From the Preface: "Although the new documents from recent discoveries have had only preliminary examination, the importance of the data which have been extracted from them can scarcely be overestimated." [viii] Historical allusions are somewhat rare, "but Greek kings, Hamonaean rulers, and a Roman official, all well known to the historian, are named by name". We can reconstruct the religious and community life of the people of Qumran, and trace the development of Scripture. This includes a "catalogue" of the Library.

The Library was once great, with tens of thousands of documents. Since the rediscovery in 1952, the manuscripts dating back to the 1st century A.D., are in an advanced state of decay. In addition, the Arabs tore them apart in order to sell them piece-meal at higher prices.[7, 16, 35] However, the fragments are being restored and many can be "read" for insight into linguistic change, history, and the "order" of a radically different sect of the Jews which throve in the immediate century after the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. [14, 72]

The magnificence of the caves of Wadi Murabba'at were often exaggerated by the Bedouin, but the hardships of working scientific excavation were understated. [17] The caves had long been a refuge during the troubled history of the "Promised Land". "There were evidences of men who had huddled in the caves three millennia before David hid from Saul's jealous wrath in the caves of this same hinterland. In the days of the Huyksos and the kings of Judah, in the era of the Jewish revolts against Roe and the Arab conquest, desperate men found shelter in the caverns of Murabba'at and left behind bits of pottery and tools, and in the later periods scraps of their "papers" and books." [17. FN 20 noting the Chalcolithic, Middle Bronze II, Iron II, Roman, and Arab levels superimposed in excavation.] This includes the earliest Hebrew papyrus ever found in Palestine, and documentation left by the remnant army of Simon bar Kokheba, the Messiah who led the second Jewish revolt against Rome (A.D. 132-35) [18]. More than 200 productive caves have been excavated. [20] Interestingly, some sixty treasures of gold and silver, amounting to "more than two hundred tons of precious metal" are inventoried in the inscriptions of the Copper Scrolls. [21] This is now considered folkloric. [22] The author is skeptical that such amounts of treasure were secretly hidden or escaped greed besiegers.

No Iron Age tombs have come to light. [25] The main lode for manuscripts was in the marl terrace supporting Khirbet Qumran, less than 200 yards from the Essene center. [26] The author notes that the marl terraces contained abundant manuscripts deposited in caves now collapsed, and "Most of the treasures had washed with the winter torrents into the sea". [29]

The author provides a sketch of the contents of Cave IV. "At the end of four years' labor 382 manuscripts have been identified from this cave," and new lots of fragments are awaiting identification. [39] All of the books of the Hebrew canon are now extant, except for the Book of Esther. An archaic Samuel scroll is dated "scarcely later than 200 B.C." [42] The biblical scrolls from Qumran span three centuries. [43] The majority date in the first century, terminating with the destruction of the community in A.D. 68. [43]