The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English

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Summary: Very happy
Review: All i have to say is trust this person, they were very nice and sent my book right away. im happy with them.

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Summary: The Latest Stunning Dispatches from the Desert
Review: As a layman and absolute amateur with a deep passion for the Word of the Bible, I purchased and read Vermes' stunning English translation of the DSS upon its publication in 1997 and again recently in 2002.

This is no ordinary book but a work of profound importance. It is, as it were, the latest dispatch from the desert revealing Holy Writ hidden for two millennia!

1. Reading the DSS has a kalaidascopic effect on everything I have ever read, pondered or believed about the Tanakh -- it illuminates and enriches and startles at every turn.

2. A question for believers -- how many stars do you give to the Word of God?

3. This translation is magestic and lofty in tone, somewhat reminiscent of the KJV, but plain and unadorned. The editor's introductory chapters provide a grand overview of the history of the discovery of the scrolls and the benighted and myopic attempts of some to limit or halt their coming to light. Aside from this introduction Vermes nobly stands aside and lets the scrolls unfold their own message for the reader with a minimum of interruptive footnotes and scholarly asides.

4. Unfortunately this edition does not contain any complete or partial translations of books already found in the Tanakh/OT.

5. I am very impatient with the scholarly debates about the supposed messages and portents of the DSS. I, for one, don't need any ivory tower academic of whatever religious or political persuasion telling me what I ought to think about the words of the scrolls. I say, let the documents be published in full and speak for themselves! The Word will have out!

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Summary: If you buy 1 book on the Dead Sea Scrolls, make it this one.
Review: Geza Vermes provides a concise introduction to the topic of the Dead Sea Scrolls and provides English translations of many of the scrolls and fragments found in the 11 caves of Qumran. This book was originally published in 1965 and was last updated in 1997. Much has happened in those 32 years and this book contains updates on the key items.

In the first 96 pages of the book, Vermes provides an insight into what the Scrolls are, who the authors were, a history of the community that wrote the scrolls, and the religious ideas of the community. 500 pages of translations and brief discussions of each scroll and fragment follow. The discussions are particularly helpful as introductions to the themes and background related to each scroll. About 40 pages at the end of the book present a catalogue of the scrolls, an index of the texts, and a bibliography. The indexes in the book provide references by topic and by the classification number of the text or fragment (e.g. 4Q525 is text number 525 from Qumran Cave 4).

Among the many key manuscripts translated in this book are the Community Rule, the Damascus Document, the Messianic Rule, the War Scroll, the Thanksgiving Hymns, the Apocryphal Psalms, the calendrical documents, the Blessings and Benedictions, the Peshers (commentaries) on numerous books of the Old Testament, Biblical Apocryphal Works, and the Copper Scroll (the Copper Scroll is a description of the locations of hidden treasures).

The book is quite complete, but new discoveries and revisions to existing hypotheses will always make future revisions a necessity. I have used this book to teach a 4-week mini-course on the Dead Sea Scrolls at my Church with much success. I highly recommend this book. The topic is fascinating and this book is a must for anyone serious about learning what is in the Dead Sea Scrolls and what life was like from 150 B.C to 70 A.D.

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Summary: For the first time in 2000 years...
Review: Geza Vermes' book, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, is a worthy capstone to a long and distinguished scroll career. Vermes entire career, from his student days to this present work, has been concentrated largely on the Dead Sea Scrolls and related topics. His doctorate in 1953 was completed with a dissertation on the historical framework of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is difficult to find any scholar with as complete a knowledge of the scrolls as has Vermes; it is impossible to find one who knows them better.

This book was released in 1997, 50 years from the time the first Arab shepherd climbed into a cave in search of a wandering animal and instead fell upon the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Following the 'revolution' of 1991 (to use Vermes words), everyone interested could have unfettered access to the Scrolls, and yet, as inaccessible as they had been previously due to physical restriction, they remained just as inaccessible due to the problem of language and translation.

'In addition to the English rendering of the Hebrew and Aramaic texts found in the eleven Qumran caves, two inscribed potsherds (ostraca) retrieved from the Qumran site and two Qumran-type documents discovered in the fortress of Masada, and brief introductory notes to each text, this volume also provides an up-to-date general introduction, outlining the history of fifty years of Scroll research and sketching the organisation, history and religious message of the Qumran Community.'

This is the latest volume of a series: when Vermes first published an edition in 1962 (then 15 years after the discovery of the first scrolls), the book had 262 pages; the current edition has 648. The introduction deals with a brief sketch of the history of research (including a bit on the controversies, such as not allowing Jewish scholars to work on these Jewish texts, the close-guarding and restrictive access of the scrolls by the scholars); further issues in the introduction address current research, including questions of dating, provenance, and perhaps, most importantly, the meaning and significance of the Qumran texts.

Vermes puts together a three-part essay on his view (as well as a little on alternative views) of who was the community at Qumran, the history of that community, and the religious ideas of the community.

This is where we get into the text of the Scrolls in earnest. Vermes begins with The Community Rule a large document that listed the requirements and a penal code. This is best known as the Manual of Discipline. Composition may have begun about 100 BCE, and several fragmentary remains exist of copies of the manual.

