THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS; Rule of the Community

Of the many Dead Sea Scrolls and innumerable fragments, the most important arguably is the Rule of the Community. It is the rule book of the Qumran Community in which many of the Scrolls were composed or copied, and it is the single most important source for understanding the history and theology of this community.
This edition of the Rule of the Community is published in cooperation with the American Interfaith Institute/World Alliance and the Israel Museum's Shrine of the Book. The book incorporates state of the art photography and transcription of the original Hebrew text. To make the Scroll accessible to the world community, this edition includes translations in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and modern Hebrew.

In a question-and-answer introduction to this volume, Charlesworth (New Testament studies, Princeton Theological Seminary) briefly addresses the history and significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the nature of the Jewish community at Qumran, and the contents of the "Rule of the Community" scroll. Because the current controversy surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls is beyond the scope of this work, Charlesworth answers the questions in terms of majority opinion regarding these issues. In the second section, color photographs and transcriptions of the scroll's 11 columns are displayed on facing pages, often cryptically. The last section is a collection of six fairly literal modern language translations of the Rule. Although this is an interesting work, it is more a luxury than a necessity for most libraries. Smaller libraries will probably be satisfied with a one-volume translation such as that of Florentino Garcia Martinez (The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English, Brill, 1994).
Craig W. Beard, Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham Lib.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.