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Document Details :

Title: Dead Sea Scrolls Scholarship in Oxford
Subtitle: Past, Present and Future
Author(s): BROOKE, George J.
Journal: Revue de Qumran
Volume: 32    Issue: 2   Date: numéro 116, 2020   
Pages: 177-193
DOI: 10.2143/RQ.32.2.3289038

Abstract :
This study has three sections. In the first, more extensive section, there is discussion of how Oxford scholars (especially G.R. Driver, C. Roth and C. Rabin) were involved in the initial debates about the date and significance of the Scrolls; they tried to provide them with a context on the basis of known parameters. In the second section, through description of the work of G. Vermes (and some of his students), Oxford is understood as playing a major part in providing a consensus view of the Scrolls, whilst being open to the significance of the new materials emerging in preliminary ways in the 1980s and then in floods in the 1990s. In the third section the contribution of contemporary Oxford scholars (especially M. Bockmuehl and H. Najman) is outlined in terms of its more nuanced attention to contextual issues. What is presented for the story of the Scrolls in Oxford could be described in similar terms for other institutions and so the history of research here is exemplary, even paradigmatic of what has taken place more generally.

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