Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

Texts and fragments are translated as precisely as possible, as they are; nothing substantive is held
back or deleted. A precise transcription into the modern Hebrew characters conventionally used to
render classical Hebrew and/or Aramaic writing, is also provided, so the reader can compare these
with the original photographs or check Translations, if he or she so chooses. Every Translation might
not be perfect, and the arrangement of fragments in some cases still conjectural, but they are precise
and sufficient enough to enable the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, which is indeed the
point of this book.
Also towards this end commentaries on each text are provided, some lengthy, some less so, which
should help the reader pass through the shoals of what are often quite esoteric allusions and interrelationships.
These commentaries also attempt to put matters such as these into a proper historical
perspective, though in these matters, it should be appreciated that Professor Eisenman and Professor
Wise have ideas concerning these things that, while complementary, are not always the same. Both
agree as to the 'Zealot' and/or 'Messianic' character of the texts, but one would go further than the
other in the direction of 'Zadokite', 'Sadducee', and/or 'Jewish Christian' theory.
Every effort is also made to link these new documents with the major texts known from the early days
of Qumran research which were published in the fifties and sixties, including the Damascus
Document, the Community Rule, the Habakkuk Pesher, the War Scroll, and Hymns, which can be
found in compendiums in English available from both Penguin Books and Doubleday. Through these
commentaries the reader will be able to see these earlier works in a new light as well. Without
commentaries of this kind, linking one vocabulary complex with another, one set of allusions with
another - sometimes esoteric, but always imaginative - and new documents like those we provide in
this work, the interpretation of these early texts must remain at best incomplete.
Nor is the number of documents presented here insubstantial. It compares not unfavourably with the
numbers of those already published and demonstrates the importance of open archives and free
competition even in the academic world. It also makes the claim that more time was required to study
these texts than the thirty-five years already expended, and pleas to the public for more patience,
somewhat difficult to understand.
Nor are these documents, as the reader will be able to judge, dull or unimportant. They absolutely
gainsay any notion that there is nothing interesting in the unpublished corpus, just as their style and
literary creativity gainsay any idea that these are somehow inferior compositions. On the contrary,
some, particularly ecstatic and visionary recitals, are of the most exquisite beauty. All are of unique
historical interest.
Of the Cave 4 materials in the DJD series and the 1800 photographs or so in the Facsimile Edition,
about 5 80 separate manuscripts can be identified. Of these, some 380 are non-Biblical, or 'sectarian'
as they are referred to in the field; the rest Biblical. Non-Biblical or sectarian texts are those not found
in the Bible. Except for those apocryphal and pseudepigraphic works that have come down to us
through various traditions, most of these are new, never seen before.
During the somewhat acrimonious exchanges that developed in the press in the 1989 controversy over
access, some claimed that they were willing to share the documents assigned to them. This was