Customer Reviews

The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This volume is an excellent book to either start or enhance one's study of the scrolls discovered near Qumran, commonly referred to as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Although there has been some negative critique, (see other reviews) this book is very unbiased and scholarly in nature. Yes, there is an added commentary, and words filled in where there were no words preserved, but that is besides the fact. There has been no cover-up attempt to claim that these added texts are somehow the original; a guide at the beginning of the book clearly explains how to see what was actually contained in the scrolls and what was not. The commentary is necessary especially for those who have never looked in the scrolls at all to begin with, to at least give a basic framework. By nature, any commentary will have a level of bias - but it's not as though the book claims to have an inspired commentary - ignore the commentary if you're solely interested in the text!

I have had Dr. Wise for several graduate-level classes, and he has been very scholarly in his teaching, presenting the information that is known, and only on rare occasion giving his actual opinion instead of simply what has been discovered. His area of specialty is the Second Temple period in which the Dead Sea Scrolls play a significant role, which is one reason why he is so involved with them, and why this particular volume is so well written: it from the perspective of one who really cares about the issues surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I would recommend this volume to anyone as a fascinating source for study.

This book needs to be considered alongside _The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated_ edited by Florentino Garcia-Martinez. Both are "comprehensive" translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls which have become available since the end of the embargo in the fall of 1991.

Wise, Abegg, and Cook organize this book primarily by the Qumran manuscript number. The exceptions are the manuscripts found in Cave 1 which have no number. These appear at the beginning of the book along with other manuscripts which relate to the same text. So for example, the Thanksgiving Scroll appears at the beginning of the book along with 4Q427-432. The Damascus Document also appears at the beginning of this book along with manuscripts Geniza A and B.

At the end of the book there is a helpful index of DSS manuscripts and the page(s) on which they may be found. There is also an index of references to other liturature, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and Rabbinic texts. So for example the editors find some connection between 4Q525 and Matthew 5.3-10. Both are beatitudes.

It is not a disadvantage of this book that it contains no Hebrew texts. I find that I want to look at photos of the manuscripts and judge the translations for myself. Nor is it a disadvantage of this book that it does not contain any biblical texts. Those may be found in a translated form in Martin Abegg's _Dead Sea Scrolls Bible_.

The advantage this book does have is its commentary. The editors have brought numerous significant items to the the attention of the reader which the non-specialist probably had not noticed. Even so, the commentary will bring some enlightenment to DSS specialists as well.

In reading "James the Brother of Jesus" by Robert Eisenman, I found that I needed a translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I chose this edition over Vermes, who makes use of pseudo-biblical archaic language in his translations, because the language in Wise is clear and modern, and the introductions are excellent. My reservation is due to a puzzling ediorial decision: there are no informative headers on the pages to let the reader know at a glance which scroll is being looked at, particularly annoying in the longer scrolls. What is gained by inconviencing the the reader?

The edition of THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS - A NEW TRANSLATION that I am reviewing is the older edition, not the revised edition of 2005.

I came away from reading this book with a better understanding of the times and beliefs involving the sectarians that were the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The aim of the editors was to provide a book for the nonspecialist. They succeeded in that endeavor.
"In it we have aspired to be both responsible to the sources and understandable to the public."

There is a clear explanation up front about missing material and how the editors addressed that problem.

The editors examine the date of the scrolls and offer some suggestions for the identities of "the Wicked Priest" and " the Man of the Lie."

On page 65 of the Damascus Document the Name is discussed in the context of swearing an oath- "He must not make mention of the Law of Moses, because the Name of God is written out fully in it, and if he swears by it, and then committs a sin, he will have defiled the Name."
The use of the Name is also discussed in other scrolls.

Some information on the Urim and Thummim was offered in Chapter 11 "Tongues of Fire". That subject has been of interest to me personally.

The approach employed to interpret prophecy by some of the scroll authors is found ironically to be very similar to the approach used by Protestant Christianity.

