The themes of this volume encompass the lifelong interests of one of the most eminent and learned Jewish scholars of our time: Qumran, Hellenism, Rabbinics and chronography. The contributors, leading scholars in these fields, have produced what is a benchmark of modern scholarship of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman period.

This volume is the first comprehensive commentary on the wisdom texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls. John Kampen provides original translations of these works -- most of which are drawn from an extensive collection of fragments that only became widely accessible for study in 1991 -- augmenting them with scholarly notes, discussions of key terms, and detailed commentary. Kampen relates the body of wisdom literature discovered at Qumranto the larger wisdom tradition, to apocalyptic literature, to the Hebrew Scriptures, and to the New Testament, and he shows how these texts fit into -- and enhance...