The Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for Understanding the Bible and Judeo-Christian Traditions
VIEW EVENT DETAILSEvening Lecture by ARCHIE LEE, Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Social Science, Shandong University
Registration at 6.15pm
Lecture at 6.30pm
Close at 8pm
Major events are often triggered by seemingly trivial details. The Dead Sea Scrolls--an accidental discovery by shepherds in 1947--have far-reaching significance to the studies of both the community life and faith of the Essenes at Qumran as well as the development of Judeo-Christian origins from 2BC to 1st Century. These parchments take us back two thousand years, shedding light on the faith, rituals, daily life, and even the concept of eschatology in ancient Israel. What is even more gratifying to biblical scholars is that the Scrolls contain a number of manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, providing new perspectives for textual criticism and textual transmission. With reference to the best preserved Great Isaiah Scrolls, this lecture will illustrate the impact on biblical scholarship and the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls have made.
Archie C.C. Lee is Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Social Science at Shandong University, after serving at the The Chinese University of Hong Kong for over three decades. He received his doctoral degree from Edinburgh University in 1980. Being trained as a biblical scholar who is dedicated to doing interpretation of the Bible in context, he has developed a reading strategy of interpreting the Bible cross-textually, taking his religio-cultural and socio-political texts into the reading process of understanding the Bible. He is the founding President of Society of Asian Biblical Studies SABS, 2006) and is currently on the Council of Society of Bible Literature. Besides numerous books in Chinese on naming God in China and textual practice and identity making of Chinese Christians, he was co-editor of the Text@Context Series (with Athalya Brenner and Gale Yee) (Fortress Press, 2010-13) and Global Bible Commentary (Abingdon Press, 2004). He also served on the editorial board of Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Publications on the Bible in China include: “Scriptural Translations and Cross-textual Hermeneutics,” Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, (Oxford University Press, 2014), “When the Flood Narrative of Genesis Meets its Counterpart in China: Reception and Challenge in Cross-Textual Reading,” Genesis: Text @ Context (2010) and “Cross-textual Hermeneutics and Identity in Multi-textual Asia,” Christian Theology in Asia: Emerging Forms and Themes, (Cambridge, 2008).