The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance For Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity

There are introductions... and introductions to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most of them serve strange hypotheses. Because they hope to sell well, they are often creations espousing the authors' pet theories. Otherwise, they are academic and soporific. The discussion of Qumran archaeology, the biblical and sectarian texts themselves and their relationship to the canon and Jesus is fair, comprehensive for the layman, clear and level-headed. Flint and Vanderam's intro steers deftly between the Scylla of sensationalism and the Charybdis of dullness. It is well-organized, very readable, and...not expensive (as Scrolls literature, especially, academic ones, go). Any beginning self-learner of the Scrolls and its secondary literature will benefit from this well-written book.

This book is part introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls, and part overview of the texts and the work done by scholars since their discovery. It is not a detailed academic work, but it doesn't set out to be. It is intended for the intelligent reader to gain a good insight into the scrolls, their history, the significance of the texts, and the work that is being done. In this respect, it achieves its objective. I like this book because it is possible to pick it up without any great knowledge of paleography or patristics, yet still be able to make sense of it, and gain some perspective at the same time. If you are interested in finding out about these fascinating texts, and if you want an intelligent yet readable work, this is the book for you.

James Vanderkam and Peter Flint are names well-known to those who follow the scrolls. Each has contributed their own work in book and article form to the body of literature about the Dead Sea Scrolls. This volume, 'The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance for Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus and Christianity' is one of the most comprehensive, in-depth and well-organised introductions and overviews of the scrolls done to date. Published just a few years ago, it takes into consideration all but the very latest of scroll research and publication. As Emmanuel Tov, another name well known to scroll aficionados, states in the foreword, the publication of information about the scrolls has proceeded so rapidly during the past decade that it has become necessary for a new volume such as this to provide an adequate introduction to the scrolls.In the first part, Vanderkam and Flint give an overview of the discovery and identification of the scrolls. This includes discussion of the acquisitions and explorations, the dating processes, and the archaeological digs around the site at Qumran. The authors also discuss the use of technology in the processes around the Dead Sea Scrolls; processes such as Carbon-14 dating were in their infancy during the time the scrolls were first discovered - both technology and scroll knowledge have come a long way in the past 55 years.The second section looks at the relationship of the scrolls to scripture. The chapters here look almost exclusively at the Hebrew Bible; questions regarding the New Testament are reserved for a later section. The scrolls contained at least some portions of every text of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament save (perhaps) Esther; there are also apocryphal and pseudipigraphical texts among the scrolls. This section shows some of the multi-task use of the book - in discussing the relationship of the scrolls to the canon of scripture, they go into some detail about what is meant by the use of the term 'canonical', and what constitutes the canon of scripture for the Jewish, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox bibles. This makes this an excellent text book for biblical studies classes in addition to a book for the general reader.The third section surveys the nonbiblical scrolls - phylacteries, commentaries, community documents, and more. In addition to looking at these texts, the authors recreate from them a possible portrait of the community at Qumran, providing of course that one accepts that the scrolls are related to the Qumran site. The authors mention various interpretations at different points, but largely concentrate on the most commonly accepted interpretation, which is that the Qumran group was a part of the Essenes, one of the three primary groups of Judaism identified by Josephus as being present in the late Second Temple period. This section also addresses some of the more interesting characters found within the writing of the scrolls, the Teacher of Righteous

In this book VanderKam and Flint present an in-depth survey of the Dead Sea Scrolls with many insights making the book worthy enough of a scholar to read, or in another sense, worthy of the two scholars who wrote it. The book begins with the discovery, dating, and preservation of the DSS. The archaeological work of de Vaux is well spoken of, but V and F point out his dating may need some adjustment. The site may not have been occupied until the 1st century BCE. There may have been no 30 year gap between Periods I and II. And Yaakov Mosherer (more of his work on coins ought to be read) points out that coins from years four and five of the Revolt are rarer, so there is no need to posit that Qumran was destroyed before 73 BCE. In their survey of the DSS and Scripture, V and F mention that Psalm 145 is an acrostic poem with a verse missing. For those who do not know, an acrostic poem is one in which the successive verses begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In the Masoretic Text and English versions based upon it, Psalm 145 skips the "nun" verse which would occur right after verse 13 in English versions. One of the DSS texts contains the missing verse. The verse from 11QPsA may be translated "God is faithful in his words and gracious in all his deeds." One will want to grab her/his favorite version of the DSS texts as he makes his way through the sections on the non-biblical texts. There is no text of the Book of Esther among the DSS. However there is a *proto-Esther* to be found. The fragments known as 4Q550 clearly show similarities with the Book of Esther though the same story is not told. For all of the scrolls found among the DSS, one might get the impression that the library was comprehensive. Actually it was not. Works such as the Wisdom of Solomon and other Jewish Greek works are absent. Also notably absent is the pro-Hasmonean 1 Maccabees.Most readers will pay avid attention to Part Four of the book on the relationship of the DSS to the New Testament. Dispelled are the theories of O'Callaghan, Allegro, and others. The connections between the DSS and the NT are generally nuanced. 4Q521 supports the idea that Jesus saw himself as Israel's Messiah. However Luke 7.21-22 is not a direct quote of 4Q521. Rather it shows that Jesus adopted an extant manner of speaking and gave it his own spin. Common to nowhere else in ancient writings than in 4QMMT and the Pauline writings is thephrase "works of the law." Because of 4QMMT some scholars are rethinking the traditional Protestant thinking of the use of the phrase in Paul.The last section is on controversies surrounding the DSS. The recent availability of the DSS in such books as Abegg's _DSS Bible_ and Garcia Martinez's _DSS Translated_ have made us forget that once upon a time Solomon Zeitlin wrote a series of articles in which he claimed the DSS were medieval documents. More recently was the lawsuit by Qimron against Shanks. This section is followed by four appendices one of which