First Glance

Amid the massive media coverage of the breaking of the Dead Sea Scrolls monopoly, scant attention has been paid to the content of the scrolls. What do they tell us about the roots of Christianity and the period before the rise of Rabbinic Judaism? Now James C. VanderKam helps fill the void with “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Early Christianity—How Are They Related?” This unusually important article will appear in two parts in this and the next issue of BR.

One of the more recently appointed members of the official Dead Sea Scroll editing team, VanderKam has been assigned the manuscripts of the Book of Jubilees found in Qumran Cave 4. A scholar of remarkable linguistic facility, he is fluent in five modern languages and ten ancient languages. VanderKam serves as professor of Old Testament at Notre Dame University and chairs the Ancient Manuscripts Committee of the American Schools of Oriental Research. In his extensive publications he has concentrated on the pseudepigraphic and eschatological books of the intertestamental period. The author of Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (Catholic Biblical Association, 1984) and The Book of Jubilees (Peeters, 1989), VanderKam is now working on several books simultaneously, including an introductory textbook to the intertestamental period. His “The People of the Scrolls: Essenes or Sadducees?” appeared in the April 1991 BR.