According to its author, this volume is ‘about the varieties of the reception of the Hebrew Bible in ancient Judaism and the diverse attempts to renew the sacred writings of ancient Israel and the legal material contained therein’ (p 41). Jassen argues that the academic study of the Dead Sea Scrolls is to some extent divorced from both biblical and rabbinic studies, so he aims to show how much the disciplines can learn from one another, particularly with regard to the legal portions of the Scrolls. Through very detailed analysis of the Hebrew texts themselves, he demonstrates that the Qumran Scrolls represent a particular phase in the development of Jewish law, where, unlike in the rabbinic tradition, texts from outside the Pentateuch could be used as legal proof texts. He suggests that the rabbis avoided the prophetic texts in particular because they were used extensively as doctrinal proofs texts by the early Christian community. To do this, Jassen focuses his discussion in particular on the Scrolls’ use of Isaiah 58:13 and Jeremiah 17:21–22 as part of the legislation governing the sabbath, where the original Pentateuchal laws needed to be updated and reinterpreted to face the challenges of living in a Hellenistic world.

The volume may not be central to the concerns of most readers of this Journal, but it provides a valuable and interesting sidelight on a forgotten part of the Judaeo-Christian legal tradition.