Who Wrote The Dead Sea Scrolls?: The Search For The Secret Of Qumran - Softcover

Golb, Norman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684806924 ISBN 13: 9780684806921

Publisher: Touchstone, 1996

Synopsis

Since their discovery in the Qumran caves beginning in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have been the object of intense fascination and extreme controversy. Here Professor Norman Golb intensifies the debate over the scrolls' origins, arguing that they were not the work of a small, desert-dwelling fringe sect, as other scholars have claimed, but written by different groups of Jews and the smuggled out of Jerusalem's libraries before the Roman seige of A.D 70.

Golb also unravels the mystery behind the scholarly monopoly that controlled the scrolls for many years, and discusses his role as a key player in the successful struggle to make the scrolls widely available to both scholars and students. And he pleads passionately for an academic politics and a renewed commitment to the search for the truth in scroll scholarship.

About this title

About the Author

Dr. Norman Golb is the first holder of the Rosenberger Chair in Jewish History and Civilization at the University of Chicago.

From Booklist

There has been a spate of new books about the Dead Sea scrolls since their recent "liberation" from the small group of scholars who were originally granted exclusive access to the historic documents. The prevalent theory among those first researchers was that the scrolls were the work of the Essenes, an ascetic sect that presumably had a settlement near where the scrolls were found. Golb, a professor of Jewish history and civilization at the University of Chicago, has a different theory. He claims that the scrolls were the work of many different groups and were moved to the Judaean wilderness during the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. He also argues that the supposed Essene monastery was actually a Jewish fortress. Golb's scholarly credentials are both a plus and a minus. He obviously has plenty of archaeological and historical evidence to back up his claims, but he also writes like an academician, and despite the book's catchy title and subtitle, it will take more than the casual reader to plow through Golb's dense prose. Public libraries that can only afford one scrolls tome should stick with Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992), edited by Hershel Shanks, but those with active religion or archaeology collections will want this one for its provocative assertions. Ilene Cooper

Edition details

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0684806924
• ISBN 13: 9780684806921
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480