The discovery of manuscripts in Qumran--the Dead Sea Scrolls--and other sites in the Wilderness of Judah has stimulated a period of unparalleled activity in the study of the biblical text. Students and teachers in this field are overwhelmed with the thousands of articles that have appeared in hundreds of journals in the last thirty years. The older handbooks surveying biblical textual criticism have become hopelessly obsolete. Frank Cross and Shemaryahu Talmon have designed a collection of essays to help the serious student find his way in this transformed field of research. Some of the essays are general surveys, some propound new theories, several publish manuscript data of revolutionary importance. The editors have contributed previously unpublished papers suggesting new approaches to the fundamental task of textual criticism. A list of published manuscripts or manuscript fragments from the Judaean Desert and a bibliography are included.

In this important collection of studies, copublished by Eerdmans and Brill, one of the world's foremost experts on the Dead Sea Scrolls outlines a comprehensive theory that reconstructs the complex development of the ancient texts that eventually came to form the Old Testament.

This new volume in the Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature series explores two principal themes: the text and shape of the "Bible" at Qumran and the interpretation of these scriptures by the Qumran community and other ancient Jews. Written by leading scholars in the field, these informed studies make an important contribution to our understanding of these two pivotal topics.

Subdivided into three segments (Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, Qumran), this updated and revised collection of essays represents the work of Emanuel Tov in the past seventeen years. He focuses on various aspects of the textual analysis of the Hebrew and Greek Bible, as well as the Qumran biblical manuscripts in Hebrew and Greek. Further he takes a special interest in the orthography of biblical manuscripts, the nature of the early Masoretic Text, the nature of the Qumran biblical texts and their importance for our understanding of the history of the biblical text, the editions of the Hebrew Bible, and the use of computers in biblical studies. The author also focuses on the interaction between textual and literary criticism and the question of the original text or texts of the Hebrew Bible. His special interests in the Qumran scrolls include the nature of the Qumran corpus, their scribal background, the contents of the various caves, and the number of the compositions and copies found at Qumran. His interest in the Septuagint translation evolves around its text-critical value, the Greek texts from the Judean Desert, and translation technique.

In Reading and Re-reading Scripture at Qumran, Moshe J. Bernstein gathers more than three decades of his work on diverse aspects of biblical interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The essays range from broad surveys of the genres of biblical interpretation in these texts to more narrowly focused studies and close readings of specific documents. Volume I focuses on the book of Genesis, with a substantial portion being dedicated to studies of the Genesis Apocryphon and Commentary on Genesis A. Volume II contains several historical and programmatic essays, with specific studies focusing on legal material in the DSS and the pesharim. Under the former rubric, the documents known as 4QReworked Pentateuch, 4QOrdinancesa, 4QMMT, and the Temple Scroll are discussed.

Dr. Norman Golb's classic study on the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls is now available online. Since their earliest discovery in 1947, the Scrolls have been the object of fascination and extreme controversy. Challenging traditional dogma, Golb has been the leading proponent of the view that the Scrolls cannot be the work of a small, desert-dwelling fringe sect, as various earlier scholars had claimed, but are in all likelihood the remains of libraries of various Jewish groups, smuggled out of Jerusalem and hidden in desert caves during the Roman siege of 70 A. D. Contributing to the enduring debate sparked by the book's original publication in 1995, this digital edition contains additional material reporting on new developments that have led a series of major Israeli and European archaeologists to support Golb's basic conclusions. In its second half, the book offers a detailed analysis of the workings of the scholarly monopoly that controlled the Scrolls for many years, and discusses Golb's role in the struggle to make the texts available to the public. Pleading for an end to academic politics and a commitment to the search for truth in scrolls scholarship, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? sets a new standard for studies in intertestamental history "This book is 'must reading'.... It demonstrates how a particular interpretation of an ancient site and particular readings of ancient documents became a straitjacket for subsequent discussion of what is arguably the most widely publicized set of discoveries in the history of biblical archaeology...." Dr. Gregory T. Armstrong, 'Church History' Golb "gives us much more than just a fresh and convincing interpretation of the origin and significance of the Qumran Scrolls. His book is also... a fascinating case-study of how an idee fixe, for which there is no real historical justification, has for over 40 years dominated an elite coterie of scholars controlling the Scrolls...." Daniel O'Hara, 'New Humanist'

The Dead Sea Scrolls are an invaluable source of information about Jewish biblical interpretation in antiquity. This volume by preeminent scholars in the field examines central aspects of scriptural interpretation as it was practiced at Qumran and discusses their implications for understanding the biblical tradition. While many of the forms of biblical interpretation found in the Scrolls have parallels elsewhere in Jewish literature, other kinds are original to the Scrolls and were unknown prior to the discovery of the caves. These chapters explore examples of biblical interpretation unique to Qumran, including legal exegesis and the Pesher. Readers will also find discussion of such fascinating subjects as the "rewritten Bible," views on the creation of humanity, the "Pseudo-Ezekiel" texts, the pesharim, and the prophet David. Contributors: Moshe J. Bernstein Shani Berrin Monica Brady George J. Brooke John J. Collins Peter W. Flint Matthias Henze Shlomo A. Koyfman Michael Segal James C. VanderKam

From the dramatic find in the caves of Qumran, the world's most ancient version of the Bible allows us to read the scriptures as they were in the time of Jesus.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are perhaps the most important archaeological discovery of the twentieth century. These lectures set before the public the real Dead Sea Scrolls, the most important collections of Jewish texts from the centuries before the rise of Christianity. Only through efforts to understand what the scrolls can teach us about the history of Judaism is it possible for us to learn what they have to teach us about the history of Christianity. Professor Schiffman leads the listener through the complex details of the Scrolls and their true meaning for the world.

In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd literally stumbled upon a cave near the Dead Sea, a settlement now called Qumran, to the east of Jerusalem. This cave, along with the others located nearby, contained jars holding hundreds of scrolls and fragments of scrolls of texts both biblical and nonbiblical—in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The biblical scrolls would be the earliest evidence of the Hebrew Scriptures, or Old Testament, by hundreds of years; and the nonbiblical texts would shed dramatic light on one of the least-known periods of Jewish history—the Second Temple period. This find is, quite simply, the most important archaeological event in two thousand years of biblical studies. The scrolls provide information on nearly every aspect of biblical studies, including the Old Testament, text criticism, Second Temple Judaism, the New Testament, and Christian origins. It took more than fifty years for the scrolls to be completely and officially published, and there is no comparable brief, introductory resource. Core Biblical Studies fulfill the need for brief, substantive, yet highly accessible introductions to key subjects and themes in biblical studies. In the shifting tides of biblical interpretation, these books are designed to help students locate relevant meanings in conversation with the text. As a first step toward substantive and subsequent learning, the series draws on the best scholarship in order to provide foundational concepts and contextualized information on a broad scope of issues, methods, perspectives, and trends.