The Discovery and Importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Instructor: Reverend Dan Lewis

Discovered in the late 1940s near the Dead Sea, the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) were the single most important archaeology discovery in the 20th century. In addition to sectarian works and various intertestamental literature, they contained portions of every book in the Old Testament except Esther, and they pushed back our textual evidence for the Hebrew Bible by up to a thousand years. Every current translation of the Bible accesses the DSS as a primary textual resource.

About the Presenter: Reverend Dan Lewis, M.A. in Western Religion, University of Detroit; former assistant professor at William Tyndale College; former pastor, now the primary adult teacher at Old Mariners’ Church, Detroit; currently lectures worldwide in ancient Near Eastern and biblical studies in every continent except Antarctica.