Books published by Society of Biblical Literature

Based on papers originally presented at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, 2007, San Diego, Calif.

This volume explores the language and poetic structure of the seven non-Masoretic poems preserved in the Dead Sea Scroll labeled 11Q5. It presents fresh readings of the Hebrew poems, which were last studied intensively almost fifty years ago, stressing their structural and conceptual coherence and incorporating insights gained from the scholarship of recent decades. Each chapter addresses a single poem and describes its poetic structure, including its use of parallelism and allusion to scripture, as well as specific problems related to the poem's interpretation. In addition, the book considers these poems in relation to what they reveal about the development of Hebrew poetry in the late Second Temple period.

Originally published: Leiden; New York: E.J. Brill, 1994.

Contradictions within the book of Jubilees suggest the need for an expanded critical approach. The author uses literary-criticism to propose that the editor of Jubilees adopted extant reworked sources and added his own legal and chronological framework.