![]() Of the greatest help for this revision was the Dutch translation by A.S. That translation has served as the base-text of the translations presented in this edition, but has been thoroughly checked and corrected by the authors. A considerable part of the materials was already accessible in translation in The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated. The main exceptions are reconstructions based upon the preserved text of parallel copies of the same manuscript. The restorations of the text offered in the transcriptions are on the whole relatively sparse. In the case of ambiguous manuscript evidence, and in view of the practical purpose of this book, we have often adopted the suggestions of previous editors, rather than presenting alternative readings for the sake of originality and difference, even when such readings would be palaeographically or otherwise possible. In most cases one will find no or few significant differences from other transcriptions because these readings are imposed by the univocal manuscript evidence. We have checked all the proposed readings against the photographs accessible to us: the photographs provided by the published editions, the photographs included in the Brill microfiche edition and the photographs available in the Oxford-Brill’s CDROM. Although we have consulted the available editions of the individual manuscripts, the responsibility for the transcriptions here presented is entirely ours. Our transcriptions rely not only on the identification and placement of the many tens of thousands of fragments achieved by the original editors of the non-biblical scrolls, who arranged the fragments for the photographs made by the Palestine Archaeological Museum in the 1950s and 1960s, and the subsequent editions of these materials by the original editors, but also on all the editions done by other scholars. The transcriptions of the material included in this edition are fresh transcriptions made by the authors, though it is a very pleasant duty to recognize the debt to all previous work by teachers and colleagues. In three cases we have included texts not found at Qumran, but related to manuscripts from Qumran this goes for the remains of the mediaeval copies of the Damascus Document and the Aramaic Levi Document found in the Cairo Genizah, and for the copy of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice recovered at Masada. The inclusion in the edition of these ‘additions’ does not imply a judgment on their ‘biblical’ or ‘non-biblical’ character. Not included are the scant remains of Ben Sira from Cave 2. Thus, the so-called Reworked Pentateuch consists mainly of the biblical text of the pentateuchal books, be it sometimes in a different order, but also has some sections with material that is not included in the Hebrew Bible likewise, we have included the non-biblical psalms from the Psalms Scrolls 4Q88, 11Q5 and 11Q6. ![]() In several cases the distinction between biblical and non-biblical texts is not clear-cut. By biblical scrolls we understand here the copies of the books that subsequently emerged as the traditional Hebrew Bible, as well as the remains of tefillin and mezuzot which only contain quotations of those biblical books. Ulrich, this book offers a fresh transcription and an English translation of all the relevant non-biblical texts found at Qumran, arranged by serial number from Cave 1 to Cave 11. Whereas the evidence of the biblical manuscripts from Qumran will be shortly available in The Qumran Bible by E. ![]() The plates printed in the critical editions, as well as the transcriptions, translations and commentaries of the first editors are, and will always remain, the basis of all serious work on the Scrolls. As such, it is not intended to compete with, let alone to replace, the editio princeps of the materials published in the series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert or outside this series, or the preliminary publications of materials which have not yet appeared in the DJD Series. As such, it is primarily intended for classroom use and for the benefit of specialists from other disciplines (scholars working on the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament or Rabbinic literature, specialists on Semitic languages, on the History of Judaism or on the History of Religions, among others) who need a reliable compendium of all the relevant materials found in this collection. This book is intended as a practical tool to facilitate access to the Qumran collection of Dead Sea Scrolls. ![]()
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