Notes from Limmud 2005

The Importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Prof. Rachel Elior

( The Dead Sea scrolls which were revealed between the years of 1947-1956 and have been since deciphered, edited and disseminated in the course of the last fifty-five years by a myriad of scholars. The complete presentation of these texts appears in the bilingual series entitled 'Discoveries in the Judean Desert' (Oxford: Clarendon) and consists of 39 volumes which have been completed only recently. The new insight offered by the 950 scrolls demands a new historical perspective on the period of late antiquity. The lecture will focus on the four-fold division of this unknown library which includes various kinds of holy scripture previously unknown. )