The Dead Sea Scrolls

How were Jewish texts produced and transmitted in late antiquity? What role did scribal practices play in the shaping of both scriptural and interpretive traditions, which are—as the Scrolls show so decisively—intimately intertwined? How were texts assembled from a variety of earlier sources, both oral and written? Why were they often attributed to pseudonymous authors from the remote past such as Moses and David? How did the composers of these texts understand the enterprise in which they were engaged? This volume furthers current debates about Qumran Scribal Practice and the transmission of traditions in Jewish Antiquity. It is published with the conviction that the transmission of traditions and the details of scribal practices—so often treated separately—should be considered in conversation with each other.

Sarianna Metso received her doctorate from the University of Helsinki in 1997. She is Associate Professor in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto and the author of The Textual Development of the Qumran Community Rule and The Serekh Texts.

Hindy Najman, PhD. (Harvard University, 1998) is the Director of the Centre for Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of Ancient Judaism in the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Najman has published on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo of Alexandria, Ezra-Nehemiah, 4Ezra and the Book of Jubilees. She is the author of Seconding Sinai (Brill, 2003) and Past Renewals (Brill, 2010).

Eileen M. Schuller, Ph.D. (1984) from Harvard University is Professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario Canada. She has been involved in editing various Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts of psalmic and hymnic texts, most recently the reedition of 1QHa.