Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the revelatory collection of Biblical texts, legal documents, community rules and literary writings.
In 1946 a Bedouin shepherd boy was looking for a goat he’d lost in the hills above the Dead Sea. He threw a rock into a cave and heard a hollow sound. He’d hit a ceramic jar containing an ancient manuscript. This was the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of about a thousand texts dating from around 250 BC to AD 68. It is the most substantial first hand evidence we have for the beliefs and practices of Judaism in and around the lifetime of Jesus.
The Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our understanding of how the texts that make up the Hebrew Bible were edited and collected. They also offer a tantalising window onto the world from which Christianity eventually emerged.
With
Sarah Pearce Ian Karten Professor of Jewish Studies and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton
Charlotte Hempel Professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Birmingham
and
George Brooke Rylands Professor Emeritus of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester
Producer Luke Mulhall
Julian the Apostate
Karl Barth
Julian of Norwich
The Ramayana
John Donne
Angkor Wat
Comenius
Early Christian Martyrdom
The Sistine Chapel
In Our Time is now first on BBC Sounds
Arianism
Medieval Pilgrimage
Saint Cuthbert
John Wesley and Methodism
Deism
The Covenanters
The Rapture
Sir Thomas Browne
Judith beheading Holofernes
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Global News Podcast
Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4
The Infinite Monkey Cage
You’re Dead to Me
Elis James and John Robins