The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Truth Behind the Mystique

Written by Lawrence Schiffman

Narrated by Richard Ferrone

The Dead Sea Scrolls are perhaps the most important archaeological discovery of the twentieth century. These lectures set before the public the real Dead Sea Scrolls, the most important collection of Jewish texts from the centuries before the rise of Christianity. Only through efforts to understand what the scrolls can teach us about the history of Judaism is it possible for us to learn what they have to teach us about the history of Christianity, because Christianity came into being only after these texts were composed and copied. Professor Schiffman leads the listener through the complex details of the Scrolls and their true meaning for the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 12, 2008
• ISBN: 9781436173063

Reviews for The Dead Sea Scrolls

[wildbill_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Modern Scholar is an interesting series of audio books. I previously listened to a good book on Alexander the Great by Robin Lane Fox. Along with the audiobook they have an extensive reference manual.I knew very little about the Dead Sea Scrolls before I listened to this book. It was a very good introduction to the topic which covered a little bit of everything about the scrolls. They aren't really scrolls anymore. They used to be but they laid up in jars for 2,000 years and now they are fragments of paper with writing on them that are like a jigsaw puzzle to try to read. The jars were just storage jars from that time and were not adapted to storage of documents. As I was listening I was thinking of them sitting there for 2,000 years waiting to be found. A documentary snapshot of a very different way of life. The lecturer provides a lot of detail about what is in the scrolls and gives the listener an idea of what it was like to live in Qumran.The lecturer does a good job of educating the reader about what the Dead Sea Scrolls are and what they are not.They are what is left of the library of a Jewish sect that flourished during the Second Temple period which ended with the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. They have large portions of the Hebrew Bible and a big section on the rules of the day to day life of the sect. They were most likely a group of Essenes who lived a communal life strictly regulated by their religion.Pieces of the scrolls surfaced as far back as 1897. A Bedouin family found them again in 1947 and began selling fragments. In the 1967 war Israel took possession of the scrolls that had been found and the area where the Qumran library was located. They have now all been published with translations and are available to anyone with a library card.Finding the scrolls was probably the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century. I recommend the book highly for the fascinating knowledge it contains and look forward to listening to it again.