Congratulations to Eugene Ulrich

CONGRATULATIONS TO EUGENE ULRICH, who has received NEH funding for his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls:

Professors receive fellowships

By Tori Roeck (The Observer)

News Writer

Published: Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Updated: Wednesday, February 2, 2011 00:02

Two Notre Dame professors recently received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to pursue their scholarly work next year, increasing the University's record number of NEH fellowships to 44 in the last 12 years.

Notre Dame has earned more NEH fellowships since 1999 than any other university in the country, according to a University press release. The University of Michigan earned 35 NEH fellowships and Harvard earned 26.

Notre Dame theology professor Eugene Ulrich received a fellowship this year in Ancient Languages to pursue his book, "The Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls," a compilation of his previous work on the topic.

"The Dead Sea Scrolls … open up a period that we had lost sight of, a period that had just been lost to history," Ulrich said. "Which is part of the period of the composition of the Scriptures."

Ulrich's career has been focused on exploring this era through the scrolls, and therefore gaining a greater appreciation for and understanding of the Biblical texts.

His work began as a graduate student at Harvard under Frank Cross, one of the two original American editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. His dissertation became an analysis of one of the major scrolls.

"It was being in the right place at the right time," Ulrich said.

Ulrich's first NEH fellowship in 1977 enabled him to publish one of the scrolls, leading to a lifetime of research pertaining to these documents. When the other editor, Monsignor Patrick Skehan of Catholic University of America, died, he left his life's work to Ulrich because he was so impressed with his research.

"This coming year will be my 39th year of teaching here," Ulrich said, "and 21 of those years, I have had NEH funding. They were very interested in the publication of the scrolls."

Ulrich's upcoming work expands on a book he published last year, "The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Textual Variants," which includes all of the text from the Biblical Scrolls, but makes it more accessible.

"After going through scroll after scroll after scroll and seeing different surprises here, different surprises there, what I'm doing now is synthesizing all that and putting it into one monograph so that you can get in one book a clear explanation and description of how the Bible came to be the way it is," Ulrich said.

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Congratulations also to the second Notre Dame recipient, Professor Thomas F. X. Noble, who received funding for his work on medieval perceptions of Rome.