Monday, December 19, 2011

DSS fragments at SWBTS

THE DEAD SEA SCROLL FRAGMENTS owned by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary are the subject of an article in the Baptist Press:
Scroll fragments could 'shed light' on O.T. text

Posted on Dec 14, 2011 | by Benjamin Hawkins

FORT WORTH, Texas (BP) -- The potential contribution to Dead Sea Scroll scholarship of nine scroll fragments owned by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary was underscored when several SWBTS professors discussed their research to date during the Society of Biblical Literature's 2011 meeting in San Francisco.

"Southwestern's scrolls contain readings of Old Testament passages that are nowhere else attested," Ryan Stokes, assistant professor of Old Testament, noted after the SBL's three-day mid-November meeting. "We are just beginning to comprehend their importance for the field, but we expect them to shed light on how we came to have the Old Testament text that we have today."

Southwestern Seminary currently houses the largest collection of fragments owned by an institution of higher education within the United States. The seminary will host an exclusive exhibit of the scrolls from July 2, 2012, to Jan. 11, 2013. To learn more about Southwestern Seminary's exclusive "Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible" exhibit, visit http://seethescrolls.com.

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The article is pretty thin on details about the fragments. And now there appear to be nine of them, although an earlier report said ten. In any case, I look forward to their publication and to any additional information about them which comes out in the meantime.

Background here and links. The earlier reports indicate that some of the fragments come from the biblical books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Daniel.