This volume of conference papers presents new discoveries, updated information, and technological advances in the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Two papers examine the identity of the messiahs in 4Q246 and 4Q521. A thorough analysis of scribal markings in the Dead Sea texts is presented. Biblical studies include multiple literary editions of biblical texts, the book of Numbers at Qumran, and the appearance of the Tetragrammaton in 4QSama texts. The notions of judgment and salvation according to Sapiential Work A are thoroughly examined, and the relationship of the six Barki Nafshi texts is carefully considered. New developments in the field of Dead Sea Scrolls studies include the Dead Sea Scrolls Database and DNA studies on the scrolls themselves.

Scholars tend to view the Damascus Document as a historical source, but a reading of the text in light of contemporary (audience-oriented) literary criticism finds its emphasis in the ideological construction of history and communal identity, rather than in the preservation of a historical record. An introduction to contemporary literary criticism is followed by a series of thematic readings, focusing on historical narrative, priestly imagery, and gender in the covenant community. Each theme is examined in terms of its potential for multiple (sometimes contradictory) interpretations and for its place in the larger sectarian discourse. This study offers an alternative approach to the historiography of ancient Jewish sectarianism, acknowledging the presence of competing claims to shared traditions and the potential for changes in textual interpretation over time or among diverse communities.

Following a successful symposium held in Leiden in 1995 a second international gathering took place, also in Leiden, two years later. The volume contains revised papers covering a wide range of linguistic and textual subjects and presented by scholars from eight countries: Austria (Reiterer), Denmark (Ehrensvärd), France (Joosten), Israel (Fassberg, Hurvitz, Kister, Qimron), Netherlands (Baasten, Beentjes, Muraoka, van Peursen, van Uchelen, Wesselius), Spain (Pérez Fernández), UK (Aitken, Elwolde), USA (M. Smith). A subject index and an index locorum are included.

At the third meeting of the International Organisation for Qumran Studies, held in Oslo in 1998, a variety of papers were presented concerning the study of the Sapiential, Liturgical and Poetical Texts from Qumran. The fourteen papers selected for this volume are arranged in three sections. ‘Sapiential Texts’ contains four studies on different wisdom texts from Cave 4; ‘Liturgical and Poetical Texts’ is formed by seven papers dealing with independent poetic or liturgical compositions; while ‘Qumran Wisdom and the New Testament’ presents three papers that explore the relationship of wisdom materials found at Qumran and some passages of the New Testament. The volume is published in memory of Maurice Baillet, who passed away shortly before the meeting. It contains a biographical sketch and his complete bibliography provided by Emile Puech.

4QSama is the Qumran scroll of 1 and 2 Samuel written in c. 200 BC in Hebrew Herodian script. The surviving fragments allow a faithful glimpse of about 60% of the Hebrew Samuel at the dawn of the birth of Christianity. The book is divided into three sections: 1) Plates showing the handwork of the author in replicating the fragments and restoring the gaps between them. 2) An apparatus giving the variants of the restored text from the traditional Hebrew Bible and the justification for the restoration. 3) A table comparing text breaks in the scroll with those of the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. The book is a source work for the upcoming revised critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, viz. Biblia Hebraica Quinta. New translations of the books of 1 and 2 Samuel will use it as source or include notes to its variant readings at page bottom or in the margins. Furthermore, it may serve as textbook for students of Hebrew and Greek in their coursework on Samuel and/or Dead Sea Scroll compositions.

This volume investigates critical practices by which the Qumran community constituted itself as a sectarian society. Key to the formation of the community was the reconstruction of the identity of individual members. In this way the “self” became an important symbolic space for the development of the ideology of the sect. Persons who came to experience themselves in light of the narratives and symbolic structures embedded in the community practices would have developed the dispositions of affinity and estrangement necessary for the constitution of a sectarian society. Drawing on various theories of discourse and practice in rhetoric, philosophy, and anthropology, the book examines the construction of the self in two central documents: the Serek ha-Yahad and the Hodayot.

Conflicting rules of the correct procedures of the Temple cult, whose significance demanded absolute exactitude and uniformity, precluded common public rituals and created the schism

This volume is concerned with the great Psalms Scroll from cave 11 at Qumran as an example for the reception ("Fortschreibung") of biblical texts and books in early judaism. After methodological considerations the scroll is examined and reconstructed entirely in its material and textual extent for the first time. Detailed analyses of the text and the structure of this work show that 11QPsa developed from the final redaction of the biblical book of Psalms. In its unique text form and arrangement of Psalms it was composed in a qumranic milieu and functions as a work for a davidic figure.

This study aims at furthering our understanding of the early Jewish sapiential composition 4QInstruction which was found in fragmentary manuscripts at Qumran. The first part focuses on the reading and joining of the fragments, and gives an approximate reconstruction of the manuscripts and the composition. The second part discusses some disputed sections and themes in more detail, especially the beginning of the composition (4Q416 1), its relation to the Community Rule and the Hodayot, alleged sacerdotal fragments (4Q415 1 ii-2 I and 4Q418 81), as well as fragments describing fate after death (4Q418 55 and 69 ii). The first part is intended as a supplement to the official DJD edition, whereas the second part is of a more general interest.