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The Damascus Document is one of the key texts to have been discovered in both spectacular Jewish manuscript discoveries of the twentieth century: the Cairo Genizah and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The legal part of this document has until recently received little scholarly attention. With the recent publication of eight manuscripts of the Damascus Document from Cave 4, which provide a substantial amount of additional legal material, the legal part of this document is set to be the focus of research in coming years.

This volume, first published in 1998, provides a detailed analysis of the laws of the Damascus Document that fully incorporates the new Cave 4 evidence. Hempel offers a close reading of the text and identifies a number of literary strata and a considerable amount of redactional activity.

“This is a sophisticated grappling with very difficult material and must be taken into account in all future descriptions of the history and organization of the movement reflected in the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls.”
—G. J. Brooke, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Charlotte Hempel, Ph.D. (1995), University of London, is Birmingham Fellow at the University of Birmingham. Her publications include The Damascus Texts (2000) and The Penal Code Reconsidered in Legal Texts and Legal Issues (1997).