In 4QInstruction: Divisions and Hierarchies, Benjamin Wold challenges the interpretation of 4QInstruction as a deterministic and dualistic composition. In a re-examination of key fragments he offers new reconstructions and translations that indicate 4QInstruction envisaged wisdom available to all humanity, divisions among humankind and communities as the result of individual adherence to wisdom, and a hierarchy of authority as a result of individual merit.

This volume is devoted to 4QInstruction, the last lengthy text of the Dead Sea Scrolls to be officially published. The central concern of this study is how it should be understood in relation to the sapiential and apocalyptic traditions.

This volume consists of an edition, a translation and a commentary of the most important fragments of 4QInstruction. Initially it deals with the linguistic characteristics of the scroll highlighting the links between 4QInstruction and Ben Sira, and also with the Community Rule and the Hodayot. It then investigates the Sapiential fragments dealing with poverty, husband-wife and parent-child relationships. Finally it examines the eschatological fragments. The work seeks to improve the edition and understanding of this fundamental text enhancing our knowledge of the history and development of thinking at Qumran. Moreover, it examines links which 4QInstruction establishes between purely Sapiential discourse and descriptions of eschatological judgement. This study substantially illuminates our understanding of the Wisdom movement in the early intertestamental period.

In spite of the amount of literature on the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, no consensus among the scholars has emerged as yet on how to explain both the similarities and the differences among the two corpora of religious writings. This volume contains a revised form of the contributions to an experts meeting held at the Catholic University of Leuven on December 2007 dedicated to explore the relationship among the two corpora and to understand both the commonalities and the differences between the two corpora from the perspective of the common ground from which both corpora have developed: the Hebrew Bible.

4Q246 (4QApocryphon of Daniel ar), 4Q521 (4QMessianic Apocalypse), and 4Q215a (4QTime of Righteousness) are among the «newer» texts from Qumran Cave 4 that are of relatively recent publication. All three texts share an interest in eschatology, and more specifically in the time of salvation. Two of them, 4Q246 and 4Q521, are among the most debated texts from the Qumran library, chiefly because they are assumed to have significant and substantial parallels to texts in the New Testament. The main aim of the thesis is a separate and detailed analysis of the three texts. More substantially this analysis aims at presenting improved textual editions of each of the texts, with new readings, critically examine and evaluate scholars' attempts to restore the texts' fragmentary parts, and writing detailed commentaries on the texts. On the basis of this detailed treatment of the three texts, the images they present of the time of salvation are compared in a synthetic presentation.

This study examines educational motifs in 1 Corinthians 1-4 in order to answer a question fundamental to the interpretation of 1 Corinthians: Do the opening chapters of 1 Corinthians contain a Pauline apology or a Pauline censure? The author argues that Paul characterizes the Corinthian community as an ancient school, a characterization Paul exploits both to defend himself as a good teacher and to censure the Corinthians as poor students.

"Discerning Wisdom" provides an overview of all the Qumran wisdom texts. The Dead Sea Scrolls offer crucial evidence for understanding the wisdom of the late Second Temple period and the reception of traditional wisdom in Early Judaism.

This book examines four texts: 1 Enoch, 4QInstruction, Matthew and 2 Enoch. A common idea in these texts, which blend sapiential and apocalyptic elements, is that the revealing of wisdom to an elect group inaugurates the eschatological period. The emphasis on “revealed wisdom” is essentially apocalyptic, but facilitates the uptake of motifs, forms and language from the sapiential tradition and is important in explaining the fusion of the two traditions. In addition, revealed wisdom often has creational associations and this has significance for the notion of ethics in these texts. The book will interest anyone concerned with the development of Jewish and Christian eschatology and ethics. It also challenges the simplistic redactional assumptions of certain New Testament scholars.

The volume publishes papers read at the tenth International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books, Budapest, 2013. The authors explore various aspects of this literature, with pre-eminent emphasis on their relation to diverse early Jewish texts and traditions; their reactions on Hellenism; and the way they treated as a canonical collection within their history of interpretation.

This volume consists of nineteen essays, written by internationally renowned scholars such as George Brooke, John Collins, Heinz-Josef Fabry, André Lemaire, Julio Trebolle, Emanuel Tov, James VanderKam and others, presented to Émile Puech, palaeographer and Dead Sea Scrolls specialist, on the occasion of his 65th birthday. All contributions deal with aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls, including fundamental essays on 4QMMT by Steudel, Kratz and Berthelot, and two papers on resurrection and afterlife. Other essays are concerned with textual criticism and the Hebrew Bible, the Astronomical Enoch, the Admonitions of Qahat, 4QInstruction, and Isaac in the Scrolls. This volume will be indispensable for scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and of interest for scholars of Bible and Second Temple Judaism.