The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (review)

Abstract

Hebrew Studies 37 (1996) 190 Reviews Pfann. The present work lists more of the photographs for each text. The Companion Volume has just appeared in a Second Revised Edition (1995), incorporating many corrections submitted by Marilyn Lundberg of ABMC and bibliography through 1994. It remains an essential guide to the microfiche and, in particular, should be consulted for the history of the photography and the chronology of the shooting of the photographs. Scholars who have ever worked with any of the fragments and attempted to correlate them with photographs will appreciate the incredible amount of painstaking work that has gone into this project. The catalogue will greatly facilitate the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and will aid scholars in the expeditious publication of these documents. Ironically, the very scholarly work that this catalogue facilitates is already beginning to render the catalogue incomplete. For instance, the bibliography in the catalogue is now almost two years out of date. Those who use this indispensable aid are encouraged to send corrections, additions, and changes to the ABMC to aid in the revision of the catalogue and the database. David Rolph Seely Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84602 THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS TODAY. By James C. VanderKam. pp. xii + 208. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994. Paper, $12.99. The Dead Sea Scrolls Today is the best of the new "introductions" to the Dead Sea Scrolls which have been published in the last two or three years. The author, James VanderKam, is a senior member of the international publication team working to publish the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts under the leadership of Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University. Thus, he is at the forefront of Scroll research. In this volume, VanderKam has used his intimate knowledge of the Scrolls to present the reader with a thorough, scholarly, yet accessible treatment of the major issues surrounding Dead Sea Scroll research. The book is divided into six parts. The first two parts discuss the discovery of the Scrolls, the site of Qumran, and the contents of the manuscripts. Parts three and four deal with the identification of the group who lived at Qumran and their way of life. In parts five and six, VanderKam discusses the relation of the Scrolls to both the Old and New Hebrew Studies 37 (1996) 191 Reviews Testaments. Finally, a very brief final chapter discusses the various controversies that have surfaced about the Scrolls in recent years. Chapter 1 begins with an account of the discovery of the Scrolls in the 1940s and 1950s. Much of this material is by now well-known, and the cast of characters, Muhammad ed-Dhib, Kando, Mar Athanasius Samuel, Eleazar Sukenik, and Roland de Vaux, are extraordinarily familiar. VanderKam also briefly discusses the archaeological excavations at Khirbet Qumran, located near the manuscript caves. However, what is new here is VanderKam's discussion of the various methods for dating the Scrolls and the artifacts from Qumran, a topic that has generated some controversy in the scholarly community but has not received too much attention from the general public. Arriving at a date (or range of dates) for the settlement at Qumran and the copying of the manuscripts has an enormous impact on the reconstruction of the history of the community and the interpretation of the Scrolls, so methods of dating deserve the rather lengthy treatment that VanderKam gives them here. He discusses the methods of paleography (the study of the development of ancient scripts), accelerator mass spectrometry (a more refined form of carbon-14 dating), historical allusions within the Scrolls themselves, and the dating of coins. He concludes by giving the generally accepted dates for the occupation of Qumran: the last two centuries B.C. and the first century A.D. He then mentions two alternatives to the generally accepted consensus first put forward by de Vaux: Norman Golb's theory that Qwnran was a military fortress unrelated to the Scrolls, which VanderKam rightly dismisses as "implausible," and Pauline DonceelVoute 's theory that Qumran was a Herodian villa. VanderKam feels that the verdict is not yet in on Donceel-Voiite's theory but points out several difficulties, such as the fact that what she has identified as...