The studies in this volume examine the intersection of the Dead Sea Scrolls with early rabbinic literature. Methodological attention is paid to questions of the nature of sectarian and rabbinic law and narrative, and how they may elucidate one another.

This volume offers new insight into the origins of the "new covenant in the land of Damascus" and the Qumran community, and explores topics related to their covenantal theology.

This book represents the first comprehensive study on the concept of ritual purity in the Dead Sea Scrolls since the full publication of the legal material from Qumran. Utilizing an independent approach to the relevant documents from Qumran, this study discusses the primary and secondary literature on the five major categories of impurity in the scrolls (i.e., diseases, clean/unclean animals, corpses, bodily discharges, and sexual misdeeds). This examination is supported by a comparison between the scrolls' purity legislations and their biblical counterparts. The book culminates with a...

This volume contains 15 contributions presented at a symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls & Ben Sira, held in Strasbourg on May 29 and 30, 2006. The papers address linguistic and philological issues.

Scholars have long questioned the conceptual background for the priestly Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews, with suggestions including Gnosticism, the thought of Philo of Alexandria, common themes in early Christian theology and exegesis, and the creativity of the author of Hebrews himself. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls prompted waves of enthusiasm for understanding Hebrews in that context, both in terms of the Qumran sect's priestly messianism and understanding of Melchizedek, but claims often were excessive and the approach was discredited. The present study reevaluates the...

Offering new reconstructions and interpretations of physiognomic and astrological texts from Qumran in comparison with Babylonian and Greco-Roman texts, this book gives a fresh view of their sense, function, and status within both the Qumran community and Second Temple Judaism.

This book is a comprehensive treatment of prophecy and revelation in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It examines the reconfiguration of biblical prophecy and revelation, the portrait of prophecy at the end of days, and the evidence for ongoing prophetic activity.

This volume consists of an edition, a translation and a commentary of the key fragments of 4QInstruction. The scroll combines, in a new way, the practice of Wisdom and the understanding of eschatological judgment. This study substantially illuminates our comprehension of the Wisdom movement and of its influence in the early intertestamental period.

Rather than being an isolated, primitive body of knowledge the Jewish calendar tradition of 364 days constituted an integral part of the astronomical science of the ancient world. This tradition--attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Pseudepigrapha--stands out as a coherent, novel synthesis, representing the Jewish authors' apocalyptic worldview. The calendar is studied here both "from within"--analyzing its textual manifestations --and "from without"--via a comparison with ancient Mesopotamian astronomy. This analysis reveals that the calendrical realm constituted a significant case of...

Since the discovery of the Cave 4 versions of The Community Rule (Serekh ha-Yaḥad or S), scholars have been perplexed about its complex textual history. This important charter material for the Dead Sea Scrolls' authors appears in alternate versions--ones with contradictory legal prescriptions and opposing self-references--but exhibits no clear order of chronological development. Benefitting from the entire Qumran library now available to us, this book offers a new, broader model for reading S that better accounts for the long and diverse history behind the text. The resulting paradigm...