From The Damascus Document Reconsidered, Ed. Magen Broshi/Courtesy Joseph Baumgarten

When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the middle of this century, Schechter’s hunch was proved correct: Among the finds were several copies of the Damascus Document (shown here, compare with previous photo). While this and the other scrolls tell us much about the Dead Sea Scroll sect, they also broaden our knowledge of other ancient Jewish groups, writes Lawrence H. Schiffman in the accompanying article. In particular, the views of the rabbis of the Talmud are turning out to be remarkably consistent—as the rabbis themselves had claimed—with those of the Pharisees, a group of lay teachers of the Torah who came to prominence in the mid-second century B.C.E.