Genesis Apocryphon: What Does This Dead Sea Scroll Add to Genesis?

An Aramaic scroll from Qumran Cave 1 that retells Genesis in the first person, including Lamech's fear that his son was a Watcher's child.

The Genesis Apocryphon is an Aramaic scroll from Qumran Cave 1 that retells Genesis in the first person. Found in 1947 and unrolled in 1956, it now belongs to the Israel Museum.

The Genesis Apocryphon is one of the original seven scrolls found by Bedouin in Qumran Cave 1 in 1947. It was so brittle and fused that it was nicknamed a scroll that could not be opened. It was finally unrolled in 1956 by scholars in Jerusalem, and Nahman Avigad and Yigael Yadin published the best-preserved columns that year. It is written in Aramaic and now belongs to the Israel Museum.

It retells stories from Genesis with characters speaking in the first person. In column 2, Lamech suspects his wife Bitenosh's pregnancy came "from the Watchers" or the holy ones, and she swears the child is his. Later, Noah narrates his own life, the Flood and the division of the earth among his sons.

The Abraham section adds unexpected details. Abram dreams of a cedar and a palm tree, where men try to cut down the cedar but the palm protests, a dream that prepares him for danger in Egypt. Pharaoh's courtiers praise Sarai's beauty in a long poem that describes her face, hair, eyes, hands and legs. When Pharaoh takes her, a plague spirit strikes his household until Abram lays hands on him and heals him. No public-domain English translation exists, since the scroll was only published in the 1950s. Scholarly translations are widely available.