Insights into the Growth of Biblical Literature from the Dead Sea Scrolls
“The compositional history of individual books was largely complete by the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Consequently, the Hebrew Bible is usually seen as a fixed and closed entity and studied exclusively as the object of biblical reception history. However, the biblical reception history begins already in the making and growing of the biblical texts themselves.”
Reflections on the Textual Development of the Pentateuch in Light of Documented Evidence
“Another important question illuminated by the Dead Sea Scrolls is whether or not scribes attempted to replicate the texts of their exemplars or felt free to change their received texts. The Dead Sea Scrolls make it abundantly clear that both modes of transmission were practiced during copying acts in the Second Temple period, and it would be simplistic to insist on an either/or answer.”
The Multiple Faces and Phases of Texts at Qumran: Growth, Expansion, and Rewriting in Community Documents
“Instead of envisaging a single fixed text that has to be interpreted (which was the modus operandi prior to this discovery), we must now engage ourselves with multiple texts, varying from each other … ‘the Serekh’ is in fact a compilation of works differently shaped in various copies. All of these are – on a different level – the result of compiling earlier sources of community rules of various groups of the same movement.”
The Community Rule Manuscript Tradition from Qumran and the Growth of Ancient Jewish Texts
“Our manuscript evidence—particularly that of the Community Rule—points in the direction of a complex evolution of texts … With the manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially those of the Community Rule, we are in the privileged position to be able to trace their textual evolution first hand.”
EDITORIAL TEAM
The Ancient Jew Review and Trinity Western University Dead Sea Scrolls Institute forums and reviews commemorating the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the Qumran scrolls were edited by Dr. Andrew Perrin (Trinity Western University), Dr. Andrew Krause (University of Münster), Dr. Jessica Keady (University of Chester), and Spencer Jones (Trinity Western University).
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