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War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness

 

 
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War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness
 
 
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The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness is a manual for military organization and strategy that was discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls
Dead Sea scrolls

The Dead Sea scrolls consist of roughly 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea....
. It is also known by the names "War Rule
War Rule

The War Rule is a name used for various Dead Sea Scrolls.* The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness* The War of the Messiah which includes The Pierced Messiah Text...
", "Rule of War", and "War Scroll". The document is made up of various scrolls and fragments including 1QM, 4Q491-496. It is possible that The War of the Messiah
The War of the Messiah

The War of the Messaiah is a series of Dead Sea scrolls fragments describing the conclusion of a battle led by the Leader of the Congregation. The fragments that make up this document include wikisource:Dead Sea scrolls/4Q285, also known as The Pierced Messiah Text, and 11Q14 with which it was found to coincide....
 is the conclusion to this document.. More recent study suggests that 4Q491 is three separate documents all describing the same events.

These scrolls contain an apocalyptic prophecy of a war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness.






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The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness is a manual for military organization and strategy that was discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls
Dead Sea scrolls

The Dead Sea scrolls consist of roughly 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea....
. It is also known by the names "War Rule
War Rule

The War Rule is a name used for various Dead Sea Scrolls.* The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness* The War of the Messiah which includes The Pierced Messiah Text...
", "Rule of War", and "War Scroll". The document is made up of various scrolls and fragments including 1QM, 4Q491-496. It is possible that The War of the Messiah
The War of the Messiah

The War of the Messaiah is a series of Dead Sea scrolls fragments describing the conclusion of a battle led by the Leader of the Congregation. The fragments that make up this document include wikisource:Dead Sea scrolls/4Q285, also known as The Pierced Messiah Text, and 11Q14 with which it was found to coincide....
 is the conclusion to this document.. More recent study suggests that 4Q491 is three separate documents all describing the same events.

These scrolls contain an apocalyptic prophecy of a war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. The war is first described as an attack by the Sons of Light against Edom
Edom

Edom is a name given to Esau in the Hebrew Bible, as well as to the nation descending from him. The nation's name in Assyrian language was Udumi; in Syriac language, ????; in Greek language, ?d???a?a ; in Latin, Idum?a or Idumea....
, Moab
Moab

Moab is the historical name for a mountainous strip of land in modern-day Jordan running along the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. In ancient times, it was home to the kingdom of the Moabites, a people often in conflict with their Israelite neighbors to the west....
, the sons of Ammon
Ammon

Ammon or Ammonites , also referred to in the Bible as the "children of Ammon," were a people living east of the Jordan river whose origin the Old Testament traces to an illegitimate son of Lot , the nephew of the patriarch Abraham, as with the Moabites....
, the Amalekites, Philistia, and the Kittim
Kittim

Kittim in the genealogy of Genesis 10 in the Hebrew Bible, is the son of Javan, the grandson of Japheth, and Noah's great-grandson.The city of Larnaca, on the west coast of Cyprus, was known in ancient times as Kition, or Citium....
 of Asshur (referred to as the army of Belial
Belial

Belial is a demon in the Bible, Biblical apocrypha and Jewish apocrypha, and also a term used to characterize the wicked or worthless.The etymology of the word is uncertain, but is most commonly translated as "without worth"....
), supported by those who "violated the covenant" including the sons of Levi
Levi

Levi/Levy, Hebrew language#Modern Hebrew Levy ??? Tiberian vocalization ; "joining") was, according to the Book of Genesis, the third son of Jacob and Leah, and the founder of the Israelites of Levites ....
, the sons of Judah
Judah (Biblical figure)

Judah/Yehuda was, according to the Book of Genesis, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, and the founder of the Israelites of Tribe of Judah; however some Biblical criticism view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation....
, and the sons of Benjamin
Benjamin

Benjamin in the Book of Genesis, is a son of Jacob, the second son of Rachel, and the founder of the Israelites Tribe of Benjamin; in the Biblical account, unlike Rachel's first son - Joseph , the father of Ephraim and Manasseh - Benjamin was born after Jacob and Rachel arrived in Canaan....
. In the end, all of Darkness is to be destroyed and Light will live in peace for all eternity

The war is then described again as a conflict between the congregation of the gods and the congregation of men. The rest of the document is a detailed description of the events of the war and the ways in which it should be conducted.

Further reading

  • Collins, John Joseph. 1998. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans.
  • Segal, Alan F. 1986. Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
  • Wise, Michael, Martin Abegg Jr., & Edward Cook. 1996. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation. Harper. San Francisco.


External links

  • Dead Sea scrolls on WikiSource