The Dead Sea Scrolls

4 May, 2023 220 The Bible

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’d lost in the hills above the Dead Sea. He threw a rock into a cave and heard a hollow sound. He’d 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.

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Guests

  • Sarah Pearce No other episodes
  • Ian Karten No other episodes
    Professor of Jewish Studies and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton
  • Charlotte Hempel No other episodes
    Professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Birmingham
  • George Brooke No other episodes
    Rylands Professor Emeritus of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester

Reading list

  • Josephus' Description of the Essenes
    Todd S. Beall (Cambridge University Press, 1988) Google Books →
  • T &T Clark Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls
    George Brooke and Charlotte Hempel (eds.) (Bloomsbury, 2019) Google Books →
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament
    George J. Brooke (SPCK, 2005) Google Books →
  • Qumran and the Jewish Jesus: Reading the New Testament in the Light of the Scrolls
    George J. Brooke (Grove Books, 2005) Google Books →
  • Reading the Dead Sea Scrolls: Essays in Method
    George J. Brooke (SBL Early Judaism and its Literature, 2013) Google Books →
  • Deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls
    Jonathan G. Campbell (Blackwell Publishing, 2002) Google Books →
  • From the Maccabees to the Mishnah
    Shaye J.D. Cohen (Westminster John Knox Press, 2014) Google Books →
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography
    John J. Collins (Princeton University Press, 2013) Google Books →
  • Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls
    John J. Collins (Eerdmans, 2010) Google Books →
  • The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls
    Philip R. Davies, George J. Brooke and Phillip R. Callaway (Thames and Hudson, 2002) Google Books →
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls
    Peter W. Flint (Abingdon Press, 2013) Google Books →
  • A History of Judaism
    Martin Goodman (Allen Lane, 2017) Google Books →
  • The Community Rules from Qumran: A Commentary
    Charlotte Hempel (Fortress Press, 2020) Google Books →
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls: Texts and Context
    Charlotte Hempel (ed.) (Brill, 2010) Google Books →
  • Who is Making Dinner at Qumran?
    Charlotte Hempel (Journal of Theological Studies, 2012)
  • Ezra and the Dead Sea Scrolls
    Charlotte Hempel (Biblical Archaeology Review, 2022)
  • The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls
    Jodi Magness (Eerdmans, 2021) Google Books →
  • The Essenes, the Scrolls and the Dead Sea
    Joan Taylor (Oxford University Press, 2012) Google Books →
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible
    James C. VanderKam (Eerdmans, 2012) Google Books →
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls Today
    James C. VanderKam (Eerdmans, 2010) Google Books →
  • The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English
    Geza Vermes (Penguin Classics, 2011) Google Books →
  • Scribes and Scrolls at Qumran
    Sidnie White Crawford (Eerdmans, 2019) Google Books →
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls in Ancient Media Culture
    T. Williams, C. Keith, and L. Stuckenbruck (eds.) (Brill, 2023)
  • The Message of the Scrolls
    Yigael Yadin (Crossroad, 1992) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m001ljc0

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001ljc0

Auto-category: 220.6 (Bible)