types of text

What types of texts are represented at Qumran, the site where the scrolls were stored in caves surrounding a Jewish sect settlement?

Copies of every book of the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, except the Book of Esther.

Biblical commentaries known as Pesharim.

Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible, known as the targum.

Apocrypha, books such as Tobit and Sirach, that are found in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian canons of sacred scripture, but not in the Jewish or Protestant canons.

Pseudepigrapha, books such as Enoch and Jubilees, not found in either the Hebrew Bible or Catholic or Protestant canons, but may be found in the Ethiopian or Armenian canons.

Greek copies of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint.

Sectarian manuscripts, such as the Community Rule or the War Scroll, that speak to the specific rules and beliefs of a sect. There’s insight — but not proof — in the Dead Sea Scrolls.