BAS Publishes Fascicle Two of DSS Transcripts

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The Biblical Archaeology Society has recently published Fascicle Two of A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts from Cave Four reconstructed and edited by Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin G. Abegg, both of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like Fascicle One, published last year,^a the volume presents texts in their original languages as reconstructed, with the help of a computer, from a concordance to the scrolls prepared in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Joseph Fitzmyer, Raymond Brown, William Oxtoby and J. Teixidor. Despite initial scholarly skepticism, this method of reconstruction has been found to be about 98 percent accurate.^b Moreover, it has permanent value because the scholars who prepared the transcripts in the late 1950s (John Strugnell, J.T. Milik and other members of the original team of editors) worked from the original scroll fragments and therefore could sometimes detect details not shown in any photograph. Many of the scrolls have subsequently suffered some deterioration, and so this reconstruction is the only way to retrieve these lost portions of the texts.

Fascicle Two contains two genres of scrolls: wisdom literature and sectarian scriptures. The wisdom texts present the Vision of the Haguy (or Book of Memory), writings that aim to teach how to distinguish right from wrong, composed in a proverbial style. The sectarian scriptures include the Cave 4 texts of the Thanksgiving Psalms, the War Scroll and new midrashic amplifications of Genesis and Exodus. The fascicle concludes with an index that keys the texts to the photos in the BAS Facsimile Edition.^c

A reprint of Fascicle One, to which a key to the Facsimile Edition photos has been added, is also available.

To order either fascicle, or call toll-free 1–800-221–4644 with your Visa or MasterCard order. The price for Fascicle Two is $67.50 and for Fascicle One, $25.00.