Focus on Scrolls and Carmelites

BROADCAST NEWS by Joanna Moorhead THE latest chapter in the controversy surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls is examined in Horizon (Monday, 8pm. BBC2). The programme explores how archaeology and dating are helping profile the people who write the ancient documents, while at the same time fuelling the arguments about how the contents could affect the understanding of Christianity and Judaism today.
In November last year the chequered history of the Scrolls took a dramatic twist with the release of a book of translations claiming to be of 50 previously unpublished texts. The Dead Sea Scrolls have remained largely unpublished and under the control of a small, select group of scholars for more than 40 years, and the new translations were the culmination of a bitter fight to have them released to the public.
Horizon talks to the translators, Jewish scholar Robert Eisenman and Christian Michael Wise, and discovers they are at odds not only with the academic establishment but also with one another. Do the Scrolls represent the writings of a militant, movement of anti-establishment zealots, or a small, pacifist, monastic sect living in a settlement call Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea? According to Eisenman: "Whatever Jesus was, he's not like the picture we have in the Scriptures, he's more like the Qumran material... that's what's so frightening about my ideas."
Less frightening, but every bit as fascinating, is the portrait of life behind the walls of a Carmelite convent which goes out on Tyne Tees tonight (630pm, Friday). For a whole week, the Prioress and sisters of Darlington Carmel allowed a Tyne Tees crew to join their daily ritual. The
cameras were allowed everywhere, and the nuns spoke openly and frankly about why they embrace such a difficult life. The result is a sensitive and rare insight into Carmel which deserves a networked showing.
Coming up in the week Saturday: 8.09am, World Service: Words of Faith with Prof S N Rao, Visiting Professor of Hinduism to the Catholic Seminaries of South India; 9.15pm, Radio 3: The last of five tales to coincide with the publication of the BBC's annual anthology of original radio stories is Pastoral, by David Lodge.
Sunday:7am, Radio 2: Good Morning Sunday's special guest for Mothering Sunday is Pat Harris, president of the Mother's Union.
8.09am, World Service: Words of Faith with Fr Kumara Illangasinghe, principal of the Theological College of Sri Lanka. 9.15am, BBC1: The Lenten series People on the Way goes to Tundergarth.
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