The Dead Sea Scrolls

his book will clearly be sought after and read by scholar, student and interested layperson alike. Eileen Schuller has a delightfully clear style which makes complicated matters very accessible and even those who know the territory learn much fi-om her whenever she puts something in the public domain.- George J. Brooke, Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis, University of Manchester Here for the first time is Eileen Schuller's expanded lecture series, given as the John Albert Hall lectures at the University ofVictoria in 2002. Beginning with the question, what have we learned from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Eileen Schuller presents a discovery made over 50 years ago, that everyone has heard at least something about already, and takes the reader through, decade by decade, highlighting key events and accomplishments in scrolls scholarship. Each chapter presents specific areas where the scrolls have made a distinctive contribution to how we think about key questions in the development of early Judaism and early Christianity. In each chapter a few specific passages from the Scrolls are discussed, so that the reader is familiar with the actual text of the scrolls themselves. The specific areas discussed are Scriptures and how biblical writing was formed, transmitted and interpreted, then Prayers, hymns and liturgies found in the scrolls, looking at their significance for our understanding of the development of Jewish and Christian worship, and finally drawing on both text and archaeological materials Schuller demonstrates that contrary to certain early claims that the Scrolls authors were a male, celibate, misogynist group, the scrolls in fact provide considerable information about women.The concluding chapter looks forward to areas of research and questions to be asked in the future. Eileen Schuller is a Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at McMasters University, and for 2005-2006 will be a Humboldt Research Fellow at University of Goettingen working on a commentary on the Hodayot (Thanksgiving Psalms). One of the world's foremost authorities on the Dead Sea Scrolls - and the Thanksgiving Scroll in particular - she has been involved in editing and publishing the Dead Sea Scrolls since the early 1980s.