The Developmental Composition of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls

FAIN: FA-55746-11

Eugene C. Ulrich
University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN 46556-4635)

With all the Dead Sea scrolls now published, and with all the biblical scrolls collected into a single volume, the opportunity is ripe for a synthesis of what it all means for scholars and the general public. I propose a monograph describing the much-changed picture of the character of the Scriptures at the beginning of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. These 2000-year-old texts display a rich and unimagined pluriformity, showing the last stages in the long developmental composition of the Bible, prior to the unified picture formerly presented. As Chief Editor of the Biblical Scrolls I reworked them all into The Biblical Qumran Scrolls (2010). Thus, I have all the data compiled. And having written some forty articles on the scrolls, I am proposing to rework these articles into a monograph which will synthesize the learnings and offer scholars and the educated public an illustrated, inductively explained, comprehensive picture of what the biblical scrolls have taught us.