Departing from scholarship dedicated to the socio-historical realities of priesthood at Qumran, this book explores images of otherworldly and messianic/eschatological priesthood in the Dead Sea Scrolls as a reflection of the religious worldview of the Qumran community and related groups.

A well-known characteristic of the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls are their assertions that membership in the Qumran movement included present and eschatological fellowship with the angels, but scholars disagree as to the precise meaning of these claims. To gain a better understanding of angelic fellowship at Qumran, Matthew L. Walsh utilizes the early Jewish concept that certain angels were closely associated with Israel. Moreover, these angels, which included guardians and priests, were envisioned within apocalyptic worldviews that assumed that realities on earth corresponded to those of the heavenly realm. A comparison of non-sectarian texts with sectarian compositions reveals that the Qumran movement's lofty assertions of communion with the guardians and priests of heavenly Israel would have made a significant contribution to their identity as the true Israel.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the March 7, 2008 Ranieri Colloquium on Ancient Studies at New York University, dedicated to "The Dead Sea Scrolls at 60: The Scholarly Contributions of NYU Faculty and Alumni." These studies offer a sampling of the extensive research conducted by three generations of NYU faculty, students, and alumni, in a range of domains pertaining to the scrolls and documents discovered in the Judean Desert since 1947, including Hebrew language, religious thought, and law.

One of the leading Historical Jesus scholars of our time, John Meier has also made significant contributions in the areas of early Judaism and New Testament studies writ large. The Figure of Jesus in History and Theology features more than a dozen prominent scholars who engage Meier's work and address its reception today. These scholars, whose areas of expertise range from second temple Judaism to early Christianity, revisit, extend, and respond to Meier's scholarship in ways that allow readers to appreciate anew Meier's landmark publications. Collectively, these essays cast new light on the question of the Historical Jesus and provide a wealth of insight into John Meier's body of work as viewed through the lens of contemporary research. The volume offers essays that explore early Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts for New Testament writings, with contributions from Gary Anderson, James VanderKam, Michael Duggan, and Michael Theobald. Five related essays involve historical Jesus research, by Francis Moloney, William Loader, Amy-Jill Levine, Barbara Reid, and Michael Benjamin Cover. Five more essays concern the New Testament Gospels, as explored by Donald Senior, David Lincicum, Brant Pitre, Jeremy Corley, and Harold Attridge. The final three contributions by Frank Matera, David Aune and Alan Mitchell examine the Epistle to the Hebrews. This book is essential reading as it chronicles how the capacious scholarship of John Meier has impacted the 21st century.

This volume situates the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls within Hellenistic Judea. By so doing, this volume shows how the Dead Sea Scrolls participate in broad, cross-cultural intellectual discourses that surpass the Jewish group that produced and collected these scrolls.

History of the World Christian Movement shows that from the beginning Christianity has been a world religion, informed and shaped through the interplay of gospel and culture church and world.

"Since its discovery at Qumran in the 1950's, those wishing to study the Songs of the Sage (4Q510, 4Q511) had to approach a scattered grouping of fragments that gave little indication of the overall sequence, structure, and scope of the original composition. In the present volume, Joseph Angel remedies this situation by providing a new edition according to the sequence of the fragments determined by the material reconstruction of the more extensive manuscript, 4Q511. In addition to numerous enhanced readings and fresh English translations, the volume includes a general introduction, apparatus of variant readings, contextualizing commentary, catalog of photographic evidence, and key-word-in-context concordance. This work represents an unparalleled and comprehensive resource for anyone interested in the Songs of the Sage"--

Essays representing ten years of John J. Collins's expert reflection on Scripture and the Qumran community are here collected in a volume that is sure to be of interest to students and scholars of Early Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Collins opens with the introductory chapter "What Have We Learned from the Dead Sea Scrolls?" before offering essays on the authority and interpretation of Scripture, historiography and the emergence of the Qumran sect, and specific aspects of the sectarian worldview: covenant and dualism, the angelic world, the afterlife, prayer and ritual, and wisdom. A concluding epilogue considers the account of the Suffering Servant and illustrates the relevance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for early Christianity.

What is the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and what do we know about the community that possessed them? Avoiding both popular sensationalism and specialist technical language, this book aims to integrate all the latest findings about the scrolls into existing knowledge of the period, to advance understanding of the scrolls and the Qumran community, and to explore their wider significance in a scholarly and accessible way. The "state of the art" in international scrolls scholarship. Contributors include E.P. Sanders, Eugene Ulrich, George Brooke, and John J. Collins.