Many scholars of the Second Temple period have replaced the concept of canonization by that of canonical process. Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been crucial for this new direction. Based on this new evidence taxonomic terms like biblical, nonbiblical or parabiblical seem anachronistic for the period before 70 C.E. The notion of authoritative Scriptures plays an important part in the new paradigm of canonical process, but it has not yet been sufficiently reflected upon and is in need of clarification. Why were some texts more authoritative than others? For whom and in what contexts were...

Few studies focus on the modes of knowledge transmission (or concealment), or the trends of continuity or change from the Ancient to the Late Antique worlds. In Antiquity, knowledge was cherished as a scarce good, cultivated through the close teacher-student relationship and often preserved in the closed circle of the initated. From Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform texts to a Shi'ite Islamic tradition, this volume explores how and why knowledge was shared or concealed by diverse communities in a range of Ancient and Late Antique cultural contexts. From caves by the Dead Sea to...