The Dead Sea Scrolls probably represent the most significant historical manuscript discovery in recent history. In 1993 Brill Academic Publishers published all available DSS photographs on microfilm together with an extensive guide to them. But because microfilm offers less than optimal access, all film has been transferred onto CD-ROM which mean that the digital computer technology is making such tasks as cross referencing, interpretation and comparisons much easier and faster than before.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Reference Library project takes the form of an ongoing archive. Brill Academic Publishers and Oxford University Press, granted exclusive rights by the Israeli Antiquities Authority to produce this CD-ROM edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, will publish new volumes in the series on a regular basis.

Volume 1, a 3 CD-ROM package, comprises over 3,500 black and white images and detailed support information.

Success in scholarship today is increasingly a function of the speed and convenience of source access and interpretation. The rich material detail combined with the unprecedented manipulative capabilities of the computer mean the DSS Electronic Reference Library leaves all alternatives far in its wake.

General Editors: Timothy H. Lim in consultation with Philip S. Alexander. Timothy H. Lim is Lecturer in Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins, Department of Hebrew and Old Testament Studies, University of Edinburgh. He is an editor on the international team publishing in the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series (Oxford University Press) and the author of the book, Holy Scripture in the Qumran Commentaries and Pauline Letters (OUP, 1997). Philip S. Alexander is Professor of Post-Biblical Jewish Literature and Director, Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Manchester. He was formerly President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and one of the editors of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series (OUP).

...a laudable research tool which exploits the manipulative powers of the computer...It will open new opportunities to study this sample of early Jewish; it will offer a new resource for studying paleography; and it will enhance textual criticism of sacred and apocryptahl texts...a first rate product...the scholarly community can look forward to the upcoming volumes.