"The Dead Sea Scrolls: Mysteries of the Ancient World" Exhibition
The Jewish Museum
This event has ended.
In 1947, a significant discovery of ancient Jewish texts written on parchment was made in a cave in the Judean Desert, east of Jerusalem and near the Dead Sea. These first scrolls turned out to contain the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible, biblical commentaries, and the writings of a Jewish religious sect. When biblical scholars learned of these texts, they were electrified at the possibility that they could reveal new information about the development of early Judaism and of Christianity.
The Jewish Museum’s exhibition will include six Dead Sea Scrolls. They represent the important transformation that occurred in Jewish worship from sacrifice to Bible study and prayer, the debates among Jewish groups of the Second Temple Period, and the indirect connections between the scrolls and early Christianity.
Media
Schedule
from September 21, 2008 to January 04, 2009
Reviews
The Jewish Museum exhibit is at the center of a controversy, in that it highlights the "two basic theories" about the scrolls -- a complete about-face from previous exhibits, which have attempted to hide the debate over scroll origins from the public.
See University of Chicago historian Norman Golb's review of the exhibit:
https://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/dds_new_york_exhibit_2008.pdf
and see the controversy that has erupted in the pages of the National Post in Canada -- details at: