Qumran Cave 4: XI: Psalms to Chronicles

by Frank Moore Cross

This volume continues the publication of the series of biblical Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran. It contains forty-two manuscripts of the Writings or Wisdom Books, from Psalms to Chronicles. These Hebrew texts antedate by a millennium what had previously been considered the earliest surviving biblical manuscripts in the original language. They document a pluriformity that characterized the ancient biblical textual tradition before the text became uniform later in the Rabbinic period. The Book of Psalms was the most widely copied book at Qumran, and the manuscripts display some alternate arrangements.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 11, 2000

About the author

Frank Moore Cross Jr. (1921–2012) was the Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages Emeritus at Harvard University, notable for his work in the interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, his 1973 magnum opus Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, and his work in Northwest Semitic epigraphy. Many of his essays on the latter topic have since been collected in Leaves from an Epigrapher's Notebook.