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Biblical scholars have long argued that the Dead Sea Scrolls were the work of an ascetic and celibate Jewish community known as the Essenes, which flourished in the 1st century A.D. in the scorching desert canyons near the Dead Sea. Now, a prominent Israeli scholar, Rachel Elior, disputes that the Essenes ever existed at all - a claim that has shaken the bedrock of Biblical scholarship. Elior, who teaches Jewish mysticism at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, claims that the Essenes were a fabrication by the 1st century A.D. Jewish-Roman historian, Josephus Flavius, and that his faulty reporting was passed on as...

The Story of the Scrolls: The Miraculous Discovery and True Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. By Geza Vermes. WITHIN a century or so of Christianity’s emergence, Jews and Christians were having heated disputes over certain prophetic passages in the Hebrew scriptures. They were arguing not only over the meaning of those verses, but over their precise wording. Each side suspected the other of doctoring manuscripts in order to support its own interpretations. At least until the late 20th century, it was almost impossible for modern scholars to throw any light on the substance of these disputes: in other words,...

The following topics are not meant to be exhaustive, but rather are offered to indicate the nature of the assignment and to stimulate your own interests. You are encouraged to consider a topic more aligned with your own interests and to submit a topic statement and sources. The professor will work with you to be certain that the topic suits the course. As students choose topics, their names and e-mail addresses will be accessible from this page so that you can contact them to share resources and ideas. The topics are arranged into eight categories: Historical Economic Sociological Legal Scientific...

The most complete Dead Sea Scroll ever found will go on display at the Israel Museum this month for the first time in four decades, the museum announced Monday. Two major sections of the Great Isaiah Scroll, featuring the prophet's celebrated message of peace: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares" (Isaiah 2:4), will be on display at the museum's Shrine of the Book from May 19-August 30 in honor of Israel's 60th anniversary. "This special installation provides visitors with a rare opportunity to view one of the oldest, most complete, and best preserved of the Dead Sea Scrolls," said...

Israeli paleographer Ada Yardeni has recently identified 50 Dead Sea scrolls found near Qumran in Israel as having been penned by the same scribe, a scribe who also penned scrolls that have been found at the Herodian mountain-top fortress of Masada, where Jewish rebel zealots made their last suicidal stand against the Romans in 73 A.D.The subject scrolls were previously discovered in six different caves in the area of the Qumran site. In an article authored by Sidnie White Crawford and published in the November/December 2012 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Crawford writes that documents penned by the same scribe and found...

The Dead Sea Scrolls may have been written, at least in part, by a sectarian group called the Essenes, according to nearly 200 textiles discovered in caves at Qumran, in the West Bank, where the religious texts had been stored. Scholars are divided about who authored the Dead Sea Scrolls and how the texts got to Qumran, and so the new finding could help clear up this long-standing mystery. The research reveals that all the textiles were made of linen, rather than wool, which was the preferred textile used in ancient Israel. Also they lack decoration, some actually being bleached...

Jerusalem (CNN) – In a perfect blending of 21st-century advances with the cutting-edge technology of an earlier age, starting this week internet users can, for the first time, use Google search and scanning technology to examine five manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Google and the Israel Museum unveiled the project Monday in Jerusalem with the launch of a museum website that allows users to interact with the ancient texts in a way impossible just a few years ago."You have the capability with high-resolution definition to look at the scrolls in a comfortable setting - to enlarge them, to magnify...

JERUSALEM — Two thousand years after they were written and decades after they were found in desert caves, some of the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls went online for the first time on Monday in a project launched by Israel's national museum and web giant Google. The appearance of five of the most important Dead Sea scrolls on the Internet is part of a broader attempt by the custodians of the celebrated manuscripts — who were once criticized for allowing them to be monopolized by small circles of scholars — to make them available to anyone with a computer. See msnbc.com's...

An intact, sealed, jar has been discovered at Qumran, the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in nearby caves. A multinational team of scientists have been analyzing the jar and their findings are set to be published in the journal Archaeometry. If you have a subscription (or access to a library with one) you can already see the article on the publication's website... Altogether nine scientists are credited in the paper. Kaare Lund Rasmussen, of the University of Southern Denmark, is listed at the lead author. The jar itself was excavated in 2004. It was found about 50...

...Using sophisticated computer programs, Cargill built what he described as "a fully reconstructed, three-dimensional, real time, interactive model of Khirbet Qumran." Taking the building's excavated remains as a blueprint, the model "visualized" that the structure was originally designed as a fortress, then abandoned, and later expanded and repurposed by a group... According to the model, the new inhabitants built an elaborate water system, as well as a scriptorium, where the scrolls were written. The building was destroyed in 70 C.E., or shortly thereafter, by the conquering Roman legions, a view now widely accepted... In early 2007, Cargill was nearing completion...

