1 The Twelve Minor Prophets at Qumran and the Canonical Process: Amos as a “Case Study” Hanne von Weissenberg University of Helsinki Introduction The Twelve Minor Prophets (from now on simply “the Twelve”) is one of the “biblical” books found in several copies at Qumran. Therefore, it is generally considered as one of the “biblical” books that had already gained an authoritative status, possibly as a collection (the “Book of the Twelve”), in the late Second Temple period. However, the manuscripts of the Twelve at Qumran present a complicated and confusing picture. To alleviate this confusion, in this study I will first introduce all the manuscripts of the Twelve preserved in the Qumran collection in order to establish what in actual fact is preserved of the collection in the manuscripts of the Qumran library. This overview serves both as an introduction to the manuscripts and as an example of certain methodological difficulties we have when determining the existence and importance of the Twelve (or any “biblical” manuscript for that matter) in the Qumran collection. Additionally, my purpose is, as a “case study”, to investigate the exegetical use of the book of Amos in the Qumran collection. The aim is to see how the usage of this book can illuminate the way texts with (growing) authoritative status were used in the Qumran library.