The Dead Sea Scrolls
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the revelatory collection of Biblical texts and other documents dating from around 250 BC to AD 68, which were first rediscovered in a cave in 1946
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the revelatory collection of Biblical texts, legal documents, community rules and literary writings.
In 1946 a Bedouin shepherd boy was looking for a goat he鈥檇 lost in the hills above the Dead Sea. He threw a rock into a cave and heard a hollow sound. He鈥檇 hit a ceramic jar containing an ancient manuscript. This was the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of about a thousand texts dating from around 250 BC to AD 68. It is the most substantial first hand evidence we have for the beliefs and practices of Judaism in and around the lifetime of Jesus.
The Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our understanding of how the texts that make up the Hebrew Bible were edited and collected. They also offer a tantalising window onto the world from which Christianity eventually emerged.
With
Sarah Pearce
Ian Karten Professor of Jewish Studies and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton
Charlotte Hempel
Professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Birmingham
and
George Brooke
Rylands Professor Emeritus of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester
Producer Luke Mulhall
Last on
Links and further reading
CONTRIBUTORS
READING LIST
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Todd S. Beall, Josephus鈥� Description of the Essenes (Cambridge University Press, 1988)
George Brooke and Charlotte Hempel (eds.), T&T Clark Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls (Bloomsbury, 2019)
George J. Brooke, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament (SPCK, 2005)
George J. Brooke, Qumran and the Jewish Jesus: Reading the New Testament in the Light of the Scrolls (Grove Books, 2005)
George J. Brooke, 鈥楻eading the Dead Sea Scrolls: Essays in Method鈥� (SBL Early Judaism and its Literature 39, Atlanta, SBL, 2013)
Jonathan G. Campbell, Deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls (Blackwell Publishing, 2nd edition, 2002)
Shaye J.D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Westminster John Knox Press, 3rd edn, 2014)
John J. Collins, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2013)
John J. Collins, Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Eerdmans, 2010)
Philip R. Davies, George J. Brooke and Phillip R. Callaway, The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Thames and Hudson, 2002)
Peter W. Flint, The Dead Sea Scrolls (Abingdon Press, 2013)
Martin Goodman, A History of Judaism (Allen Lane, 2017)
Charlotte Hempel, The Community Rules from Qumran: A Commentary (Fortress Press, 2020)
Charlotte Hempel (ed.), The Dead Sea Scrolls: Texts and Context (Brill, 2010)
Charlotte Hempel, 鈥榃ho is Making Dinner at Qumran?鈥� (Journal of Theological Studies 63, 2012)
Charlotte Hempel, 鈥楨zra and the Dead Sea Scrolls鈥� (Biblical Archaeology Review, Summer 2022)
Jodi Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Eerdmans, 2nd edition, 2021)
Joan Taylor, The Essenes, the Scrolls and the Dead Sea (Oxford University Press, 2012)
James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible (Eerdmans, 2012)
James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (Eerdmans, 2nd edition, 2010)
Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin Classics, 2011)
Sidnie White Crawford, Scribes and Scrolls at Qumran (Eerdmans, 2019)
T. Williams, C. Keith, and L. Stuckenbruck (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls in Ancient Media Culture (Brill, 2023)
Yigael Yadin, The Message of the Scrolls (Crossroad, 1992)
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