From Lauren Green at Fox News, with video: Dead Sea Scrolls in a Command Performance on Broadway. Larry Schiffman is interviewed:
Lawrence Schiffman, curator and Dead Sea Scroll scholar, says, "The way a person should relate to this and, in fact, I think this is true whether they are a religious believer or not, is that what we see here is the background of the whole religious system that underlies Western civilization."And a dismissive one from The Forward:
Schiffman explains that the exhibit shows the real live relationship of Christianity and Judaism, how they developed.
Included in the exhibit are some 700, centuries-old artifacts, giving viewers a look inside the ancient biblical world of faith.
Schiffman says, "we've got here a house that you can look into and get a sense of what was there.
How people live. How people bathed. How they cooked. We've got some weapons. We've got all kinds of things from that real life that you read about, especially in the books like Samuel and Kings."
Dead Sea Scrolls Come to Times SquareMore reviews noted here and here.
Massive Discovery Show Aims to Put Artifacts in Context
By Michael Kaminer
Published November 11, 2011, issue of November 18, 2011.
“Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times,” which opened on October 30 at the cavernous Discovery Times Square exhibit space in New York, touts itself as showcasing “the largest and most comprehensive collection of Holy Land artifacts ever organized.” Indeed, a more accurate title for this Bible-themed behemoth of a show, produced in partnership with the Israel Antiquities Authority, might be “Dead Sea Scrolls: The Collected Works.”
While the exhibit’s ambition — to contextualize the creation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and to frame their effects on religion, borders and history — is spectacular, the sheer volume of notable relics ends up diminishing the show’s impact. Among the more than 500 objects, many on display for the first time, are pottery, coins, seals, jewelry, carvings, textiles and 2,000-year-old olive pits dug up in the deserts surrounding Qumran, where the scrolls were first discovered.
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