The Laws of the Damascus Document

Book excerpt: The Damascus Document is one of the key texts to have been discovered in both spectacular Jewish manuscript discoveries of the 20 th 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 provides a detailed analysis of the Laws of the Damascus Document which fully incorporates the new cave 4 evidence. The author offers a close reading of the text and identifies a number of literary strata as well as a considerable amount of redactional activity.