The Qumran Library: Scribes and Scrolls
Join Museum of the Bible, in person or via Zoom, for our speaker series focusing on topics related to Dead Sea Scrolls: The Exhibition.
The Qumran scroll corpus is the largest subset of the Judean Desert scrolls, but much about it remains mysterious. Why were the scrolls deposited in the caves surrounding Khirbet Qumran? Who put them there? Are they a random or a deliberate collection? In this lecture, Dr. Sidnie White Crawford will argue that the Qumran scrolls are one collection, a scribal library belonging to the community of Jews that inhabited Khirbet Qumran, and that they were deposited in the caves by that community throughout its existence in the first century BCE and first century CE, until its destruction by the Romans in 68. The most likely identification for this community is a settlement of the larger Essene movement, active in Second Temple Judaism.
Tickets include museum admission, but do not include admission to Dead Sea Scrolls: The Exhibition. Guests who attend this lecture will receive 10% off the price of the other lectures. The discount code will be included in your receipt.
Get your tickets today and learn more about the Qumran library and the community surrounding it.
Jun 28, 2026 - Jun 28, 2026
2:30 PM - 4:30 PM EDT
Scholars Initiative Conference Room, Floor 5R
Includes Admission
General in Person $39.99
Members in Person $22.99
Students in Person $29.99
General Virtual $19.99
Members and Students Virtual $14.99
In Person Event
Virtual Event
Speaker
Dr. Sidnie White Crawford
Sidnie White Crawford is Willa Cather Professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism emerita at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2025–26 she was a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, where she began a commentary on the Damascus Document. She is an internationally recognized scholar in the areas of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Her latest publications are Qumran Questions: Collected Essays (Wipf & Stock, 2025) and, with Tommy Wasserman, The Oxford Handbook of Textual Criticism of the Bible (Oxford University Press, 2025). Her book Scribes and Scrolls at Qumran (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2019) was the winner of the Biblical Archaeology Society’s “Best Popular Book on Archaeology” (2021) and the Frank Moore Cross Award from the American Schools of Oriental Research (2019). Crawford serves as the Chair of the Old Testament Editorial Board for the Hermeneia commentary series, and is Board Chair emerita and past President of the Board of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. Crawford served as a general editor (Hebrew Bible, Deuterocanon) for the 30-year review of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible undertaken by the National Council of Churches (released in 2022).