Four participants in a Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) seminar on the Dead Sea Scrolls were interviewed in a MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour report this past spring. The four had attended a BAS seminar at Guilford College, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Also interviewed was BAR contributor James Tabor, a featured speaker at the seminar.

The 13-minute report, timed to coincide with the opening of the scrolls exhibit at the Library of Congress,^a was narrated by Richard Ostling, Time magazine’s religion writer and special correspondent for the NewsHour. The broadcast noted “the extraordinary public interest” in the scrolls and reviewed the scrolls’ discovery, the recent furor over access and the current debate about the meaning of the scrolls.