This authoritative volume provides reliable, up-to-date information on the literary heritage and social organization of the Qumran community, its religious beliefs, and its links with early Christianity. The reader is given an opportunity to look behind the scenes, to gain an insight into the state of current research on the Dead Sea texts and to experience first-hand the ongoing scholarly debate on the origins of the Essene movement and the Qumran sect.

Florentino García Martínez, a pre-eminent specialist of Qumran Studies, is Professor at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, where he heads the Qumran Institute, and Professor at the Catholic University in Leuven. He is a member of the International Team of Editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls and editorial secretary of the Revue de Qumran and the Journal for the Study of Judaism. García Martínez has written numerous books and articles on the Dead Sea Scrolls, including Qumran and Apocalyptic and Studies on the Aramaic Texts of Qumran (Brill, 1992).
Julio Trebolle Barrera is Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic and Director of the Institute of Religious Studies at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. He is a member of the International Team of Editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls and has written and edited several books on the textual and literary criticism of the Bible and on contemprorary biblical hermeneutics, such as La Biblia judaia y la Biblia cristiana (Madrid, 1993), and The Madrid Qumran Congress (Leiden/Madrid, 1992).