Discoveries In The Judaean Desert

Composed at the end of the editorial process, this provides a general overview of and introduction to the thirty eight volumes of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series and includes several indexes to the whole series.

Originally published 1961, this volume is being reissued to make the entire series available to students and scholars of biblical and post-biblical Judaism and early Christianity. A companion volume contains the text found in the original one-volume publication.

This volume inaugurates the publication of the series of biblical Dead Sea Scrolls written in the Jewish (or `square') script that were discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran. It contains twenty-six manuscripts of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. These Hebrew texts antedate by a millenium what had previously been considered the earliest surviving biblical manuscripts in the original language. They document a pluriformity acceptable in the ancient biblical textual tradition that formed the basis for the Samaritan Pentateuch and helps to illumine the historical and theological relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans. Superior textual variants from these manuscripts have been adopted in recent revised translations of the Bible.

This volume is the first ever edition, complete with translation, commentary, and plates, of one of the most important documents found at Qumran: a letter from one of the leaders of the Dead Sea sect to one of the leaders of Israel. It is a unique and extremely important legal document from the first century AD, shedding light both on the ritual practices of the Qumran community and on the Hebrew language.

This volume charts the extraordinary developments witnessed over the last 50 years of the 20th century, since the chance discovery in 1947 of biblical scrolls in a cave in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. This collection of article represents cutting-edge research by an international team of scholars. Together, they chart the findings and controversies sparked off by the discovery and publication of some 900 scrolls which have transformed our understanding of the state of the biblical text at the turn of the last millennium. With subjects encompassing rewritten scriptures, canonical development, and the ramifications of the Qumran discoveries for modern textual criticism and the Bible today, this volume should hold something for both scolar and layperson alike.