Best-selling book on the Scrolls, updated to reflect current scholarship and recent debates The premier Dead Sea Scrolls primer ever since its original publication in 1994, James VanderKam's
Best-selling book on the Scrolls, updated to reflect current scholarship and recent debates
The premier Dead Sea Scrolls primer ever since its original publication in 1994, James VanderKam's Dead Sea Scrolls Today won the Biblical Archaeology Society's Publication Award in 1995 for the Best Popular Book on Biblical Archaeology. In this expanded and updated edition the book will continue to illuminate the greatest archaeological find in modern times.
While retaining the format, style, and aims of the first edition, the second edition of The Dead Sea Scrolls Today takes into account the full publication of the texts from the caves and the post-1994 debates about the Qumran site, and it contains an additional section regarding information that the Scrolls provide about Second Temple Judaism and the groups prominent at the time. Further, VanderKam has enlarged the bibliographies throughout and changed the phrasing in many places. Finally, quotations of the Scrolls are from the fifth edition of Geza Vermes's translation, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin, 1997).
Choice Magazine, Outstanding Academic Title (2010)
From reviews of the first edition
Commonweal
"This is the book for those interested in a sober, careful, and well-written account of the discovery of the Scrolls, their meaning, and the current state of research on them. A well-organized and highly readable account."
Hebrew Studies
"An attractive book, easy to read, and with excellent photographs. VanderKam has rendered a much-needed service to the Dead Sea Scrolls by presenting such a thoughtful, well-reasoned, and balanced treatment."
Church & Synagogue Libraries
"This is the book congregational libraries need to help readers put in perspective much that has come about as a result of the discovery of the Scrolls a half century ago."
Journal of Biblical Literature
"Among the many books on the Dead Sea Scrolls, this one can be recommended as the best popular recitation of the history of the sites, of the texts, and of the scholarly process."
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