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The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered: The First Complete Translation and Interpretation of 50 Key Documents withheld for Over 35 Years

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This book contains fifty short texts recovered from the Qumran caves, all fragmentary and some much worse than others.

The texts are grouped thematically into chapters, each chapter beginning with an introduction explaining the genre of text in question. For each text, the authors/editors give you a discussion/analysis, touching on relevant context and highlighting ideas that appear in the text, the Hebrew transliteration of the text (in contemporary Hebrew characters), and a translation. In addition, the center of the book contains a series of black and white photos, some of the area (Wadi Qumran and its caves, Masada) and some of the scroll fragments.

I've casually cross-checked the 50 texts in this volume against my larger edition of the Scrolls (Geza Vermes's translation), and many -- perhaps all -- of the fifty are also contained in the larger edition. What's different here, and what makes this book valuable, is the different translation (designed to emphasize, by vocabulary choice, points of commonality with the Jamesian Christian writings of the New Testament) and the commentary.

The fragmented texts reveal a community that was xenophobic, nationalistic, militant, pro-Maccabean and wildly apocalyptic. In addition, certain specific doctrines are clearly illuminated, including the resurrection of the dead and a single (as opposed to dual) Messiah.

The authors therefore paint a different picture of the Qumran community from proponents of the "Essene Theory" (like Geza Vermes). This makes for interesting reading of the texts in this book and also informs alternative understandings of other Dead Sea Scrolls texts. Very, very interesting.

Eisenman and Wise have put together a phenomenal collection of some of the most significant missing scrolls. Each translation is accompanied by commentary and reproduction in the original Hebrew or Aramaic. Photographic plates of several of the actual scrolls are included. Scrolls such as "The Messianic Apocalypse" and "Chariots of Glory" are particularly impressive. Through the reading of these scrolls, one begins to understand that the Qumran library presents an entire spiritual system of faith, prophecy, and revelation. This is certainly THE "apocalyptic Judaism." Excellent material.

_DSS Uncovered_ was first published in 1992 shortly after the embargo on the Scrolls had been broken. Eisenman and Wise played key roles in those events.Unfortunately _DSS Uncovered_ will be largely remembered for its sensational aspects. Chief among these is the "pierced messiah" text, Eisenman's interpretation of 4Q285. (On this matter Eisenman has since recanted according to none other than Wise who wrote this in _The Dead Sea Scrolls_ on page 292.)

This is not to fault the translations. I have no particular problem with the translations offered by E&W. For example, in 4Q521 E&W suggest "resurrect the dead" for VMTIM YCHYH. Perhaps a more literal translation might be "enliven the dead." However is there that much difference between raising from the dead and enlivening a person? In the thinking of the people of the place and time of the DSS, one raised a person from the dead by enlivening them and enlivening them "raised" them from the realm of the dead.

As a digressive thought, I might warn that the reader ought to be aware that fragment and column numbers, and sometimes scroll numbers, change from book to book. There are changes between the two books by Garcia-Martinez on the DSS texts. This is just a hazard of DSS studies.

Hopefully the above matters will not overshadow the usefulness of this book. There are transliterations, translations, and most of all...commentaries on 50 different DSS texts. E&W are quite right to point out that their 50 texts compares favorably with the volume of DSS texts which had been published up to that time. Also the commentaries point out to the reader esoteric allusions, interrelationships between the texts, and the beauty of some of the texts as well.

The real and enduring value of _DSS Uncovered_ is in its commentary.

The book presents the Hebrew or Aramaic text of the 55 best-quality scrolls from the Qumran Community, with their English translation, analyses, commentary and background historical and thematic from the translators. This is the first publication of many of these texts, and the first translation and interpretation by a truly international independent group of scholars.

This collection represents a selection of documents out of the 150 fairly complete items out of the total store of over 500 total documents. The authors had to reconstruct the fragments of the scrolls in Hebrew or Aramaic, since many of the scrolls were damaged, or had variant readings. They provide extensive explanations on decisions made and areas of uncertainty and difficulty.

