The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Resource for Qumran Scholars of all levels
Review: After many years of hearing about the Dead Sea Scrolls, but not being able to read the original texts, one is now able to read the Hebrew and Aramaic texts from Qumran in modern square script(some Greek texts are also contained). The texts are unpointed just as the manuscripts themselves are. Bibliographical information is listed for the Biblical texts, but their Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek content are not included in the book. In most cases the Biblical texts align with the Masoretic text. Having the Hebrew and English text in parallel allows people who know a little Hebrew to work with the text. The paperback edition is a better investment as there are errors within the book, most of them minor. Overall this book fills a huge void in Dead Sea Scrolls research and despite some flaws, it is a must for any student of the Qumran scrolls.

Rating:
Summary: The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition
Review: Even though it has been 50 years from the time these discoveries started to be published, this is the first time a Hebrew/English edition of the "published texts" has ever appeared. There have always been English translations available, regularly updated as the findings were gradually released, but students who wished to explore the original language always had to visit some college library and make copies from the journals or consult some edition that was in French or German. Individual scrolls or a particular grouping of text might appear in both languages, but nothing presented this corpus to English readers before this Study Edition.
The work itself is not a critical edition. It is actually more of a catalogue of the corpus of manuscripts, providing the non-Biblical texts in their original language (Hebrew or Aramaic) with an English translation on facing pages. As a result, many of the texts occur several times, because every manuscript of each work is provided. This reveals how some of the texts were recovered, as one set of fragments fills the gaps of another. But in each case, the "recovered" text is given in brackets, and the student is able to flip back and forth to see how the fragments are related. However, there are many reconstructions that are not supported by an actual manuscript, so this edition does make it possible to detect unsupported emendations, which is of the greatest importance to any student.
As for the subject of Qumran itself, the site, the caves, the dates of these materials, the place they hold in ancient literature and history, even their relation to the Bible, there is not a word. This is purely the sources without comment, and leaves you to still obtain a good edition of the non-Biblical materials we have always had (Enoch, Jubilees, Testament of the 12 Patriarchs, etc.)which are only represented by fragments in this collection, but essential to understand this corpus. Even worse then this, the Biblical book of Ecclesiasticus (Ben Syrah), also represented by fragments in the Dead Sea Scrolls, does not exist in such a convenient Hebrew/English edition.
While I find this work satisfying and useful, it has occurred to me that, after all these years, even if this edition was worth the wait, we must still wait for such materials as I listed above to be presented in a similar form.

Rating:
Summary: Handy reference, gives the text & translation only
Review: It is two-volume compendium following the scholarly enumeration of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It also includes the Hebrew and Aramaic text and newly edited English translations and summaries of all biblical and nonbiblical scrolls found at Qumran. This work was designed to accompany course work as a practical reference tool to facilitate research of the Scrolls. It lacks the general introductions and other interpretive matter of other translations that may bias a reading of the texts, but it does include bibliographical references to other translations and studies. Because of this more invisible editorial intervention the work will best serve students who are learning how to read and interperted these texts. As a handy reference work nothing else is as useful. Also this less expensive edition will make this a much perferred edition.

Rating:
Summary: A Notch Above the Others
Review: There are two reasons that _The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition_ is a notch above other comprehensive translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls. One is that it provides a transliteration of almost all of the manuscripts. The second is that not only non-biblical texts are translated. And since I have a Bruce Zuckerman photo of a couple of the DSS mss, I can verify the translation of the mss. Most of all, this two volume work includes extensive bibliographical work.

I know professional scholars who prefer _The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition_.