In the attempt to overcome the crisis of knowledge in wisdom thought, even the non-Essene texts from Qumran developed the wisdom notion of a pre-existent order of being and history which was to be realised in the Eschaton. This notion was taken up in non-wisdom texts and elaborated into a dualistic ordering of the world and of history, structured in epochs. In this form the notion was used by the Essene community to deal theologically with their negative experience of reality (schism, persecution by Hasmonoaeans, delay of the Eschaton). The results of this investigation are thus able to...

The biblical Dead Sea Scrolls are about a thousand years older than the earliest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible and provide crucial insights into the history of the biblical texts. The Biblia Qumranica is the first comparative edition of these unique textual witnesses. The present volume provides a synopsis of the Minor Prophets manuscripts from Qumran and the other sites at the Dead Sea. In addition the Masoretic text (according to Codex Leningradiensis) and the Septuagint (according to the Gottingen edition) are included as reference texts. The Biblia Qumranica is a...

The purpose of the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion (ARSR) is to investigate the "new" role of religion in the contemporary world, which is characterized by cultural pluralism and religious individualism. It is the aim of the ARSR to combine different methods within the social scientific study of religion. The ARSR employs an interdisciplinary and comparative approach at an international level, to describe and interpret the complexity of religious phenomena within different geopolitical situations, highlighting similarities and discontinuities. Dealing with a single theme in each...

In der Reihe Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW) erscheinen Arbeiten zu samtlichen Gebieten der alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft. Im Zentrum steht die Hebraische Bibel, ihr Vor- und Nachleben im antiken Judentum sowie ihre vielfache Verzweigung in die benachbarten Kulturen der altorientalischen und hellenistisch-romischen Welt.

The Textual History of the Bible (THB) brings together for the first time all available information regarding the manuscripts, textual history and character of each book of the Hebrew Bible and its translations as well as the deuterocanonical scriptures. In addition, THB covers the history of research, the editorial history of the Hebrew Bible, as well as other aspects of text-critical research and its subsidiary fields, such as papyrology, codicology, and the related discipline of linguistics. The THB will consist of 4 volumes. Volume 1A consists of a series of overview...