The Damascus Document

What sets this commentary apart is its philosophical sophistication, adopting a broadly Gadamerian approach to the question of what a “work” is. * Adam Booth, C.S.C., Stonehill College, North Easton, MA, Catholic Books Review *Scholars in a variety of fields should salute the publication of Steven Fraade’s new commentary on the Damascus Document. * Lawrence H. Schiffman, Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University and Director of the Global Institute for Advanced Research in Jewish Studies. *A most pleasing volume that demonstrates clarity, erudition and discernment throughout. * Siam Bhayro, Journal of Jewish Studies *The Damascus Document, the second volume in the series, Oxford Commentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls (OCDSS), is such a work that will be helpful to both new readers and experts…Fraade’s balanced and succinct style of commentary is congruous with the mission of the Oxford Commentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls series- “to provide scholarship of the highest level that is accessible to non-specialists.” The commentary is a product of and testament to the author’s meticulous use of the comparative method and will surely contribute to conversations between scholars of Scrolls and specialists in cognate fields. * Tianruo Jiang, The Articles *These brief observations underscore the scholarly value of this commentary. The author deserves commendation for having concisely assembled a substantial body of documentation pertaining to the various manuscripts of the Damascus Document. * Emile Puech, Revue Biblique *Fraade’s learned com­mentary bridges these fissures and, in doing so, demonstrates the creative and intellectual scale of ambition and learrting of the ancient authors of this text. The volume will become a standard point of reference for scholars and stu­dents of the Damascus Document, Second Temple Judaism and the history of Jewish law. * Charlotte Hempel, Recension *These few remarks underline the interest in reading this commentary. We will be grateful to the author for having gathered in a few condensed pages a rich documentation concerning the various copies of the Damascus Document regulating family life, according to the law of Moses correctly interpreted, in the various Essene camps distributed in towns and villages, a composition parallel to the Rule of the Community for singles of Qumran. * Émile Puech, Revue de livres *

Steven D. Fraade is the Mark Taper Professor of the History of Judaism at Yale University in the Department of Religious Studies and the Program in Judaic Studies. He has held a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and was awarded a National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship for From Tradition to Commentary. Fraade has published widely in the history of ancient Judaism, rabbinic literature, multilingualism in antiquity, scriptural translation and interpretation, ancient Jewish legal rhetoric, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is the author Enosh and His Generation: Pre-Israelite Hero and History in Post-Biblical Interpretation (1984), From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (1991), and Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages (2011). He is the co-editor of Rabbinic Perspectives: Rabbinic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls (2006).