All of the HB books, except
perhaps Esther and Nehemiah, have been found at Qumran. In the case of Esther,
it is likely that it was never considered as a sacred text among the
Covenanters at Qumran not just because no portion of it was found there, but
more importantly, it is not cited, quoted, or alluded to in any of the
literature found at Qumran, and the festival of Purim, which is central to the
later use of the book, is not mentioned in any of the calendar texts at Qumran.
The scriptures of Qumran are not equal to the biblical canon of later rabbinic
Judaism or any Christian OT canon and it is clear from what has survived that
there were more non-biblical texts discovered at Qumran than biblical texts and
their sacredness or scriptural status is not easily distinguishable from the
biblical manuscripts.
No listing of a fixed collection
of sacred books can be discerned at Qumran, though some scholars have suggested
one. Also, the psalmic texts at Qumran exhibit significant variations from the
later MT that became the fixed text of the HB. (Lee Martin McDonald, The Formation of the
Biblical Canon, 2 vols. [London: T&T Clark, 2017], 1:239-40)
