The Rule of the Association and Related Texts

The Rule of the Association (1QS; Serek ha-Yahad) is the primary description of the sectarian community described in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was one of the first Scrolls published, in 1951. Several related fragmentary scrolls subsequently came to light. This book provides text, translation, and commentary on all these manuscripts, with a substantial introduction that locates the Rule in the context of the sectarian movement.

Distinctive features of this commentary include: presentation of the Hebrew text; treatment of the related manuscripts as texts in their own right, not just as stages in the development of 1QS; recognition that this was a rule for a movement with many settlements and not just for the community that lived at Qumran; recognition of graded levels of holiness within 1QS; recognition of conceptual differences between 1QS and some of the related fragments with regard to the nature and goals of the association; discussion of the broader cultural context of voluntary associations in the Hellenistic world, and the influence of Persian dualism on the Instruction on the Two Spirits in 1QS 3-4.

The commentary also engages the full range of scholarship on the texts known as 1QSa (The Rule of the Community) and 1QSb (The Scroll of Blessings) which were copied on the same scroll as 1QS but appear to have originated separately.

John J. Collins, Holmes Professor of Old Testament Emeritus, Yale University, James Nati, Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Santa Clara University Jesuit School of Theology

John J. Collins is Holmes Professor of Old Testament Emeritus at Yale University. He has held Academic appointments at the University of Notre Dame, University of Chicago, and Yale, and has honorary Degrees from University College Dublin and the University of Zurich. he has been President of the Catholic Biblical Association and the Society of Biblical Literature. He has been editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature, Dead Sea Discoveries, Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements, and Anchor Yale Bible. He is member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has published widely on the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Apocalypticis.

James Nati, PhD (Yale, 2019) is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at the Santa Clara University Jesuit School of Theology. He is the author of Textual Criticism and the Ontology of Literature in Early Judaism: An Analysis of the Serekh ha-Yahad (Brill, 2022). His research focuses on the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism, and on the Dead Sea Scrolls in particular.