A review: History comes alive: A walk through the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit (jgelfand,Cincinnati.com)
Related:
HUC part of Scrolls' mysteryBackground here.
Cincinnati connections go back to the scrolls' discovery in 1947
11:38 PM, Nov. 15, 2012 |
Written by
Steven Rosen
Enquirer contributor
For decades, Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion has been an unsung hero in the long, dramatic struggle to save and understand the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls.
So pronounced has HUC’s role been – going back to the 1947 discovery of the first of the scrolls that are 2,000-plus years old – that a special section will be devoted to it when the traveling exhibition Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times opens at Cincinnati Museum Center today.
It’s a story that, in different chapters, involves high intrigue in helping purchase and protect priceless scrolls put up for sale, storing a secret “security negative” on the University Heights campus in case war destroyed the originals in Israel, and a professor’s defiant publication of an unauthorized transcription of scroll text to force authorities to finally make the scrolls public.
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Jason Kalman, an HUC professor of classical Hebrew text and interpretation, has studied his school’s complex involvement with the scrolls and just published a book about it, “Hebrew Union College and the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
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