June Singer, author of Knowledge of the Heart: Gnostic Secrets of Inner Wisdom and Boundaries of the Soul
"In a time when material possessions-or lack of them-leave people anxious and hungry for something more, a different path is shown to us in the two-thousand-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls. Kenneth Hanson's brilliant translation and lucid commentary bring to light the beliefs and practices of an elite consecrated community of desert people who turned away from wealth and power and gained in return simplicity, tranquility, peace, order and camaraderie. This book is a lovingly prepared feast for the spirit!"


From the Inside Flap
Spirituality More than two thousand years ago a dedicated group of religious ascetics and visionaries fled the opulence of Jerusalem and sequestered themselves in a desert stronghold at Qumran in a utopian attempt to forge a purer, more spiritual existence. By the end of the first century of the Common Era this ancient Judean sect had disappeared, but the library of scrolls they secreted away in limestone caves would lie hidden until their sensational discovery in 1947. The Essenes, or Sons of Light, as they called themselves, copied out thirty-eight books of the Hebrew Biblethe oldest known copies todayas well as apocryphal material, and original rule books for community living, psalms, and books of prophecy. In Words of Light, Hebrew scholar Kenneth Hanson uses information contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls, accounts from the ancient historian Josephus, and contemporary archaeological discoveries to create a handbook of spiritual living for contemporary readers. Culling from his own translations of the most evocative passages from the massive and impenetrable scroll texts, Dr. Hanson shows how we may share in the timeless vision of the Sons of Light, with its emphasis on community, simplicity, learning and perseverance, to achieve spiritual wealth and personal abundance.


About the Author
Kenneth Hanson holds a Ph.D. in Hebrew Studies. He currently teaches courses on Jewish history at the University of Central Florida, Orlando and on religion and philosophy at Rollins College, and lectures widely on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Kabbalah. He has lived and studied extensively in Israel. Dr. Hanson is also the author of Dead Sea Scrolls: The Untold Story and Kabbalah: Three Thousand Years of Mystic Tradition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER