The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment

Beginning of article

edited by Peter W. Flint and James C. Vanderkam. Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 1998-99. 2 vols. 1360 pp. + plates. $196.00

The first of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered near the ruins of Qumran in 1947. (For a brief overview of the Scrolls, see my "Teaching the Dead Sea Scrolls," Shofar 14 [1996]: 76-95].) The fifty-year mark since the initial discoveries of the Scrolls is indeed an appropriate time for an assessment of where things stand. Photographs of all the texts are now available; important tools have appeared (such as the Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, edited by L. Schiffman and J. Vanderkam); and many early controversies have died down, leaving more freely drawn …