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Suffers heavy abridgement! DECEIPTIVE TITLE!
This is nowhere near the complete Dead Sea scrolls, and I'm not referring to the portions that are absent due to the original text being damaged and unreadable, I'm talking about entire sections that exist in English but for some reason are not included in this "complete" collection. Firstly, it only contains the non-biblical Dead Sea scrolls but even those suffer a painful abridgement. For example, the Genesis Apocryphon does not include any text from columns 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 or 10 (and go figure I was specifically needing column 5). The introduction even admits that they exist and have even been translated and is kind enough to provide information on where to look if you wish to read them. Kind, yes, but insulting given the book's title and $22 price mark.
If this were called "Abridged Portions of Selected Dead Sea Scrolls in English" I would respect it as that would be a wonderfully accurate title, but we all know that it would not sell nearly as well as it has if it had been labeled honestly. This blatant marketing deception fueled by greed is probably to be placed upon Penguin Classics and not the late Geza Vermes, who is an exceptional biblical scholar.
September 2015 · Books · verified purchase