 2016 - 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0690-1236-01 | Introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 2.0
Course description
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-twentieth century revolutionized the study of the biblical and Second Temple literature. For the first time, scholars had access to authentic documents of the Hellenistic and Roman period, which witness a variety of aspects in the cultural and spiritual life of the late Second Temple period. The course offers a systematic explorations of the various textual collections found in several sites in the Judean Desert (especially the caves near Qumran, on the shore of the Dead Sea) and the numerous literary genres represented in these collections against their historical background. It will also survey the “state of the art,” namely, and the updated achievements of current research with respect to the main problems that are at the focus of contemporary studies. We will also attempt to understand how the historical context of the discovery itself and of subsequent generations has impacted scholarship.