The present volume is one of the first to concentrate on a specific theme of biblical interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls, namely the book of Genesis. In particular the volume is concerned with the links displayed by the Qumranic biblical interpetation to the inner-biblical interpretation and the final shaping of the Hebrew scriptures. Moshe Bar-Asher studies cases of such inner biblical interpretative comments; Michael Segal deals with the Garden of Eden story in the scrolls and other contemporary Jewish sources; Reinhard Kratz analizes the story of the Flood as preamble for the lives of the Patriarchs in the Hebrew Bible; Devorah Dimant examines this theme in the Qumran scrolls; Roman Viehlhauer explores the story of Sodom and Gomorrah; George Brooke and Atar Livneh discuss aspects of Jacob’s career; Harald Samuel review the career of Levi; Liora Goldman examines the Aramaic work the Visions of Amram; Lawrence Schiffman and Aharon Shemesh discuss halakhic aspects of stories about the Patriarchs; Moshe Bernstein provides an overview of the references to the Patriarchs in the Qumran scrolls.

Rewritten Bible After Fifty Years presents the papers of a conference on the meanings and usages of the term Rewritten Bible introduced by Geza Vermes in 1961. Leading scholars of the topic discuss their new insights and ideas comparing with Vermes' initiative, whose participation on this conference was unfortunately the last chance for a life dialogue with him on this topic. Apart from the terminological discussions and comparisions several case studies widen the scope of the notion of Rewritten Bible/Scripture and rewriting as a genre and technique.

The Qumran discoveries have demonstrated that much of the earliest interpretation of Hebrew Scripture was accomplished through rewriting: production of revised editions of biblical books, or composition of new works drawing heavily upon Scripture for their organization and content. This study advances our understanding of the nature and purpose of such rewriting of Scripture by examining the compositional methods and interpretive goals of the five Reworked Pentateuch manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4 (4Q158, 364–367). This analysis, along with a comparison of the 4QReworked Pentateuch manuscripts to the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Temple Scroll, provides a clearer picture of how early Jewish communities read, transmitted, and transformed their sacred textual traditions.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls more than sixty years ago has revealed a wealth of literary compositions which rework the Hebrew Bible in various ways. This genre seems to have been a popular literary form in ancient Judaism literature. However, the Qumran texts of this type are particularly interesting for they offer for the first time a large sample of such compositions in their original languages, Hebrew and Aramaic. Since the rewritten Bible texts do not use the particular style and nomenclature specific to the literature produced by the Qumran community. Many of these texts are unknown from any other sources, and have been published only during the last two decades. They therefore became the object of intense scholarly study. However, most the attention has been directed to the longer specimens, such as the Hebrew Book of Jubilees and the Aramaic Genesis Apocryphon. The present volume addresses the less known and poorly studied pieces, a group of eleven small Hebrew texts that rework the Hebrew Bible. It provides fresh editions, translations and detailed commentaries for each one. The volume thus places these texts within the larger context of the Qumran library, aiming at completing the data about the rewritten Bible.

The articles in this volume investigate changes in texts that became to be regarded as holy and unchangeable in Judaism and Christianity. The volume seeks to draw attention to the "empirical" evidence from Qumran, the Septuagint as well as from passages in the Hebrew Scriptures that have been shaped by the use of other texts. The contributions are divided into three main sections: The first section deals with methodological questions concerning textual changes. The second section consists of concrete examples from the Hebrew Bible, Qumran and Septuagint on how the texts were changed, corrected, edited and interpreted. The contributions of the third section will investigate the general influence and impact of Deuteronomistic ideology and phraseology on later texts.

"Early Jewish writings pose important implications for understanding the nature of "scripture" in ancient times, prior to the later formation of biblical canons. A review of early "non-canonical" literary collections unveils the diverse assumptions about "scripture" that existed within ancient Judaism. In their formative contexts, many of these writings present their religious claims as extensions of divine revelation, not merely as secondary, post-biblical compositions. Others endeavor to present themselves as essential complements to earlier scriptural books. Such high esteem for their authority appears to have been shared among some of their earliest audiences. Carefully studying the literature of this era, thus, reveals the extended horizon of authoritative traditions prevalent during the period of Christian origins. This realization arises from the modern study of literary collections known as Apocrypha (Deuterocanonical Books), Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, and the writings of Philo and Josephus"--

Readers may be surprised at the complex course that many biblical texts traveled between original composition and inclusion in the Jewish or Christian canons of Scripture. Four different patterns of development are examined and evaluated in this study.

B The ''letter'' / historical events - reassessments

Meeting a need for quality English-language resources on the Dead Sea Scrolls, this series makes available to readers at all levels the best of current Dead Sea Scrolls research, showing how the Scrolls impact our understanding of the Bible, Judaism, and Christianity.

A study of the many different ways ancient Jewish scribes changed, or rewrote, the sacred and authoritative traditions they inherited.