What is the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and what do we know about the community that possessed them? Avoiding both popular sensationalism and specialist technical language, this book aims to integrate all the latest findings about the scrolls into existing knowledge of the period, to advance understanding of the scrolls and the Qumran community, and to explore their wider significance in a scholarly and accessible way. The state of the art in international scrolls scholarship. Contributors include E.P. Sanders, Eugene Ulrich, George Brooke, and John J. Collins.