The Omnibus

Issue date: 3/2/07 Section: In the Spotlight

Media Credit: Bing Bayer (Left to right) Seniors Sarah Lewis, Travis Weil and Matt Gallion visited the Dead Sea Scroll exhibit in Kansas City. Faculty member Dr. Bing Bayer and senior Stephanie Luce also attended.

Seniors Sarah Lewis, Matt Gallion, Stephanie Luce and Travis Weil and Dr. Bing Bayer, professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, experienced a rare event; they viewed original manuscripts at the "traveling" Dead Sea Scroll Exhibit in Kansas City Saturday, Feb. 24.
This exhibit, open to the public for $19.95 per person, is housed at Union Station until May 13. Both novice and expert alike would enjoy this opportunity, but tickets must be bought online in advance, as it was very crowded with tours starting every 15 minutes.
After viewing a seven-minute film giving an overview of the discovery, interpretation and significance of the scrolls, they toured about 60 displays. An audio wand given upon entry narrated the details of what they saw.
The students and Bayer observed pottery, scroll jars, a cache of Roman coins and various artifacts found at Qumran, a small village on the northwest corner of the Dead Sea. The community that lived there either copied or hid over eight hundred manuscripts found from 1947-1956 in 11 caves in the surrounding hillsides.
The best part of the trip was the manuscript room. Four replicas and six authentic manuscripts were available for inspection. Authentic texts they saw included fragments of Genesis, Exodus, the earliest known copy of Joshua, Psalms 135-136, Job 36, a commentary on Isaiah 11 and the Community Rule.
To preserve the documents, the lights in the display cases were dimmed and cycled off and on after so many seconds of time. The real highlight was seeing the divine name, the tetragrammaton YHWH, in paleo-Hebrew script, a style of writing that predated the scrolls themselves.
At the end of the tour, the group walked through a DSS bookstore / souvenir shop and several "hands-on" booths.
At the booths Gallion wrote some Hebrew on an Etch-a-Sketch pad and others tried to piece together a broken "scroll jar." Luce had the best job of all; she worked as a volunteer at the exhibit.
As a free souvenir, the students and Bayer each received a key chain containing a polished stone that was gathered outside cave three in the Qumran area.
"The best thing I took away that day was the joy and encouragement of seeing four SBU students giving up a Saturday to pursue their academic passion," said Bayer.

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