Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Piecing Together The Past, Eugene Ulrich, James Vanderkam, Catherine M. Murphy

Faculty Publications

Nearly fifty years ago, some Bedouin shepherds stumbled upon a cache of ancient texts in caves near the Dead Sea, thirteen miles east of Jerusalem.

It soon became clear that this was the largest and most significant collection of manuscripts ever discovered in Palestine.

Finds Included the oldest witnesses to the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts of Jewish scripture-the Christian Old Testament-along with nonbiblical manuscripts certain to illuminate the tumultuous period of the destruction of the Second Temple and the time of Christ. The singularity of these texts has brought about one of the most protracted and painstaking endeavors of …