Women in Qumran Interpretation

Among the first Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran was a work now known as the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen), an early Jewish literary expansion of parts of the biblical book of Genesis. Written in the third to first centuries BCE, it is the longest Jewish Aramaic text extant from the Second Temple period and exemplifies the genre of rewritten Bible. Its author-interpreters grapple with narrative gaps and cruxes in the text of Genesis, and the interpretations and literary expansions they offer reflect the moments of composition and share characteristics with other Jewish texts of this period. Like the apocryphal books of Judith and Susanna, the two passages here reflect ancient social concerns expressed in relation to the gendered bodies of women, in particular the issue of whether a beautiful woman can be trusted. The first passage addresses the question of Noah’s paternity and the trustworthiness of his mother to attest to her marital fidelity. In the second passage, Sarah, Abraham’s wife, lies to Pharaoh in order to be a good wife to her husband—also raising the question of the trustworthiness of a beautiful woman.