Ancient Texts and Modern Techniques: Producing A New Edition of the Temple Scroll (lecture)

March 10th
6 PM
Gilman 130G

The Temple Scroll was an attempt by the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls to produce a more perfect Torah. Five copies of this text were discovered, including the longest of all the extant Scrolls. In recent years, high resolution photography has greatly improved our ability to read the ink on these scrolls, and highly sophisticated online platforms have made these photographs very accessible and easy to use.  With this technology in hand, the time was ripe to produce a new edition of the Temple Scroll. This presentation will briefly survey the contents of the Temple Scroll, demonstrate how this new technology has aided in producing a new edition, and explain the limitations of this technology.

Dr. Andrew Gross is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at the Catholic University of America, where he has taught since 2008. He recently co-edited a new edition of the Temple Scroll for Brill’s Dead Sea Scrolls Editions series.  His academic interests include the connections between cuneiform legal traditions and West Semitic ones as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls.