Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 5 p.m. (refreshments before the talk 4:30) in Humanities 1, 210
Join us for a free public lecture by Professor Jodi Magness, Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In 1946-47, Bedouins found the first Dead Sea Scrolls in a cave near the site of Qumran, by the shore of the Dead Sea. Eventually, remains of over 900 scrolls were discovered in eleven caves surrounding Qumran. The scrolls, which date to about the time of Jesus, were deposited in the caves by members of a Jewish sect — apparently the Essenes — who lived at Qumran. This slide-illustrated lecture will explore the ancient remains at Qumran and discuss the contents and significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Professor Magness' research interests, which focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, include ancient pottery, ancient synagogues, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Roman army in the East. Magness co-directed the 1995 excavations in the Roman siege works at Masada in 1995, and the excavations in the late Roman fort at Yotvata, Israel from 2003-2007.
