BAS Seminar Is Featured on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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Four participants in a Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) seminar on the Dead Sea Scrolls were interviewed in a MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour report this past spring. The four had attended a BAS seminar at Guilford College, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Also interviewed was BAR contributor James Tabor, a featured speaker at the seminar.

The 13-minute report, timed to coincide with the opening of the scrolls exhibit at the Library of Congress,^a was narrated by Richard Ostling, Time magazine’s religion writer and special correspondent for the NewsHour. The broadcast noted “the extraordinary public interest” in the scrolls and reviewed the scrolls’ discovery, the recent furor over access and the current debate about the meaning of the scrolls.

The MacNeil/Lehrer broadcast, to borrow the memorable phrase from the movie Casablanca, rounded up the usual suspects, interviewing such scholars familiar to BAR and Bible Review readers as Lawrence Schiffman, Michael Wise, James VanderKam and Robert Eisenman. Also interviewed was BAR editor Hershel Shanks, who spoke of the Pentagon Papers-like events that led to the BAS publication of A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a two-volume collection of nearly 1,800 photographs of previously unpublished scroll fragments. “Now anybody can do with [the fragments] what they want. They can translate them, transcribe them, print them, publish them or eat them for breakfast in the morning,” Shanks said as the barest hint of a smile crept onto his face.

But the real stars of the report were the BAS seminar participants. Ann Baldwin was particularly excited by a recently published scroll fragment that contains the phrase “Son of God.”^b “We tend to think about Christianity as set apart from everything. Yet here are the scrolls telling us that ‘son of God’ was a term in use in those days,” Baldwin said. “Jesus was a real man in a real society and I want to know what that society looked like, felt like, smelled like and I want to touch it. If that means touching a scroll, that’s what I want to do.”

Eugenia Ballesteros, a second seminar participant, was struck by the continuities revealed by the scrolls between the past and the present. “On a spiritual level we are really one with the past and they are one with us.”

Added Rabbi Richard Harkavy, “I’m always amazed when Christians look at these texts and say, ‘I always thought that this was a part of Christianity,’ and now they’re starting to realize this has always been a part of Judaism.”

The fourth participant interviewed, David Freseman, said, “We have always believed that you cannot be a Christian in the truest sense of the word unless you understand Judaism, particularly the Hebrew Bible.” Interjected Rabbi Harkavy, “We are both branches on a tree but we have a common root, and the Dead Sea Scrolls are a part of that root.”

If you want to take part in a BAS seminar, we can’t promise you will be featured on television, but we do guarantee a thought-provoking experience.

Four participants in a Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) seminar on the Dead Sea Scrolls were interviewed in a MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour report this past spring. The four had attended a BAS seminar at Guilford College, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Also interviewed was BAR contributor James Tabor, a featured speaker at the seminar. The 13-minute report, timed to coincide with the opening of the scrolls exhibit at the Library of Congress,a was narrated by Richard Ostling, Time magazine’s religion writer and special correspondent for the NewsHour. The broadcast noted “the extraordinary public interest” in the scrolls and reviewed the scrolls’ discovery, […]