Robert L. Millet Blog Posts Publications Director of BYU
Religious Studies Center POSTED BY: holzapfel This past month
Andrew Lawler published an essay on the Dead Sea Scrolls in the
Smithsonian magazine (“Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?” [January
2010]: 40–47). The media likes controversy, and Lawler
highlights it in this interesting essay. Since the first
discoveries in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have captured the
imagination of the public, including Latter-day Saints. The
importance of these textual discoveries on the northwestern
shore of the Dead Sea can hardly be overestimated. They open an
important window onto the past, particularly for the period when
the paucity of sources made it frustrating for scholars
attempting to reconstruct the Jewish world during the
intertestamental period. They also illuminate the world of John
the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth, although it is doubtful that
either of them spent time at the site where the scrolls were
copied. In the end, some 800 manuscripts were found in e