The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls. (Briefly Noted).

The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls. By Philip R. Davies, George J. Brooke, and Philip Callaway (Thames & Hudson, $34.95). It is now 55 years since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls--800 documents from eleven caves--and the five chapters in this lavishly illustrated book (216 illustrations, of which 84 are in color) report the conclusions scholars have come to--and still argue about. The authors tell about the discovery of the scrolls, describe the various Judaisms that were alive at the time the scrolls were written, and discuss what has been learned (more or less) from the excavation of the Qum-ran community. They list what was found in each cave and provide an introduction to all the major writings. Finally, the authors assess the meaning of these discoveries and attempt to identify who wrote these scrolls. Many scholars now believe that the majority of the scrolls were brought to rather than written at Qumran. The scrolls contain the seeds of elements that reemerge in both Christianity and rabb inic Judaism and help us to understand the relationship between these two religious systems. This beautiful and relatively inexpensive book contains competent essays in relatively short and digestible chunks.