The Textual History of the Bible from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Biblical Manuscripts of the Vienna Papyrus Collection

Biblical manuscripts from the Dead Sea and the Cairo Genizah have added immeasurably to our knowledge of the textual history of the Hebrew Bible. The papers collected in this volume compare the evidence of the biblical DSS with manuscripts from the Vienna Papyrus Collection, connected with the Cairo Genizah, as well as late ancient evidence from diverse contexts.
The resulting picture is one of a dialectic between textual plurality and fixity: the eventual dominance of the consonantal Masoretic Text over the textual plurality of the Second Temple period, and the secondary diversification of that standardized text through scribal activity.

Ruth A. Clements, ThD (1997, Harvard Divinity School), is Head of Publications for the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature. She coedited The Religious Worldviews Reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Brill, 2018).

Russell E. Fuller, PhD (1988, Harvard University), is professor of Hebrew Bible in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego. He is a member of the international team of editors for the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Armin Lange is professor of Second Temple Judaism and Antisemitism Studies at the University of Vienna, a member of the international team editing the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He has published on the Hebrew Bible, its textual criticism, Second Temple Judaism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the religious history of antisemitism.

Paul Mandel (PhD, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997) is Senior Lecturer at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, where he researches the language and texts of Hebrew and Aramaic literature of the Second Temple and Rabbinic periods.