Mediating the Divine

This book is a comprehensive treatment of prophecy and revelation in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It begins by analyzing the re-presentation of the classical prophets and their revelatory experience in an attempt to identify how prophecy and revelation was reconceptualized in the Dead Sea Scrolls in dialogue and in contrast with received biblical models. This work then examines the direct evidence in the Dead Sea Scrolls regarding ongoing prophetic activity at Qumran and in related segments of Second Temple Judaism. This study argues that the Dead Sea Scrolls bear witness to a transformed prophetic tradition active at Qumran and in Second Temple Judaism. Topics treated include the relationship of prophecy to scriptural interpretation, wisdom, and law, and eschatological prophecy.

Alex P. Jassen, Ph.D. (2006) in Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University, is Assistant Professor of Early Judaism at the University of Minnesota. He specializes in Dead Sea Scrolls, early biblical interpretation, and Jewish law.

Recipient of the 2009 Templeton Award for Theological Promise.

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"Jassen's book is insightful and forms a major contribution to the two areas of research that it spans, namely the afterlife of bibilical prophecy in the interprative tradition of the Second Temple Period, and the social phenomenon of prophecy in the same time period. The author is clearly knowledgably in his field, as shown by the wealth of secondary literature cited in, among other languages, English, French and German."
Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, Svensk Exegetisk Arsbok, 2010.