This volume contains the first editions of 55 Greek literary and documentary papyri. The theological texts include fragments of Genesis and Luke, both assignable to the third century. Pride of place among the new literary texts is given to a retelling of Egyptian mythology, in which Isis writes to Arianis, appealing for his help in locating the body of Osiris. Two others are philosophical (Peripatetic and Stoic). Among the extant classical texts, large fragments of Plato's Laches offer readings of particular interest. A paraphrase of Justinian's Digest shows a professor explaining the relationship between written law and custom in a mixture of Greek and Graeco-Latin. The documents include a group of ten private letters and an elaborate first-person account of a failed attempt to buy camels for the state.

This volume is the first in the series to present a long Greek text (large sections of the Minor Prophets). The version in the scroll represents an early revision of the Septuagint towards a closer correspondence with the Hebrew text of the Bible - the revision given the name kaige by D. Barthelemy ('Les devanciers d'Aquila', SVT 10, 1963). After an extensive introduction (which includes a description of the materials by R. A. Kraft, and of the script by Peter J. Parsons) the volume contains an edition of the text, both with and without reconstructions, notes on the palaeography and reconstructions, an extensive commentary on the translation technique, orthographic peculiarities and textual relations, and is supplemented by an index of all words, as well as twenty plates (containing fragments arranged so as to present their position in the original scroll).

This volume inaugurates the publication of the Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls from the main collection discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran. It contains six biblical manuscripts written in the ancient palaeo-Hebrew script, four Septuagint manuscripts and five hitherto unknown compositions. There are also ten biblical manuscripts from Genesis to Deuteronomy and Job. The Hebrew texts antedate by a millennium what had previously been the earliest surviving biblical codices in the original language and they document the pluriform nature of the ancient biblical textual tradition before the text became standardized. The most extensive and significant manuscript, 4QpaleoExodm, exhibits the extended textual tradition that formed the basis for the Samaritan Pentateuch, and illumines the historical and theological relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans. Fragments of an unidentified Greek text mention Moses, Pharoah and Egypt, suggesting some development of the Exodus theme, and further witnessing to the rich religious literature to which Rabbinic Judaism and nascent Christianity were heirs. Patrick Skehan (died 1980) was the editor of the Old Testament text in the "New American Bible" (1970).