The New Jerusalem Texts

Synopsis

The expectation for a New Jerusalem is a common motif in ancient Jewish and Christian prophetic and apocalyptic writings. It also appears in several texts that have been preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls , including, most significantly, the Aramaic New Jerusalem Text. This book examines the New Jerusalem Text and other Dead Sea writings that envision a New Jerusalem, and situates them within their larger literary and eschatological contexts. The first part of the book describes the NJ Text: the discovery of the text and its editions and translations; its seven manuscript copies and their overlaps; its distinctive content, with special attention to its genre and antecedents; and its date and provenance. This is followed by a presentation of other Dead Sea texts which anticipate the appearance of the New Jerusalem, notably the Temple Scroll and the Reworked Pentateuch. The second part of the book investigates the motif of the New Jerusalem (heavenly or otherwise) as it is featured in the prophetic and apocalyptic writings of early Judaism and Christianity, including Isaiah , Jeremiah , Ezekiel , Tobit , and the Revelation of John . After exploring the motif's rather complicated relationship with apocalypticism, the book concludes with a discussion on the place of the NJ Text within the compass of the eschatology of the Qumran community.