James H. Charlesworth is George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature and director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at Princeton Theological Seminary. He has authored or edited over sixty books.
David Noel Freedman
-- University of California, San Diego
"James Charlesworth has produced yet another valuable volume for
the ongoing and ever-increasing library on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This indispensable book provides a thoroughgoing commentary on the
Pesharim, the early Jewish commentaries on the Hebrew Bible.
Charlesworth is a faithful reporter of the scholarly battlefield,
and he steers a moderate middle course among the treacherous
minefields in which the Scrolls have been lodged ever since their
discovery. Charlesworth is sound and safe and solid, citing the
best authorities and hewing to the established lines in Dead Sea
Scrolls scholarship. Thus he brings us up to date on the issues and
their likely resolutions, and he prepares us for the future
completion of current labors and the possible and hoped-for
consensus regarding the main chronological and historical events in
the experience of the people of Qumran." James A. Sanders
-- Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center, Claremont, California
"Charlesworth explores the understanding of Scripture that the
Jewish sectarians at Qumran had and the way they read and applied
Scripture to their time in history. They lived in the tumultuous
period of Roman oppression just before the rise of Christianity,
and they had essentially the same hermeneutics of Scripture as the
New Testament writers ? that is, they believed that the Bible
addresses the end time, that they were living in the last days, and
that Scripture therefore spoke directly to their situation.
Charlesworth's study starkly illumines the same kind of
hermeneutics evident in present-day Christian eschatological sects.
The appendixes by Lidija Novakovic of biblical quotations and
textual variants are alone worth the price of the book." Doron
Mendels
-- Hebrew University of Jerusalem
"This illuminating study of the Pesharim is a major contribution to
the fields of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. In a
masterful manner Charlesworth goes through the texts and analyzes
them against the backdrop of Hellenistic and Jewish historiography
as well as of biblical literature. The book is brilliantly written
and should be read by scholars and the general public. It is a
learned and important scholarly book, but it is also a very
enjoyable book to read."
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