Preface

The purpose of this book is to provide a complete and reliable translation of the celebrated Dead Sea Scrolls, insofar as the original Hebrew texts have yet been published. Everything that is sufficiently well preserved to make connected sense has been included. Mere fragments, however, have been left out, because there is no point in rendering disjointed (and often incomplete) sentences wrested from their contexts. Furthermore, no translation is offered of the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah or of the other more fragmentarily preserved Biblical manuscripts. The contents of the Bible are readily available in English, and the special contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls in this field is of interest only to scholars. (*)

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[*] For the same reason no translation is offered of fragments from known apocryphal and pseudepigraphic works.

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This book is addressed to laymen. It is not intended as an independent scholarly contribution to the problem (or problems) of the Scrolls, nor as a survey of, or introduction to, the current controversy about them. It is concerned only with what the Scrolls themselves have to say, not with what has been or is being said about them. The Introduction therefore confines itself to providing background material for an understanding of the documents, but does not venture into any detailed discussion of the various theories that have been advanced concerning their date, the possibility of recognizing historical allusions, and the like.

The present writer holds the view that:

(a) The texts here presented were composed at various dates between about 250 B.C. and 68 A.D.

(b) They formed part of the library of a religious brotherhood located at Qumran, but not all of them were necessarily composed in the first place by or for members of that community. The latter may simply have adopted them out of a body of traditional literature dealing with that future regenerated House of Israel which they were seeking to create.

(c) The Dead Sea Scrolls and the religious movement which they depict help us to reconstruct the spiritual climate of early Christianity and throw light especially on the mission of John the Baptist and on the constitution of the primitive Church. But the Scrolls contain no anticipation of, or parallel to distinctive Christian doctrines, e.g., Incarnation, Vicarious Atonement or Communion.

(d) The religious brotherhood represented by the Scrolls did not believe, as has been supposed, in a martyred Messianic Teacher of Righteousness' who reappeared posthumously to his disciples and whose Second Coming was awaited. The title Teacher of Righteousness' (more correctly, 'true exponent of the Law') designates an office, not a particular person. The passage of the texts on which the sensational theory has been based has been misunderstood. The writers of the Scrolls indeed looked forward to the advent of a prophetic and priestly Teacher before the Final Era, but this was not the Second Coming of a martyred Christ

(e) It is unsafe at present to draw historical conclusions from the texts or to speculate about historical allusions in them. Indeed, the latter need not necessarily refer to the vicissitudes of the particular Qumran community.

More than to all the foregoing, however, the writer ad-: heres to the view that the Dead Sea Scrolls should be regarded as something more than the subject matter of a scholarly controversy. For those who will read them sympathetically, they possess value in their own right as conveying the religious message of men who gave up the world and were able to find God in a wilderness, simply because they preferred nakedness to motley and because they realized that, in the larger analysis, crucifixion can itself be resurrection.

The translation of the non-literary documents (e.g., The Manual of Discipline) aims to reproduce the original in idiomatic English. The same liberties have been taken in breaking up the sequences of the Hebrew sentences, rendering copulas by punctuation-marks, and the like as would readily be permitted—even expected—in any version of a modern work. These renderings, therefore, while they are not to be regarded as slavish 'ponies', are not mere paraphrases. They stick strictly to the letter of the text, and every word of the original is covered.

The hymns and prayers present a special problem. These are written, by and large, in the style of the Biblical Psalms; but to the composer this style was a conscious archaism, while it fell on the ears of the reciters with the same effect as does the language of the Anglican Prayerbook or the King James Version upon the modern churchgoer. The only feasible way of reproducing this effect is to fall back on 'Biblical English'. Readers who may be irritated or impeded by the 'howbeits' and 'whiloms' and the like need only to be reminded that the original reciters were, in all probability, just as much put out by the plethora of rare and recondite words and by the artificial manipulation of Biblical 'tags' in which the authors indulged. But to smooth this out would be to lose the flavor; it would be like trying to make Lyly talk the language of Housman.

As for the other literary texts, my aim has been to bring out not only the overt meanings of words and phrases, as these might be determined in a dictionary, but also their subliminal suggestions and associations. For it scarcely needs pointing out that it is precisely in the conveyance or evocation of these latter that the art of any creative writer really lies. A translator therefore short-changes both author and reader if he does not at least try his best to reproduce tone as well as text. In the present case, this applies especially to the rendering of the commentaries and discourses on passages of Scripture, where at least half of the sense depends on what is read into the text, as the complement of what is read out of it.

Obviously, this involves a subjective element, but so does all intelligent reading, for meaning is, in the final analysis, the junction of an author's statement with a reader's experience and perception. The translator is, in fact, in much the same position as is a concert artist playing a score; he has to use his ear and heart as well as his hands; and no two performers will play the same piece alike. In other words, this book represents my own understanding of the Scrolls. No one can honestly produce any other kind of translation of anything.

For the benefit of those who may wish to use this book alongside of the original texts, I should like to point out that the translations have been made in all cases from the facsimile plates, not from the editors' transcriptions. This means that in a few instances I have read faint traces or ambiguous spellings somewhat differently.

Then, too, it should be pointed out that in rendering the innumerable Biblical 'tags' that are interwoven in all the texts, I have not simply fallen back on the standard English versions. The original authors often understood the Scriptural passages in a way quite different from ours, and more often they deliberately manipulated them to produce effective phrases and tropes. In all cases I have carefully consulted the Ancient Versions (especially the Aramaic Targum and the Syriac Peshitta) hi order, if possible, to recover from those sources traces of the tradition that the authors may have followed.

Not infrequently, this has provided the clue to expressions that would otherwise be obscure; but it means that hi translating the 'tags' I have had perforce to render them somewhat unrecognizable to those brought up on the English Bible. This is especially so in the case of the Hymns, where the impression that is made on a reader familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures can scarcely be reproduced. For even measure, however, I have cited in the notes all the main Scriptural passages from which the writers borrowed. The reader must be warned, nonetheless, that these will have to be turned up in the Hebrew Bible. (It is for that reason that they are cited according to the Hebrew rather than the English numeration.)

Finally, the reader is asked to bear in mind that only a fraction of the material recovered from Qumran has yet been published. All work on these documents is therefore in large measure provisional. Many of us who stand outside the charmed circle of the 'Scrolls team' in Jerusalem deplore the fact that, after nearly twenty years, so relatively little has been made generally available to us, and even more the tendency of those in charge of the texts to publish tantalizing snippets and excerpts, the proposed interpretations of which other scholars cannot control because so much of the context has not yet been revealed to them. One cannot but contrast this with the promptness and rapidity with which the important cuneiform tablets from Ras Shamra or the Hittite texts from Boghazkoy are being made available, and regret wistfully that the prevailing policy will, by the hazards of mortality, prevent a whole generation of older scholars from making their contribution. Meanwhile, we can try only to do by our strength whatsoever our hand attaineth to do.

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