Author Description

This volume inaugurates the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls from the main collection discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran. It continues six biblical manuscripts written in ancient Palaeo-hebrew script, four Septuagint manuscripts, and five hitherto unknown compositions. The Hebrew texts antedate by a millennium what had previously been the earliest surviving biblical codices in the original language, and they document the pluriform nature of the ancient biblical textual tradition before the text became standardized. The most extensive and significant manuscript exhibits the expanded textual tradition that formed the basis for the Samaritan Pentateuch and helps illuminate the historical and theological relationship between the Jews and Samaritans.