The Dead Sea Scrolls: How They Changed My Life

In this issue four prominent scholars tell BAR readers how the scrolls changed their lives. Harvard’s Frank Cross is the doyen of Dead Sea Scroll scholars; his views come in an interview with BAR editor Hershel Shanks. In the pages that follow, Emanuel Tov, the publication team’s current editor-in-chief, who replaced the controversial John Strugnell, describes his personal challenges in this demanding assignment; Sidnie White Crawford, now a leading scroll scholar in her own right, was just a kid back then but with a view from the inside; and Martin Abegg, who was also just a young graduate student back then, tells us how he used a computer to reconstruct some of the secret unpublished scrolls to help him with his doctoral dissertation.

In subsequent issues we will continue this series with Oxford don Geza Vermes and New York University’s Lawrence Schiffman in July/August, and James Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary and James VanderKam of Notre Dame University in September/October. Stay tuned.

Reminiscences of Scholarship, Anti-Semitism, Alcohol and Creating Texts

HERSHEL SHANKS: Where were you when you first heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls?