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Rating: 
Summary: Revisionist history
Review: Disappointing. Promoted as scholarship, the inherent bias soon becomes apparent - Christian spin doctoring promoting the Scrolls as a prophetic precursor and validation of the Jesus story. The glaring and logical question, however, is; did the later writers of the narrative Gospels use available contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls to pen their accounts? How? As Christian revisionist history, don't expect this to be considered. An interesting story though, but don't expect an unbiased account or a scholar's insight.
Rating: 
Summary: Great overview of the DSS; some overstatements
Review: I heard Dr. Hanson both times he has been on the well-known
(inter)national talk radio show, "Coast to Coast," though he was
never interviewed by the show's mainstay, Art Bell. Dr. Hanson is a
very competent and highly enthusiastic speaker. On the show and
certainly in "The Untold Story" he adds life to what could be a
"dead" subject. He is the rare Christian, not in that he accepts
Judaism as the undoubted precursor to Christianity (a point
fully proven by the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), according to him), but
he knows Hebrew fluently from years of study, and more importantly,
having lived in Israel for many years, and not always in the safest
places! You feel his deep love for religious studies in the book,
and his sincere, humble conviction for the religious path. On the radio and in the Introduction of the book Dr. Hanson
promises to tell the DSS saga to non-scholars, without the verbose
and dry prose of the many scholarly but unfulfilling tomes that have
been produced since the remarkable discovery of the scrolls in 1947,
amazingly synchronistic with the founding of the modern state of Israel.
For the most part Dr. Hanson succeeds very well, giving a very clear,
thorough, lively, and from what I know, factual account of the finding,
history, and meaning of the DSS - all this in relatively few pages. I
think that even those (non-experts) who are familiar with the story will
find Dr. Hanson's account enjoyable reading. Another aspect of the DSS that Dr. Hanson's covers admirably are
the many controversies surrouding the scrolls, and he explains why the
scholarly consensus is usually to him the most plausible. For example,
most scholars think that the authors and creators of the scrolls were
Essenes, but some feel that this is not the case. Dr. Hanson not
only shows why the philosophy and lifestyle(s) of the various Essene
sects point to the Essenes, but on p. 61 he cleverly speculates that
the Hebrew word Osin, which means "doers of God's will," could have
been "corrupted" to form "Essenes," who most certainly consider
themselves doers of God's will. I much appreciated Dr. Hanson's extensive use of Josephus'
writings, for example discussing John the Baptist, as well as the
Romans account of the almost total annihilation of the Jews in Israel
by the Kittim (DSS term for "the dark forces") in the late 60's AD.
Finally, I also enjoyed Dr. Hanson's contention that Jesus himself
must have known about the DSS, and while he might have been the Messiah
the scrolls predicted, he constantly drew a distinction between their
extreme positions and disciplines and his more lenient, compassionate
teachings. (I will assume Jesus existed for this discussion). Yet parts of the book were a little troublesome for me, and these
were always Dr. Hanson's commentaries (as opposed to his always
lucid accounts of the details of scrolls-related topics). Indeed
he quotes Josephus extensively for interesting historical context,
and even states that Josephus was a contemporary of Jesus, yet he
says not one word as to why there is maybe only 1 brief "legitimate"
reference in Josephus to Jesus, when according to the author, Jesus'
miracles, predicted by the DSS, were perhaps the most essential aspect
proving his being the Messiah! One would think that anyone who did
such things would be mentioned in detailed volumes in more than a
very passing way. On p. 92 the cruel King Aristobolus dies after a short reign,
it is as if "divine judgement," but when there is a severe earthquake
in 31 B.C., that greatly affects the DSS community, there is no
"Godly" (my words) reason. Perhaps the Essenes and the author need
some background in science! And on p. 116 there is a paragraph
that stunned me given the quality of most of the book. Dr. Hanson
claims that through the Jewish ritual, the "Bar Mitzvah," the 13-year
old "son of the Most High," bypasses adolescence. Having gone through a
serious preparation of quite a bit of Hebrew and Torah reading myself
at that age, I can assure the author that the "High" was only very, very
temporary, and I went through my puberty like everyone else! Whatever its faults, I still highly recommend "The Untold Story" for
a great overview and fine insights into the many aspects the Dead Sea
Scrolls.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fascinating Read!
