Founded in 1995, the

Trinity Western University Trinity Western University (TWU) is a Private university, private Christian liberal arts university with campuses in both Langley, British Columbia (district municipality), Langley and Richmond, British Columbia, Richmond, British Columbia. The sch ...

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the nor ...

Institute is the only centre in North America dedicated to the manuscript discoveries in the

Judean desert The Judaean Desert or Judean Desert ( he, מִדְבַּר יְהוּדָה, Midbar Yehuda}, both ''Desert of Judah'' or ''Judaean Desert''; ar, صحراء يهودا, Sahraa' Yahuda) is a desert in Palestine and Israel that lies east of Jerusal ...

and material finds of the

Qumran Qumran ( he, קומראן; ar, خربة قمران ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, near the Israeli ...

community. With strengths in the textual and philological interpretations of both biblical and non-biblical texts, the institute provides support and resources graduate and faculty research, events, and publications on the Qumran finds.

Founders and directors

The Trinity Western University Dead Sea Scrolls institute was founded by Craig Evans in 1995. From 1995 to 2015, the institute was co-directed by

Martin Abegg Martin G. Abegg Jr. (born 1950) is a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, researcher, and professor. Abegg is responsible for reconstructing the full text of the Dead Sea Scrolls from the Dead Sea Scrolls concordance, a project that broke the lengthy publicati ...

and

Peter Flint '' Santa Barbara'' is an American television soap opera that aired on NBC from July 30, 1984, to January 15, 1993. The show initially revolved around the lives of four families; the wealthy Capwell family, rivals the Lockridge family, and the mor ...

. Following Abegg's retirement in 2015, Andrew Perrin stepped into the role of co-director alongside Flint. The institute has been home of the Ben Zion Wacholder Chair and Canada Research Chair in Dead Sea Scrolls Studies.

Events and initiatives

The institute has a heritage of hosting public and academic events related to the Dead Sea Scrolls and will launch an open-access initiative for research and reviews on the Qumran finds, entitled Maskilim. Open access resources in the form of public lectures and introductory course content for the Dead Sea Scrolls are also archived on the Institute's YouTube channel. Launched by alumni in 2015, the Dead Sea Scrolls Legacy Scholarship supports graduate students who are entering into the Masters of Arts in Biblical Studies program and display a strong interest in researching topics surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls.

References

{{Reflist 1995 establishments in British Columbia Organizations established in 1995 Trinity Western University Dead Sea Scrolls Biblical studies organizations Learned societies of Canada