Dead Sea) and early Judaism. The first part gives an account of the rediscovery of Midrash—a term initially borrowed from rabbinic literature, where it denotes the specifically rabbinic tradition of Bible exegesis—the commentary created in dialogue with the scared Scripture in early Judaism. The rediscovery of Midrash was prompted in particular by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947–1956), and the finding of the Codex Neofiti 1 in the Vatican library in 1953; these and other examples of Midrash have given rise to numerous monographs and articles over the last thirty years of the twentieth century. The second part discusses the use of the Scripture and the Dead Sea sect of Qumran, and the third analyses the use of Scripture among other Jewish rabbinical groups in late antiquity. The last two sections look at the Scripture in the Alexandrian schools and among the early Christians, and at the emergence of Judaism and Christianity as ‘Religions of the Book’.

This chapter extends the exploration of the Biblical culture of Hellenistic Judaism through the comparative use of different models of text-based communities. The parallel that is commonly drawn between the role of the Bible for the Jews and the position of the Homeric poems among all the Greeks is examined but found to be of limited value. Two disparate worlds of Second Temple Judaism are then invoked and the role of the Bible within them assessed in some detail. One is that of the Qumran sect who (in the common opinion) gathered the Dead Sea Scrolls and wrote some of them, operating in the Semitic languages of Hebrew and Aramaic; while the other, reasonably deemed a Jewish environment for this purpose, is the mainly Greek-speaking world of the writers of much of the New Testament and their readers. Both of these groups represent a type of community of users that might be called ‘bible soaked’. They immersed themselves in biblical literature (or their preferred parts of it). Through constant rehearsing and re-interpretation, those texts pervaded every aspect of their existence. By contrast, Greek-speaking diaspora Jews, Bible-centred though they were, lived by but yet through Torah. The Greek Bible, precisely because it was in Greek, could be a bridge between their Jewish lives and their immediate surroundings. Philo and Josephus are for this purpose exemplary: two illustrious, if unique individuals, whose closeness to Scripture is manifest and whose writings give us access to something of that hybrid thought-world.

In this chapter we study the mysteries and secrecy in Greco–Roman antiquity. The cults of Mithras and Isis as mysteries and revelations to their initiates, as well as the “Mithras Liturgy” and magical elements of the ascent, are examined. Secret groups have tripartite social structures. There is evidence for secret societies in Ancient Judaism other than Essenes and Therapeutae. The identification of the Qumran covenanters and of the Essenes is explored. We look at cryptic writing and secrecy within groups. The role of women in some groups is discussed. Past discoveries of Dead Sea manuscripts and documents are outlined.