Ebook: Exploring the Dead Sea Scrolls Archaeology and Literature of the Qumran Caves

Among the most prominent hallmarks of the late Prof. Hanan Eshel’s scholarship
are generosity, passion, and an integrative approach. As he described vividly
in his introduction to his book The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hasmonean
State, Prof. Eshel strove to create and maintain conversation between archaeologists
and historians, and to link texts and realia, and the specialists interested
in both. This commitment is highlighted also in the Festschrift dedicated
to Hanan: Go Out and Study the Land (Judges 18:2): Archaeological, Historical,
and Textual Studies in Honor of Hanan Eshel (JSJSup 148; ed. Aren M. Maeir,
Jodi Magness, and Lawrence H. Schiffman; Leiden: Brill, 2012). Shortly before
his untimely death, Prof. Eshel selected the essays in the current volume to serve
as a legacy of that aim. In organizing the selections according to provenance, he
contextualized the textual finds within their archaeological settings and within
the contours of contemporary scholarship. The Qumran texts that stand at the
center of these articles are correlated with archaeological and geographic information
and with a variety of textual sources including epigraphic evidence and,
especially, the Hebrew Bible, Josephus, and rabbinic texts.