'There are, to my knowledge, no writings in ancient Jewish sources parallel to the Community Rule, but a similar type of literature flourished amogn Christians between the second and fourth centuries, the so-called 'Church Orders' represented by works such as the Didache, the Didascalia, the Apostolic Constitution.'

From the Rules and variants, including the now-infamous MMT text, which provoked international lawsuits for violating the 'copyright' exerted by one Scroll scholar on its contents, Vermes proceeds to examine Hymns and Poems; Calendars, Liturgies and Prayers; Apocalyptic Works (which have the greatest appeal to many imminent eschatologically-inclined sects today); Wisdom Literature; Bible translations, commentaries, and apocryphal works; and Miscellanea, including objects such as the Copper Scroll (a rare form, not on parchment, which reads like an accountant's register of treasure), and lists, including the List of False Prophets.

For anyone interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls in any serious way, this is an essential book. With various 'complete' scroll editions and collections being released, this edition, produced by one who has devoted his life to scroll studies, remains one of the best, most complete and clearly translated.

The one drawback, which will only affect those whose interest extends to the study of Roman-period Hebrew and Aramaic, is that there is no photographic imagery or recreation in Hebrew/Aramaic script to show the actual scroll text so that one might make a personal study of the accuracy of the translation. Thus, this text works best for that purpose in conjunction with another translation, or with the very-expensive scroll photographic plate sets now available.

But, for most any use from general interest to scholarship, this volume will serve the reader well.

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Summary: Y'SHUAMASHIACH-MELCHEZIDEC
Review: It is a goodbook and sheds newlight on MESSIAH.I am lead to believe JESUSCHRIST-ELELYON and MELKIZIDEC are the same or identcal at least.Blessed be IMMANUEL;shalom.DEAD SEA SCROLLS.

Rating:
Summary: An adequate source for this text
Review: Looking for some source for this material to use as reference I somehow ended up with this book on my shelf. It has so far been useful. Where anyone would get off claiming that this stuff comes directly from God is beyond me. I don't find it any more wise, insightful, or helpful than a lot of self help books you find out there today. If God were to write his word for us to read you'd think it would have much more power than the Scrolls and it wouldn't require so much rereading and analysis to pull out its full potential. I mean, imagine you're God and you need to transmit your word to your people - are you gonna do it in a way that requires and allows interpretation and let it languish in a cave and rot away until only fragments are left? Way I see it, if you're God and you do this then you have no right to get mad when people never get around to reading Your word, not to mention when they totally misinterpret Your word or even ignore it altogether. Frankly, there's ample grounds (the language problem, for instance, nothing is completely the same once it's translated) to reject this material completely due to its faulty transmission. If you don't agree with me, then grab yourself any translation of the Scrolls and if after reading it once you are not completely changed forever into a fully realized and illuminated child of God immediately upon reading it then, well, good luck proving the Scrolls' divine origin to anyone who still has the ability to think for themselves. And by the way, what the heck was old whats-her-name's problem down in FLA? Man, I sure hope I don't ever meet that misguided fanatical scizo in a dark alley!

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Summary: Literary Armageddon
Review: Nearly all knowledgeable Biblical scholars realize there have been a wide range of writings attributed to Jesus and his Apostles..... and that some of these were selected for compilation into the book that became known as the Bible.....and that some books have been removed from some versions of the Bible and others have been re-discovered in modern times.

The attention focused on Gnosticism by Dan Brown's DaVinci Code may be debatable, but the fact is that increased attention on academics tends to be predominately positive, so I welcome those with first-time or renewed interest. At least first-timers to Gnosticism are not pursuing the oh-so-popular legends of the Holy Grail, Bloodline of Christ, and Mary Magdalene.

This is great......I seldom quote other reviewers, but there is one reviewer of Pagels' books who confided that he had been a Jesuit candidate and had been required to study a wide range of texts but was never was told about the Nag Hamadi texts. He said:

"Now I know why. The Gospel of Thomas lays waste to the notion that Jesus was `the only begotten Son of God' and obviates the need for a formalized church when he says, `When your leaders tell you that God is in heaven, say rather, God is within you, and without you.' No wonder they suppressed this stuff! The Roman Catholic Church hasn't maintained itself as the oldest institution in the world by allowing individuals to have a clear channel to see the divinity within all of us: they need to put God in a bottle, label the bottle, put that bottle on an altar, build a church around that altar, put a sign over the door, and create rubricks and rituals to keep out the dis-believing riff-raff. Real `Us' versus `them' stuff, the polar opposite from `God is within You.' `My God is bigger than your God' the church(s)seem to say. And you can only get there through "my" door/denomination. But Jesus according to Thomas had it right: just keep it simple, and discover the indwelling Divinity `within you and without you.'"

Here are quickie reviews of what is being bought these days on the Gnostic Gospels and the lost books of the Bible in general:

The Lost Books of the Bible (0517277956) includes 26 apocryphal books from the first 400 years that were not included in the New Testament.

