Between 1946 and 1956, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and became one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time. All of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been translated within the past 40 years.

The University will be welcoming Dr. Adolfo Roitman, a leading expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, to speak at an event, sponsored by the University’s Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies, coming up on October 14.

The Dead Sea Scrolls consisted of 900 manuscripts which came from many different places. Dr. Richard Freund, the director of the Greenberg Center, says that “40 percent of them are from the Bible, 30 percent of them are books that didn’t get into the Bible and 30 percent are books that we’d never heard from ever in any language ever before”.

The scrolls were found in the Judean Desert around the Dead Sea in eleven caves in southern Israel. The salt within the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, preserved the caves making them look like they were from a museum.

Dr. Freund was able to get Dr. Roitman, the curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, to come to the University because he has been working with Dr. Roitman for the past 20 years. And before that Dr. Roitman was Dr. Freund’s student back in Buenos Aires.

Having such a renowned scholar, such as Dr. Roitman come to the University, really makes the University of Hartford seem like a place of great cultural significance in the area to the outside world.

The Dead Sea Scrolls shows how fascinating it is that new information about ancient civilizations can still be discovered in the 20th and 21st Century. Dr. Freud says that “Everything we know is not everything we will know”.

The event will be taking place on Tuesday, October 14, in Mali Auditorium II in Dana Hall, at 7 p.m., and is free of charge. Reservations can be made by calling 860-768-5018.