Abstract
It was very rewarding to become acquainted with a series that was unknown to me, Very Short Editions, published by Oxford University Press. This particular introduction does justice to its title, as it indeed provides a very short introduction to everything you wanted to know about the Dead Sea Scrolls and never dared to ask. This is the second edition, updating the first one of 2005, but I will not compare the two editions. Suffice it to say that the author did a masterful job in introducing the topic in a pleasant and relaxed way. While reading the various chapters, the reader does not sense that the author was limited to a certain number of words, because he takes time to tell stories and add anecdotes that strictly speaking are a luxury in such a limited framework.
Lim is a born raconteur; he relates in great detail the story of a novel, The Judas Testament, ‘which vividly describes an imagined conspiracy to suppress information damaging to Christian faith’ (pp. 12–14). This book is described in the section dealing with ‘The Vatican and the Dead Sea Scrolls.’ The same section informs the reader in detail on the activities of some of the giants of the first generation of scroll scholars: John Strugnell, John Allegro, and Frank Moore Cross. I learned new facts from sections about ‘Tourism and the Dead Sea Scrolls’, ‘Politics and the Dead Sea Scrolls’, and ‘The Media and the Scrolls’. The author tells us about celebrations and conferences he attended and reports in the first person on the feelings of the public at these many events. He tells us about scandals surrounding the publication of the scrolls. All these topics fill twenty pages.
The bulk of the book describes in 120 small pages the core matters of the research on the scrolls: archeology, the communities of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their beliefs, the scrolls and early Christianity, and much more. The biblical scrolls are introduced in great detail with pictures, passages are explained, and their importance for scholarship is explained. There is room for a special chapter on canon. The reviewer would have wished to have seen a somewhat wider coverage of the content of the non-biblical scrolls, which are treated briefly in an appendix. There is a helpful bibliography and index. Altogether, this is a very helpful, personal, and enjoyable introduction.