3a - Note On The Texts

Translators of the Scrolls are tempted to render them either with extreme freedom at the expense of fidelity, or else literally, word for word and line for line. I have tried to avoid both these pitfalls by providing an interpretation in simple English which is at the same time faithful and intelligible.

Lacunae impossible to complete with any measure of confidence are indicated by dots.

Hypothetical but likely reconstructions are placed between [ ] and glosses necessary for fluency between (.....).

Biblical quotations appearing in the text are printed in italics, as well as the titles and headings which figure in the manuscripts.

Each scroll is divided into columns. The beginning of each of these columns is indicated in the translation by bold Roman numerals: I, II, III etc. [Scan note - in the text version I will be using <I>, <II>, <III> etc to indicate bold Roman numerals, the html version will have the proper bold inserted - Salmun]

I have included only those fragments which are large enough to convey some meaning and have similarly omitted from the Scrolls any passage too mutilated to reconstruct.