BELLOWS FALLS — Adult Religious Education at Immanuel Episcopal Church presents a course on the Dead Sea Scrolls on Tuesdays at 6:30 p.m. from Sept. 2 through Oct. 21.
All are welcome to participate. The course, based on video presentation, runs at the Chapel at the Stone Church, 20 Church St.
As a program announcement explains, “the year is 1947: A Bedouin shepherd tracks one of his stray goats into a cave mouth above the shore of the Dead Sea at a desolate place named Qumran. Inside, he discovers a pair of tall, thin, clay pots. And what he finds when he opens those pots will be nothing less than the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century: the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
Soon enough, continues the program announcement, “archaeologists began swarming the dusty cliffs of Qumran in search of more caves and more scrolls. In time, the original seven scrolls this Bedouin shepherd haphazardly uncovered grew to 930 scrolls: some of them complete, others merely fragments.”
This video lecture series offers a comprehensive introduction to these unique archaeological documents and to scholars' evolving understanding of their authorship and significance.
Taught by Professor Gary A. Rendsburg, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar who has dedicated decades to the study of this find, the course is based on 24 lectures which tell you what the scrolls are, what they contain, and how the insights they offered into religious and ancient history came into focus.
Rendsburg holds the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair in Jewish History in the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Hebrew studies from New York University and joined the Rutgers faculty in 2004.
The presenter is the Rev. Steve Fuller, who was born and raised in the Bellows Falls/Rockingham area. He has worked for Hubbard Farms in Walpole for many years and is the priest at Immanuel Episcopal Church. He lives in Bellows Falls with his wife, Jeannie.