Hebrew Texts and Language of the Second Temple Period presents discussions on textual and linguistic aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls and of Second Temple Hebrew corpora.

In December 1995 an international symposium was held in Leiden, concerning the subject of the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the book of Ben Sira. The papers, presented at this symposium, are collected in this volume. The papers deal with various aspects of grammar, syntax, and lexicon of Hebrew texts of the Judean Desert. They include the first publications of a Nahal Hever text, and the important apocryphal book of Ben Sira.

The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the book of Ben Sira can be properly understood only in the light of all contemporary Second Temple period sources. With this in mind, 20 experts from Israel, Europe, and the United States convened in Jerusalem in December 2008. These proceedings of the Twelfth Orion Symposium and Fifth International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira examine the Hebrew of the Second Temple period as reflected primarily in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the book of Ben Sira, Late Biblical Hebrew, and Mishnaic Hebrew. Additional contemporaneous sources—inscriptions, Greek and Latin transcriptions, and the Samaritan oral and reading traditions of the Pentateuch—are also noted.

"Discerning Wisdom" provides an overview of all the Qumran wisdom texts. The Dead Sea Scrolls offer crucial evidence for understanding the wisdom of the late Second Temple period and the reception of traditional wisdom in Early Judaism.

This is a publication of papers presented and discussed at the first international congress on the Hebrew language of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the book of Ben Sira held in Leiden in December, 1995. The papers deal with various aspects of the grammar, syntax, and lexicon of the Hebrew of the post-biblical texts.

In 1986, Elisha Qimron published the first comprehensive study of the Hebrew language of the scrolls from Qumran, examining the orthography, phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary of the language. Over twenty years later, his work remains the standard reference on the subject.

Books within Books presents some recent findings and research projects on the fragments of medieval Hebrew manuscripts discovered in the bindings of other manuscripts and early printed books across Europe. This is the second collection of interdisciplinary articles on Hebrew binding fragments presenting current scholarship and its international scope. From the contemporary perspective, the fragments of medieval Hebrew manuscripts preserved until today, through their numbers (estimated 30,000 fragments, so more than double of the number of the known Hebrew volumes produced in medieval Europe ), the texts they carry (some of them have been previously unknown), the insights into book making techniques and finally their economic impact, are an unprecedented source for our knowledge of the Hebrew book culture and literacy as well as the economic and intellectual exchanges between the Jewish minority and their non-Jewish neighbours.