The fragments of Aramaic Levi Document are presented for the first time as a single coherent whole. This book, which will move the study of this pivotal document to a new level, includes original texts, translation, introduction and extensive and detailed commentary.

This source publication of the Aramaic Levi Document collects all the manuscripts and photographs of this Levitical composition from the Second Temple period. The commentary on the Document deals with its literary characteristics, educational character, and Babylonian origin of Levitical professional education.

This source publication of the Aramaic Levi Document collects all the manuscripts and photographs of this Levitical composition from the Second Temple period. The commentary on the Document deals with its literary characteristics, educational character, and Babylonian origin of Levitical professional education.

In this study of the Aramaic materials at Qumran, Andrew B. Perrin examines the Aramaic Levi Document, Words of Qahat, and Visions of Amram, showing how they exhibit a concentration of priestly concerns/knowledge and exploring new models for evaluating their potential textual or traditional connections. The Aramaic texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most understudied items in the Qumran collection, and with open questions posed around their origins, transmission, and reception in and beyond the Second Temple period, these writings provide both new materials and fresh insight into the thought, identity, and practice of ancient Judaism. Perrin's analysis includes a new transcription, critical notes, and translation of the Aramaic Levi, Qahat, and Amram fragments based upon the latest digital images. He pairs them with a comprehensive commentary on the conceptual elements, codicological features, and cultural contexts of the materials, and he concludes with a fresh synthesis regarding the textual formation of these Aramaic, priestly pseudepigrapha as a “constellation” of texts within a larger world or scribal-priestly activity and traditions.

Kugler (Gonzaga U.) describes and comments on the contents and structure of Aramaic Levi, analyzes the Levi-priestly tradition as it appears in Jubilees 30:1-32:9, discusses the Testament of Levi, and concludes with an overview of the study's literary results. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Aramaic texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most important discoveries for the history of Aramaic and for the background of early Judaism and Christianity. They constitute a “missing link” between Biblical Aramaic and the later Aramaic of the targums and midrashic literature. Among them are the oldest texts we have of the Book of Enoch and Tobit, as well as the earliest Aramaic translation of a portion of Scripture, the Targum of Job. Other previously unknown texts such as the Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Levi Document have opened up many new avenues of research on the literature of early Judaism, and the dialect itself is chronologically the one nearest to the origins of Christianity. Now, for the first time, there is a comprehensive dictionary of all the Aramaic texts from the 11 Qumran caves, from a noted specialist in Qumran Aramaic. It is the first dictionary in any language devoted solely to this important Aramaic corpus and contains a wealth of detail, including definitions, extensive citations of the sources, discussions of difficult passages, revised readings, and a bibliography. It will be an indispensable resource to anyone interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the literature of early Judaism and Christianity, and the Aramaic language.