The Dead Sea scrolls

"The student who undertakes the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls soon realizes the vastness of this modern aspect of biblical studies. The bearing of the discovery of these texts on the technical study of the Bible is far from having been exploited. To some people the topic of Dead Sea Scrolls may seem to be 'old hat,' but when one realizes that we are still waiting for the publication of about 70 percent of the texts from Qumran Cave 4, then it is evident that much important material is still to be brought to light and that the full bearing of this remarkable manuscript-discovery on the OT and NT is still to be worked out...the Dead Sea Scrolls...contain not only forms of the text of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Scriptures, but also much other Palestinian Jewish literature of the last two centuries BC and of the first century AD. They bear upon the history and archaeology of the Roman period of Palestine, and the pertinence of them in providing a Palestinian Jewish background for many NT writings is far from having been adequately assessed...Students...all too frequently [are] confronted with the problem of trying to find out where the texts to be studied have actually been published, either in a definitive or a preliminary form, and where one must go for secondary literature on them. For many of the texts have been published in partial or preliminary forms in out-of-the-way places, in different periodicals, or in Festschriften; and it is not easy to keep track of them...In an effort to sort out all this material, to explain the various sigla used for it, to indicate the places of publication of the Dead Sea Scroll material made available to date, to explain the contents of the texts, and to introduce the student to various tools of study, this book has been composed. It includes not only the list of sites where the texts have been found and the full bibliographical titles of the major publications, but also guides to further material: bibliographies of the Dead Sea Scrolls, survey articles, other attempts to list the material, concordances, dictionaries, and grammars for the study of the texts, secondary collections of Qumran texts, translations in modern languages, outlines of more important, longer Qumran texts, and some of the more important bibliography on selected topics of scroll-study or secondary literature about them" -- Forward, p. xiii-xiv.