Lim, Timothy H., and John J. Collins. The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Oxford University Press, USA, 2010.

This compendium of essays by noted scholars brings to us the most up-to-date scholarly works on various aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls. A panel of thirty experts drawn from all over the world has written on almost all possible topics in this area, divided in to eight parts: (1) Archaeology of Khirbet Qumran and the Judaean Wilderness, (2) The Scrolls and Jewish History, (3) Scrolls and Sectarianism, (4) The Biblical Texts, Interpretation, and Languages of the Scrolls, (5) Religious Themes in the Scrolls, (6) The Scrolls and Early Christianity, (7) The Scrolls and Later Judaism and (8) New Approaches to the Scrolls.

Most of the essays take stock of the previous scholarship before they take their deviation to new directions on the topic. This feature of this book helps even novices too have a diachronic view of each area or topic. In instances where the past scholarship is not detailed, allusions and useful bibliography help to complete the picture. Those who are coming back to the field after a break will find these essays filling the gaps and taking them to the growing edges of the field.

This is the most useful one-volume scholarly work on the Dead Scrolls hitherto available and will be valued by students and teachers in the discipline greatly. Its value as a textbook for course on the Dead Sea Scrolls invaluable!