This volume contains the most recent scholarship on a number of issues and topics presented at an international conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls, held at Provo, Utah, July 15-17, 1996. Forty-three articles examine various aspects of the Scrolls, placed under the following divisions: Technology, Editions and Analyses of Texts, The Qumran Community, Calendar, Levi and the Priesthood, Messianism and Eschatology, and Wisdom and Liturgy.

This volume contains the published proceedings of the conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls, held at Provo, Utah, July 15-17, 1996. Forty-three articles, all dealing with various aspects of the Scrolls, are placed under the following divisions: Technology, Editions and Analyses of Texts, The Qumran Community, Calendar, Levi and the Priesthood, Messianism and Eschatology, and Wisdom and Liturgy. The volume offers the most recent scholarship on a number of issues and topics pertaining to the Qumran community, newly translated biblical and non-biblical texts, and technological advances that assist scholars and researchers in accessing and studying the scrolls. The section that pertains to technology, for example, focuses on DNA techniques to analyze Scroll fragments and an imaging radar system that has archaeological applications to Qumran and its environs. Another section addresses the question of how and where the Qumranites lived and speaks concerning Qumran names.

The International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls as Background to Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity (St. Andrews, Scotland, 2001) gathered scholars from a wide range of specialties and perspectives from around the world to explore how the Scrolls contribute to our knowledge of the background of both rabbinic and noncanonical forms of Judaism, and of the origins and early development of Christianity. This volume publishes papers from the conference which deal with the Scrolls and: rabbinic literature; Christian origins; Pauline and Deutero-Pauline literature; and Jewish and Christian liturgy, mysticism, and messianism. It comprises an excellent sketch of the state of the question at the beginning of the twenty-first century and is also programmatic for future research.

This volume presents the proceedings of an international conference of the same title held at the University of Birmingham in 2007. The contributors are drawn from the ranks of leading international specialists in the field writing alongside promising younger scholars. The volume includes studies on the contribution of the Scrolls to Second Temple Jewish history, the archaeological context, the role of the temple and its priesthood, as well as treatments on selected texts and issues. These proceedings offer a timely and up to date assessment of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the material remains unearthed at Qumran in their wider context and not infrequently challenge prevailing lines of interpretation. Helen Jacobus has won the Sean Dever Memorial Prize with her contribution to this volume. Commenting on the Dever prize, Professor Carol Meyers of Duke University, North Carolina, said: “The judges thought highly of Helen’s meticulous scholarship and careful presentation of the data in her discussion of the zodiac and its role in Jewish calendars.”

4QSama is the Qumran scroll of 1 and 2 Samuel written in c. 200 BC in Hebrew Herodian script. The surviving fragments allow a faithful glimpse of about 60% of the Hebrew Samuel at the dawn of the birth of Christianity. The book is divided into three sections: 1) Plates showing the handwork of the author in replicating the fragments and restoring the gaps between them. 2) An apparatus giving the variants of the restored text from the traditional Hebrew Bible and the justification for the restoration. 3) A table comparing text breaks in the scroll with those of the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. The book is a source work for the upcoming revised critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, viz. Biblia Hebraica Quinta. New translations of the books of 1 and 2 Samuel will use it as source or include notes to its variant readings at page bottom or in the margins. Furthermore, it may serve as textbook for students of Hebrew and Greek in their coursework on Samuel and/or Dead Sea Scroll compositions.

This volume deals with the Copper Scroll, an almost two thousand year old cryptic proto-Mishnaic Hebrew Dead Sea document. It is the largest known ancient text to have ever been recorded on metal. The Introduction covers the nature and site of the discovery, opening of the two brittle oxidized copper rolls, deciphering the text, controversy about genuineness of the content, etc. The in-depth study presents the primary major studies, and offers a new reading, translation, and interpretation, including alternatives, as well as detailed studies of some unique aspects. The analysis is based on Rabbinical Jewish sources originating largely in the same historical era. This results into a more reliable interpretation of the Copper Scroll which probably originates from the Priestly leaders of Jerusalem, and contains a list of the hidden treasures of the Second Temple before its destruction by the Romans.

The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years is being published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the first scrolls at Qumran. The two-volume set contains a comprehensive set of cutting-edge articles on a wide range of topics that are archaeological, historical, literary, sociological, or theological in character. Since the discovery of the first scrolls in 1947 an overwhelming number of studies has been published. Now, half a century later, nearly all scrolls found have been published in critical editions, and scholars can begin to assess the true relevance of the scrolls for the study of the Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and Early Christianity. The contributors to these volumes form an international team of leading specialists in the field. They have written critical surveys of particular aspects of Dead Sea Scrolls research, focusing on significant developments, theories and conclusions, while also indicating directions for future study.