Dead Sea Scrolls

The purpose of this book is to provide a complete and reliable translation of the celebrated Dead Sea Scrolls, insofar as the original Hebrew texts have yet been published. No translation is offered of the Dead Sea Scrolls of Isaiah or of the other more fragmentarily preserved Biblical manuscripts. This edition is concerned only with what the Scrolls themselves have to say.

The texts presented here were composed at various dates between about 250 B.C.E. and 68 C.E. They formed part of the library at a religious brotherhood located at Qumran. The Scrolls and the religious movement help us to reconstruct the spiritual climate of early Christianity. The brotherhood did not believe in a martyred Messianic Teacher of Righteousness who reappeared posthumously to his disciples and whose Second Coming was awaited. They possess value in their own right as conveying the religious message of men who gave up the world and were able to find God in a wilderness.

The Scrolls were found in a cave at the northern end of the Dead Sea by an Arab boy in 1949. It is not known for certain who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, when, and where. Attempts to date them by palaeography or by allusion to known persons or events have not yielded conclusive results.

The Scrolls furnish a picture of the religious and cultural climate in which John the Baptist conducted his mission and in which Jesus initially was reared. However, they contain no trace of any of the cardinal theological concepts.

The Service of God:
The Manual of Discipline
The Zadokite Document
The Letter of the Law: Ordinances
A Formuary of Blessings

Appendix
The Copper Scroll and the Prayer of Nabonidus