Some of the other topics of interest I read in the book are;

The extreme positions in some of the sectarian laws regarding Sabbath activities they found unacceptable. The most extreme were the strict limits imposed on saving a human life.

On the calendars of the time of the DSS-
This was a divisive issue with a variety of methods used for reckoning time and the calendar.
The importance of the calendar to two groups- the priests and the astronomers.

The earliest list of zodiacal signs ever discovered in Aramaic is another interesting topic.

Three extra-Biblical feasts are mentioned in the scrolls.
The Wine Festival, Festival of Wood Offering, and the Festival of Oil.

The editors also offered some helpful information on different Old Testament translations, some of the differences in them, and how the scrolls mirror or deviate from other manuscripts.

I enjoyed the book. It's easy enough to comprehend, but the reader has to understand that this is not a complete translation because there are scroll materials missing and you will have gaps in the text.
It's a useful resource in many ways. Keep in mind that there is a revised edition published after this edition.

"In their great variety and stunning richness, the Dead Sea Scrolls as captured in this groundbreaking translation offer modern readers an unprecedented glimpse of the complex roots of modern Christianity... texts encompass poetry and prose, teaching parables and magical tales, astrology, apocalyptic visions,..., stories of messiahs and antichrists,"



After Three Decades:
I followed the saga of DSS since I read in 1970 Wilson's account of the discovery, two decades later. I strove to get any information, even John allegro's imaginary cults, but not until the siege was overcome, that few years later I could read, all in one compendium, the text of the Scrolls in plain English. It took its place, in my library, next to The Coptic Gnostic texts. It may take me the rest of my life to reflect on and discern the amazing writ!
Three scholars of the second DSS generation offer a new translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, integrated with material never published or translated before. The book includes newly published Psalms (151) attributed to David, non-Biblical texts claiming Moses as their author, previously unknown fables about Abraham and Jacob, and many other writings that shed light on non-Temple Jewish thought, parallels showing the Jewish origins of Christianity and the close relationship between Judaism and early Christianity. Some of its amazing texts are, The Damascus Document (Geniza manuscripts), The vision of the Son of God, Psalm 151 (Chanted in the Coptic Church for 17 centuries), The War of the Messiah, Rule of Initiation, between many amazing poetry and prose.

Recent Developments in DSS:
The Dead Sea Scrolls represent a non-rabbinic type of Judaism enhancing our understanding of Second Temple Judaism and of early Christianity. They DSS provide textual treasures for New Testament scholars, and have been called the evolutionary link between Judaism and Christianity, demonstrating a variety of important parallels to Jesus ministry, showing that the Gospel message to be based on, and rooted in Judaism. The major intact texts, from Caves 1 & 11, now housed in the Shrine of the Book museum in Jerusalem, were published by the late fifties. Since then, mostly fragments from Cave 4, about 40% of the Scrolls remained unpublished and were not accessible until 1991.
Almost half of a century after the initial discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, when the academic pressure for publication mounted, general access was granted through the photographs of the Scrolls. Late 1991 the photos were made available by the Biblical Archaeological Society in a computer reconstruction, based on a concordance. A nonofficial edition was announced, and the Huntington Library microfilm files of the scroll photographs were made accessible. In "The Current State of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Are There More Answers than Questions?" L. Grabbe stresses the need for Qumran scholarship to recognize how uncertain is much of our present knowledge of the Qumran material. Following are some issues which enhance your interest in this collection.

Psalm of thanksgiving: A:
I give Thee thanks, Adonai!
For Thou hast placed my soul in the bundle of life,
and Thou has protected me from all the snares of the pit.
And the violent sought my soul, when I trusted in Thy covenant.

The Damascus Document:
In 1896, in Ezra Karaite Synagogue, built Ca. 882 AD in Old Cairo, near Babylon fortress, the Damascus document was discovered amongst other ancient Hebrew manuscripts. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, half a century later, and the consequent publication of the Cave I first scrolls, marked a turning point in the scholars views on the Damascus Document. The similarity in language between the Qumran material and the Cairo Geniza manuscripts removed all doubt that the Damascus Document was composed during the Second Temple period.

