This low rating is not a reflection of the very impressive scholarship that this book displays. It is a reflection of the fact that it is phenomenally dull. To me, anyway. Look, I'm not religious, but religion can be interesting. There are interesting religious books out there! This is not one of them. It is not, I think, the fault of the authors - the modern authors, at least. There's only so much you can do with ancient scrolls that are missing a lot of text. Let me give an example of what you might read if you were to pick up this book: "He is the Lord [...] He made the [...I] adjure all [...] [...] and all [...] which [...] before [...] the earth [...] [...]" (p.454).

What I'm saying is that this is very fragmentary. In fairness, not everything is like the above. Some paragraphs only have half a dozen odd absences, products of damage in the original material. But some of it is so fragmentary it's nigh on unreadable to the layperson, which I am. (No doubt religious scholars are fascinated). And what there is that's readable is often deeply repetitive: I don't know how many instructions on slaughtering lambs for sacrifice I had to read to finish this, but it was a lot. "Odour is pleasing to the Lord" my arse, it seemed like these endless instructions were more to set the priests to gorging than anything else.

I'm glad I've read it, but having read it I'm never doing so again and this book's going to the local free library where it can bore someone else (and free up space on my shelves). I would say, though, that the introduction was genuinely interesting, and I think I would like to read a good popular history book about the Dead Sea Scrolls, just so long as I never have to slog through them myself ever again.