The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated

Between the publication of the first Spanish edition of Textos de Qumrán in November 1992 and the appearance of this English translation, research on the manuscripts from Qumran has proceeded at a faster pace, and its fruits can be found collected here.

Of particular importance has been the publication of four works, very different in character. Each in its own way has contributed to the preparation of this volume, and they account for the obvious differences which this English translation displays in respect of the first Spanish edition.

First, and of most importance, was the publication in the summer of 1993 of the complete edition on microfiche of all the manuscripts from the Dead Sea: The Dead Sea Scrolls on Microfiche: A Comprehensive Facsimile Edition of the Texts from the Judaean Desert, edited by Emanuel Tov with the collaboration of Stephen Pfann (E. J. Brill-IDC, Leiden 1993), which for the first time has placed at the disposal of all researchers the entire collection of material available.

The second was the publication of the first two fascicles of A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls, reconstructed and edited by Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin G. Abegg (Biblical Archaeological Society, Washington 1991 and 1992), in which the text of the various copies of 4QD, 4QMishmarot, a series of Wisdom Texts, and Sectarian Scriptures have been reconstructed with the aid of a computer using A Preliminary Concordance to the Hebrew and Aramaic Fragments from Qumrân Caves II-X. They have also made the reading of some badly preserved fragments much easier for me.

The third was the publication by R. Eisenman and M. O. Wise of The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (Element, Shaftesbury 1992), a book which contains the transcription and English translation of several previously unpublished texts. The quality of these transcriptions and translations sometimes leaves much to be desired (as shown in my review article, "Notes on the Margins of The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered," Revue de Qumrân 61 [1993] 123-150). Also, a large part of the texts they publish was already included in the Spanish edition. Even so, using this book helped me to read and translate several new texts now accessible in the microfiche edition.

The fourth was the publication of the supplement to Klaus Beyer, Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer. Ergänzungsband (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1994), which completes the edition of the Aramaic texts from Qumran with the publication of some previously unpublished material.

Thanks to these works and to continual study of the originals, this book claims to offer the reader a translation of the 270 most important manuscripts from Qumran. In other words, it is a virtually complete translation of the non-biblical manuscripts found there. Of course, the "List of Manuscripts from Qumran" has been brought completely up to date, taking new publications into account.

Like the Spanish edition, this English translation omits any kind of note or explanation, since everything needed to understand these difficult texts is in-