“The Dead Sea Scrolls: What They Are & Why They Matter” by Professor Hugh Williamson OBE FBA

The Dead Sea Scrolls were one of the most spectacular archaeological finds of the last century. They attracted enormous popular interest when first displayed but work on publication and interpretation has been going on ever since, even if sometimes beneath the popular radar. But what exactly are they? Where did they come from, and how do they relate to the buildings excavated nearby? Who wrote them? What do they tell us about the history of the text of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, and what light do they shed on the nature of Judaism at the time of Jesus? Over the decades all sorts of conspiracy theories have also grown up. Proper publication has now been completed (why did it take so long?) so that we are now in a better position to answer some of the many questions that they have raised over the decades.

Programme
9.30 Registration
10.00 An Overview
11.00 Coffee / Tea
11.30 The Biblical Text
12.30 Lunch – Bring-Your-Own – Tea / Coffee available
1.30 Interpreting the Bible
2.30 Tea / Coffee
3.00 The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christianity
4.00 Departure

Speakers – Hugh Williamson was the Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford from 1992 until his retirement in 2014 (before that he was in Cambridge). His main research in the first part of his career was on the books of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, and he then moved on to work mainly on the book of Isaiah. But his interests go more widely than that, not least in that for many years he participated in the archaeological excavations at Lachish and then at Jezreel.

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