Short History

A periodical that grew out of the immense interest aroused by the Dead Sea Scrolls and the problem of the proliferation of scientific articles scattered in many differents journals, the Revue de Qumrân, founded in 1958 by Abbé Jean Carmignac, sought to consolidate new research. Throughout his tenure, Jean Carmignac performed the role of director and secretary with exemplary devotion and self-sacrifice.

According to the statement of its founder, the Revue is international in scope, and accepts articles written in German, English, Spanish, Frenc, Italian, and Latin. Its focus is scholarly and scientific. The editors seek to ensure rapid publication so that scholars can profit from research as quickly as possible, while maintening the freedom to publish by adapting to the pace of the work. Finally, it seeks to be as practical as possible with reviews, indexes, tables and bibliographies.

A periodical that grew out of the immense interest aroused by the Dead Sea Scrolls and the problem of the proliferation of scientific articles scattered in many different journals, the Revue de Qumrân, founded in 1958 by Abbé Jean Carmignac, sought to consolidate new research. Throughout his tenure, Jean Carmignac performed the role of director and secretary with exemplary devotion and self-sacrifice.

According to the statement of its founder, the Revue is international in scope, and accepts articles written in German, English, Spanish, French, Italian and Latin. Its focus is scholarly and scientific. The editors seek to ensure rapid publication so that scholars can profit from research as quickly as possible, while maintening the freedom to publish by adapting to the pace of the work. Finally, it seeks to be as practical as possible with reviews, indexes, tables, and bibliographies. Les Éditions Letouzey et Ané (Paris) agreed to guarantee the speed of publication.

Publication proceeded on schedule at first; however, later on the journal experienced som difficulties. Therefore, the director of the Revue had to make some modifications. The Revue de Qumrân changed publishers in 1976 when Émile Puech, as the new associate director, took office.

With the exception of the occasional publication of a few fragments, the Revue de Qumrân generally limited itself to presenting studies on a great variety of subject related to Qumran, and texts from Judaism in that period. With fascicle 46 in 1986, the founder handed over the work to a new team consisting of a new director, Émile Puech; an editorial secretary, Florentino García Martínez; and a European editorial committee. The new team attempted to give the Revue a new thrust, focusing on the publication of as many editions of unpublished manuscripts from the Judean Desert as possible, while adhering to a semiannual schedule. The Revue de Qumrân concentrates on the manuscripts from the Judean Desert while leaving to its sister journals studies abour various texts from Judaism in that period, such as the Pseudepigrapha, and so forth.

A memorial volume was published in honor of its founder (vol. 13, 1988) and another in honor of one of the members of the editorial committee, who was also the editor of one group of scrolls from Cave 4 at Qumran, Jean Starcky (vol. 15, 1991). With volume 17 (1996), it honored the most eminent of the first-generation editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Józef T. Milik, on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday. The Revue de Qumrân has made it a point to fulfill the commitments of its charter and to provide a service to science and scholars as a focal point for exchange and discussion. In its beginnings it supplied the first components of a concordance of Hebrew (War Scrolls 1QM) andAramaic (Genesis Apocryphon 1QpGen) texts, the supplements to the Konkordanz zu den Qumrân Texten by K. G. Kuhn and the corrections by John Strugnell that were critical of John M. Allegro’s work in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, V (Oxford, 1968). The journal publishes fragments and inscriptions from the region, linguistic an thematic studies, relationships with the history of the period, the New Testament, and the archaeology of the region. On a regular basis it provides a bibliography of the articles on Qumran studies.

A few years ago a new journal, Dead Sea Discoveries, was founded. The intentions of its editors were not to interfere with the scholarly Revue de Qumrân or to compete with its elder sister. But, while addressing a wider English-speaking audience, the editors intend to focus on more popular studies on manuscripts in their context.

Emile Puech, Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. L. H. Schiffman and J. C. VanderKam; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 774-775.