KU News Release

Curator of upcoming Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit to speak at KU

LAWRENCE — Morris Margolies, curator of an upcoming exhibit at Kansas City’s Union Station featuring ancient religious texts, will speak at the University of Kansas next month.

Margolies lecture, “Judaism and Christianity in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 11, in the Alderson Auditorium at the Kansas Union. Portions of the scrolls will be exhibited at Union Station, one of only four U.S. venues on a tour authorized by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

KU’s Hall Center for the Humanities hosts this lecture, which is free and open to the public.

Margolies, ordained by Yeshiva University, is rabbi emeritus of Beth Shalom Congregation of Kansas City, Mo., and a former visiting professor of Jewish history at KU. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and a doctorate in Jewish history from Columbia University. He is the author of several books, including Gathering of Angels: Angels in Jewish Life and Literature and the major scholarly work Samuel David Luzzatto, Traditionalist Scholar.

A Bedouin shepherd discovered the scrolls in a Judean desert cave in 1946, and since then they have provided new insight into both the Jewish and Christian faiths. A scroll of the complete book of Isaiah is remarkably similar to the modern text found in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament. Four of the scrolls reference a “teacher of righteousness” who is often regarded as a persecuted messiah killed by his enemies. Additionally, says Margolies, these four scrolls “all express the confidence he will come back to life and with this will occur the redemption of the Jewish people and the redemption of mankind.”

The Union Station exhibit will run Feb. 8 through May 13 and is supported by a grant from the Hall Family Foundation. For more information on the lecture at KU, contact the Hall Center at hallcenter@ku.edu or (785) 864-4798.

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