Émile Puech - Böcker

This volume contains a collection of compositions from Cave 4 at Qumran, written during the Second Temple period and linked to biblical texts through characters, themes, or genre. Some of these, such as the Levi Aramaic Document, Testament of Naphtali, and Prayer of Nabonidus, were known previously from Greek and Aramaic manuscripts of the Apocrypha. The additional documents include PseudoDaniel, the Commentaries on Genesis, Commentary on Malachi, Apocryphon of Joshua, The Two Ways, Apocryphon of Elisha, Prayer of Mercy, and a number of small miscellaneous texts. All these documents greatly enhance our understanding of the phenomenon of psuedepigraphy (written in the name of a famous biblical or religious character) and of biblical interpretation during the Second Temple period.

In the spring of 1956, a comprehensive inventory of the manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4 was prepared which established the manuscript assignments for each of the members of the first editorial team. The manuscripts numbered 4Q521-4Q579 were assigned to Jean Starcky. Unfortunately Père Starcky died before publishing his allotment, which included primarily parabiblical and pseudepigraphic compositions in Hebrew or Aramaic. Though quite amorphous in character, the group reflects the interest in biblical themes and liturgy characteristic of Second Temple period Judaism. In this volume, Émile Puech presents a critical text edition of the Hebrew manuscripts from this corpus. His edition of the Aramaic texts is scheduled to appear as Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Volume XXXI.

This volume (in French) contains the editio princeps of the first part (4Q529-549) of the Aramaic texts from Cave 4 at Qumran which were originally assigned to Père Jean Starcky (4Q521-578). The second part of the Aramaic texts will appear in volume XXXVII of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series, while the Hebrew texts were published in volume XXV.These Aramaic and Hebrew texts include primarily parabiblical and pseudepigraphical compositions, often named 'Apocryphon', 'Testament', 'Pseudo-', or 'Visions'. They reflect the interest in biblical themes characteristic of Second Temple period Judaism, and exhibited in many of the Quumran compositions.