The Qumran Library and Other Ancient Libraries: Elements for a Comparison

This paper will analyze various examples of libraries from the ancient world in different socio-cultural contexts, focussing on Graeco-Roman, Near Eastern and Jewish cultures. These data will be compared with the evidence from Qumran in order to (try to) ascertain if, and to what extent, the widely used concept of "sectarian" library is applicable outside Qumran. On the other hand, such a comparison might shed some light on the difference between a sectarian library and a library containing sectarian texts. The paper is divided into four parts: What is a Library; Some Examples of Ancient Libraries; What do we know about Ancient Jewish Libraries?; The Qumran Library as a Sectarian Library? A provisional conclusion. The first section (What is a Library?) deals with the general concept of library and the different meanings of the term over the centuries. In addition, it is stressed that it was not so easy to clearly distinguish between library and archive in antiquity. In the next section some examples of ancient libraries are analyzed. The most ancient examples of libraries are found in an Ancient Near Eastern context. In this section a quick description of the Library of Assurbanipal is given. As for Ancient Greece, we know traditions about private collections of books, but we find here the most important public library of the ancient world, the library of Alexandria. This library aimed at comprehending all the works written in Greek wherever they are published, including translations from foreign languages. That's why the first Greek tranlsation of the Pentateuch took place here, according to a well-known tradition.