This is volume 1 of a two volume set, which replaces the six volumes of the first edition. This volume contains Texts concerned with Religious Law, Exegetical Texts and Parabiblical Texts.

The purpose of The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader is to enhance the research facilities of the individual texts within their respective genres. The nature of the Dead Sea Scrolls publication project was such that texts belonging to the same literary genre were published in different volumes in the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD) series, although those from cave 4 were often published by subject. The dispersion of these texts in several different volumes complicates their analysis, a problem that is now overcome in DSSR.
This second and revised edition of the DSSR forms an updated and expanded publication, as follows:
- DSSR II replaces preliminary editions of DSSR I with fine-tuned, published editions.
- DSSR II presents improved or revised texts.
- DSSR II features texts not published in DSSR I.
- DSSR II reassembles segmented texts.
- DSSR II deletes extremely fragmentary texts.
- DSSR II updates names of compositions.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader, Volumes 1–2, 2nd ed., rev. and exp. (ed. Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov in association with Geraldine I. Clements; Leiden: Brill, 2014) was published with an Index, but that Index did not contain any references to the page numbers. These are now provided in the Revised Index edited by Sister Raghida Obeid, OLM, The Lebanese Maronite Order, Lebanon and Rome. The document can be found in the 'Downloads' tab.