{"id":1597,"date":"2014-06-16T09:53:25","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T09:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/?p=1597"},"modified":"2014-06-16T09:53:25","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T09:53:25","slug":"qumrans-a-significant-cultural-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/qumrans-a-significant-cultural-foundation\/","title":{"rendered":"Qumran’s a Significant Cultural Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Anna Sangrey<\/a><\/p>\n

In every country, a culture runs as deep as the plants, animals, and people groups who lived on the land before them. In Israel, land of creation, culture is no different. Preservation of the past connects the Holy Land’s modernity and technology to the rock on which it stands.<\/p>\n

The Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority was formed to harbor and cultivate Israel’s rich historical landscape. They are there to protect the country’s plants and wildlife.<\/p>\n

One of its national parks, the Qumran National Park<\/a>, sits off the northwestern tip of the Dead Sea and shouts out the home-place of the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls<\/a>. Discovered between 1947 and 1956, the scrolls, written in papyrus, parchment, and copper, depict the religious foundation of Christianity and Judaism. Travelers touring the visitor’s center, built to resemble one of the ancient buildings of Qumran, touch the sand particles and smell the salty winds coming from the nearby Dead Sea. Visitors, both native and foreign, witness a culture over two thousand years old.<\/p>\n

\"Qumran\"<\/a>

Qumran<\/p><\/div>\n

A national park is more than a field trip, more than a picnic place. It is a foundation that connects generations of history together. Qumran’s national park showcases piles of scattered pale yellowish-tan clumps of rocks and a tower and several rooms. These structures are remnants of the ancient monastic and secluded community of the Essenes, a devout, Jewish religious sect, who called Qumran home. While the Essenes disappeared, wiped out by the Romans in the first Jewish War in A.D. 88, the remains of their vegetable garden still shimmers south of Qumran, the Ein Feshkha oasis in a place of desert seclusion. Today, Qumran is a mere forty-two minutes drive from the city of Jerusalem, in current traffic, of course.<\/p>\n

The park, open year round, provides tours and gives work. Someone manages the souvenir shop and visitors’ center. Someone runs the descriptive video, with English subtitles, explaining Qumran. Several others act together during a live dramatization in Hebrew of the caves and the hidden scrolls<\/a>. These found scrolls are a collection of mostly Hebrew, some Greek, and fifteen percent Aramaic inscriptions. The national park is a collection of travelers and Israelis, a collection of voices, and a historical foundation of Middle-Eastern significance.<\/p>\n

Dust-smeared canyons surround Qumran, the same canyons the Essenes would have been familiar with while working in their gardens. It is 300 ft (100 m) above the Dead Sea. The arid climate of the Judean Wilderness still harbors the eleven caves which had been the scrolls’ <\/a>hiding places. There were scrolls of religious Jewish writings, such as hymns, prayers, apocalyptic and exegetical texts. There were copies of the oldest Hebrew Scriptures discovered so far. There were objects depicting the lifestyle of the Essenes, reflecting their religious devotion. Two thousand years have passed, but the solitude and silence of the desert still envelopes Qumran at sunset.<\/p>\n

\"Dead-sea-scrolls\"<\/a>

Dead-sea-scrolls<\/p><\/div>\n

In the mid-1900s, a Bedouin shepherd boy searching for a lost goat found the hidden manuscripts<\/a>. And the National Parks Protection Authority? They saw Qumran in its desert landscape, and they began cultivating and protecting the culture of modern Israel.<\/p>\n

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\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Anna Sangrey In every country, a culture runs as deep as the plants, animals, and people groups who lived on the land before them. In Israel, land of creation, culture is no different. Preservation of the past connects the Holy Land’s modernity and technology to the rock on which it stands. The Israel Nature more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[195,188,625,194,125,187],"class_list":{"0":"post-1597","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israeli-culture","8":"tag-archaeological-digs","9":"tag-dead-sea-scrolls","10":"tag-israeli-news","11":"tag-israel-tourism","12":"tag-news-from-jerusalem","13":"tag-qumran","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1599,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions\/1599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}