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Before the Church · c. 75–50 BC

The War Scroll

1QM

Anonymous

Full text

What it is

A forty-year campaign of the sons of light against the sons of darkness, laid out like a manual: the wording on each trumpet and banner, the dimensions of the shields, the ages of the cavalry, and the priests who must not enter the killing so as not to be defiled — with the outcome decided seven times, three to each side and the last by God's own hand.

Why it lasted

The fullest picture of ancient Jewish holy war expectation, and the direct background to the language of spiritual warfare, armour, and the sons of light that runs through Ephesians, Thessalonians, and Revelation.

Scripture it works from

Read it here

The full text is held here in 2 editions, and can be read in the reader.

22 sections · complete, from Qumran-Digital transcription: 1QM and seed/library-translations/war-scroll/ai-en.

Elsewhere

The complete text is held here and can be read in the reader.

These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.

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