War Scroll and the Essenes:
"The principal defining differences ...are the following: (1) the peace-loving Essenes contrast with the warlike spirit evident in some of the scrolls, especially the War Scroll; (2) the Essenes were mostly celibate, whereas the scrolls include many laws concerning women, children and even sexual intercourse; (3) the Essenes abhorred slavery, while the scrolls legislate the practice; (4) the Essenes took no oaths except when entering the group, whereas the scrolls contain numerous regulations for the taking and voiding of oaths; (5) the Essenes owned no private property, whereas the scroll-writers did; and (6) there are significant differences between the Essenes and the relevant Dead Sea Scrolls regarding entry procedures for new members. Cansdale concludes that the scrolls probably issued from one of the many Jewish sects whose names are not recorded in the meager sources at our disposal, perhaps a sect related to the Sadducees." Michael O Wise

The DSS and Hebrew Bible:
The Scrolls and the Scriptures provides much extensive and helpful information on careful studies of the Qumran documents. Proper study underlines that these documents reflect a much larger community and thought pattern than that of the small Qumran community earlier portrayed by DSS scholars. The scrolls may help us to understand and better interpret the OT Scriptures and the various ways in which these record eschatological and messianic ideas.
The basic problems concerned with the historical and literary context of the scrolls.
In an essay is by P. Davies, "Qumran and the Quest for Historical Judaism," records the uncertainties of our knowledge of who wrote the scrolls and the true meanings of the diversity of this collection, warning against reading them in the light of the rigid notions of late antiquity Judaism.

The DSS and Christianity:
"Those few scholars who persist in the view that a direct link can be made between Qumran and the New Testament are probably constructing an approach to the evidence which cannot be sustained. those links between the Qumran and the New Testament are more likely to be indirect." George Brooke
C. Evans reviews the role of the David figure in the scrolls, stressing how the virtues, achievements and promises of David contribute much to the Messianic character of the scrolls and how these provide a background for the understanding of the early Christian belief of Jesus. In " 'Son of God' as 'Son of Man' in the Dead Sea Scrolls? A Response to John Collins on 4Q246," J. D. G. Dunn contends that the figure of the "son of God" in this document refers to the descendant of David in the messianic prophecy of 2 Sam 7:14.


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

The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts With English Translations : Pseudepigraphic and Non-Masoretic Psalms and Prayers (Dead Sea Scrolls)

"The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation" is a translation from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into modern English, intended for the non-specialist, by Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook. There were 870 separate scrolls found in the caves near Khirbet Qumran in the 1940s, many of which are Biblical texts or duplicates. This book does not include the Biblical texts that don't differ significantly from those found elsewhere. It includes translations of 131 documents, often reconstructed from multiple scrolls, with explanatory introductions for each document. The editors begin by providing background on the discovery and translation of the scrolls, their contents, competing theories about the identity of their authors, and how the scrolls were reconstructed.

The texts themselves are in order of their scroll numbers, which means that some texts of like subjects are grouped together and some are not. Some documents are shorter than a page, while some are over 30 pages long. Some are badly fragmented and full of brackets where text is missing or cannot be deciphered; others are intact. The longer texts tend to be intact, so it isn't difficult to read those. The editors have placed explanatory headings in italics between sections of text, which is especially helpful for the fragments. The headings include references to any verses in the Tanakh or New Testament that the text may be compared to, or, in the case of law texts, there is sometimes a reference to the Mishnah also.

Introductions to each text are from a Christian point of view, but the authors are well-versed in the history of Second Temple Judaism, and the introductions are informative and often necessary, as in the lengthy explanation of the "calendar texts". The editors state plainly that some of their interpretations will not survive future scholarship, and they do present competing theories on major points. To give you some idea of the variety of documents, they include: religious law, commentaries on Bible and prophetic writings, re-writings and expansions of Biblical texts, charters for this religiously conservative community, invocations of war, wisdom instructions, writings on physiognomy and astrology, testaments of famous men, calendar texts, psalms, and more.

