By David Calkins
After fueling more than a decade of controversy and renewed interest in ancient studies, the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls are now available in their entirety.
Nearly 30 previously unpublished scrolls appear in the recently published ?The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader,? a six-volume series first available this year.
?We can now say all the Dead Sea Scrolls have been published,? said Emanuel Tov, co-editor of the series and editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls publication project in Israel.
Tov said the series was divided into categories so it would be convenient for research.
?We?ve made it in such a way in six volumes that people who are only interested in one literary genre can buy the book they?re interested in,? he said.
The reader has more than 500 non-biblical texts, including the Temple Scroll, the Book of Noah, the Rule of the Community, the Book of Enoch and Melchizedek.
Tov began working on the reader in the mid-1990s, collaborating with BYU?s Donald W. Parry, who also co-edited the series.
Parry, a professor of Hebrew Bible, said he and Tov saw a need among students and researchers for such a resource.
?We wanted just the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls without our commentary, without notes and footnotes,? he said. ?We wanted to present the Dead Sea Scrolls in an easy-to-read format.?
With the Hebrew text on the left-hand pages and the line-by-line English translation on the facing pages, the reader serves as a learning aid for students of the Hebrew language, Parry said.
?If students struggle with the Hebrew, the syntax or the grammar, they can look over at the English to see what it says,? he said.
Discovered in a cave outside Jerusalem in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain documents from a religious community that inhabited the area sometime between the second century B.C. and the first century A.D.
?The Dead Sea Scrolls teach us much about the transmission of the ,? Parry said. ?So that?s one of the most interesting things for me about them.?
Parry said the series sheds light on the Jews who proceeded Christ?s time, including their religious ways, rituals, texts and understanding of the Law of Moses.
Parry?s research assistant, Carli Anderson, said the new reader brings the Dead Sea Scrolls to the average layman.
?It makes the Dead Sea Scrolls accessible,? she said. ?Anybody who reads English can access them.?