This volume—based on the Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies delivered at the University of California, Berkeley in 2005—explores the contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the history of Jewish law (halakhah). The study of law in the Dead Sea Scrolls long suffered from neglect, because of the lack of availability of many texts that scholars of Jewish law would find illuminating and the associated lack of interest (and competence) in these texts among those scholars who did have access to them. Beginning in the 1970s, the pioneering work of Joseph Baumgarten, Lawrence Schiffman, and Yigael Yadin turned the attention of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship to the history of Jewish law. Since then, the combined growth in interest and now complete availability of the entire corpus of legal texts has translated into the emergence of Jewish law as a vibrant subfield of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship (see especially the work of Lutz Doering,Footnote ¹ Steven Fraade, and Vered Noam).

The present work combines several different areas of inquiry in order to provide an analysis of sectarian law in the Dead Sea Scrolls within a broader historical and literary context—most importantly, defining the relationship of the scrolls and rabbinic texts. Shemesh is well suited to this task because of his significant contributions in recent years, many of which form the basis of the material in this volume. In the introduction, Shemesh identifies his task as picking up the long-dormant agenda of nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars. He notes how the efforts of Abraham Geiger, Zacharias Frankel, and others to trace the historical origins and development of halakhah were often stymied by the lack of source material outside biblical and rabbinic literature. The large corpus of legal texts now available in the Dead Sea Scrolls—together with fresh approach applied to long-known texts (e.g., Jubilees)—provide the rich source material necessary for a “comprehensive reassessment … of the history and development of halakhah” (2).

Shemesh outlines two primary approaches scholars have taken to assess the contributions of the Dead Sea Scrolls in analyzing the points of contact between rabbinic halakhah and its Second Temple–period antecedents, notwithstanding the chronological gap of several centuries (3–7). The “reflective” approach (represented by scholars such as Yadin and Schiffman) assumes that debates that arise in rabbinic literature represent long-standing issues in Jewish legal discourse. In contrast, the “developmental” model (represented, e.g., by Yitzhak Gilat and Vered Noam) locates singular strands in rabbinic law as attempts to promote older Second Temple–period legal positions. Shemesh rightfully acknowledges that both of these approaches accurately represent the textual and historical evidence and, indeed, they often coexist within other aspects of halakhah.

A second inquiry that runs throughout Shemesh's study is the social setting for the legal system of the scrolls. In investigating this subject, he enters into the long-standing debate over the identity of the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He does not reject the Essene identity of the community, but rather characterizes the law in the scrolls as simultaneously “sectarian,” “priestly,” and “Sadducean,” and assumes that this system was shared by the Essenes (15–17). Shemesh further broadens the definition of “sectarian” law by assuming an identical social setting for the law of the Temple Scroll and Jubilees. The payoff here is potentially significant. Shemesh sets out not only to outline the origins and development of halakhah, but also to reshape our still blurry understanding of the contours of Jewish society in the late Second Temple period and thus expose the multiple streams that flow into rabbinic Judaism.

Four core chapters apply these broad questions to the study of the scrolls and rabbinic texts. The first chapter doubles as a survey of legal texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls and an inquiry into the literary forms in which law is expressed. The second chapter explores varying notions of legal authority with particular attention paid to the role of divine inspiration (sectarian) versus human creativity and democratic procedure (rabbis). Chapter 3 shifts attention to the competing notions of textual authority versus traditional norms, a debate long thought to characterize the distinction between the Pharisaic-rabbinic and sectarian approaches. Chapter 4 focuses on further ways to characterize sectarian law in relation to rabbinic law by exploring the presumed distinction between realism and nominalism in the two corpora. Following a summary chapter, the volume closes with an appendix that provides full text for many of the Hebrew passages treated, a bibliography, an index of primary sources, and a general index. Unfortunately, the volume contains many typographical errors.

Shemesh is at his best when analyzing the Second Temple and rabbinic texts. For example, Chapter 2 contains an engaging exploration of competing approaches to the origins of law in the scrolls versus rabbinic Judaism. Through analysis of the sectarian and rabbinic approaches to the authority of the high court in Deuteronomy 17, the false prophet of Deuteronomy 18, and the legislative procedure, Shemesh makes these texts and their competing theologies of law come alive, and in so doing, frames the ideological assumptions of each approach in their literary and historical contexts, as well as demonstrates vestiges of the sectarian attitude in later rabbinic tradition (in the views of R. Eliezer b. Hyrcanus) and underscores how both systems bear evidence of exceptions to the rule when legal philosophy meets reality.

Students and scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls, rabbinic literature, and ancient Judaism more broadly will welcome Shemesh's contribution. Yet, the book fails to deliver on two of its main “big picture” objectives. While attention is often paid to offer a more engaged analysis of what it means to talk about sectarian or Sadducean law (especially in Chap. 4), the reader is still left without a clear sense of what the terms mean for Shemesh in a broader social setting. Shemesh notes in the introduction that not all elements of “sectarian law” were equally “Sadducean.” This observation has great potential for getting at the heart of the underlying historical questions. Moreover, as noted above, he aligns the book of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll with the sectarian system of law but suggests that any discernible differences are mere “literary variants” (19). Yet, these variants can often function as opportunities to unpack the literary and historical relationship of all these interconnected texts and social groups, thereby allowing us to see where sectarian, Essene, Sadducee, and “other” both meet and diverge. For example, his analysis in Chapter 2 of the authority of the high court in Deuteronomy 17 rightfully acknowledges that the Temple Scroll's exegetical reformulation “makes it [i.e., the court] a reliable conduit for delivering divine truth” (47–48), thus corresponding with the sectarian assumption that a singular truth stands behind all aspects of revealed law. Yet, nowhere in this chapter is there any mention that the Temple Scroll otherwise disagrees with the sectarian belief in progressive revelation, instead asserting a singular revelation at Sinai that the author recaptures by appropriating the divine authorial voice. Indeed, throughout the volume, we hear more about what unites the various legal approaches in Second Temple Judaism than about the rough edges that might allow us to uncover a richer tapestry of ancient Jewish society. This stands in contrast to the much more nuanced understanding of early rabbinic Judaism that Shemesh presents.

Shemesh delivers a wealth of material to consider. But this volume never quite matches its comprehensive ambitions. This work is not the comprehensive history of the origins and development of halakhah that Geiger, Frankel, and more recent scholars have sought. Similarly, while the notes and bibliography reflect engagement with the wealth of recent scholarship, the body of the work itself gives the reader less of a sense of the location of Shemesh's work in the history of scholarship on law in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Geiger and Frankel are important conversation partners, but any study of the relationship of the Dead Sea Scrolls with wider currents in Sadducean law and rabbinic literature would well benefit from deeper engagement with the vast research on these issues in the work of Baumgarten and Schiffman.

The original oral nature of the material likely contributes to the brevity of the final published version. Even in such a compressed form, however, Shemesh enriches our knowledge of the intersection of rabbinic halakhah and its Second Temple period antecedents.