More Info
Scholarly Editions and Translations

The texts and translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls are now available in a variety of print and electronic editions.

Critical Editions

Early Editions:

Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark's Monastery (2 vols.; New Haven: The American Schools of Oriental Research, 1950–1951). English edition; second volume has transcription of the Hebrew text with English translation.

Jacob Licht, The Thanksgiving Scroll: A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judaea (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1957). Hebrew transcription, introduction, and notes.

Jacob Licht, The Rule Scroll: A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judaea (1QS, 1QSa, 1QSb) (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1965). Hebrew transcription, introduction, and notes.

E. L. Sukenik, The Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew University (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik and the Hebrew University, 1954; The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1955). 1954 edition is Hebrew; 1955 edition has English introduction.

Nahman Avigad and Yigael Yadin, A Genesis Apocryphon: A Scroll From the Wilderness of Judaea (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press and the Shrine of the Book, 1956; published separately in Hebrew and English).

Yadin, Yigael. The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness (Hebrew edition: Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1955; English edition: trans. Batya and Chaim Rabin; London: Oxford University Press, 1962). Transcription, introduction and notes.

Current Editions and Series:

Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series (DJD): This series of critical editions of most of the scroll fragments features transcriptions, translations (English or French), and photographs of the scrolls. The photographic plates use the photographs taken for the Palestinian Archeological Museum; the plates for each volume were produced from full-size sharpened and digitized PAM negatives. The series includes over 900 hundred individual texts. The first DJD volume appeared in 1955. Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University serves as the current editor-in-chief; although the 39–volume series was virtually completed in 2001, a few scheduled volumes plus re-editions of older volumes are still in the pipeline.

The Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project, general editor James H. Charlesworth. These volumes present new critical editions, commentaries, and English translations:
James H. Charlesworth, et al. The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1994– ).

Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin G. Abegg Jr. (eds.), A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls, The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts from Cave Four, Fascicles I-IV (Biblical Archaeological Society: Washington D.C., 1991–1996). This edition of at the time unpublished scroll fragments was constructed from the Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance compiled in the early years of scrolls research. Its usefulness has largely been superseded by later editions and electronic tools, but it still may contain valuable readings.

Text Editions Outside of the DJD Series

Carol Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition (Harvard Semitic Studies 27; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985). Critical edition of the Hebrew text with English translations, introduction and notes.

Elisha Qimron, The Temple Scroll: A Critical Edition with Extensive Reconstructions (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1996). Reconstruction of the Hebrew text with English introduction and notes.

Eileen M. Schuller, Non-Canonical Psalms from Qumran: A Pseudepigraphic Collection (Harvard Semitic Studies 28; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986). Critical edition of 4Q380 and 381 with English translations, introduction and notes.

Yigael Yadin, Jonas C. Greenfield, Ada Yardeni, and Baruch A. Levine, The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Nabatean-Aramaic Papyri (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, Israel Museum Shrine of the Book, 2002). Critical edition of the texts, with English introduction and commentary; volume 2 has photographic plates.

Yadin, Yigael. The Temple Scroll (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1977–1983; original Hebrew edition: 3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, Israel Museum Shrine of the Book, 1977). Critical edition of the Hebrew text, with English introduction and commentary, and photographic plates.

Photographic Editions

Eisenman R.H. & Robinson, J.M. (eds.), A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Vol.Vol. I+II (Biblical Archaeology Society: Washington, D.C. 1991). Produced by the Biblical Archeology Society from a set of small-format reproductions of many photographs from the PAM series. Often the plates’ small size makes them difficult to read. The DJD volumes have replaced much of the usefulness of this publication.

Emanuel Tov, with the collaboration of Stephen J. Pfann (eds.) under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority, The Dead Sea Scrolls on Microfiche and its Companion Volume (Brill: Leiden, 1995): The comprehensive facsimile edition is the published version of the Microfiche Edition Masters (see below). The Companion Volume, also available separately, contains articles, both technical and anecdotal, by expert scholars about the photographs at the Rockefeller Museum.

Brooke, G.J. with Bond, H.K.(eds.), The Allegro Qumran Collection: Supplement to the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls on Microfiche’ (Brill: Leiden, 1996).

The Microfiche Edition Masters:  Co-edited by Emanuel Tov and Stephen Pfann, the collection is a set of microfiches produced from the original negatives by P. Moerkerk, a photographer from publishers E. Brill/IDC under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).  The microfiches include the whole collection of negatives stored at the IAA.
Due to the method by which the microfiches were made, and the fact that they were done on Fuji II high Resolution microfiche film, information preserved only in the layered emulsion is preserved on the microfiche. The masters are kept with E. Brill/IDC in the Netherlands.

English translations (NB: most of these volumes include only the nonbiblical texts found at Qumran)

Martin G. Abegg, Jr., Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich.The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999). Translations of all the biblical texts found at Qumran, arranged in canonical order.

Florentino García Martínez, ed. The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English (2d ed.; Leiden: Brill, 1996).

Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (2 vols.; Brill: Leiden, 1997–1998). Hebrew text (drawn from published editions and published corrections) with facing English translations.

Michael Wise, Martin G. Abegg Jr., and Edward Cook, (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls – A New Translation (HarperSanFrancisco: San Francisco, 1996; 2d edition 2005).

Donald Parry and Emanual Tov, (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader (6 volumes; Brill: Leiden. 2004–2005). Hebrew texts (mainly drawn from the DJD series) with English translations, classified by genre.

Geza Vermes. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin, 2004).

Translations into other Languages

Torleif Elgvin ed., Dǿdehavsrullene (The Dead Sea Scrolls in Norwegian) (Oslo: De Norske Bokklubbene, 2004).

Bodil Ejrnaes, Søren Holst, and Mogens Müller, M., Dǿdehavsskrifterne og de Antikke Kilder Om Essaeerne (2d rev. and expanded ed.; Copenhagen: ANIS, 2003). Danish translation.

Electronic Editions

  • The Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Library (Leiden: Brill, 2006) (http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=24612), prepared by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, under the editorship of Emanuel Tov, offers searchable images and transcriptions of all the published nonbiblical texts, tagged for morphological analysis, along with English translations.
  • http://www.accordancebible.com/: Accordance offers, in separate modules, tagged databases of the biblical and nonbiblical Qumran texts, both prepared by Martin Abegg, Jr.
  • http://www.olivetree.com/store/product.php?productid=17117:: OliveTree offers the Accordance (Abegg) Qumran database of nonbiblical scrolls for mobile PDA and cell phones.
  • http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/3455:: Logos offers a tagged database of the nonbiblical Qumran scrolls (prepared by Martin Abegg, Jr.), as well as an electronic version of the Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, by Florentino Garcia Martinez and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar. The company is about to release a separate database of the biblical scrolls, prepared by Stephen Pfann.