Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The reader is alerted in the Preface that this book is a collection of past essays by the author, written for various conferences and collections. Some overlap of subject matter and repetition of thoughts should be expected. The amount of this, however, is not severe.
Perhaps as much as one-half of the book addresses the question of how the biblical text came into being. The idea of a divinely inspired and faithfully handed down original text is quickly dismissed. The author instead advances the now familiar theory that the books of the bible were produced in editorial stages that included two major thrusts: The faithful repetition of important traditions, and the creative reshaping of those traditions in new theological directions. (Pg. 8)
If one wonders why so much attention is given to possible origins of the Bible instead of the Qumran scrolls themselves, the answer becomes apparent as the author strives to demonstrate that the Qumran biblical manuscripts continue this very process of textual evolution.
For this reader the value of the book lies in the chapters that present readings from the Qumran scrolls which are lined up with the same-verse-readings from a wide range of other ancient texts. The Samaritan Pentateuch; the Masoretic Text; the Septuagint; the Hexapla; and the Old Latin translation of the Septuagint all receive comparative attention.
The reader may not always agree with the conclusions of the author, but the easy-to-compare format allows one to quickly grasp a picture of the differences among the texts and to evaluate their import.
However, a reader does need to be forewarned that without a working knowledge of Hebrew, Greek and Latin one is left in a weak position from which to evaluate the conclusions the author draws.
Click Here to see more reviews about: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature) (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls & Related Literature)
The Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran provide the oldest, best, and most direct witness we have to the origins of the Hebrew Bible. Prior to the discovery of the Scrolls, scholars had textual evidence for only a single, late period in the history of the biblical text, leading them to believe that the text was uniform. The Scrolls, however, provide documentary evidence a thousand years older than all previously known Hebrew manuscripts and reveal a period of pluriformity in the biblical text prior to the stage of uniformity.In this important collection of studies, Eugene Ulrich, one of the world's foremost experts on the Dead Sea Scrolls, outlines a comprehensive theory that reconstructs the complex development of the ancient texts that eventually came to form the Old Testament. Several of the essays set forth his pioneering theory of "multiple literary editions," which is replacing older views of the origins of the biblical text.The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible represents the leading edge of research in the exciting field of Scrolls studies.
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