By Angelique Thomas
angelique@newsroom.byu.edu
The Dead Sea Scrolls are on a tour of the Midwest, stopping at LDS stake centers.
'The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies at BYU has assisted The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in outreach activities by providing a free traveling exhibit on the scrolls,' said Daniel Oswald, executive director and CEO for Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of several hundred texts, written in Hebrew, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves near the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, said Donald W. Parry, associate professor of Hebrew language and literature at BYU.
The Scrolls are currently in Minnesota. This summer they will also visit Iowa, Missouri and Illinois through the month of August.
According to Insights, a FARMS newsletter, those who visit the traveling exhibit will walk through several rooms to view various scroll replicas and artifacts while listening to audio commentary.
The rooms focus on the making of the scrolls and life at Qumran, a site of ancient ruins located near the caves where the scrolls were first discovered.
The rooms also deal with the ancient practices of preserving documents as they relate to the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are of great general interest because they shed much light on cultural, religious and political aspects of certain Jews who lived around the time of Jesus Christ.
The scrolls also provide new information about the manner in which the Old Testament was preserved, copied and transmitted through the ages.
Parry speaks at firesides about the Scrolls and the exhibit.
He said one scroll of great significance is the Great Isaiah Scroll, which is 23 and 1/2 feet long.
He is currently translating this scroll with the LDS audience in mind.
Parry said it is important because it is approximately 1000 years older than the book of Isaiah that belongs to the Hebrew Bible.
It has new readings that provide information that has been lost for centuries, he said.
Parry is also co-author of 'The Dead Sea Scrolls: Question and Responses for Latter-day Saints.'
He said the book sets forth 70 questions and responses, designed to inform Latter-day Saints regarding the nature and significance of the Scrolls.
He said he hopes to set the record straight regarding particular aspects of the Scrolls that have been generally misunderstood in the past.
Oswald said they have received some wonderful feedback from stake presidents and other church leaders about the attendance and publicity the traveling exhibit has generated.
At some locations, more than a thousand people have attended in an evening, and of those attending estimates have ranged from up to 70 percent of those being members from other faiths, Oswald said.
Often they leave with the Book of Mormon because they realize that the people of Qumran were not the only people to have ancient records, he said.
It becomes very plausible to them that other people kept similar records, Oswald said.
The FARMS Web site, farms.byu.edu, said the LDS Church is one of the sponsors of a larger exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago, Ill.
Noel B. Reynolds, associate academic vice president, said he hopes the Chicago exhibit will encourage the people of the Midwest to become personally acquainted with these invaluable documents from ancient Judaism.
The exhibit features 15 scroll texts and 80 artifacts excavated at Qumran.
Some of the scrolls include one from Leviticus, parts of the Psalms, and Enoch scroll, a messianic apocalypse and a text of beatitude-like blessings and are on display until June 11.