075
The Biblical Archaeology Society’s advocacy of open access to the Dead Sea Scrolls and its publication last November of A Facsimile Edition of the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls continue to bear fruit, this time by advancing the education of a new generation of Dead Sea Scroll scholars. Thirteen graduate students in New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies spent last semester analyzing the recently released fragments of the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls. The students studied the fragments mostly from the BAS Facsimile Edition, supplemented by microfilms of the Huntington Library photographs and, in a few cases, by photographs obtained from the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Under the direction of Lawrence H. Schiffman, professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies, each student assembled and studied the fragments of a particular Dead Sea Scroll text or group of texts. The texts under study were Jubilees, Purity Laws, pseudo-Moses, pseudo-Jeremiah and pseudo-Ezekiel materials, the Hodayot fragments (Thanksgiving Psalms), Serekh-Damascus (a work that combines parts of the Damascus Document and the Manual of Discipline), liturgical fragments, Mysteries (being edited by Schiffman) and a number of “apocryphal” texts (to be edited by Erik Larson of N.Y.U.).
The students worked alone and with one another to learn to use the scroll catalogue recently compiled by Stephen A. Reed (see “DSS Catalogue Now Available,” in this issue) and to read the various scripts in which their texts were copied. At formal seminar sessions, they presented papers surveying the technical data regarding the fragments they are studying as well as discussing the significance of the scrolls for an understanding of the history of Judaism and the background of early Christianity. Commenting on the seminar, Schiffman said, “Students are learning the hard way that there can be no shortcuts in scrolls research. Full study of the documents in manuscript must precede any historical conclusions.”
The Biblical Archaeology Society’s advocacy of open access to the Dead Sea Scrolls and its publication last November of A Facsimile Edition of the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls continue to bear fruit,a this time by advancing the education of a new generation of Dead Sea Scroll scholars. Thirteen graduate students in New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies spent last semester analyzing the recently released fragments of the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls. The students studied the fragments mostly from the BAS Facsimile Edition, supplemented by microfilms of the Huntington Library photographs and, in a few cases, […]
