A large amount of Leviticus material has been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yet there is surprisingly little secondary scholarly analysis of the role of Leviticus in this corpus. The book of Leviticus survives in several manuscripts; it also features in quotations and allusions, so that it seems to be a foundational source for the ideology behind the composition of some of the nonscriptural texts. Indeed this volume argues that the ideology of the Holiness Code persisted in the communities that collected the manuscripts and placed them in the Qumran Caves.

This volume examines the formation, final form, themes, and interpretation of the Book of Leviticus. Contributors include well-known experts on Leviticus: Baruch Levine, Jacob Milgrom, Graeme Auld, Andreas Ruwe, and James Watts address Leviticus in its compositional and literary context; Alfred Marx, Mary Douglas, Walter Houston, and Adrian Schenker treat issues of cult and sacrifice; and Rene Peter-Contesse, Lester Grabbe, and Calum Carmichael discuss Leviticus on the priesthood. A groundbreaking section on Leviticus in translation and interpretation includes essays by Sarianna Metso and Eugene Ulrich, Martin McNamara, David Lane, Peter Flint, Robert Kugler, Bruce Chilton, Hannah Harrington, Gerhard Bodendorfer, Linda Schearing, and Judith Romney Wegner. These essays will serve students of Leviticus well for long time to come.

In Leviticus at Qumran: Text and Interpretation Robert A. Kugler and Kyung S. Baek provide an indispensable reference work for understanding how the Book of Leviticus shaped the people of Qumran and their texts. Focusing on issues central to the Qumran community’s identity—sacrifice, priesthood, purity, and holiness—Leviticus played a pivotal role in the group’s self-understanding. The volume presents all of the texts of Leviticus from Qumran with their variants (with contributions from Eugene Ulrich and Peter Flint), lists over three hundred and fifty uses of Leviticus in the scrolls from Qumran, and provides brief summaries of each of those uses. It provides all the data necessary to explore how Leviticus shaped the people of the scrolls.

In The Love of Neighbour in Ancient Judaism, Kengo Akiyama traces the development of the mainstay of early Jewish and Christian ethics: "Love your neighbour." Akiyama examines several Second Temple Jewish texts in great detail and demonstrates a diverse range of uses and applications that opposes a simplistic and evolutionary trajectory often associated with the development of the "greatest commandment" tradition. The monograph presents surprisingly complex interpretative developments in Second Temple Judaism uncovering just how early interpreters grappled with the questions of what it means to love and who should be considered as their neighbour.

Michael Avioz builds upon his earlier work on Josephus as an exegete, providing a comprehensive study of Josephus' contribution to the crystallization of the Halakha which focuses on the similarities (and dissimilarities) between his work and the tannaitic sources, as well as contemporary Second Temple sources. Avioz begins by providing a clear definition of Halakha, and offering an explanation of methodology and sources. He then examines the structure and contents of the Pentateuch in Josephus' writing, before moving on to more specific coverage of the Decalogue in the work of Josephus and its relation to other laws in the Pentateuch. Further analysis is applied to the laws in the books of Leviticus-Deuteronomy and on laws that appear outside the Pentateuch. Throughout, Avioz makes close comparisons between biblical laws and Josephus' rewriting of them, in order to consider the reasons behind this rewriting and the origins of the texts that Josephus may have had access to in his exegetical work. Avioz is consequently able to draw clear conclusions about the interpretative traditions that Josephus had access to and worked within, and about how he used them in his writing.

In this volume, Schiffman and Gross present a new edition of all of the manuscript evidence for the Temple Scroll from Qumran. It includes innumerable new readings and restorations of all of the manuscripts as well as a detailed critical apparatus comparing the manuscripts of the Temple Scroll as well as Qumran biblical manuscripts and the ancient versions. Each manuscript is provided with a new translation, and a commentary is presented for the main text. Also included are a general introduction, bibliography of published works on the text, catalog of photographic evidence, and concordance including all vocables in all the manuscripts and their restorations. This work promises to move research on the Temple Scroll to a new level.

This volume contains 17 essays on the subjects of text, canon, and scribal practice. It provides an overview of the Qumran evidence for text and canon of the Bible, an essay on the development of Hebrew and thematic studies.