All About The Scrolls
TliE Dead Sea Scrolls have often produced more h_eat than light from their would-be interpreters and it is high time that an authoritative and comparatively objective description of these finds was produced for the interested but non-specialist reader. It is just this that Dr. Millar Burrows has achieved in The Dead Sea Scrolls (Seeker and Warburg, 30s,). This volume includes a description of how the finds were discovered, a discussion on the dates of the manuscripts, the probable dates of their composition and the nature of the community who owned them. After an assessment of their importance, Dr. Burrows gives his own translation of the principal manuscripts. compared with the summary of the finds lh the current number of Revue Biblique, Dr. Burrows's account may be thought to under- state the diversity and multiplicity of the texts; while his chapter on the relevance of the finds for the interpretation of the New Testament and the early church, although succinct and judicious, might well have been enlarged. Any book today on the scrolls can only give an interim report. Since this volume was first published in America in 1955, another scroll has been unrolled and more material has been published; one of the copper scrolls, we are told, has disclosed exciting news of hidden treasure: and now there is talk of great new finds in Cave XI, said to contain manuscripts of great importance, including the complete texts of Leviticus and the Psalms.
Nothing, however, has appeared which should make Dr. Burrows modify his con- elusions and this book will remain the authoritative and standard work on the sub- ject for some years, Maddeningly, there is ne index.
HUGH MONTEPIORE
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