(Reuters) - Scholars and anyone with an Internet connection will be able to take a new look into the Biblical past through an online archive of high-resolution images of the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls. Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the custodian of the scrolls that shed light on the life of Jews and early Christians at the time of Jesus, said on Tuesday it was collaborating with Google's research and development center in Israel to upload digitized images of the entire collection. Advanced imaging technology will be installed in the IAA's laboratories early next year and high-resolution images of each of...

Over the last six or nine months I have been growing ever more concerned over Glenn Beck and his Evangelical and Conservative followers. I have not been alone, there have been countless other Christian Laymen and Pastors have expressed the same concern when Mr. Beck started talking about God, Jesus and Faith. My question is should we as Christians who believe in Salvation by Grace Alone, through Faith Alone in the Person and Work of Christ Alone, for God’s Glory Alone have anything to do with Beck in the areas of Faith and Religion? Mr. Beck is a confessing Mormon,...

The recent decoding of a cryptic cup, the excavation of ancient Jerusalem tunnels, and other archaeological detective work may help solve one of the great biblical mysteries: Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The new clues hint that the scrolls, which include some of the oldest known biblical documents, may have been the textual treasures of several groups, hidden away during wartime—and may even be "the great treasure from the Jerusalem Temple," which held the Ark of the Covenant, according to the Bible. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered more than 60 years ago in seaside caves near an ancient...

...The analyses, which were conducted by INFN physicists in collaboration with researchers from IBAM-CNR, have revealed that one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in particular, the Temple Scroll (which is not part of the biblical narration and instead describes the construction and life of a temple and dictates how laws are to be communicated to the people), may have been made near the Dead Sea, in the area of Qumran, where the scrolls were found. In other words, the scrolls may have been created locally... At the LANDIS laboratory (one of the INFN laboratories in Catania), non-destructive analyses were performed...

An eighth-century religious manuscript described as " more important than the Dead Sea Scrolls" has finally been put on display at the National Museum of Ireland. The 1,200 year old religious manuscript was found in a bog with the Latin words of Psalm 83 open. It had lain undisturbed for 1,200 years. The psalm closes with the words: “Let them know that you, whose name is the LORD—that you alone are the Most High over all the earth." The National Museum rated the work as of "staggering importance" and says the book of psalms or psalter is among the top...

In some cases the traditional text is clearly superior, but in others the version in the scrolls is better. Thanks to the scrolls, more and more textual problems in the Hebrew Bible are being resolved. The notes in newer Bible translations list variant readings from the scrolls, and in some cases, the translations incorporate these readings in the text as the preferred reading. No one has ever seriously suggested that the Dead Sea Scrolls contain anything like an eleventh commandment; but the scrolls do help clarify numerous difficult phrases in the Hebrew Bible, and for textual scholars that is more...

After a decade of intense laboratory tests, a Danish archaeochemist has found a way to enable scientists to precisely date the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ownership of which is currently a bone of contention between Israel and Jordan, according to videnskab.dk. The Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient documents were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in caves near the Qumran Wadi northwest of the Dead Sea. Treatment of the rolls has included them being spread out using plant oil, which in turn made precise carbon dating of the scrolls almost impossible. A Danish archaeochemist and an international team of researchers,...

The London-based Globe and Mail reports that Jordan has asked Canada to seize Israel's 2,000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls that are currently on display in Toronto. The scrolls are on display until until Sunday at the Royal Ontario Museum. Jordan claims that the scrolls were found in "disputed territory" that Israel captured from Jordanian control in 1967, and asks Canada to hold them until the question of their ownership is settled. Jordan's control of Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley - which it called the "West Bank" - from 1948 until 1967, was recognized internationally by only two countries: Great Britain...

For his part, Peleg believes Qumran went through several distinct stages. As the morning heat mounts, he leads me up a steep ridge above the site, where a channel hewn into the rock brought water into the settlement. From our high perch, he points out the foundations of a massive tower that once commanded a fine view of the sea to the east toward today's Jordan. "Qumran was a military post around 100 B.C.," he says. "We are one day from Jerusalem, and it fortified the northeast shore of the Dead Sea." Other forts from this era are scattered among...

Israeli archeologist and professor Dan Bahat... a lecturer in the Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology department at Bar-Ilan University and the former district archeologist for Jerusalem, addressed hundreds who gathered at Beth Tikvah Synagogue on June 3... "When I speak about the caves in the Judean desert where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, actually, all the scrolls we're talking about come from 11 caves only," Bahat said. He said the discovery of the first scrolls in 1947 was made on Nov. 29 -- the day the United Nations adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine... all that was yielded...