Discoveries in the Judaean Desert: Volume XVI: Psalms to Chronicles

This volume continues the publication of the series of biblical Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran. It contains forty-two manuscripts of the Writings or Wisdom Books, from Psalms to Chronicles. These Hebrew texts antedate by a millennium what had previously been considered the earliest surviving biblical manuscripts in the original language. They document a pluriformity that characterized the ancient biblical textual tradition before the text became uniform later in the Rabbinic period. The Book of Psalms was the most widely copied book at Qumran, and the manuscripts display some alternate arrangements. The Song of Songs also displays a version that contrasts in arrangement of contents with the edition found in the traditional Massoretic Text. Superior textual variants from these manuscripts have been adopted in recent revised translations of the Bible.