Few if any archaeological finds in the past century have elicited the interest or controversy that has surrounded the Dead Sea Scrolls. With that in mind, Jewish residents of Manchester, England, sat down to learn more about the scrolls, and what they can and cannot tell researchers, from one of the world’s leading scholars on the topic, New York University professor Lawrence H. Schiffman.
English Community Prepares for Holiday With Dead Sea Scrolls Lecture
Few if any archaeological finds in the past century have elicited the interest or controversy that has surrounded the Dead Sea Scrolls. With that in mind, Jewish residents of Manchester, England, sat down to learn more about the scrolls, and what they can and cannot tell researchers, from one of the world’s leading scholars on the topic, New York University professor Lawrence H. Schiffman.
Schiffman, who serves as chair of NYU’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and is a member of the university’s Centers for Ancient and Near Eastern Studies, began his pre-Shavuot address at the Beis Menachem Community Centre – a Chabad-Lubavitch educational institution in Manchester – by referring to what he called the “mystique” of the scrolls.
The story of how one cache of some of the world’s most priceless manuscripts has become legendary, he said: Before the founding of the modern State of Israel, a Bedouin shepherd threw a stone into a cave while searching for a lost sheep. He knew immediately from the sound made as the stone landed that something was in there.
Still, reminded the professor, details of the story may or may not be true. It persists, however, and tends to distract people from the importance of what the scrolls contain, a unique glimpse into Second Temple-era Jewish history and the development of Jewish legal thought.
While the original shepherd discovered just a few scrolls and fragments, the collection referred to today as the Dead Sea Scrolls contains some 80,000 fragments grouped together into 20,000 segments. These include six complete, or nearly complete, scrolls and sections of other books.
One of the complete scrolls contains what is referred to by scholars as the Rules of the Community, a series of laws governing life in a highly-restrictive community that centered in that area of the wilderness outside Jerusalem. It outlines the community’s basic beliefs and laws of purification, and ends with a poetic description of the Shema, and the laws for reciting the central Jewish prayer.
Levi
Good job!
Mendy
very impressive!