This was also the first publication of Dead Sea Scrolls processed by historians. The early, highly proprietary group were primarily linguists and theologians, and the Dominican Ecole Biblique denied other scholars access to the scrolls for many years. The authors of this volume provide excellent historical background and connections with the individual texts presented here.

They provide extensive critical comparisons with Old Testament, historical and New Testament texts, critically analyzing conceptual themes, verbal usage and theological implications of the Qumran community. Many themes and terminology found in the New Testament and other early Christian literature appears in the Qumran documents presented here.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered provides extensive critical comparisons of these 55 Qumran documents with Old Testament, historical and New Testament texts. These authors critically analyze conceptual themes, verbal usage and theological implications of the Qumran community. Many themes and terminology found in the New Testament and other early Christian literature appear in the Qumran documents presented here. These authors love their work and this comes through clearly.

The texts published and analyzed here appear to definitively disprove the early "Essene" theory of Qumran. These authors certainly are satisfied. However, much study has been done by specialists since this book was written, and these authors are writing from a somewhat polemical and defensive position, due to their personal history in the acrimonious politics that delayed the public release of the Qumran documents. Many books have been published in the last 5-6 years, and the Essene-Qumran connection seems quite solid. Much work in several disciplines has enabled a much more complete picture than just a few years ago.

From the analysis of these two authors, as well, these texts clarify that the Qumran community was NOT opposed to the Temple priesthood, although they were purists in terms of procedure, and nationlalist, even xenophobic in their outlook. The author's commentaries also clarify the distinction between different "Sadducee" (Zadok) groups, pre-Herod and in the Herodian period.

They also clarify that during the Herodian period, which includes the events of the New Testament Gospels, there were two groups of Sadducees even then. One group was non-collaborative, while the prominent Sadducees were aligned with (the authors say dominated by) the Pharisees, in their cooperation with the Roman authorities. This explains much about the situation the life of Jesus and the events in his last days before crucifixion.

See my review on The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English for a description of the scrolls and the history of the ancient Essene community that owned them. The authors of this volume offer their own translation of fifty of the hundreds of age-old documents that were found in Israel. Their book has a sixteen page general introduction to the texts followed by the fifty documents. Each of the documents is shown in its original Hebrew or Aramaic followed by an English translation. Readers familiar with these languages can see if they agree with the authors' translations. These non-English sections highlight and dramatize how the texts are fragmentary because they show the spaces between words and even in the midst of words. Each document is preceded by a specific introduction explaining it. The fifty documents are grouped into eight classes: messianic and visionary recitals, prophets and pseudo-prophets, biblical interpretations, calendrical texts and priestly courses, testaments and admonitions, righteous and legal texts, hymns and mysteries, and the last, divination, magic and miscellaneous. The documents show, among many other things, how the group waited for a saving messiah and how, like other misguided people of their time, they believed that seclusion defends people from injustice, cleanliness brings holiness, and the world is filled with malicious demons that must be avoided.

Now that all of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been published, this book is pretty much pointless. And Eisenman's theories are a stretch, to say the least.

I had always wanted to find information about this subject, and this book has plenty.

I bought this book cause I wanted to find out what Mr Eisenberg released that was so threatening to the church that he got fired. I consider my self a pretty smart dude. The book is completely over my head. I need a couple courses just to get to the point where I can read this book. Too many words I don't know, and so much base knowledge I don't have. I praise Mr Eisenberg for releasing these materials, but I think I really wanted a book titled "The Significance of the book, "The dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered.""

The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered: The First Complete Translation and Interpretation of 50 Key Documents Withheld for over 35 Years

Fascinating and educational reading.

From a Historianary perspective this is a great book to have. The text is revealed here with lots of commentary.

These texts are not complete for much of it has been lost. Sort of a dry read but gives quite a bit of interesting info.