© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi � �. ��63/9789004305069_0�3 The Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls: Coherence and Context in the Library of Qumran Daniel A. Machiela As the exciting task of integrating the Aramaic texts from the Qumran caves into our portraits of Second Temple period Judaism gains momentum, one of the principle questions to be asked is how this literature fits into the broader Qumran library (or libraries).1 This subject has already been addressed in a preliminary way, most notably by Devorah Dimant, Eibert Tigchelaar, and Florentino García Martínez, and my goal in this paper is to build on their obser- vations by turning attention more directly to the situation and character of the Aramaic Scrolls in the broader context of the literature found near Qumran.2 * This essay was written and presented as part of an extended research stay at the University of Göttingen in 2011–12, generously supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Special thanks are due to Prof. Dr. Reinhard Kratz, who provided a wonderful academic environment and was a gra- cious host while in Göttingen. 1  I do not intend to address in this article the important, but difficult, question of what we mean by the term “library” when speaking of the Qumran manuscripts, since even a cursory treatment would require much more space than is available here. Happily, the reader may now be referred to the judicious treatment of this topic by Mladen Popović, “Qumran as Scroll Storehouse in Times of Crisis? A Comparative Perspective on Judaean Desert Manuscript Collections,” JSJ 43 (2012): 551–94. An excellent bibliography for both the Qumran material and ancient libraries in general may be found in Popović’s study. In what follows I approach the Qumran texts in a way that essentially agrees with Popović, as a loosely interrelated col- lection of writings connected, in various ways, with a distinctive (Essene) Jewish community, at least part of which was based at Qumran for a significant period of time. Whatever one’s opinion on these matters, I hope that the present study will help to better situate the Aramaic texts among the broader collection from the caves around Qumran. 2  See, e.g., Devorah Dimant, “The Qumran Aramaic Texts and the Qumran Community,” in Flores Florentino: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez (ed. A. Hilhorst et al.; JSJSup 122; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 197–205; eadem, “The Library of Qumran: Its Content and Character,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997 (ed. L.H. Schiffman, E. Tov, and J.C. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/Shrine of the Book, 2000), 170–77, esp. 175. Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, “Aramaic Texts from Qumran and the Authoritativeness of Hebrew Scriptures: Preliminary Observations,” in Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism (ed. M. Popović; JSJSup 141; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 155–71. Florentino García Martínez, “Aramaica 243-258_CRAWFORD AND WASSEN_f9.indd 243 7/21/2015 4:25:51 PM