Emanuel Tov untersucht die Orthographie biblischer Handschriften, die Gestalt des frühen masoretischen Textes, die Beschaffenheit der biblischen Handschriften aus Qumran und ihre Bedeutung für den biblischen Text. Er untersucht Editionen des hebräischen Bibeltextes und erörtert den Gebrauch von Computern in der Textanalyse sowie den Zusammenhang von Text- und Literarkritik. Sein Interesse an den Schriftrollen von Qumran gilt besonders der materialen Beschaffenheit und dem Hintergrund des Schreibvorgangs, dem Inhalt der Höhlen und der Zahl der Werke und Handschriften. Die Studien zur Septuaginta behandeln deren textliche Bedeutung und Übersetzungstechnik sowie die Handschriften aus der Wüste Juda.

Subdivided into three segments (Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, Qumran), this updated and revised collection of essays represents the work of Emanuel Tov in the past seventeen years. He focuses on various aspects of the textual analysis of the Hebrew and Greek Bible, as well as the Qumran biblical manuscripts in Hebrew and Greek. Further he takes a special interest in the orthography of biblical manuscripts, the nature of the early Masoretic Text, the nature of the Qumran biblical texts and their importance for our understanding of the history of the biblical text, the editions of the Hebrew Bible, and the use of computers in biblical studies. The author also focuses on the interaction between textual and literary criticism and the question of the original text or texts of the Hebrew Bible. His special interests in the Qumran scrolls include the nature of the Qumran corpus, their scribal background, the contents of the various caves, and the number of the compositions and copies found at Qumran. His interest in the Septuagint translation evolves around its text-critical value, the Greek texts from the Judean Desert, and translation technique.