The Rule of the Congregation from Cave 1 of Qumran: A New Annotated Edition

The present study offers a new edition of Serekh ha-‘Edah, the Rule of the Congregation from Cave 1 of Qumran (1QSa). Although this text has been the subject of several editions and studies since its original publication in 1955, a new edition is required in light of recent findings. Those include the identification and reconstruction of a copy of the Rule of the Congregation in Cryptic script from Cave 4, as well as new methods for working with the available images. The reconstruction of lacunas in this edition has been carried out using digital tools, on the basis of actual letters preserved in the same scroll. We survey previous scholarship on 1QSa and provide a new edition (transliteration, translation and commentary), including several new readings, some changes in the placement of small fragments, as well as several new textual reconstructions.