The Aramaic texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most important discoveries for the history of Aramaic and for the background of early Judaism and Christianity. They constitute a “missing link” between Biblical Aramaic and the later Aramaic of the targums and midrashic literature. Among them are the oldest texts we have of the Book of Enoch and Tobit, as well as the earliest Aramaic translation of a portion of Scripture, the Targum of Job. Other previously unknown texts such as the Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Levi Document have opened up many new avenues of research on the literature of early Judaism, and the dialect itself is chronologically the one nearest to the origins of Christianity. Now, for the first time, there is a comprehensive dictionary of all the Aramaic texts from the 11 Qumran caves, from a noted specialist in Qumran Aramaic. It is the first dictionary in any language devoted solely to this important Aramaic corpus and contains a wealth of detail, including definitions, extensive citations of the sources, discussions of difficult passages, revised readings, and a bibliography. It will be an indispensable resource to anyone interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the literature of early Judaism and Christianity, and the Aramaic language.

This book provides the first comprehensive treatment of the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls from the caves of Qumran. These nearly one hundred scrolls open a window onto a vibrant period of Jewish history for which we previously had few historical sources. Scholars and advanced students will find a general introduction to the corpus, detailed, richly-illustrated profiles of individual scrolls, and up-to-date studies of their Aramaic language and scribal practices. The goal of the book is to foster and support further study of these scrolls against the historical backdrop of early Judaism and ancient Mediterranean scribal cultures.

This volume contains studies that explore the content and meaning of the Qumran manuscripts of the Aramaic Books of Enoch, the Book of Giants, and related literature. The essays shed new light on the lexicon, orthography and grammar of the Aramaic scrolls, as well as their relationship to schematic astronomy in ancient Mesopotamia. Contributors examine the origin of the angelic tradition of the Watchers, the textual and literary relationship of the Aramaic scrolls to the Book of the Watchers, and the culpability of humanity in the spread of evil on earth according to the myth of the fallen angels.

A reexamination of the people and movements associated with Qumran, their outlook on the world, and what bound them together Dead Sea Scrolls, Revise and Repeat examines the identity of the Qumran movement by reassessing former conclusions and bringing new methodologies to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The collection as a whole addresses questions of identity as they relate to law, language, and literary formation; considerations of time and space; and demarcations of the body. The thirteen essays in this volume reassess the categorization of rule texts, the reuse of scripture, the significance of angelic fellowship, the varieties of calendrical use, and celibacy within the Qumran movement. Contributors consider identity in the Dead Sea Scrolls from new interdisciplinary perspectives, including spatial theory, legal theory, historical linguistics, ethnicity theory, cognitive literary theory, monster theory, and masculinity theory. Features Essays that draw on new theoretical frameworks and recent advances in Qumran studies A tribute to the late Peter Flint, whose scholarship helped to shape Qumran studies

Subdivided into three segments (Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, Qumran), this updated and revised collection of essays represents the work of Emanuel Tov in the past seventeen years. He focuses on various aspects of the textual analysis of the Hebrew and Greek Bible, as well as the Qumran biblical manuscripts in Hebrew and Greek. Further he takes a special interest in the orthography of biblical manuscripts, the nature of the early Masoretic Text, the nature of the Qumran biblical texts and their importance for our understanding of the history of the biblical text, the editions of the Hebrew Bible, and the use of computers in biblical studies. The author also focuses on the interaction between textual and literary criticism and the question of the original text or texts of the Hebrew Bible. His special interests in the Qumran scrolls include the nature of the Qumran corpus, their scribal background, the contents of the various caves, and the number of the compositions and copies found at Qumran. His interest in the Septuagint translation evolves around its text-critical value, the Greek texts from the Judean Desert, and translation technique.

In this volume—the first complete history of Aramaic from its origins to the present day—Holger Gzella provides an accessible overview of the language perhaps most well known for being spoken by Jesus of Nazareth. Gzella, one of the world’s foremost Aramaicists, begins with the earliest evidence of Aramaic in inscriptions from the beginning of the first millennium BCE, then traces its emergence as the first world language when it became the administrative tongue of the great ancient Near Eastern empires. He also pays due diligence to the sacred role of Aramaic within Judaism, its place in the Islamic world, and its contact with other regional languages, before concluding with a glimpse into modern uses of Aramaic. Although Aramaic never had a unified political or cultural context in which to gain traction, it nevertheless flourished in the Middle East for an extensive period, allowing for widespread cultural exchange between diverse groups of people. In tracing the historical thread of the Aramaic language, readers can also gain a stronger understanding of the rise and fall of civilizations, religions, and cultures in that region over the course of three millennia. Aramaic: A History of the First World Language is visually supplemented by maps, charts, and other images for an immersive reading experience, providing scholars and casual readers alike with an engaging overview of one of the most consequential world languages in history.

Since the early 1990s, about two thousand Idumean Aramaic ostraca have found their way onto the antiquities market and are now scattered across a number of museums, libraries, and private collections. This fifth and final volume of the Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea completes the work of bringing these ostraca together in a single publication. Volumes 1–4 published some 1,600 ostraca that gave us insight into agriculture, economics, politics, onomastics, and scribal practices from fourth/third-century BCE Idumea and Judah. The ostraca in volume 5 come from the same milieu, but the information they provide is entirely new and different. This volume presents 485 ostraca, including 99 land descriptions, 168 uncertain texts, and 218 assorted remains, scribal exercises, and forgeries, along with useful indexes and tables and a comparative list of entries. The land descriptions—which record local landmarks, ownership boundaries, and land registration—provide rich complementary material to the rest of the Idumean ostraca. The “uncertain texts” are fragmentary, in poor condition, or contain other abnormalities. As the TAO corpus becomes better understood and as imaging techniques improve, these texts will help to fill gaps in knowledge. The final section includes the remains of scribal practices and forgeries, important because they help to show the authenticity of the other two thousand pieces. A unique collection of documentary sources for fourth/third-century BCE Idumea—and, by extension, Judah—this multivolume work will be a powerful resource for those interested in onomastics and social and economic history.