Between Sectarian and Non-Sectarian : the Case of the Apocryphon of Joshua With the emerging of the complete picture of the Qumran library the sizable number of texts not directly connected with the peculiar literature of the ascetic Qumran community became evident. As a result, the problem of defining what belonged to this community and what did not has become a major issue in recent studies. Especially intriguing is the nature and provenance of the Qumran texts reworking the Hebrew Bible in various ways. Such texts do not contain the explicit terminology and ideas characteristic of the writings produced by the Qumran community. Therefore they are usually classified as non-sectarian. Nevertheless, further study shows that some of them evince notions close to the ones espoused by the sectarian literature proper and related works. This paper will examine the work known as the Apocryphon of Joshua in the light of this phenomenon. Three passages (4Q379 12; 4Q522 9 ii and 4Q379 22 ii) will be discussed in more detail in order to decide how to classify this writing. |