Despite severe weather, students and community members filled Willard Collins Alumni Auditorium on Monday night to learn more about the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Dr. Weston W. Fields, one of the world’s leading Dead Sea Scrolls scholars, was the featured speaker at the Prentice Meador Distinguished Lectures, an annual series designed to honor quality communication in the area of faith and spirituality.
“It was as though someone at the time of Jesus had the ability to take a picture of the Bible as it was at that time, and then had hidden it away, and someone 2,000 years later could open it up and see exactly what the text of the Bible was like in that day,” Fields said of the scrolls.
Fields said that people often wonder how closely the current English Bible resembles the Bible of that time. He said the scrolls assure people that the Bible has been passed down carefully and reliably.
“The text has been transmitted amazingly well and faithfully,” Fields said. “Much more faithfully than any other ancient text.”
Dr. Ken Durham, the Batsell Barrett Baxter Chair of Preaching and emcee for the evening, agreed.
“This gives us even more confidence in the Biblical text,” Durham said.
According to Fields, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered nearly 65 years ago, mostly in caves in Qumran, the northern area of the Dead Sea. He said the scrolls were hand copied and preserved by a “separatist” group, possibly called the Essenes.
Fields said the group who copied the scrolls probably had no “direct connection” with Jesus, but he said Jesus would have likely spent time near that area.
Durham said that even if this group didn’t have direct contact with Jesus, the discovery of their scrolls still gives insight into that time period.
“This find gives us a glimpse into a first century community,” Durham said. “It tells us more about the world in which Jesus lived and preached.”
Fields said fragments of the scrolls are being purchased all over the world. He mentioned that the fragments are locked in safes in places like a museum in Los Angeles, a farm in Norway, a Hobby Lobby in Oklahoma and a theological seminary in Texas. He said the man who originally began selling the scrolls was a clever business man.
“He started selling the worst ones first, the smallest, the hardest to read, the ones with fewest numbers and letters to read,” Fields said.
According to Fields, smaller fragments of the scrolls typically sell for about $1 to $2.5 million, but he mentioned one larger scroll that is currently priced at $42 million.
Fields is the executive director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, which focuses on publishing the scrolls so that people have more access to the documents. He invited audience members to consider supporting that endeavor.
Durham said he thinks this kind of event is what liberal arts education is all about and that creating events like this is exactly what the university should be doing.
“I think this just makes us more wise in our faith and more thankful for the big world that God allows us to learn about,” Durham said. “I’m proud of my university that we’re bringing people to campus. This is for our students more than anything else. We’re trying to bring the very best thinkers onto campus.”