The Damascus Document: (Oxford Commentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls)

Steve D. Fraade offers a new translation, with notes, and detailed commentary to the Dead Sea Scroll most commonly called the Damascus Document, based on both ancient manuscripts from caves along the western shore of the Dead Sea, and medieval manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza. The text is one of the longest and most important of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Its importance derives from several aspects of its contents: its extensive collections of laws, both for the sectarian community that authored it and for the rest of Israel; some of the oldest examples of scriptural interpretation, both legal and narrative, both implicit and explicit, with important implications for our understanding of the evolving status of the Hebrew canon; some of the clearest expressions, often in hortatory form, of the community's self-understanding as an elect remnant of Israel that understands itself in dualistic opposition to the rest of Israel, its practices, and its leaders; important expressions of the community's self-understanding as a priestly alternative to the sacrificial worship in the Jerusalem Temple; expressions of an apocalyptic, eschatological understanding of living as the true Israel in the "end of days;" important expressions of attitudes toward woman, sexual activity, and marriage; importance for our understanding of ancient modes of teaching and of ritual practice; importance for the study of the history of the Hebrew language and its scribal practices. The volume contains a substantial introduction, dealing with these aspects of the Damascus Document and locating its place within the Dead Sea Scrolls more broadly as well as the historical context of ancient Judaism that gave rise to this text.

Table of Contents:
List of Abbreviations Introduction Texts, Translations, Notes, and Commentary Bibliography Index of Ancient Sources Index of Modern Scholars Index of Subjects

About the Author :
Steven D. Fraade is the Mark Taper Professor of the History of Judaism at Yale University in the Department of Religious Studies and the Program in Judaic Studies. He has held a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and was awarded a National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship for From Tradition to Commentary. Fraade has published widely in the history of ancient Judaism, rabbinic literature, multilingualism in antiquity, scriptural translation and interpretation, ancient Jewish legal rhetoric, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is the author Enosh and His Generation: Pre-Israelite Hero and History in Post-Biblical Interpretation (1984), From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (1991), and Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages (2011). He is the co-editor of Rabbinic Perspectives: Rabbinic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls (2006).

Review :
What sets this commentary apart is its philosophical sophistication, adopting a broadly Gadamerian approach to the question of what a "work" is. Scholars in a variety of fields should salute the publication of Steven Fraade's new commentary on the Damascus Document. A most pleasing volume that demonstrates clarity, erudition and discernment throughout. The Damascus Document, the second volume in the series, Oxford Commentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls (OCDSS), is such a work that will be helpful to both new readers and experts...Fraade's balanced and succinct style of commentary is congruous with the mission of the Oxford Commentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls series- "to provide scholarship of the highest level that is accessible to non-specialists." The commentary is a product of and testament to the author's meticulous use of the comparative method and will surely contribute to conversations between scholars of Scrolls and specialists in cognate fields. These brief observations underscore the scholarly value of this commentary. The author deserves commendation for having concisely assembled a substantial body of documentation pertaining to the various manuscripts of the Damascus Document. Fraade's learned com­mentary bridges these fissures and, in doing so, demonstrates the creative and intellectual scale of ambition and learrting of the ancient authors of this text. The volume will become a standard point of reference for scholars and stu­dents of the Damascus Document, Second Temple Judaism and the history of Jewish law. These few remarks underline the interest in reading this commentary. We will be grateful to the author for having gathered in a few condensed pages a rich documentation concerning the various copies of the Damascus Document regulating family life, according to the law of Moses correctly interpreted, in the various Essene camps distributed in towns and villages, a composition parallel to the Rule of the Community for singles of Qumran.