What is the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and what do we know about the community that possessed them? This important work situates the Dead Sea Scrolls in their historical context of Second Temple Judaism and the rise of Early Christianity. Expert scholars address the issue in four sections: The Qumran Community; The Qumran Biblical Text and the Masoretic Text; Sectarian Law and Normative Jewish Law; and The Theology of the Qumran Community, Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity.
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 and to advance understanding of many specific issues in Qumran studies in a scholarly and accessible way.
The “state of the art” in international scrolls scholarship, this book includes contributions from E. P. Sanders, J. Ian MacDonald, Eugene C. Ulrich, Julio Trebolle Barrera, George J. Brooke, Lawrence H. Schiffman, Calum Carmichael, James C. VanderKam, Sacha Stern, Charlotte Hempel, John J. Collins, Philip R. Davies, Hakan Ulfgard and James C. Davila.
