Scroll scholar to speak at Midwestern Seminary’s Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls Workshop
KANSAS CITY – “The DSS [Dead Sea Scrolls] do much to shed light on the Jewish context out of which Christianity grew,” said Terry Wilder, associate professor of New Testament and Greek at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (MBTS).
To further explore this context, MBTS will host a workshop entitled Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls featuring well-known scroll scholar and Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College, Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada, Craig A. Evans. He will speak twice. Concurrent with the opening of the Union Station Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit on Feb. 8, 2007, this workshop will run Feb. 9, 6-9 p.m. and Feb. 10, 8 a.m. to noon. Students will be required to attend the exhibit as part of the workshop.
“This exhibit is timely and will be a great opportunity for folks in the Midwest to see actual fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” said Stephen J. Andrews, MBTS professor of Old Testament, Hebrew, and archaeology and director of the Morton-Seats Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology. “This workshop is designed to investigate the relationship of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Christian origins and their impact on our Christian faith.”
In his two lectures, “Jesus, Paul, and the Dead Sea Scrolls” and “The Extra-Canonical Gospels and the Dead Sea Scrolls: What Do They Really Tell Us about Jesus?,” Evans will address not only the implications of the DSS discovery for Christianity, but also its effect on the scholarly and popular culture surrounding current extra-canonical perspectives.
Evans frequently speaks about the Bible and Archaeology, and Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls in a variety of venues. In his 21 years of directing the graduate program at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, he was also responsible for founding the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute at that university. He has served in his current position at Acadia Divinity College since 2002.
He also co-edited the book “Christian Beginnings and the Dead Sea Scrolls” in which he and five other leading scholars address questions for the study of early Christianity created by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. What did the Jews of Jesus’ day believe about salvation? The Holy Spirit? The nature of the Messiah? These issues and more will be the focus of this workshop.
“Without a doubt the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was the greatest archaeological discovery of all time,” said MBTS President R. Philip Roberts. “Every book or portions of every book in the Old Testament, except for Esther, was found among these manuscripts dating from approximately 300 years prior to Jesus Christ. The prophecy of Isaiah was found in its entirety. This is a monumental and unique workshop which will provide pertinent and exciting information, related to this discovery, for the participants.”
This workshop is free and open to the public. For more information about the workshop, contact 816-414-3733 or 800-944-MBTS (6287), e-mail agilmore@mbts.edu, or visit the MBTS Web site at www.mbts.edu.
In addition to the workshop, Midwestern will offer a 10-week spring semester master’s level course entitled “Introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls” on Thursday evenings, Feb. 15 through Apr. 26, 6:30-9:10 p.m. A master’s level Hebrew reading class entitled “Translating Selected Dead Sea Scrolls” will be offered on Mondays, 1-2:50 p.m., during the spring semester as well.