Hello everybody,
I’m looking into getting a translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, I’m aware that there are many translations out there. So I was wondering if anyone could recommend what they think is the best translation. What would be better would be one with the Nihl Obstat and Imprimatur of the Catholic Church, however I’m unsure if there are any that do have them, although that would be great.
Personally, I doubt the Church will ever grant an Imprimatur or a Nihil Obstat on such a translation - just as it maybe won’t grant one on translations of some very ancient works like, say, many apocryphal gospels or even the writings of the Fathers (I don’t know of any translation of a Church Father’s work that has a nihil obstat or an imprimatur too; somebody please correct me here).
After all, in the case of the DSS we’re not dealing with an exclusively Christian, or more specifically Catholic, thing. Since the main purpose of the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur is to express that the work contains nothing contrary to our faith or morals and to authorize its publication, as NHInsider said, submitting a translation of the DSS for Ecclesiastical approval is just, odd, especially considering the first reason. We’re talking about an ancient Jewish group and their literature here; of course it would be a given that there would be a bit of ‘doctrinal errors’ (from our perspective as Catholics) in there.
Okay, my explanation is a bit off. Other posters might correct me here.
As for translations, I have a copy of Geza Vermes’
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. In a sense, the title is a bit of a misnomer, since it’s not really a translation of
all the fragments discovered in the area. Vermes opted to leave out the Scriptural ones (since they’re well-known anyway) and those fragments which are so small as to be devoid of any significance to the popular reader, instead focusing on the extrabiblical literature found in the Dead Sea that are sufficiently well-preserved enough to be readable. It is ‘complete’ in the sense that it contains all such works. As for the translation, it’s readable enough as the book was apparently intended for the popular audience who might find a ‘hard’, slavishly literal translation to be quite cumbersome.
One section of the book I really like is the English translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic fragments of parts of the book of Tobit, found in Cave 4 (it apparently wasn’t counted as ‘Scriptural’
)
Also, can anyone tell me if the Scrolls contained Genesis Chapter 1? I’m really interested in seeing that, so if anyone could tell me I’d be overjoyed.
Well, there are some fragments which contain the chapter that I know of - all of these are found in Cave 4:
4Q4 (4QGen[sup]d[/sup]) - A single fragment with remains of Genesis 1.
4Q7 (4QGen[sup]g[/sup]) - Two fragments of Genesis 1-2.
4Q8 (4QGen[sup]h[/sup]1) - A fragment with remains of Genesis 1:8-10.
4Q10 (4QGen[sup]k[/sup]) - Small fragments with remains of Genesis 1-3.
