BIB 615 Dead Sea Scrolls
This introduction to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls will concentrate on selected issues: their historical context's, including a survey of the archaeological issues regarding the site of Qumran and the caves, a survey of the history of their study, the literary nature of the corpus and the variety of genres encompassed therein, and contemporary approaches to and issues in their study. Each of these issues will be discussed in connection with the careful reading of key texts. Included will be portions of the mss. of the Community Rule, Damascus Covenant, 4QMMT and the Temple Scroll, as well as selected wisdom texts. Students will be asked to write a research paper on a text from those to be covered in class; papers on texts outside of the syllabus will also be possible.