Marvin Meyers' The Secret Teachings of Jesus : Four Gnostic Gospels (0394744330 ) is a new translation without commentary of The Secret Book of James, The Gospel of Thomas, The Book of Thomas, and The Secret Book of John.

James M. Robinson's The Nag Hammadi Library in English : Revised Edition (0060669357) has been around 25 years now and is in 2nd edition. It has introductions to each of the 13 Nag Hammadi Codices and the Papyrus Berioinensis 8502.

The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (0140278079) by Geza Vermes has selected works....a complete work is more difficult to achieve than the publisher's marketing concept indicates. His commentary generates strong reactions.

Elaine Pagels has 2 books (The Gnostic Gospels 0679724532 and Beyond Belief : The Secret Gospel of Thomas 0375501568) that have received considerable attention lately. For many, her work is controversial in that it is written for popular consumption and there is a strong modern interpretation. She does attempt to reinterpret ancient gender relationships in the light of modern feminist thinking. While this is a useful (and entertaining) aspect of college women's studies programs, it is not as unethical as some critics claim. As hard as they may try, all historians interpret the past in the context of the present. Obviously there is value in our attempts to re-interpret the past in the light of our own time.

If you want the full scholarly work it is W. Schneemelcher's 2 volume New Testament Apocrypha.


Rating:
Summary: An adequate source for this text
Review: The case for reading the Dead Sea Scrolls is not as compelling as the case for reading the Bible. Assuming their truth value is identical (i.e., both contain or do not contain the word of God), the Bible has the added attraction of being a fundamental text of Western culture. The day may come when popular literature, song and film are sprinkled with allusions to the Community Rule, but we're not there yet.

But you ought to read the Dead Sea Scrolls anyway. You ought to read them because they shed light on an important point -- the "Intertestamental Period" -- where the Bible is dark. You ought to read them because they fill in some of the vacuum from which Christianity appears to spring. You ought to read them because they're interesting. You ought to read them for their moral content and because, just maybe, these books belong alongside the books of the Bible as inspired prophetic literature.

Vermes's translation is fluid and readable and this book contains all the significant Scrolls texts which are not either simply fragments or biblical texts. A useful added bonus is a series of essays by Vermes about the history, practices and theology of the Dead Sea Scrolls community.

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Summary: Live From The Judean Desert... Okay, Not Live, But...
Review: The case for reading the Dead Sea Scrolls is not as compelling as the case for reading the Bible. Assuming their truth value is identical (i.e., both contain or do not contain the word of God), the Bible has the added attraction of being a fundamental text of Western culture. The day may come when popular literature, song and film are sprinkled with allusions to the Community Rule, but we're not there yet.

But you ought to read the Dead Sea Scrolls anyway. You ought to read them because they shed light on an important point -- the "Intertestamental Period" -- where the Bible is dark. You ought to read them because they fill in some of the vacuum from which Christianity appears to spring. You ought to read them because they're interesting. You ought to read them for their moral content and because, just maybe, these books belong alongside the books of the Bible as inspired prophetic literature.

Vermes's translation is fluid and readable and this book contains all the significant Scrolls texts which are not either simply fragments or biblical texts. A useful added bonus is a series of essays by Vermes about the history, practices and theology of the Dead Sea Scrolls community.

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Summary: MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN
Review: THE SCRIPTURES FOUND IN THE CAVES OF THE ESSENES AT THE DEAD SEA IS CORRECT.
ANY VARIATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES SHOULD BE DESTROYED.
YOU ARE NOT TO ADD ANY ADDITIONAL FORE-WORD, LETTERS, NUMBERS, OR COMMENTS.
THESE SCRIPTURES ARE NOT TO BE EDITED, THEY ARE TO BE WRITTEN JUST EXACTLY AS THEY ARE WRITTEN IN THE SAME SCRIPT.
THE SCRIPTURES ARE TO BE TRANSLATED INTO ALL LANGUAGES WITHOUT ANY DEVIATION OF MEANING, WITHOUT ANY INTERPRETATIONS.
ANY VERSION OTHER THAN THE ESSENE SCROLLS WITH ANY DEVIATION IS NOT CORRECT.
ANY OTHER VERSION WITH ANY DEVIATION IS TO BE DESTROYED.
WHEN PRINTED THE HOLY SCRIPTURES WILL BE PRINTED WITHOUT ANY ADDITIONAL FORE-WORD OR INTERPRETATIONS.
THE PRINTING COMPANY MARK WILL BE PRINTED WITH NO ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OR THANKS TO ANYONE NOT EVEN GOD ALMIGHTY, UNLESS IT IS IN THE SCRIPTURES (SCROLLS) AND THEREFORE AUTHORIZED BY GOD ALMIGHTY.
DO NOT DEVIATE FROM THE ORIGINAL SCRIPTURES EVEN IF YOU CAN HEAR AND ARE A SEER.
THE PROPHETS AND DECIPLES DO NOT DO ANY TRICKS TO FALSIFY DOCUMENTATIONS THEY ARE AWAKENED FOR TRUTH.
EPIPHANY, THANK YOU FATHER, I LOVE YOU WITH ALL MY HEART! REBECCA LYNN