Saturday, November 28, 2015

Crawford and Wassen (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept of a Library

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:
The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept of a Library

Edited by Sidnie White Crawford, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Cecilia Wassen, Uppsala University
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Concept of a Library presents twelve articles by renowned experts in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran studies. These articles explore from various angles the question of whether or not the collection of manuscripts found in the eleven caves in the vicinity of Khirbet Qumran can be characterized as a “library,” and, if so, what the relation of that library is to the ruins of Qumran and the group of Jews that inhabited them. The essays fall into the following categories: the collection as a whole, subcollections within the overall corpus, and the implications of identifying the Qumran collection as a library.
Some potentially related past posts on ancient libraries are here and here and links.