A complete translation. 50 key documents. Gave to the church library.
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A translation of the dead sea scrolls, which suffers from a good deal of pedantry. It's interesting for what you can learn about religious history, but overall, many of the scrolls appear to be basically similar to the Hebrew Bible, with differences in wording in places from the books. The tedium of the Biblical begats is in this spot taken over by the tedium of the calendric scrolls, with endless lists of days and dates to explicate the complicated calendar the authors of the scroll were using, and also correlating it with the different calendar being used by other Jewish communities. Overall, it's interesting on the margins, and the authors included a transliteration of the scrolls, so readers could check their translations themselves (for those readers who can read Hebrew and/or Aramaic). It does raise the question of whether Pascal was right in saying there is nothing to lose in believing, since an awful lot of people spent an awful lot of hours on this, which really didn't do anything to improve the human condition at all (and the people I count here are not only the many modern researchers, but the ancient scribes who created and preserved these writings). Overall, not a bad read, but I wouldn't recommend it for casual readers. The jargon flows too freely for that. ( )

Now that all of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been published, this book is pretty much pointless. And Eisenman's theories are a stretch, to say the least. ( )

The first complete translation and interpretation of 50 key documents withheld for over 35 years.

NO OF PAGES: 286 SUB CAT I: Dead Sea Scrolls SUB CAT II: SUB CAT III: DESCRIPTION: For the first time the public will be able to see the most interesting and exciting texts from the unpublished corpus to allow the reader to judge for himself. These texts are accompanied by incisive and readable commentaries aimed at all people.NOTES: SUBTITLE: The First Complete Translation and Interpretation of 50 Key Documents Withheld for Over 35 Years

self-described "The First Complete Translation and Interpretation of 50 Key Documents withheld for over 35 Years"