The scrolls were not written by the same people at the same time, but their origins are believed to be mostly the 1st century BC, give or take 50 years. This was a time of great political and religious strife in Palestine. Accordingly, there is a lot of fire and brimstone and talk of war and vengeance in the scrolls. I think that scholars make matters difficult for themselves, however, by expecting these documents to delineate the practices and beliefs of one group of people. Whatever community owned the scrolls collected the texts from various sources, whose practices were not homogenous. Most of the "sectarian" scrolls indicate a hyper-legalist, ultra-conservative, isolationist community, but a few others seem more liberal, such as "Praise for King Jonathan" and the wisdom texts. Evidence of the heterogeneity of Judaism at the time.

As a newcomer to the Dead Sea Scrolls, I really appreciate the very compehensive introduction to the revised edition of this book, which makes the reading of the texts themselves even more fascinating.

The introduction covers the following topics: Discovery and Publication; How the scrolls were written; The languages used in the scrolls; Scripts used for writing the scrolls; Contents of the scrolls; The site where they were found; The origin of the scrolls; Problems associated with the original assumptions with regard to their origin; An alternative proposal as to their origin; A Dead Sea Scrolls Timeline, and a section on how to go about reading the texts.

Unlike others reviewers who have critcised the commentaries accompanying each text, I have found them extremely useful, even when I may have disagreed with some of the conclusions.

In every way this is a 5-star publication.

[...] These texts were not filled in. The point is-this is what the texts say! The parallels in terminology and phraseology are astounding. These are the texts that the early Christian writers of the New Testament were familiar with. Though the New Testament gospels may be reedited and reworked documents of the 4th century, they were still largely born in phrase and genre, from these writings. These Jews were most likely the Jews who gave rise to the Christians. These Jews used a different calendar than the Pharisees, the solar rather than the lunar calendar. There is an ancient Christian writing called the Didache which begins with a piece called "The Two Ways," there is a scroll fragment of the same title, and on and on. It would be insane to attempt to bury these facts in the name of some perverse political correctness.

So many long held beliefs about the origins of Christian ideology have been attributed to Greco-Roman influence. We now know this wasn't the case. These early Christians were Jewish, not the Jews we know today, for the Pharisees were the only sect left in numbers great enough to route history after the great slaughters by the Romans at Masada and Qumran. These freedom fighters that were massacred are our scroll writers or carriers as some of the writings were from earlier centuries. These people were all but forgotten and unknown until their writings and sacred texts were found in these caves around Qumran.

This brings us to the next point I would like to make as to why you should have and read this book. The Universe doesn't revolve around the Earth, bleeding people (extracting quantities of blood) is not an efficacious treatment for the sick, ulcers are not universally caused by stress and the Dead Sea Scrolls were not composed at Qumran by the Essene's or anyone else. Where these scrolls came from, who these people were, what they fought for and how they died is important. This book does great service in helping to repair the unforgivable damage done through shoddy scholarship and attribution by Father Roland de Vaux in his early excavations. This is now the conclusion of most scholars who didn't already invest their entire identity as academics on the first hypothesis.

See my review of The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English for a description of the scrolls and of the Essene community that owned them. This volume has an introduction of about forty pages describing the history of the scrolls and explaining how to read them. This is followed by an English translation of 131 0f the hundreds of the ancient Essene documents. Each of the texts has a running commentary, one that interspersed in the text to clarify it and put it into historical context. This is very helpful. It makes the ancient work clear and interesting.

This book had a good topic and concept, but after every relevent concept, commentary was added. After the first 50 pages or so, I simply skipped all oppions and insights added by the authors and came to my own conclusions. I would rather have a book dedicated to pure translation. I am not saying the authors conclutions where incorrect, just bothersome to me.