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BOOK REVIEWS Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990. Proceedings Of BOOK REVIEWS Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990. Proceedings of the Second Inter- national Congress on Biblical Archaeology, Jerusalem, June-July 1990, edited by A. Biran and J. Aviram. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1993. Pp. xvii + 770; suppl. vol. Pp. 149 ISBN 965-221-019-6. This elegant volume and its supplement contain almost a hundred articles, nearly all the papers given at the Second International Congress on Biblical Archaeology, Jerusalem 1990. The papers of the 1984 Jerusalem congress can be found in the corresponding volume of 1985. These congresses and their proceedings have aimed to give a new view of biblical archaeology by providing information on the latest finds and on insights from new methods for scholars working in related fields (history, history of religions, biblical literature, etc.). The date of the Second Congress marked a centenary: the first strati- graphic archaeological excavations in Palestine, under the leadership of Sir Flinders Petrie, began just a century ago. Thus the historical sessions of the Congress provided a retrospective overview for the past hundred years of the institutions, excavations, and methods associated with archaeology in Pal- estine/Israel. Just as the Congress began with a historical session reviewing the past, so it ended with one looking to the future of biblical archaeology; the same structure is reflected in the collection of papers (I. Recollections of the Past; X. Biblical Archaeology Today and Tomorrow). The Congress con- sisted of ten general sessions and two specifically devoted to the findings in the regions of Haifa and Caesarea. The regular sessions were arranged ac- cording to various perspectives: historical chronology (II. First Temple Per- iod ; III. The Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Periods), thematic order (IV. Open Cult Places; V. Trade in the Late Bronze and Iron Age), and method- ology (VII. Interdisciplinary Aspects of Biblical Archaeology; IX. Reexca- vated Sites and Changing Archaeological Methods). Biblical archaeology has changed fundamentally in the past century, espe- cially in the last few decades. It has been fully realized that archaeology should not be used to verify biblical texts, but to present the material world of the times which lie "behind the Bible"; statements concerning the rela- tionship of written and archaeological sources have become much more sophisticated than before. Written sources considered as archaeological finds were the subject of two sessions, session VIII (Text and Epigraphy: Recent Discoveries-Newly Found Texts) and VI (Forty Years of Dead Sea Scrolls Research). The sub- ject of the latter session was exclusively the Qumran manuscripts, an archae- ological find in itself; there was no paper on the archaeology of the site of 59 Qumran or other sites in the Dead Sea region, nor any discussion of how the site and the texts are related. Qumran was presented as it is reflected in the texts found there. Thus the use of the term "Dead Sea Scrolls" in the title of the session was troublesome and was rightfully rejected by the ses- sion moderator, S. Talmon. The term Dead Sea Scrolls designates all the manuscripts found all over the Judaean Desert; they originate from different periods and represent various kinds of documents, whereas the manuscripts found in the caves near to Wadi Qumran represent a much more homoge- neous group, a kind of collection of literary works or library, and they can be treated with good reason as an archaeological unity. After the initial passionate polemics, there is now a general consensus about what exactly this complex of manuscripts is. They are extremely im- portant for the study of the history of ideas and literature of the Second Temple period, being the unique group of sources which are able to fill the blank between the age of the Babylonian exile and the lst century CE, hav- ing an equal significance for the origin of both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. In the first major Qumran presentation J.C. Greenfield summarizes the way the Qumran manuscripts are being published ("The Qumran Scrolls: Pub- lished and Unpublished"). He describes the material in three familiar cate- gories : (1) biblical texts, a group which should receive more attention, for it has a pivotal importance in the study of the transmission of the biblical text, and has fundamentally changed opinions concerning the MT; (2) "library texts," i.e. works the content of which was acceptable to the group/sect of Qumran and may have influenced the sectarian writings; (3) "sectarian works," those reflecting a certain uniformity in style and ideas, which might have been bom in a (spiritual) community. Fortunately, the 1990 list of pub- lications presented here has been extended now, not only with the micro- fiche edition of the whole corpus, but also with several new scholarly editions of Qumran texts such as DJD IX and X (the long-awaited publica- tion of 4QMMT by E. Qimron and J. Strugnell). M. Stone's paper, "The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha and the Dead Sea Scrolls," is a strikingly original view of the relationship of the Qumran texts to the well-known corpus of Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. It should be noted that Stone speaks exclusively about Qumran works, though he uses the term Dead Sea Scrolls. The Jewish Apocrypha and Pseu- depigrapha have their origins in the Second Temple period and embrace works of various contents, genres, forms, and circles of origin. Since the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha are both produced alongside the process of the canonization and transmission of biblical (and other) texts, the char- acteristics of this literature cannot be described in literary terms, but only in negative terms: they are neither biblical nor rabbinical, and do not belong to Jewish Hellenistic literature. None of these works was transmitted by the .
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