This monograph constitutes a revision and expansion of the author's 2006 doctoral dissertation, which was supervised by James R. Davila at the University of St. Andrews. Following an introductory survey of the texts and issues (Chap. 1), the author proceeds through the Dead Sea material relating to ritual purity, including the Damascus Document (Chap. 2), the Temple Scroll (Chap. 3), and 4QMMT (Chap. 4). Chapter 5 covers the other sundry Cave 4 texts containing purity laws. In each of these chapters, Ian C. Werrett systematically compares the major Qumran legal texts with other Qumran documents and, especially, the legal material in the Hebrew Bible. In order to facilitate this comparison, the author breaks down the material into five major legal categories: diseases, clean/unclean animals, corpses, bodily discharges, and sexual misdeeds. Chapter 6 then presents a cumulative comparison of the material from Qumran on each of these five topics. In the conclusion, the author summarizes the explicit agreements and disagreements on purity in the Qumran corpus and considers the implications of his analysis for understanding the Dead Sea texts and the history of the community that lived at Qumran. The back matter of the book includes three brief helpful appendices detailing the correspondences between biblical texts and the major Qumran documents (the Damascus Document, the Temple Scroll, and 4QMMT). These are followed by a bibliography, an author index, and a citation index. No subject index is provided, and the bibliography is broken into categories (e.g., Dead Sea Scrolls, social science, early Judaism).

The important contribution of this volume can be stated simply: Werrett articulates an important and persuasive critique of the reigning paradigm in the study of purity at Qumran. According to the dominant voices in the field (especially those of Joseph M. Baumgarten and Hannah K. Harrington), the purity laws from the Temple Scroll, 4QMMT, and other Cave 4 documents can best be understood as articulating halakhot that work together in a single, coherent, stringent legal system. Against this consensus, the author isolates points of disagreement among the disparate texts. Some are outright contradictions, as when 4QTohorot B^b states that the sprinkler of purification waters must be a priest (4Q277 1 ii 5b–7a), while 4QMMT (4Q394 3–7 i 17–19a) and 4QD (4Q269 8 ii 4b–6a) ostensibly permit this rite to be performed by a “clean man,” following Numbers 19:9 (263–64, 273). Other disagreements are indicated by significant shifts in emphasis, such as the Damascus Document's apparent lack of interest in corpse impurity (95–96) over against the Temple Scroll's sustained interest in the matter (136–52, 171–72). Still other disagreements concern parallels that are less precise than commonly recognized, such as the Damascus Document's prohibition of sexual relations in the city of the sanctuary (CD 12:1–2), which in truth is not fully equivalent to the Temple Scroll's similar assertion (11QT 45:11–12) that a man who has had sex with his wife must remain outside the city of the sanctuary for three days (89–91, 159–62, 173). Along the way through his traversal of these texts, Werrett is also willing to note instances where, contrary to common belief, one or another of the Qumran texts articulates legal positions that are more lenient than related biblical laws (e.g., 24–31, 98).

Of course, a number of these general points have been noticed before. What is different here is that the author's approach to the material is not characterized by a commitment to either the internal consistency or the general stringency of the Qumran library. While various authors have asserted that the Qumran material represents a single legal system, with similarities outweighing the differences, Werrett is the first writer I know of to present a chart in which the number of explicit agreements is roughly equal to the number of explicit disagreements (289–90; cf. 3, 18, 293). This interest in disagreement encourages the author to raise important questions regarding some of the more speculative reconstructions of the all too fragmentary 4QMMT. Because there are some disagreements between these two documents, Werrett wonders whether it is sound to reconstruct 4QMMT based on presumed legal affinity with 11QT (e.g., 206–209). As in all issues regarding Qumran, the debate is sure to continue. But from here on, those who treat Qumranic law as an internally consistent and consistently stringent corpus will have to reckon with the forceful arguments articulated in this volume.

The book's title, which is seemingly broad, reflects at least two ways in which the topic has been narrowed for the purposes of the present analysis. First, this is a book about the Dead Sea Scrolls, as opposed to Qumran. While the literary finds relating to purity are studied in detail, the archaeological remains from Qumran itself are set aside. This analysis of purity proceeds without drawing information from or conclusions about Qumran's mikva'ot or cemeteries. Second, this is a book about ritual purity at Qumran. As indicated, laws concerning sexual misdeeds are included in Werrett's discussions of each text, but this is because sexual misdeeds are not only morally defiling, but ritually defiling as well (60–62). Werrett accepts the hypothesis put forth in my Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism that ritual and moral defilement were, over time, integrated into a single conception, particularly in those documents (such as the Rule of the Community) widely believed to reflect sectarian tendencies (7, 104–105).Footnote ¹ As a result of this phenomenon—combined with the author's interest in ritual purity per se—this volume hardly engages the central sectarian documents at all (see 18 n. 61 for the author's admission and explanation).

These moves are reasonable, especially considering that the work began as a dissertation. But now that the book has been published in a venerable series (and having already granted that its central claims are important and well argued), it is fair to point out that a treatment of ritual impurity at Qumran that skirts both the purity-related punishments of the Community Rule's penal code and the emotive associations of defilement and sin in the Thanksgiving Hymns—to say nothing of the mikva'ot and the cemetery—may well disappoint some readers. Yet more important than disappointment is a methodological issue: Those who argue that the Qumran legal corpus is basically consistent often do so as part of a larger theory that tries to account for all the literary and archaeological evidence. To be clear, I think the present author has begun to dismantle these reconstructions. However, because his argument is circumscribed, it can only have an impact on certain pieces of the puzzle. It is to be hoped that Werrett will consider the rest of the evidence—both literary and archaeological—in future projects, and thereby demonstrate even more forcefully that the dominant way of looking at purity at Qumran needs to be fundamentally reconsidered.