Review: I was just learning about the Dead Sea Scrolls when I first read this book, and I must say, I found it an intriguing and informative source of information. It was easy to understand and provided me with valuable information. This is a great book for virtually any age--young or old, who is intersted in learning about, or expanding their knolwedge of, the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Rating:
Summary: Unwrapping the Adventures of the Lost Scrolls...
Review: Our understanding of Scripture is built upon the inspired texts themselves. They are the bedrock of our faith. Over the past 2000 years, a significant body of scholarship, commentary and proclamation has been constructed above holy writ, forming what we generally think of when we consider a story or saying from God's written word. We may not know whether it was Augustine, Calvin or Barclay who elucidated a passage in such a way as to help us "own" it; nonetheless, we all depend on the faithful, dedicated witnesses who have preceded us to understand what we read between Genesis 1 and Revelation 22. Great literature has depended upon these insights; as has many of the social advances of the Christian era. It is most likely that when, in our mind's ear, we "hear" Scripture, we do so in the language of the English renaissance-the beautiful cadences of the Authorized (or King James) Version. However, remarkable discoveries have occurred since that beloved translation of the 1600s; discoveries that shed new light upon our edifice of faith. From time to time, older, more reliable copies of this or that book or collection of books from the Bible have been found-in out of the way monasteries and ancient libraries. Yet none of these have been as amazing as that day in 1947 when a Bedouin shepherd boy uncovered an entire cache of ancient scrolls that had remained in a desert cave near the Dead Sea for nearly 2000 years. What his toss of a rock revealed was one of the greatest treasures of all time. In this book, Kenneth Hanson recounts the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, relates the adventure of tracking many down (and losing some forevermore!), and offers the reader a first-hand account of the people who wrote and hid them. Why do we care about a bunch of dusty old scrolls, and their fragments that are too fragile to touch? Because they add their even-older corroboration of many of the Bible passages we have come to know and love. They show how the community of faith treasured and used the texts we revere and read. And they give us a source of greater understanding of the meaning of difficult-to-translate passages that have puzzled Christians for centuries. It is a fascinating, lively account of the importance of God's written word and the people and faith it shapes. And it points us toward the newer revisions of the King James Version (the best of which is the New Revised Standard Version)-translations that take into account the discoveries revealed in 1947. If you have made up your mind that the scholar-archeology of the Indiana Jones type is a myth, then you might want to read this book; getting to know its author will be an eye-opening adventure.
Rating:
Summary: Unwrapping the Adventures of the Lost Scrolls...
Review: Our understanding of Scripture is built upon the inspired texts themselves. They are the bedrock of our faith. Over the past 2000 years, a significant body of scholarship, commentary and proclamation has been constructed above holy writ, forming what we generally think of when we consider a story or saying from God's written word. We may not know whether it was Augustine, Calvin or Barclay who elucidated a passage in such a way as to help us "own" it; nonetheless, we all depend on the faithful, dedicated witnesses who have preceded us to understand what we read between Genesis 1 and Revelation 22. Great literature has depended upon these insights; as has many of the social advances of the Christian era. It is most likely that when, in our mind's ear, we "hear" Scripture, we do so in the language of the English renaissance-the beautiful cadences of the Authorized (or King James) Version. However, remarkable discoveries have occurred since that beloved translation of the 1600s; discoveries that shed new light upon our edifice of faith. From time to time, older, more reliable copies of this or that book or collection of books from the Bible have been found-in out of the way monasteries and ancient libraries. Yet none of these have been as amazing as that day in 1947 when a Bedouin shepherd boy uncovered an entire cache of ancient scrolls that had remained in a desert cave near the Dead Sea for nearly 2000 years. What his toss of a rock revealed was one of the greatest treasures of all time. In this book, Kenneth Hanson recounts the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, relates the adventure of tracking many down (and losing some forevermore!), and offers the reader a first-hand account of the people who wrote and hid them. Why do we care about a bunch of dusty old scrolls, and their fragments that are too fragile to touch? Because they add their even-older corroboration of many of the Bible passages we have come to know and love. They show how the community of faith treasured and used the texts we revere and read. And they give us a source of greater understanding of the meaning of difficult-to-translate passages that have puzzled Christians for centuries. It is a fascinating, lively account of the importance of God's written word and the people and faith it shapes. And it points us toward the newer revisions of the King James Version (the best of which is the New Revised Standard Version)-translations that take into account the discoveries revealed in 1947. If you have made up your mind that the scholar-archeology of the Indiana Jones type is a myth, then you might want to read this book; getting to know its author will be an eye-opening adventure.
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